#the meat shield people like touga and akio metaphorically place in front of people who (like utena)

[number1villainstan]

hopefully i don't forget this in the morning but something something saionji in the StuCo arc being the caricature of an Evil Abusive Patriarchal Man that becomes the focus of people's hatred of the system/patriarchy, the type of villain you'd find in a simplistic surface-level feminist tale, and--crucially--the societal conception of "abuse" and "abuser" that serves to a) deflect conversation about the way societal systems enable abuse and warp it into only blaming individuals/thinking of "abusive" as a personality trait rather than of abuse as a choice and b) make it much, much harder to detect and recognize more insidious, smiling-faced forms of abuse, the kind of abuse that Touga and Akio enact, the kind that leaves psychological marks rather than physical ones

[specifically this is talking about his narrative role in the story as an antagonist and butt monkey, a Doylist approach if you will, rather than his standing within the world of Ohtori (the Watsonian approach)]

[fairydust-stuff]

The funny part is sometimes it gets meta. I've heard some fans of Utena say with their whole chests Saionji is a piece of shit who never changes while Touga shows he has good character because he tries to save Utena.

Like honey you're falling for Akio's narrative.

hopefully i don't forget this in the morning but something something saionji in the StuCo arc being the caricature of an Evil Abusive Patriarchal Man that becomes the focus of people's hatred of the system/patriarchy, the type of villain you'd find in a simplistic surface-level feminist tale, and--crucially--the societal conception of "abuse" and "abuser" that serves to a) deflect conversation about the way societal systems enable abuse and warp it into only blaming individuals/thinking of "abusive" as a personality trait rather than of abuse as a choice and b) make it much, much harder to detect and recognize more insidious, smiling-faced forms of abuse, the kind of abuse that Touga and Akio enact, the kind that leaves psychological marks rather than physical ones

[specifically this is talking about his narrative role in the story as an antagonist and butt monkey, a Doylist approach if you will, rather than his standing within the world of Ohtori (the Watsonian approach)]