#ohtori akio

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

hm rgu just has a really nuanced take about how patriarchy harms men. it says that men are brought up in a society that encourages them to harm women and emulate other misogynistic, abusive men [touga emulating akio, and to a lesser extent saionji emulating touga and later akio]. this often does come at some cost to their own psyche, because the men they are emulating hurt and abuse them too [touga is abused by akio, saionji is abused by touga though touga is not nearly as skillful with it]. but regardless, they are punching downwards to mistreat the women in their lives the same way their abusive male role models do [touga abusing nanami, saionji abusing anthy], and they choose to act this way to women because, despite the conditions of patriarchy inflicting a toxic and self-destructive relationship with other men on them, they are willing to imitate and obey the same men that hurt them if it means they can keep the privilege and power over women that the patriarchy grants them by default for being men. [touga wants to be akio's successor, he wants to inherit the world that akio has constructed for himself, which is built on the foundation of patriarchal power over women. and to do this touga deliberately keeps himself on akio's radar rather than pull back once it becomes clear what akio's intentions with him are. touga believes he's letting himself be manipulated, he believes he is consenting to it, and that that will be worth it if it means claiming akio's seat of power in the future. (of course what touga doesn't consider is that he cannot meaningfully consent to any advances akio makes, because he's a minor and akio is an adult.)]

rgu asserts that yes, patriarchy does harm men, but that harm comes almost exclusively from other men. and, more importantly, while abusive men may have been hurt by the patriarchy at the hands of other men, it is still their choice to hurt the women around them. and rather than dawdle and sympathize with harmful men for how they themselves were hurt by other harmful men, it's more important to prevent them from hurting anyone else

[emberwritesinsight]

Every year Akio Ohtori loans his sister out to a bunch of teenagers, grooms said teenagers, makes all of them fight each other several times, does irreparable emotional damage, hopefully THOROUGHLY cleans the inside of his car because Christ alive.

And all of this, all these surreal, intricate rituals, are so he can lose a sword fight with a door.

This has happened multiple times. He doesn't even seem particularly upset about failing. Every year Akio Ohtori loses a sword fight with a door and somehow does not feel like an absolute clown. Could NOT be me, I would never try again. I would lie awake at night every night after the first attempt agonizing about how stupid I must have looked and how my sister absolutely would have laughed at me if all the organs she needed to do so weren't getting shish-kebabed six ways to Sunday.

[wisterimist]

[biruesque]

"I'm going to become a prince!"

[fungh0u1]

only a sick man would take pictures of corpses!

[samandboredom]

          || “The man who will save us is our destroyer.” ((Initially was just Anthy fanart, but I felt very angsty today (also related to having an assailant) so I added Dios. Does this count as vent art? Also may post the Anthy only version because I love how she turned out!))

[artisticpizza]

[sinkableruby]

why was akio cheating in othello against a 14 year old. did he really need to win that badly

[mabithebard]

Revolutionary Girl Utena (1997) // Bakemonogatari (2009)

[number1villainstan]

okay so in this post I talked about the dichotomies of good/evil and male/female and how they're at work in ohtori (and specifically wrt to saionji), and i sorted it into like a four-chambered table with Good Masculinity (prince), Good Femininity (princess), Bad Masculinity (unnamed in the show), Bad Femininity (witch), and while i think that sort of thing can still be useful in looking at how characters are treated both by other characters and by the narrative i don't think that's how the show approaches it anymore. like--witch doesn't just mean 'Bad Femininity', and there's a reason why Bad Masculinity isn't named. lemme try to explain

in the kashira players' tale of the rose, it's stated outright that a 'witch' is what happens when a princess isn't saved--when there's no prince around to save her, or when that prince isn't one that can try to save her for whatever reason, or when the prince fails to save her. like--what's termed as "good" in ohtori is a) the separation of 'man' and 'woman' into two separate, mutually-exclusive, and all-encompassing categories and b) a specific set of relations between these two categories, at least outside the context of the family: boys are 'princes', the active role, and girls are 'princesses', the passive role--'princesses' are beset by some terrible-but-temporary circumstance, doesn't really matter what, and 'princes' come in and solve their problems (and presumably get 'romance' as a reward). the 'witch' is also a role defined in relation to this setup--it's what happens when the prince fails to save the princess, or more accurately when the princess fails to be saved; it's the evil result of a failure of this system of "good". in other words, although one could argue the fault lies with the prince (the man), the punishment falls almost entirely onto the woman.

but if the 'witch' is a failed princess, then what is a failed prince? does such a thing exist under this system, or is the prince forever doomed to princehood? the most prominent example of what could be considered a 'failed prince' is akio*, who's currently in charge of running ohtori as Acting Chairman; looking at it through the lens of character motivation, it's obvious why the question of 'failed prince' is shoved to the wayside for so much of the narrative, while the concept of 'witch' is spotlighted and the girl(s) who take on this role are scapegoated so hard. but looking at it through only the lens of character motivation would ignore the thematic aspect of rgu, and this is a post about a thematic aspect of rgu. this 'failed prince' we see is...still a prince, actually, at least in some sense--akio puts on a show of attempting to reclaim the power of dios, even if he doesn't seem to actually want it. the scene of anthy and dios as children in the barn seems to suggest that what makes dios a 'failed prince' is that he was "bested by a witch", or rather that the 'witch' figure (Anthy) was seen preventing him from going out to save princesses and fulfill his purpose as a prince. but the prince is still considered a prince.

