#i was thinking saionji for like half my shift today bc i was bored so u asked at the perfect time lol :)

[carbootsoul]

omg please talk about saionji and utena and i want to know ur thoughts

ack anon i am. kissing u on the mouth rn thank u so much for asking !!! a fair warning before i write anything else: i have a stupid and inexplicable amount of affection for saionji kyouichi and this response will probably be kinda biased toward being understanding of him. don't get me wrong he is still very much a bad person throughout a lot of the series BUT he's also 17. anyway this got long bc i have many thoughts so its under the cut

my big thought about the two of them is that they're foils for each other! both to illustrate utena's good qualities and to point out what went wrong with saionji.

the main place we see similarities between them is their feelings toward both anthy and touga. saionji and utena are the only duelists to duel FOR anthy as a person rather than the power she wields. they're also the only two people that touga ever expresses unguarded affection toward, the only people with him in the church scene, the only people who reject him (other than nanami, whose rejection is more complex imo), and the two targets of his manipulation in season one. wakaba refers to them both as her prince and they both express at least the potential to be friends with her, they're both dragged into some kind of relation with akio through someone they're close with (saionji only for a few short scenes but the camera one does make me a little queasy), they're the only duelists to lose a duel and then rechallenge the winner. they're also the only characters to be "expelled" (not quite textually in utena's case, but the girls at the end of the last episode speculate that she was expelled for "getting in trouble with the chairman"). finally there are some vague thoughts i have about saionji's rose being a very pale green, which is a complimentary color to pink (while his hair is a deeper green, mirroring touga's red hair).

in terms of their personalities being similar it's mostly just the fact that they're both jocks and they both do the baffled face a lot which i think is fun from them both :) same 'interacting with nanami ever' expression. the two BIG things they have in common personality wise is their tendency to insist that their view of the world (especially!! their view of what is good for anthy) is correct, and obliviousness (especially to their privilege and the way it acts on other people, especially anthy). utena grows out of both those things, though, and they're two of her main points of character development throughout the series.

obviously, the differences between them are quite a bit more obvious. saionji is mostly used (especially at the beginning of the series) to contrast utena and to provoke her into protecting anthy. he's abusive, controlling, and cocky where she is... just cocky, and only sometimes. saionji is less aware of 'adult things' than utena (in some ways he's more childish than nanami- the scene that comes to mind is the one with the exchange diary, where utena worries that saionji is making sexual advances and saionji obviously has no idea what she's thinking. tbh i hold that saionji didn't really know what sex was before his car scene which is both funny and v upsetting to me). saionji is unwilling or unable to change the parts of himself that harm other people (or unaware of the effects of his actions) whereas utena, throughout the series, constantly does her best to be a better person and i love her so. so much. not-prince of my heart. also he has green hair and she has pink hair :) also he sucks so bad

anyway now that i've established their similarities and differences, here's the heart of my argument!! at their core, utena and saionji are very similar people (the church flashback rly illustrates this imo but maybe thats just bc children r all similar) but, because saionji grew up with power that utena didn't, he's. uh. who he is. (his eyes are purple, a color associated with akio's control. akio.. uh. patriarchy man.)

saionji's role in the show isn't just as the personification of rape culture, but as a statement on what the patriarchy DOES to teenage boys who don't notice their privilege. he is quite obviously less aware of his power than touga or akio are (they both use sex as a power tool, and both take advantage of the fact that they, as men, have power in most situations. saionji also takes advantage of this but it seems much less conscious on his part- again the scene with the exchange diary comes to mind. he is looming over utena-as-anthy but not in an attempt to scare her, but just bc he's found that when he is big and tall, people do what he want). this is shown especially in what we see of saionji when he's staying with wakaba! he's a much better person when he doesn't have this institutional power as close to his fingertips, even when he's unaware of this lacking. he goes back to being a douche the second he leaves, to, which is where his personal problems come into play.

saying that saionji is how he is just because he was born into privilege is way more forgiving of him than the narrative is or i would be, because the other bit that contrasts him with utena is his unwillingness to see or acknowledge his privilege. the fact that he's unaware of the bits and pieces of society that come together to give him that power over anthy doesn't absolve him, because he still takes advantage of the fact that he can do whatever he wants to her and he never tries to understand why. he sees that if he's engaged to anthy she will love him unconditionally (what he's looking for throughout the series) but he never tries to connect the dots between the power he has over her and the fact that she says she loves him. a scene that i think is rly interesting is the one in touga's last few episodes where touga and utena are talking and saionji comes and lies down in anthy's lap- it's such a small thing but i think it does a really interesting job summarizing his character! he actively seeks out affection/the love he wants from anthy and, because of the power he wields, she gives it to him. he's content with this, because he refuses to see the power dynamics that make her let him nap with his head in her lap. he allows himself to keep the safe blanket of his privilege, even when it hurts everyone else. utena sees that she has power as the rose bride's fiance and she (eventually) works against the powers that be to change that.

anywayyy that was a lot lol and im not sure it makes a ton of sense??? but those r what i've been thinking about! really it boils down to like. saionji would be a much better person if he took a feminist theory class with a completely open mind. and then he and utena could be friends :) the other thing it boils down to is that both utena and saionji's best and worst characteristics are being stupid as fuck BUT utena tries to learn and saionji refuses to. thanks again for sending this ask!! i hope my response made some sense haha