This person did a marvelous analisis about the movie (http://dilandau.galeon.com/mokushiroku.htm) the page is in spanish so I doubt many people in the forum can read but still:

Akio murió cuando niño, debido a que el Poder de Anthy, ese poder que lo había convertido en el Príncipe de las Rosas, desapareció, dejándolo indefenso; esto se explica desde el punto de vista biológico; las niñas maduran primero que los niños, y la maifestación de esa madurez en la mujer es su primera menstruación; podemos entender que Anthy comenzó a madurar antes que él en ese aspecto biológico, y el lazo de inocencia infantil que hubo entre los 2 se perdió, pero era algo que tenía que pasar, tarde o temprano. Nadie podía detener ese proceso... Akio no pudo resistir esa pérdida, y murió... Pero el sentimiento de culpa de Anthy hizo que Akio regresara a la vida, pero de manera adulta... Por tal razón es que Akio tiene un desfase en sus etapas de crecimiento; el no tuvo adolescencia, y por lo tanto, no puede madurar; simplemente es adulto gracias a Anthy...


Y por tal razón es que Akio necesita a Anthy en la Revolución; una vez estando ella en el lugar preciso, Akio puede tomarla para salir juntos al Mundo Exterior, y que Anthy le dé esa parte de su adolescencia que él no tiene...

Translation

Akio died as a child, because when Anthy's powers, which maintained him as prince, disappeared; he became defenseless; this can be explained in a biological point of view: girls tend to mature before boys do, the manifestation of this can be seen in their menstruation; we can understand that Anthy hit puberty before him in that aspect, and because of that the link of childish innocence between the two of them was deeply severed; this was something that had to happen early or later and couldn't be stopped... but… Akio couldn't stand that lost and died... Anthy felt guilty about that and revived Akio but now as an adult, leaving a gap in which his adolescence was supposed to be, since he didn't had adolescence he is unable to mature stays as an adult only thanks to Anthy.

For that reason Akio needs Anthy in the Revolution game; by taking here to a precise place, Akio can take her to get out the outside world and Anthy would give him then that part of her adolescence he never had.

So Akio is completely incapable to obtain revolution and real adulthood without Anthy, if Anthy lefts by herself the world he will disapear and die as he was supposed to in the first place. Anthy also didn't want to let him go and grow up, after all Akio was everything she had left. This interesting considering the manga in which Anthy was the one destined to die and Dios saved her.


Also this persons adds Shiori as a direct involved partner in crime full knowing of her participation (signals Akio's paintings in Shiori's room as proof of that, an even sugests that Shiori was the one that filmed the scandalous tape.)

Edit: Made some corrections on the translated text. and added some opinions of my own

Last edited by Romanticide (04-07-2007 01:06:09 AM)

Yasha wrote:

If anyone's willing to email the author and ask for translations, I would love to see more of this analysis.

It's a very, very, VERYYYYYYYYYYYYYY old page* so I'm not sure if this person uses that email anymore but I could try if you want or I can try to translate all the text myself for you to read it. (it could take a while though)

*4 years old at least, no actualizations since then.

Hello, all. First post, squee!

After having seen both the series and the movie a few times through over the past two years, I finally made the bad choice of checking out the Wikipedia article, which mentions that movie could be seen as a sequel to the series. I had never considered it before... I spent a few weeks mulling over how the movie could make sense as a sequel to the series. The land of the dead idea didn't quite sit right with me, as it doesn't explain what Anthy's doing there. (Yes, I know linear timelines are silly, but I couldn’t help myself!) Then I began contemplating an alternative, which I'm probably going to drive into the ground in fanfic form at some point soon. Briefly:

Anthy sets out from Ohtori, knowing that Utena is not truly dead (cheers to reincarnation and/or immortality) and so in search of her. After a lot of dead ends (haha, pun), she senses a veritable power plant of magic on the horizon, and the flavor of it is uncomfortably familiar. Anthy investigates and finds Utena, but not as she expected. The she-prince now has illusory power to rival Akio's, but she can't handle the magic, her memories, or herself. She has trapped herself in a dream school, and is reliving her experience over and over, in bits and pieces. With no other recourse, Anthy steps inside Utena's dream Ohtori. Once inside, she confronts her own demons... It takes healing and self-awareness on both sides before they're ready to escape, to the real world this time, together.

