Hiraku wrote:

2. There was never such a thing as Nemuro or the fire that killed 100 boys. Akio and Anthy just set up the illusory stage as a small experiment before putting Utena to the real test.

That's a really creepy thought -- because then you have the implication that Nemuro is a kind of artificial intelligence that developed self-awareness...and got wiped because of it.

I personally believe that he did exist, as did the boys; a sacrifice had to be made, I think, which Akio learned from Anthy. But a willing sacrifice and a forced one don't appear to yield the same results. After all, Akio "sacrificed" Utena via Anthy stabbing her in the back, but her sword didn't work when he took it. In fact it was only Utena herself, not her sword, who could open the gate of Dios. So...yeah. I don't know. I think the fact that the outside world didn't see the fate of the boys or Nemuro is testament to the glamour over the school. I mean, a girl turns into a cow, her brother punches out a kangaroo and people body-surf after making curry in home ec and no-one bats an eyelid. What's a Little Accident compared to that? It's all part of the process.

Last edited by Clarice (09-02-2011 01:16:23 AM)

After seeing the end of the Black Rose arc, my interpretation was that Mikage didn't really kill 100 boys but he believed he did. The series implies that Ohtori is a place where reality is warped and that the school is connected to an outside world that's more like our world. I like to compare it to the town of Silent Hill from the well-known game series. If 100 people really died at the school, it would make a splash in the outside world so big that I don't think Akio's reality-warping powers could cover it up. Tokiko's return to the school, among other things, suggests that Akio has some power over the perceptions of people outside the school, but how would he cover up a hundred dead students? Make 100 families forget that their sons ever existed?

You can compare it to Silent Hill as it was in Silent Hill 2. If a few people go to Silent Hill and die, then as far as people in the outside world know, they mysteriously disappeared. Big whoop. But if a hundred people disappeared into Silent Hill, it would be impossible to ignore that some serious weirdness was going on. Same deal with the hundred dead guys. How would Akio pull that off without drawing tons of attention to his otherworld, attention of a kind he wouldn't want? Any why would he bother when the entire dueling game is an illusion he created and he can set whatever rules for it he wants? Only in Mikage's mind is the sacrifice of an entombed duelist necessary to create a Black Rose duelist. The series makes it clear that all Akio needs to fuel his dreamworld is one continuous sacrifice: Anthy's. Like Jesus in Christianity, she pays in full for all of his past, present and future sins - until she decides to climb down off the cross.

My opinion's still divided on whether Mikage was a real person at all. It's possible he was just a lingering specter of Professor Nemuro's shadow self and that Akio designed him as an anti-Utena to help propel Utena's development. Or he could have been the identity Professor Nemuro took when he returned to the school after many years. It could go either way.

Well, in fact I think that the main purpose of Tokiko in the Episode 23 is to show us, the viewers, that Ohtori academy is not real world, or it doesn't follow the same rules, think about it, before that episode, there was no proof that Ohtori academy was "not normal". But when Tokiko appears as an old woman everything about the freezing of time and that is unveiled...

Well... I think it's the place, Akio says:

Akio:  As long as they stay in this garden we call the Academy, a person will never become an adult

The thing is... maybe Akio can't leave that place for some reason...

eh...... Tokiko leaves Ohtori after Nemuro's incident, so that's why she's old. But Akio and Nemuro never left, so that's why they're still young (although Akio says Nemuro has never been there...)

KaleMarsh wrote:

Well, yes, but I'm saying that since Tokiko can leave and ages, the place obviously only affects certain people.  Akio cannot leave, and Mikage/Nemuro can't either.

Though there is definitely evidence that the place might have nothing to do with aging or lack of aging, considering what and who both Mikage and Akio seem to be.  So no idea.  It's pretty much left for interpretation.

