#obfuscation abventures

[aroanthy]

the thing about ‘rgu is told from akio’s perspective’ is that it is true— but i’d go even further. rgu (the show specifically) is told from the collective perspective of ohtori academy, and at various moments it leans more into specific characters’ interpretations of what ohtori even is. it prioritises and privileges akio’s perspective over others because he’s at the top of the tower, but it doesn’t stick with him. we flicker, we dance, we dip into worlds we can’t quite see and yet— we do. moments of the show are to me like bona fide utena pov. others are 100% shadow girls, general student body takes— and these are influenced and shaped by akio yes, but there’s personhood within that untouched by him. he’s just a guy in a tower. the tower reaches further. it continues to stand without him in it. and so on and so forth

[aroanthy]

this is actually my favourite thing about saionji episodes. he's like the inverse nanami in that every episode that's supposedly About Him very much isn't. she derails the narrative constantly, pulling everything else into her orbit, and he is fundamentally unable to, actively forced from the narrative between episodes 9 and 20. of course he's the character to make one of the most astute observations in the whole series and of course it leaves you thinking 'why the fuck did saionji come up with that of all people??'. something something framing something something comic relief something something obfuscation and abstraction.

i feel kinda bad that none of saionji's episodes are really about him at all. the first two are setting up the show's structure and plot, and he's mainly just there to be a bad guy. in episode 25 his arc about quitting the duels and being pulled back in feels entirely overshadowed by the development in utena and anthy's relationship. every other episode where he has a major role he shares the spotlight with someone else, usually touga, and we all know how that goes.

[aroanthy]

thinking about nanami and touga both telling utena not to trust anthy at the end of the series. whilst nanami and anthy being friends is something that makes me bawl like a little baby and overjoys me immensely, ive never bought a reading of nanami post-32 that is anthy positive. like idk how you could get that impression when all she does is talk about how anthy is a terrible and dangerous person. she’s scared of her. and you know she shouldn’t be, but it’s understandable why a 13 year old living in ohtori academy might be scared of someone she already didn’t like after finding out something deeply traumatic regarding them and not having the tools to make sense of it in a compassionate way. and it makes me want to eat drywall

what’s really interesting about all this to me tho is how both kiryuus tell utena not to trust ‘the chairman/end of the world or himemiya anthy/the rose bride’. anthy and akio are a package deal of toxicity and harm to both of them and if that isn’t just the most fascinating thing ever. also the difference between nanami’s ‘chairman/himemiya’ and touga’s ‘end of the world/rose bride’ (nanami giving her warning during the badminton scene, touga giving his at the end of his duel. so much going on here wrt roles and settings and rituals and reality). but getting back to my real point isn’t it so cool (agonising) how nanami and touga are incapable of extending compassion or understanding to anthy despite the fact that they’re the two people who know the most about her other than utena and akio. and like. they don’t know a Lot, but theyve both had a smidge of insight into an abusive relationship that mirrors aspects of their own lives in myriad ways

idk something about the rose bride as a symbol who bears all of humanity’s hatred. and in the end all girls are like the rose bride yes, but key word here is like. an approximation; all trapped, all agonised, yes, but not all literally fucking crucified for eternity by a million swords that shine with human hatred. not abstracted in such a particular and insidious way. i always find anthy/kiryuu parallels compelling wrt issues of race and class and mannnnnn. nanami takes a step away from the duelling game. she’s not out, but she’s not actively partaking, not actively being exploited. touga, whilst a little more overtly involved in stuco business and still meeting with akio, does also take a step away. like, they’re both able to do that. it’s a bit of an artifice, sure, they’re still here, but oh my god oh my god oh my god. theyre not anthy. am i making sense can anyone hear me holy shit

i think what im trying to say is that for everything that both nanami and touga learn about ohtori academy and the people living in it, for everything that forces them to self-reflect and question the ground that they stand upon, they fail to break the chain with it. like, they too contribute to anthy’s abstraction. she’s an idea that they secretly embody/emulate (not sure which word works better for what im trying to say just yet), and not a person who shares experiences with them but is still wholly separate from them. this kind of compassion is like. it’s too hard, when you’re in the situations that all three of them are in. anthy too perceives both of them as nonhuman, but there is a crucial power dynamic at play here. how can you stomach such a kindness to someone you can only see as a poor imitation of the worst parts of yourself, whom you loathe??

