What a neat analysis of Dios's transition to Akio!  I see what you mean; he does follow an arc sort of similar to what you see in some politicians.  But I think there are a couple points that don't quite match up.

The fairy tale pretty clearly implies that Dios constantly fought monsters and won, saving princesses in the process.  He wasn't just making idealistic promises -- he was following through.  If he were a politician, he'd be one of the most successful ever, striking down corruption and injustice on a daily basis.  But it's never enough, and when he disappears from the scene people come pounding at the doors, demanding with a false sense of entitlement that Dios come back and fund their pork-barrel projects and pass laws to serve their every whim.  He delivered on every campaign promise he made; now people are trying to hold him accountable for promises he didn't make.  And he would've let them, too, if not for Anthy.  I'm not sure the analogy survives past this point, but I do like the image of Utena as his hand-picked successor.

Last edited by satyreyes (10-30-2006 12:32:55 AM)

DAMN YOU. I thought this thread was going to be some sort of concerted effort to write Akio into the ballot for senator of your state when you vote next week. The US Senate needs class and dignity, and Akio would be a breath of fresh air in an otherwise retardedly sexually oppressed, totally in denial cage of monkeys. (Although really I'd rather see him in the oval office. And people complained about Clinton. Ha!)

Anyway, that's definitely a very cool way of looking at it in parallel, I think something like that most certainly factored in Akio's development, if not Dios' original fall. Even after the swords fall on Anthy, it makes no sense to think Dios just woke up like 'hay I'm gonna fuck some people and leave a sticky, shuddering trail of emotional scarring in my wake'. For me, I wonder what he first thought was the morning after. Did Dios immediately decide that people sucked and he wasn't going to save them anymore, or did he try to pick up where he left off first? Option A certainly opens the floodgates for Akio to show up, but really, so does Option B. Just takes a little longer.

I think Dios did try to continue being the prince, but like a politician, learned he could only be effective playing by a very nasty set of rules, and in time, the rules became the norm. And just like a politician, who may start with selfless, noble intent, he ended up in it for his own ends. In Akio's case I wonder how the transition took place insofar as when he decided his interests were more important than anyone else's. Was it in some way an open rebellion against the people who turned on him and Anthy, or was it slower to develop, the result of years of futility in the effort to further more noble ends. And how did he decide he had more worth than anyone else? Considering Anthy's line in the end, 'You're he that chose his path, knowing the whole of the world', I almost suspect his overblown sense of superiority was in no small part originally the work of his sister.

Ragnarok wrote:

Akio says he used to consider Anthy as a goddess who sacrificed herself for him. That's got to be a pretty huge ego boost itself. I do think it was a gradual process that caused the transformation, though of course losing Anthy would be the biggest step to turn him away from humanity.

The last step, I suspect, involved his deciding she wasn't much of a goddess. Maybe by then he'd been insulted by the power she had over him? Yay emasculation! Perhaps the parallel would be when politicians realize the voters, the people that had been behind them all the way, really didn't mean poopysquat in the upper ranks.