#NOT meant to be crit on either of these characters or even the writing im just having a laff

[circuslollipop]

"mom, are you sure you want to sneak into king's landing? there's guards everywhere, you have an incredibly distinctive appearance, it's going to be nearly impossible"

"this is what i want to do, yes"

"okay, roll stealth. but it's going to be a very high dc"

"natural 20 :)"

[ladyloveandjustice]

Utena thoughtdump

Sometimes I see posts I disagree with but don’t feel like taking the time to rebut them, even indirectly, but then years later they come up in my head and I feel like writing a sort of thought dump.

THIS IS ONE OF THOSE TIMES.

So I once saw a post that was like “Utena and Ikuhara are bad because dudes get away with being manipulative and sexual, don’t get majorly punished for it, while girls who do similar things get “knocked down a peg”, using Shiori and Nanami as examples of this, vs like, Touga and co. 

So like, the most obvious thing to bring up here is that one of the central themes of the show is how girls will get punished for doing stuff guys do and guys will use them as human shields and get off scot free. Anthy takes the swords in Akio’s place while he fucks around doing what he wants, that’s the major reveal. It’s fairly straightfoward as Utena metaphors go. So like...the show demonstrating this doesn’t constitute an endorsement of it, since the show pretty clearly presents that as fucked up.

I don’t think we’re meant to be HAPPY or take satisfaction in what happens to Nanami and Shiori. It is supposed to be pitiful that they get so screwed over by these dudes. who had the advantage on them from the beginning. 

This take also completely ignores Kozue who actually is pretty manipulative and sexually active but isn’t ever significantly “punished” for it moreso than anyone else. I mean, she becomes a black rose duelist and is clearly pretty fucked up, but she’s not “bought low” or anything compared to anyone else. Miki is the one who gets owned more explicitly.

It also ignores that Saionji IS one of the shows biggest laughing stocks and punching bags, right up there with Nanami. Him being humiliated and punished for his actions is like. a running thing. And takes a more serious form when Touga betrays him and he’s reduced to hiding back in Wakaba’s dorm.

It’s notable Saionji is able to grab some power offered by another man and do some shitty things to get out of that situation, and hurts Wakaba to do it- and we’re pretty clearly supposed to sympathize with Wakaba here. He gets opportunities she and the other girls wouldn’t, and has no problem casting the girl who supported him aside upon getting them, and that’s not great.

IIRC, the post also went in hard on how Ruka is treated vs Shiori too, complaining about how fucked up it is he gets to “free” Juri from Shiori, claiming it’s like he “fixed” her being gay, etc.

The Ruka storyline is pretty thorny, and I can absolutely see having problems with it- it’s probably the part of Utena I have to MOST difficulty with- but we shouldn’t obscure the facts of that plot.

Ruka is treated like a martyr for helping “free” Juri from Shiori, but like, being a martyr means you die. which is a pretty big consequence. 

 (Also,slightly off topic, thanks to Utena being so full or weird stuff and open to interp, there’s like, a lot of ways you could take that narrative and what it’s “trying to say”. Here’s a good post on an interpretation contextualizes Ruka well for me personally- that he’s not 100% ‘real’ but a projection on Juri’s desires, something she created- It really works for me, fits perfectly into the show and irons out the parts of the that two parter that seem contradictory to the rest of the show and makes more sense on a smaller scale as well.)

But, whatever your interp of Ruka is, whether you think he’s a projection of Juri or a real boy, it’s just plain right there explicitly in the text that he doesn’t really “free” Juri from all of her feelings towards Shiori either. She explicitly says she still has them later on, just that she’s you know. moving on a bit from being eternally torturing herself over it (”I can’t set my feelings free”). The fact she says “yeah still have feelings for her” and then jokingly asks Utena for her picture because maybe she’ll put HER in a locket next is pretty explicitly the show going out of it’s way to say “she’s still gay btw just not as hung up on Shiori and willing to move on”. So any claims Ruka “fixed” Juri being gay are pretty hardcore contradicted there. Also, Juri did not leave Ohtori after the thing with Ruka, which means she still has stuff to work out, all her problems were not fixed thanks to that duel.

Shiori survives, and gets to a place where she seems more content and friendly with Juri (from that tiny snippet post-revolution) while Ruka does not, which is something to take into consideration when looking at how the show treats the two characters as well.

Moving on to Touga- he does pretty much get away with everything, but he also doesn’t get what he “wants”- Utena- despite developing apparently genuine feelings for her, because he’s still shitty and possessive towards her. His feelings for Utena are presented a bit sympathetically but...they don’t pan out, and it’s explicitly because of how badly handled the situation, challenging her to a duel and all, like she straight up tells him that.

He’s the person who’s standing there with Saionji saying “if u believe in true friendship ur a fool” near the end, and Utena being like “lol yeah im a fool.” That says something incredibly empty about Touga. He’s here still not believing people can ever genuinely have connections. He’s standing there with his “friend” basically saying “yeah i still don’t really have any genuine connections to anyone, all my friendships are still fake”. In some ways, that’s so much worse than where Shiori and Nanami ended up.

Yeah anyway so. Just a mess of thoughts there, but the tl;dr gist is: there are things you can criticize about Utena (and SO many things you can crit about Ikuhara’s other work, but I don’t think it belongs in a convo about Utena especially since he isn’t the sole creator there) and it’s wildIy open to interpretation by design, but I don’t think “it demonstrates the bad thing that the show is pretty explicitly focused on critiquing” is a really strong argument.