the second example we see is utena in the finale, stabbed through by anthy, lying helpless on the floor, her sword in the hands of akio (the OG failed prince). yet again, we see a prince being "bested by a witch", although in this case the witch is also the princess--utena is there, after all, to save anthy, and yet anthy is still the one to stab her in the back. in a sense, anthy is re-affirming her own witch-hood in this scene; in the very moment that she bars utena from saving her (as a princess) she becomes the witch yet again**. it is, ironically, a replication of this very same setup within a fight against the systems that maintain that setup. but utena stays a prince after she's "bested by a witch", even if she is a failed prince. she only becomes not a prince once she hauls herself up again without her sword to free anthy--she only becomes not a prince once she abandons the fight and turns her attention from fighting the system to helping its foremost victim, because in this act she stops engaging with the prince/princess setup and the related systems as a whole, and thus cannot be classified under those systems anymore.

and then we arrive at the rest of the student council. is miki a failed prince? he doesn't give up at being a prince. is juri a failed prince? she's the most distant from the dueling games, and yet she still participates. is touga a failed prince? he tried to make utena his princess, but failed in the end to defeat her in a ploy to keep her from the duel called revolution. is nanami a failed prince? she doesn't try to save anyone, not really--in fact, she's the one most ready to break rules and question things. and yet none of them really strike me as 'failed princes' in the way i'm thinking of it--miki still plays the role of prince like he's supposed to, as does touga, and juri and nanami operate outside of this framework even if they're held to it.

but finally: is saionji a failed prince? this one is more complicated. i still think of saionji's position within the narrative and social structure of Ohtori as the answer to "what's the male version of a witch?" he has several moments of seeing past the illusions of Ohtori (e.g. calling the castle a mirage in episode 1), but he still operates inside this framework of 'princes save princesses'...except. he's not cast as the prince. instead, he's cast (when we first see him) as the monster, as the thing the prince is saving the princess from. if witches attack princes, what's attacking princesses? is this our answer to 'what is the failed prince'? and yet he is also not just the monster--once he is defeated, he instead becomes the clown. he still poses a threat, and yet whenever he doesn't he's a laughingstock. this is the last evolution of the 'failed prince', the fate for any man who cannot at least appear to be doing the required things to be a prince, or who fails in an unacceptable way. a prince being "bested by a witch" garners sympathy--the witch is there to draw the ire and derision of the spectators. a prince being bested by another prince, on the other hand, becomes a laughingstock--the ire and derision of the spectators, forced to choose between two princes, focus on the 'lesser' prince. the 'failed' prince.

so: a failed princess is doomed to be a witch; a failed prince is doomed to be a clown.

*there's certainly something to be said, although i'm not sure what (or if I'm the one to say it), about how the most prominent figures of 'failed princess' and 'failed prince' in the entire show are the only two darker-skinned characters in the entire show.

**not because, necessarily, anthy likes being a witch--it's much more plausible that she did what she did because these systems of prince, princess and witch were all she knew, and that she was scared of stepping into the unknown, until utena reached out to her and gave her enough faith in other people and in herself to overcome her fear.

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

akio and the coffin

it’s fascinating how akio both literally IS the coffin of ohtori academy and, simultaneously, is trapped by it. ohtori academy is in many ways a manifestation of the ugly side of adolescence, of clinging on to something in your past and refusing to move forward in your life. every character has something they continue to hold on to despite the fact that they ought to let it go for the sake of growing and maturing. for example, saionji has his inferiority complex regarding touga, his refusal to let go of the simplicity of their childhood together when he felt that they stood on the same ground, and that touga saw him as an equal. everything he does in the series is an attempt to make himself feel as though he is finally on equal grounds with touga. if he would only stop tying his self-image to the perception that touga is somehow above him, that touga looks down on him, then he would be able to let go of that sense of inferiority and move on. but he can’t. juri refuses to let go of the pain she feels regarding her past with shiori, and continues to see shiori as someone who is “innocent”, albeit cruelly - someone who is unknowing of the pain she causes juri through her actions when in fact, shiori in seducing the boy she thought juri loved was deliberately acting to hurt her. if juri would only realize and accept the true intentions behind shiori’s behavior, then she could get one step closer to understanding shiori, to being understood by her, and moving past the pain of shiori’s betrayal. but she can’t. 

most of the characters, except utena and anthy of course, remain in ohtori by the end of the show. while they’ve all made progress in “maturing” thanks to the events they experienced throughout the series - both saionji and touga’s as well as juri and shiori’s relationships have gotten visibly better, as shown in the final medley of scenes - they still have more growing to do, hence why they remain in ohtori academy until their time comes. one day, the show suggests, they might also revolutionize their own worlds - their own selves - and finally leave the coffin of ohtori behind as well. 

