OnionPrince wrote:

That makes a lot more sense to me now. I feel like I'm learning so much about this extraordinarily deep series.

One thing still bothers me, though. Like Satyreyes said, "protecting people you care about, because you care about them" is a truer and healthier goal to live for. But in that case, what about the people who no one cares about? Are the plights of the huddled masses enough justification for a Prince in the world? I have no idea, really, so I'm just throwing that question out there.

Interesting question!  But it may be academic.  Can you think of anyone at Ohtori who no one cares about?  Take a minute and try.  It's harder than it sounds.  Maybe Kanae or Keiko?  But we know so little about Kanae, and I do think that Nanami and Aiko and Yuuko care about Keiko, in a bizarre passive-aggressive way.  If everyone would take a tip from Utena and act awesome to their friends, I don't think anyone would need an altruistic/masochistic Prince.  So it's very hard to answer your question; there are just no friendless "huddled masses" in the show for us to study.

If I had to guess, though, extrapolating from what the show communicates about the Prince archetype, I'd say that there's nothing wrong with charity as long as it doesn't take you away from the people you genuinely love.  Being awesome to your friends doesn't necessarily mean not being awesome to strangers.  But the latter is treated as much less important.

EDIT: The direction we're going suddenly puts me forcefully in mind of the anime Paranoia Agent, a horror/noir/mindfuck that carefully and movingly treats the problem of accepting responsibility for one's own life and problems.  I am sure that if you were lonely and wanted to be taken to a French restaurant, the director of Paranoia Agent would say "so deal with it."  I'm not sure Utena goes that far, but the sense of entitlement to being saved from petty personal problems by a stranger is condemned, if anything, even more harshly than being The Prince is.

Last edited by satyreyes (11-04-2007 10:45:14 AM)

Even Ikuhara seems to imply this in the movie. The very last thing seen is another castle -- possibly a mirage or another trap -- but possibly that "real" castle that is waiting to be created by Utena and Anthy.

As far as my interpretation goes, castles in the movie symbolize dreams which the characters seek to fulfill. The Castle of Eternity is real, but only within the context of the closed world and to those who seek to leave it, the castle becomes an obstacle which must be passed. The castle in the outside world represented dreams to be fulfilled within the context of the outside world, which is far wider than anything available in Ohtori. I don't think they directly correlate with princehood, even though it's easy to make that conclusion for obvious reasons - in the movie, the death of princes and acknowledging it was required for Utena and Anthy to escape. In other words, the princes themselves were traps, which bound people to their specific roles. Breaking away from the set roles has always been the main theme of Utena for me, and what role is more important than that of a prince?

Giovanna wrote:

I don't think Akio would know a true prince if it crawled out of the water and bit him on the ass, so I tend not to trust him to call whether Utena became a prince or not. Although I think the show is ambiguous on purpose about what a prince is, so we're kinda denied an obvious answer as to whether or not Utena is one. If you want to go by the archetype, probably not. She is human, and must remain human, and because she's such, she can't be a pure embodiment of any one thing except being human. But the show always seemed to me to make the point that archetypes shouldn't matter, and in the end, they don't. (Akio, the remaining archetype, becomes completely unimportant.) It's not what people aspire to become that matters, it's what they do. Utena spends all this time aspiring to be a prince, acting the part, trying to be the real deal. But it's her actions in the end that make her a prince. Not by her own standards, sadly, because she aimed for the archetype, but for the rest of us watching, what she did was at the very least princelike. A Christian does not try to be Jesus, they try to be like him, because that's the best you're going to get out of it, being what you are, and that's impressive enough. So in the end, I guess I think Utena's actions were princelike, but it doesn't qualify her to be a Prince. There was a prince, and it's gone now. The most you could give her is she was a prince for a moment, the same as Wakaba shining for a moment.

i would have to disagree. during the series utena definitely displayed actions that were above human. i think that in the end the swords of hate were similar to the fruit of the gods or the tree of life or something with the ability to make a person strong enough to endure the trials able to be on the same level as a god. like in the end no one remembered utena, well no one remembered God either (specifically). before the swords destroy the entire planatarium it goes after utena first, so maybe the swords are both good and evil

brian wrote:

Anthy tipped the balance but the world has to be brought back into balance. The role of Prince has to be filled by somebody. Unconsiously Akio is seeking his own defeat because deep down he knows that he has no where else to go.

That is arguable - it was shown that the world was going to hell when Anthy interfered. Dios was dying and people weren't even trying to do anything on their own. Anthy removed the Prince from the equation and forced the people to fix their own damn problems. They never forgave her.

Still I am not sure how far to pursue this idea. After all, who becomes the new witch/pincushion? A long time ago someone suggested that it is Utena and that is why Anthy has to find her. So is the new Prince Anthy and the new witch Utena? I don't like that idea but it would explain the swords coming at Utena.

The swords were coming at Utena because the hate of the world demands a scapegoat - the Prince who can't save everybody will do fine, if no witch is available. Anthy certainly is no Prince; she isn't driven by motivation to do the impossible, but concencrates her effort on a single meaningful task of saving Utena.

A disconnected idea. Utena does perform multiple miracles throughout. We are led to believe that Dios or Akio are doing it, but Dios is dead and sometimes Akio is completely caught by surprise. Who is doing the miracles then?

