#shoujo kakumei utena
Utena’s presented with the fact that the world is cruel twice over. Once, that it’s cruel to her, which she responds to with despair. Then, that it’s cruel to Anthy. Which, because for all her flaws she’s still the best damn person in this whole anime, she responds to by questioning the system. Not completely – she accepts that only a prince can save Anthy – but she does. If only a prince can save Anthy, she will be a prince, no matter what anyone says.
Touga’s always known the world is cruel – I don’t think he ever had the option to not know – but mimics that cruelty rather than fighting it as Utena does. “Revolutionising the world” might mean changing it, but he fits into the system completely. There’s no attempt to fight it, just the hope that winning at it might let him overhaul it from the top, and I’m not even sure what he wants to overhaul it into.
Miki retreats from it. Kozue pushes something like Touga’s view on him – the world is dirty, you have to get dirty too – but Miki is attached to his own innocence and that means not knowing. He doesn’t reject that cruelty like Utena, really, he just refuses to see it.
Saionji just reacts. The cruelty of the world took him off guard and he never seems to have figured out how to respond to it. He withdraws, he lashes out, he clings to the idea that something eternal could justify it. His cruelty doesn’t come from the cold acceptance that that’s how the world is and there’s no point in trying to be better that characterises Touga so much as a selfish inability to see beyond his own hurt.
Juri’s position is a defensive one. The world is cruel, so she tries not to give it any reason to be cruel to her. Both remaining closeted and her drive to succeed at everything seem to be an attempt to remain acceptable to a world with claws.
#excellent meta op!! would love to hear your thoughts on nanami’s anthy’s and akio’s postions
#i would say that nanami was blinded to it in her gilded cage until touga’s scheme forced her to see it and deal with it
#anthy as the world’s ultimate victim/blame target is intimately aware of it and has built her life around trying to endure it
#lashing out when she can at those who add to her pains and seemingly resigned to things never changing
#akio has seen it firsthand and ran from it; he sits in his little world of ohtori playing god and making anthy endure the pain in his place
I wanted to include Nanami but couldn’t figure her out. Does she know the world is cruel? She seems to fear people turning on her to a rather neurotic degree, her imagine spots in Nanami’s Egg focus on how quickly she thinks she could be ostracised. But at the same time, she seems oblivious in a way the other Duelists aren’t, which is why she can’t get the egg speech right – she sees the egg as caring for the bird, not as caging it. Touga definitely forces awareness on her, but I’m not sure whether it’s awareness of the world as cruel, or awareness that the person she thought was protecting her from the cruel world is equally cruel.
Anthy seems the most hopeless. If the world is cruel and everyone in it is cruel, there’s nothing to do and nowhere to go. She might as well hold on to the one person who was kind to her once, no matter that he’s no better than the rest of the world now. Utena’s a revelation just for being kind, no matter how clumsily.
Akio takes Touga’s view, I think, only he’s completed that arc. The world was cruel, he became cruel, he won at cruelty. Now he has the power not to be hurt by it as long as he never cares that it’s hurting anyone else.
(Is this cold?)
(seek release)
(Your rulebook doesn’t mean shit!)
the first episode of revolutionary girl utena, the rose bride, aired on this date 25 years ago.
(Every petal an accusation, every bumbling bee a pointing finger.)
requested by anonymous.
(Sleep like dead men. Wake up like dead men.)
(It means no worries for the rest of your days.)
(surrounded by terrified fishermen)
(he had a trustworthy smile)
(the way a human loves another human)
(care to explain THAT one?)
(The only words for this are my fingers in your mouth.)