I think you hit the nail on the head with your second guess.    The more I rewatch the series, the more I think that there's really very little that's supernatural about time in Ohtori.  We don't see any of the current revolution's characters in Mikage's flashbacks, for instance; if nothing ever changes at Ohtori, shouldn't we recognize someone?  The modern characters seem to have aged normally, with the age difference between Utena and Touga the same as it was when he stumbled across her in the church.  Ditto Tatsuya and Wakaba, even though Tatsuya hasn't gone to Ohtori for as long as Wakaba has.  People (Tatsuya, Saionji, Ruka) leave and enter the academy seemingly normally, and some students live off campus.  Nanami even goes to India.  The campus is not a sealed bubble, and time passes normally for everyone inside -- except for the archetypal beings Akio and Anthy, and for the fossilized memory Mikage.  If time seems weird at Ohtori, it's mostly because the failed revolutions are cyclical, so in a broad sense everything that is happening has happened before.  Memory, of course, does not always work normally, as the entire Black Rose Saga illustrates.

I think Akio's line about how people who stay in the academy can't become adults is rationalization.  Akio likes believing that the reason he's debased and immature is that Anthy has imprisoned him in a bubble where people can't mature, rather than because he personally has not taken responsibility for his own disintegration.  That way it's her fault, not his.  He's willfully blind to the many instances in SKU of genuine personal growth, always occurring in people other than him; I think the growth of all the other main characters gives the lie to his line.

Since I tend to be more interested in Anthy's character than Akio's, I like to think that she did actually imprison him, but her reasoning changes from wanting to protect him to wanting to protect everything else from him or derive some sort of pleasure from their continued cycle of love/hate.

Though, strangely, I think you guys nail why I'm not that interested in Akio.  He doesn't change or develop so much as he becomes more tangible to the viewer, which gives him the illusion of developing.

Basically, I wanted to contribute something to your comments because they're very nice, but I don't have much .

Last edited by KaleMarsh (09-02-2011 08:11:08 PM)

dirufacade wrote:

Then again, Akio would need to borrow someone else's nobility or "sword" since he doesn't have the Sword of Dios anymore.  Anthy does.  It's sealed it in her chest. 

Remember that Utena stops using the Sword of Dios in the Apocalypse Arc? It was always my impression that the Sword of Dios is what Akio uses in the duel called Revolution, and that that is also the sword with which Anthy stabs Utena. Utena uses her own sword in that last battle. Akio has access to the Sword of Dios, it's just useless to him because he's Akio, not Dios. (Just my opinion)

tothptah wrote:

Remember that Utena stops using the Sword of Dios in the Apocalypse Arc? It was always my impression that the Sword of Dios is what Akio uses in the duel called Revolution, and that that is also the sword with which Anthy stabs Utena. Utena uses her own sword in that last battle. Akio has access to the Sword of Dios, it's just useless to him because he's Akio, not Dios. (Just my opinion)

Excuse me?

Last edited by Leeg (09-03-2011 03:18:52 AM)

Well... I believe it works this way:


Anthy (who has sealed the power of Dios) has the sword of Dios till Episode 25, here the power of Dios is unleashed and it warps to Utena's body. At the end, the sword Akio draws from Anthy is the sword which is left in her body, the sword of the witch (since the sword of Dios is now inside Utena).

In fact, during the sacrifice sequence, the sword of the witch is shown:

Last edited by Leeg (09-03-2011 06:22:23 AM)

Not to sound like a jerk or anything, but I did write a whole four-page wrap about this thing and got no replies to it.  Just scroll around.

satyreyes wrote:

I think Akio's line about how people who stay in the academy can't become adults is rationalization.  Akio likes believing that the reason he's debased and immature is that Anthy has imprisoned him in a bubble where people can't mature, rather than because he personally has not taken responsibility for his own disintegration.  That way it's her fault, not his.  He's willfully blind to the many instances in SKU of genuine personal growth, always occurring in people other than him; I think the growth of all the other main characters gives the lie to his line.

Ikuhara wanted to portray a psychopath when he created Akio. Akio lies WHENEVER it would put him at risk, and many times when it wouldn't. He's pure evil. (Akio, not Ikuhara )

It seems like a lot of people didn't like the corpses in the coffins. I actually liked them, I don't mind at all that the corpses resembled the Duelist. I took that in a symbolic sense rather than a literal one-- the corpses are the Black Rose Duelists, the side of them that they repress, the side that came out in the duel. The side that Mikage manipulated and used-- his "fossil fuel." The fact that Mikage burns them seemed to me to represent that there was no more of that "fuel" left in those people, even if the feelings remained.


Edit: on a second look, that seems so simplistic and self-evident. OH WELL