I re-watched the movie today, just to see if my trippy story made any sense. I've managed to contrive plausible explanations for most of the whacked-out insanity of the film through this plot line (Touga and Akio included). The big problem is that I don't see clearly enough into movie-Anthy's head space to rationalize a lot of her decisions in the film, with or without my little storyline. Developing her mental state when writing might even make it all make sense.

As for the Akio question that spawned this thread... The way I'm envisioning it, Utena's subconscious can't handle memories of Akio. The terror and glory of him are too much, and the pile of mess between him, her, and Anthy are more than she can bear alone. To protect herself, she's made the chairman into a fop, and ensured that they'd never actually meet besides. He's just there as a figurehead, in case her conscious mind asks who's running the school. Oh, and she's thrown away the key to his car for good measure, just in case! Then there's Touga, reinvented as her prince to avoid all the mess of thinking about Akio and let her cope with her emotions at a safe distance.

Can you tell that it's almost 5am? Yeah...

Just writing you all to hear if other people are even vaguely intrigued by this interpretation. Am I full of it? Help me out here...

Last edited by saudadejung (06-16-2008 02:50:34 AM)

LOL, tempting...

Yay! I've actually wanted to talk about Movie-Akio for a while since, really, I never considered them that different. I think Ikuhara was using the movie characters to make some things more obvious about the characters and their relationships that were only hinted at in the series(i.e. Rose Bride sleeps with everybody).

And I think he wanted to highlight that Akio and Anthy's relationship is more equal than it seems--its just that Akio likes to feel like the one in charge and Anthy lets him believe that, or perhaps even believes it herself depending on how you want to look at it and which Anthy. Anthy in the movie has all this time been letting him think that she's drugged and HE'S the one in control. Him screaming, "I'm not that kind of person!" is him realizing that his sister was in control of the situation all along, that HE'S the pawn in HER game. And like Series-Akio, that's the one thing that absolutely destroys him. He strikes out at her with the knife as a last ditch effort to prove his dominance.

Of course, we don't see this in Series-Akio because he's damn good at convincing people that he's in control of everything and on-top of the world. You can still at least see his fear at the ending of the series--when everything goes out of his hands. That's what he truly fears, and he needs to fool everyone as well as himself that he's that in-command. And while he may be in control of his little sandbox--he massively underestimates his sister's input and royally freaks out when he realizes his mistake.

I think showing Anthy more in charge of her situation further highlighted a theme that was addressed in the series. That Anthy is stuck not necessarily because of the formidibility and power of her brother, but her own attachment. After all, wasn't the point of the end of the series was that you can only save yourself if you really want to? It illustrates that it was more the emotional power that Akio held over her, rather than a position of real power.

Hey, this is awesome~! People actually theorizing about movie!Akio? Has the world ended and I not realize it?

(Sorry, I tease. I'm just very pleased by all the analysis going on in the thread.)

Jurrasic, I have no idea how the whole Touga rape thing got in there either. It was utterly unnecessary to everything, including his being dead (go figure?) I'd blame it on Shiori's creepy fantasies, but in my Utena's dream scenario that doesn't make much sense. Then again, if I stick to my hypothesis we have Utena creating Kozue and Miki's bathtub scene, so maybe Utena just has a really twisted opinion of her cohort? Can't imagine why that would be...

As for the Akio debacle... I'd guess Utena had written him out entirely, but Anthy entering the dream forced a dopple to be created (Anthy's conception of Ohtori couldn't exist without Akio, I'd guess), and so Utena settled for keeping him at a distance, but as a fop with no car, and dead besides... Maybe movie Akio is how Anthy sees him, after all the years and crap he's put her through?

Grank.

My friends IRL have a relevant D&D joke: we were playing Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, written by Monte Cook. Our DM made a sign saying "Blame Monte" and taped it onto his DM screen, to point at when we complained... I propose a "Blame Ikuhara" sign, for when we have no other explanation for our confusion.

[Edited to make sense to everyone who isn't me.]

Last edited by saudadejung (06-17-2008 02:54:21 PM)

saudadejung wrote:

As for the Akio debacle... I'd guess Utena had written him out entirely, but Anthy entering the dream forced a dopple to be created (Anthy's conception of Ohtori couldn't exist without Akio, I'd guess), and so Utena settled for keeping him at a distance, but as a fop with no car, and dead besides... Maybe movie Akio is how Anthy sees him, after all the years and crap he's put her through?