Anthy, or rather the Power of Dios that sleeps within Anthy as she keeps telling us at the start of every duel. Remember how Ruka got that moment of insight when he saw Anthy seemingly praying for something just before "Dios" appeared? And it was her interference that allowed Utena to use her own soulsword.

It struck me that Wakaba created a lot of Princes: Saionji, Utena, Tatsuya, and Akio. She is quite a very busy girl. It seems that the Onion Prince is a false Prince but the Tatsuya who confesses unselfish love to Mikage is a True Prince. The Utena who fights duels is a False Prince, the one her sacrifices herself and her hope of keeping Akio is a True Prince.

Remember that in the movie Touga is called a True Prince because of his sacrifice. The Prince described in the Tale of the Rose is Akio's distortion. The Prince who merely makes girls feel good is not a real Prince but the Prince dying in Anthy's arms was. In the movie manga Utena makes a crack about Princes just being playboys and Touga saying that there is far more to it than that.

Perhaps that argues for the point someone made in another thread that Anthy's sacrifice made her a kind of Prince.

Also Utena and Juri both had similar relationships with their purple-haired friends. It does seem a little unjust that Juri's sacrifice gave her no peace and apparently neither did Utena's. It does seem that that Utena surpassed Juri in being better able to set aside obsessions and hurts and just think whole-heartedly about her friend.

So this argues that there are such things as True Princes in the various versions of SKU and that Utena achieved it, but not before serving time as a False Prince. This would explain why Anthy stabbed her. At that point Utena was still in love with Akio, and even though she was doing her best to defend Anthy, Anthy knew her deepest heart was not in it. Since the duels are usually fought with one whom the protagonist loves on some level Utena could not win the final duel when she still wanted to be a Princess who would be taken care of by Akio. She was still a girl, still desiring to be a usurper Rose Bride on some level. Even if she had bested Akio it would not have changed much. She finally won not by fighting Akio but by loving her friend.

Nuts, this posting is a lot more rambling than it seemed when I composed it in my sleep last night.

Last edited by brian (12-21-2007 10:06:56 PM)

Ok, ok, how about this?

Going along similar lines stated by satyreyes and others, including rhyaniwyn's post immediately above this one: "[Utena's] not a Prince...she's something better..." But focusing more on Utena's line of "I guess I couldn't be your prince after all."

One of the major themes on SKU is the concept of growing up or, in many cases, failing to do so. The Student Council, Mikage, Akio and Anthy are all trapped in Ohtori because they can't grow up or choose not to. Utena, as our protagonist, must therefore accomplish what no one else has and grow into an adult; thus showing the way to Anthy who likewise leaves her old life for the outside/adult world.

Princes as seen in SKU are fairy tale characters, they only exist in a child's view of the world. "There never was a real prince" is a true statement from the adult or faux-adult perspective. Couldn't Utena's realization that she can't be Anthy's prince stem from finally accepting this simple yet mature truth? It's not a happy thought by any means, it requires her to give up her innocence in order to pass into the unclean and realistic world which adults have made. At the same time it is not a failure to recognize fiction for what it is, growing up may be bittersweet but it's also a necessity.

Akio, as the ultimate antagonist, represents the opposite of what the hero must strive to become. He has all the trappings of an adult with none of the maturity or responsibility. He knows that the prince doesn't exist, yet rather than accept that and move on he instead steals the role of prince for himself, forcing everyone else to play along with his game. A 'real' prince can only exist to children, so Akio must keep his subjects from maturing and figuring out the truth behind his illusions. He gives the Student Council a taste of adulthood as he sees it, as it's viewed from a child's eyes; freedom from authority with none of the personal responsibility that needs to entail.

And so, by gaining the adult knowledge that being a prince is just a fantasy itself, Utena disappears from Ohtori by having outgrown it. Anthy, realizing what's happened and using Utena's example is finally able herself to grow out of the fairy tale role she's steeped herself in.

Nanami's Rose Groom wrote:

I also agree, but only to some extent, because I believe that Utena was a pronce, maybe just for a while, but always. Remember the moment, while she was duelling with Akio and she said "This means I am going to be a prince" (or sumthin like that). A second later the statue of Dios (prince) was shattered. In the same moment we see that Akio is shocked (with her words? probably). He loses control over the planetarium which shows that the castle also breaks down. We can't forget, that Akio was once the prince, and the statue might have served him as a memento of some sort. When Utena exclaims, that she will be the prince, we see that symbolically Akio is not needed as a prince anymore, because of his fall. There is now a true, new, noble prince, and this is Utena. That's my interpretation...

So many points of view...and I'm relatively open to all of these opinions...
but I'd have to say this is the closest to mine

That's what I believe. ^

Oh, that reminds me. Tying in with my pervious comment, Dios riding away (and on a merry-go-round) works symbolically as a departure from childhood.

If there is anything Revolutionary Girl Utena is not, it is most definitely not Objectivist.

I agree with the whole "new, true prince Utena" theory, especially since I consider the movie be a continuation of the series. In the movie, the cast becomes more like the people they are inside and want to be. Utena gets to be her own fusion of prince and princess, Anthy her own fusion of princess and witch. Everyone else is more direct, confident and affable, so the Revolution was a most definite success