^ THIS GUY loves it when characters commit acts of extreme violence against one another that they themselves have experienced. the nanamianthytouga brand

[aroanthy]

thinking once again about anthy as a ghost in episodes 31 and 32. what does she do in these episodes? she prompts utena to wonder if touga is italian. she trips nanami up on the stairs with a banana peel. she makes shaved ice. she feeds it to her brother. she holds a boom mic to utena. she loses a game of rock paper scissors. she does not react to other people's personal tragedies. she does not react to her own-- and it is this lack of reaction that is so horrifying to nanami, perhaps. she offers nanami rose hip jam; 'it really was very tasty'. she looks to her brother as though she does not know what to do next. she tries to water her roses; the tap breaks. she gets slapped to the floor of her greenhouse. she watches a duel. her presence in these two episodes shrinks as it goes on, and i've always had much to say about nanami derailing this narrative and rendering both anthy and touga irrelevant to it (because it's not about them/they are not her, etc.), but also-- it not being about anthy. these two episodes writing anthy out as they go on. not to be the guy who only ever talks about obfuscation, but uh. Yeah. we've obfuscated anthy once again boys

[aroanthy]

trying to write anything about anthy and touga is always objectively hilarious (lie, but only kind of) bc you always end up at the same place which is just like. these guys aren’t learning shit from each other. they will NOT be self-recognising through the other today thank uuuu and even if they did, literally nothing would happen. theyd just be like yep! knew that! anyway! and then continue to perpetuate cycles of abuse they believe to be inevitable for their slightly different reasons because ‘truly swagever’ — anthy and touga, probably. these guys don’t give a shit about each other but also they make each other want to die. hope this helps!

[aroanthy]

thinking about kanae and her relationship with her parents and akio and his relationship with her parents and just like…. ideas about patriarchs and fathers and family in utena. and incest obviously. you know there’s something so horrifying about kanae’s situation, beyond the obvious fact that she’s not yet graduated high school and she’s being married off to a child predator who is using their relationship to levy more power over more children. and her mum. and the fact that we don’t ever SEE her dad. fathers in utena have, shall we say, the worst track record in the book. i have so many things that i want to say about representations of Adult Men in rgu and specifically representations of fathers but it all circles back to their absence and imitation.

like, okay. i think the only (non-silhouetted, ie Actual Flesh) father we see is miki’s, and even then we don’t see his face. similarly we don’t see kanae’s mum’ face though she too is a Flesh Parent. don’t even get me started on how the only two visual representation of utena’s parents are their coffins and graves. also don’t get me started on that One shot from episode 10 that i use in all of my amvs of the silhouetted kiryuu parents because as you can probably tell from my heavy use of it in my amvs, i find it a deeply fascinating shot. swagever. all of this is to say, dads are not In The Flesh in utena.

im excluding the movie from this discussion bc whilst im a diehard aou lover and would never normally eclipse it from my analysis like this, the choices it makes in representing touga’s father break with rgu’s typical stylistic choices in a way that i honestly think is less effective. that whole sequence is incredibly visually rich in every other way and includes symbology that is some of the most compelling in all of rgu, imho, but it’s like. gahhh. i know it’s an active choice to represent him as Just A Guy, and you could argue ‘well akio’s Just A Guy’ but it’s. it just irritates me. i don’t think it’s meaningful in the way that utena likes to be meaningful. id argue that seeing his face doesn’t contribute anything, but idk maybe i just don’t like looking at his horrible face. it’s probably just that but also im right it’s a lacking stylistic choice

rambling side note aside, i get to my actual point that i technically already alluded to: akio. akio’s not a dad but akio is positioned as a (pseudo?)father figure to (checks notes) anthy, utena, kanae (hey remember she’s what started this post lol), touga, id throw nanami in, you could probably make a tangential argument for miki and kozue, ruka’s an interesting one, and mikage (maybe??). this is for a couple of reasons. he’s the (acting) chairman of the school that all the characters i just listed attend, he’s the guardian/caregiver for three or four of them, and, fundamentally, he guides and governs their lives to the best of his ability (not in the sense that he’s trying really hard to raise these kids, in the sense that he’s trying to control them. lol). BUT. crucially. he is an approximation of a father, an imitation of the patriarch, even and especially to anthy.