Query: Much as I'm intrigued by your premise for explaining the movie as a sequel, why wouldn't a representation of Anthy have existed in Utena's version of Ohtori? Or, if there was one, would the real Anthy's entrance have overwritten the facsimile?

Touga's being molested was probably meant to explain why he and the other duellists were so frantic for power.  The irony of what happened to movie Touga is that it all enabled him to become a rich kid, and to play Prince. Still, it seemed excessive and even gratuitous.

The movie manga said more or less explicitly that Anthy created that whole world. It's a world she created out of desperation and it attracts other desperate people. She seems to embody some kind of elemental power that others keep trying to control.

p.s. That's a great posting Frau Eva.

Last edited by brian (06-17-2008 08:46:33 PM)

First, apologies because this post is undoubtedly all over the place. Also, still not sure how convinced I am by my Utena's dream-Ohtori hypothesis, but I'm going to argue for it as best I can to see if I can keep holding it up.. If that gets irritating, say so and I'll shove the idea out of the forum and back into a word doc, I promise. (BTW, I definitely see the movie doing nineteen things at once, including Frau Eva's suggestion that it's Ikuhara clarifying the series.)

Everyone's insights about Touga: Hmm... so much to think about. I still feel like him being pimped out by his father is utterly disjointed from both his series and movie personalities (yes, trauma of rape could result in denial, but I just don't see either Touga as being in that sort of denial, though I haven't ever watched looking for it) but I don't know what to do with that feeling. Part of me wants to believe that either a) he's lying to Shiori for some reason, or b) Shiori's making it up because she wants her fictional dead boyfriend to have that history... It'd odd, you'd think SKU would have desensitized me to the point where I could believe a dead character explaining about how he was raped as a child while painting his pseudo-girlfriend's toes, but I just can't get there... My current stand is to assume explanation b, or more generally: Touga is a figment of the imagination of whomever he's talking to (which admittedly only works if Anthy and Utena are telepathic for some reason, but I'm okay with that).

Ragnarock+Frau Eva: My current explanation of Anthy within my hypothesis would be that Utena had some kind of stand-in for Anthy (likely only a modicum more true to the full person than either Juri or Miki), and probably had gotten herself stuck on her own inconsistencies replaying the thing over and over-- until the real Anthy arrived and picked up her own role. (In short, yes to R's second inquiry.) To me, the biggest selling point for my hypothesis is that it helps me to understand the difference in behavior between Anthy in the series and the movie. Series Anthy had spent unknowable years perfecting her exterior self as an almost faceless victim. It took her the entire series to show herself to be more by leaving. Movie Anthy may move like a flopsy doll, but she leaps on Utena before they are engaged, leads her up to the observation tower unprovoked, and has the drive (pardon my pun) to escape Ohtori once and for all. She does all of this without Akio's orders, because he is dead, and there is no other character to make demands on her. Movie Anthy acts upon feelings for Utena, and doing so repeatedly moves the plot forward-- and those actions are easy for her, because she already knows Utena is the person to act for, and that she is capable of action.

A thought experiment: if end-of-series Anthy was offered the opportunity for her own dream-Ohtori, a place where she could privately retell her past, vent her feelings, and prepare to move on, what would it be like? Undoubtedly, the majority of the duelists would not need to be more than caricatures, as they don't really matter to her. Depending on her feelings (and how you interpret everything), she might create an Akio she feels comfortable standing up to, one who is young, foppish, emasculated-- dead. Anthy revisiting her own choices might even want to be more forward with Utena... more affectionate, more supportive, more playful. She might want to recast herself as someone who flirts and teases, to make up for all the time she spent staring blankly behind glasses she never really needed. Perhaps she'd even be reluctant to leave when first asked... I wonder whose fantasy I really imagine the movie to be: a shared delusion? How Utena and Anthy choose to remember Ohtori after discussing it to death, fifty years later? Ikuhara's, at least.

I'm going to reread this in a few hours and see if it still makes sense. Forgive me for future edits, please?

Last edited by saudadejung (06-18-2008 12:44:38 AM)

All of your analysises [analyses?] are lovely! It really makes me think, "hey, maybe this movie DID make sense!"

But I can't help but feel attached to my own theory that Makio is really Aoi. XD

Mishi wrote:

Who is Aoi?

A very briefly seen character in the Utena manga that Utena first thinks of as her prince, who ends up getting involved with her aunt.