so where does that leave akio? i think he can be said to literally be the coffin of ohtori in that he is explicitly shown to try to manipulate others into remaining stagnant, to clinging on to whatever toxic things they are struggling to process and come to terms with, though this is of course only shown via the characters he most directly interacts with. naturally it comes across most clearly with anthy, although i think utena and to a less direct extent, touga, are the other two people who are the most straightforwardly influenced by him. when it comes to anthy, she clings to her love for the person her brother used to be, the older brother who, at least as she perceived, was kind and caring and wanted to protect people. to protect that older brother, she willingly took on the hatred of the world, and continues to endure the pain of it to this day for what is implied to be centuries. but akio has shown time and time again, through the repeating dueling cycles, that if he was ever kindhearted and genuinely caring, those parts of him are gone now. i do believe he cares about anthy to an extent even now, but whatever affection he has for her is paltry in comparison to his desire to reclaim his power as prince dios. it’s for that purpose that he set up the entire dueling system, for which he freely allows duelists to treat anthy like a prize and an object. and additionally, because anthy is so integral to the power he has now in ohtori, he uses emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual abuse to keep her tied to him. he’s willing to not just let her wellbeing come last, but puts it at the bottom of the list of priorities, and actively tears it down himself for his own benefit. anthy knows all this - but because she still holds onto that love that she had for who he used to be, she stays with him and does his bidding. and that’s what akio wants. he is the coffin, wishing to keep people in their states of despair, conflict, and pain, therefore ensuring that they are compliant and vulnerable to his manipulation. 

at the same time, akio is trapped by the coffin like everyone else. he, like all the other characters, has something that he ought to move on from for his own sake as well as the sake of the people around him: his goal to reclaim his powers as prince dios. akio has failed in this goal every single dueling cycle that happened before the show’s events, and as displayed in the final episode, he definitively fails the one that takes place during the show as well. he can attempt the cycle over and over and over again, redo and tweak and modify the dueling system however many times and in whatever ways he wants - it’s all useless. there is no sword that can break open the rose gate. there is no way to reclaim his powers. they’re gone, that part of his life is over, and if he accepted that fact, it would allow him to move on and heal from what he experienced. but he can’t. at the very end of the series, right before anthy leaves ohtori for good, he’s typing away just as diligently as he ever did and, completely oblivious, tells anthy that he’s rewriting the rules of the rose crest, that he’ll be counting on her again. and i didn’t pick up on this until rewatching the episode, but it really just hits you then how utterly stupid he looks, working so hard and speaking so confidently about the upcoming dueling cycles as if any of them are ever going to matter in the slightest. i love anthy’s response to him too; i love the subtle but at the same time so blatant scorn in her words: “you really don’t know what’s happened, do you?” because once again, throughout all this, akio has learned nothing. he hasn’t realized it’s useless, what he’s trying to do; he hasn’t realized all the effort and pain and anguish he’ll cause in people for yet another dueling cycle will never make any difference. he is unable to come to terms with the reality that he will never have his powers as prince dios back. he refuses to move on. 

akio is the coffin of ohtori, wanting to keep others in stagnation and regret. he’s also trapped by the coffin, incapable of maturing past his own stagnation and regret. and it really, really says something that all of the other major characters of the show, who have been in ohtori for far shorter a time than he has, have been able to make visible strides in their growth. anthy, who is the only one comparable to akio in terms of duration at ohtori, revolutionizes her world and leaves. meanwhile akio, as deluded and self-unaware as he is, hasn’t made a single step of progress in all this time. the only thing he does is call in bewildered desperation after anthy as she finally leaves him behind, still totally clueless as to what has happened. 

tldr; i once saw an author say one of her characters represents inertia, in fact he is inertia. i think that’s a spot-on explanation of akio, at least in terms of what he symbolizes in the story. i want to beat him in the dick with a cactus

[emberwritesinsight]

One thing that I don't think is explicitly canon but that I wholeheartedly believe about Akio is that he cannot take a joke. At all. Maybe jokes about how depraved he is because he takes a weird pride in that but if anybody laughed at the Car Flip Maneuver he would crash on purpose. If Anthy left her snail pencil box out and he opened it, especially with an audience, that would be the inciting incident for weeks of psychological warfare. This belief of mine stems from Akio caring about childrens' opinions of him to the point of faking an interest in astronomy to look more interesting, and the fact that everything about how he presents himself screams "this guy has a deep-seated need to be The Coolest Person In The Room"

[fairydust-stuff]

Akio & Saionji interactions are hilarious to me. because their both clearly trying somewhat to be cool around one another.

While probably thinking about how much they think the other is a huge loser.

Akio: I guess I can do the car flip for this little clown! Touga what do you see in him?

Saionji: Ugh I guess I'll show this pompous creep I can be sexy. Touga why do you kiss his ass so much?

[earthasacharactergallery]

01x38 the ends of the world

[mimithealpaca]

Unveiling the Shocking Truth Behind Utena - You Won't Believe What We Discovered!

(note: massive spoilers for the final episode of Utena)

an ultra high quality shitpost. derived from a meme i made about the situation in a discord server (you can see it in the thumbnail), except i went even harder.

don't mess with utena fans. you'll regret it.