why does this matter? well, funnily(?) enough it circles back to why i dislike aou’s choice to portray touga’s father as A Guy. the powerful men in ohtori— and when i say ‘powerful’ here, i specifically mean men who are not marginalised, men who are not racialised, men who come from money and have never had to reach the top of the tower, rather always resided at its summit— are not seen by us. akio is the acting chairman, the acting father, the stand-in who stood up for something that is altogether worse than him, that made him who he is in such an insidious way. and i just think that’s really fucking interesting to think about wrt his status as a brown man, being racialised, being The Thing That We See when everything else— the inappropriate vice principal, miki’s piano teacher, mr ohtori, mr kiryuu (anime version), even off-hand dialogue from shadow girls about adult men in positions of power like mr judge (papa! daddy! god!!)— is obfuscated and implied. and i don’t want to suggest that that’s an intentional commentary on the racist mythologising of brown and black men as innately sexually violent, because. It’s Not. and utena massively drops the ball wrt race, but because of that lack of explicit, intentional commentary, it creates this strange dynamic between akio, the only racialised man in the show, and Every Other Guy. and that’s a very long-winded way of saying ‘maybe poisoning mr ohtori was a good thing actually’

[aroanthy]

this might be unbearably obvious as an interpretation to some, but i was thinking about mikage’s little hands and how interesting they are as a framing device and specifically a very imposing framing device, and i was like wow. i actually really feel as though those hands are in service of his own perceptions and understandings as he struggles to make his way back to them/relearn/remember them. they’re very different to the ohtori academy certified rose frames in the sense that they beep, they’re kind of mechanical or automaton-y, they are literally pointing and drawing your attention to things much less subtly than a silent, spinning rose. idk, i don’t have much more to say on this one atm, im just rotating the show and its various perspectives in my head a lot atm

[aroanthy]

anyway this is basically my thesis statement about rgu

[ID: a cropped screenshot of a lamp in the ‘adolescence of utena’ rose garden at night. a group of bugs swarm around it. next to it is an image of the painting of the drowned prince from ‘adolescence of utena’. both have crudely drawn speech bubbles coming from them. the lamp says: ‘i’m obfuscation’. the painting says: ‘and i’m abstraction’.

all of this is on a black background, with flames at the top and bottom of the image. also at the bottom is flaming text which reads in all caps: ‘the obab sisters’ /end ID]

[aroanthy]

ohhhh and suddenly everything is different now. if you even care. they have looked at each other. btw. looking and seeing and perceiving and understanding as my absolute favourite things in rgu. bearing witness to things. knowing. having the illusion of knowledge or understanding. attempting to unpick what is and isn’t valuable, what we do and don’t understand. watching a play and wondering who produced it. nakedness and clothes and costumes and how they all pertain to this truth/untruth dichotomy that is absolutely not a dichotomy whatsoever. did you guys know i really like aou’s painting motif btw

[aroanthy]

let’s actually define some terms here though. when i say ‘abstraction’ in reference to revolutionary girl utena, i think of the following things:

anthy being stabbed with the million swords imbued with human hatred, anthy being the model in all the paintings, the drowned prince residing in the heart of those paintings, the rose bride as a role, the castle in the sky, the projector, the shadow girls, the shaved ice, stuco, akio and apocalypse arc sword pulls, the stylised silhouette tableaus used to represent the past, costumes and clothes, the cars, the duels themselves, nemuro memorial hall and all that it entails, nanami being a cow, nanami’s egg

when i say ‘obfuscation’, i think of the following things:

butterflies, roses, the projector, utena’s repressed memories, touga’s catatonia, the way that akio’s incestuous sa of anthy is presented to us compared with how his non-incestuous sa is, how nanami killing the kitten is presented, the monkey-catching robot, the off-screen kiss, hidden hand holding, black rose sword pulls, the way the show is edited, its penchant for shots of characters that obscure their faces with hair, glasses, etc., the cars, mamiya as a character

and these are just things ive written of the top of my head. abstraction is all about the generalisation, the reduction of People to Concepts, the replacement of People with Symbols that approximate an external aspect of who they are. obfuscation is all about obscuring truths, making them opaque and incomprehensible through symbolism, through censorship. what we see and what we don’t and how we see those things. there’s overlap between the two and nothing is rigid, especially wrt something like utena, but they’re essentially the lens through which i view rgu. and im sooooo regular about them (lie)

[aroanthy]

actually whilst im comparing the utena fandom to utena characters i did have a really funny thought a couple of months ago about how people who neglect the impact of touga’s history with csa do the exact same thing that he does. like they’re both like ‘didn’t happen :) not real :) wouldn’t have any tangible effect whatsoever :) now watch me craft an elaborate web of lies that dont make any fucking sense in order to obfuscate the truth (not pictured here)’. guys who hate kiryuu touga when they do the exact same thing he does

[aroanthy]

me when i see magnets repel each other: omg…., anthytouga…

[aroanthy]

you know it’s really important to acknowledge how anthy letting utena win the ep 12 duel is an accident, imho, a slip that conveys just how much she’s beginning to hope for utena, but also. if i were anthy i wouldve let touga eat shit just for pulling this the previous episode

[ID: a shot from episode 11 of ‘revolutionary girl utena’. in it, touga smugly asks anthy: ‘oh? are you really just an ordinary girl?’

anthy looks at him with a wearied but otherwise unclear expression. /end ID]

episode 11 is so underrated somehow episode 11 i love you episode 11. the way that utena is so right and so well-intentioned and so desperate to have herself heard and understood. stop going on about who gets to own the rose bride!! she’s just an ordinary girl named himemiya anthy!!! the way that touga’s little prince act functions to foreshadow how akio will isolate utena from anthy and make her lose sight of her desire to help anthy— which itself is just a reiteration of what happened in their very first meeting, wanting to help the other and being distracted by the self (being undermined by Some Fucking Guy, but. you know). the way that anthy and touga have orchestrated this whole thing with a sense of togetherness that isn’t amicable but was all the same togetherness until touga asserts a fundamental difference between them in this coded way that only anthy can understand for what it is. literally everything this episode has to say about identity and selves and recognising and seeing one another…… oh it’s just too much. oh? are you really just an ordinary girl?

[aroanthy]

like touga isn’t an angry character at all but nanami really brings it out in him and it’s just agonising to me. free my girl she did nothing wrong. i mean the cat murder was complicated and she doesn’t express her earnest care in the best or healthiest of ways but she’s literally 13 and sososo traumatised and what sucks about that whole situation, other than everything i just listed, is that as her big brother, touga should be understanding of that. and he knows that. but that’s not fair and he also knows that, so he pushes it onto her. that feeling of unfairness. and he punishes her for this illusion of a life that is easy or straightforward, punishes her doubly for the intensity of her feelings for him, and in doing so! in doing so!!!! he perpetuates that fucking cycle!!!!!!!! he nullifies every attempt he’s made to obscure himself and his experiences from her because he pushes all of that pain and abuse onto her himself. can anyone hear me. god. the fucking mimesis

thought about how touga only really looks sincerely irritated around nanami for too long. Died

[aroanthy]

really it should be the perpetuation of incest and csa taboo sisters but that’s longwinded and not as fun to say as obab. so

anyway this is basically my thesis statement about rgu

[ID: a cropped screenshot of a lamp in the ‘adolescence of utena’ rose garden at night. a group of bugs swarm around it. next to it is an image of the painting of the drowned prince from ‘adolescence of utena’. both have crudely drawn speech bubbles coming from them. the lamp says: ‘i’m obfuscation’. the painting says: ‘and i’m abstraction’.

all of this is on a black background, with flames at the top and bottom of the image. also at the bottom is flaming text which reads in all caps: ‘the obab sisters’ /end ID]