Touga's climactic duels in Seitokai Arc are two of the most significant battles in the show. They laid the groundwork for several interpersonal relationships among the cast, and play an enormous part in making Utena what she had to become. Fanfare, glitz, and glamour aside, here I will discuss how the duels affected the four characters most involved: Touga, Utena, Akio, and Anthy.

Touga

    All throughout the series, the duelists seek out battle when Ends of the World tells them to. This is most evident during the Seitokai Arc, where the duelists even know beforehand when they're supposed to duel. That they always managed to find a personal reason to fight at that exact time was mere 'coincidence'. Touga is no different; he duels when he's told. What makes him stand out from the others is that he's not working towards one goal. Touga's working towards two goals that arrive at odds with each other, causing him to gain neither.

    Touga's primary goal is the acquisition of power: he wants to gain the Rose Bride. To that end he duels—and he duels well. Touga has the distinction of being the only duelist to directly manipulate Utena in preparation for battle, and because of this, he's also the only duelist able to claim a victory over her. Touga is described in later episodes (episode 34, specifically) as simply wanting 'the power to revolutionize the world'. Touga wants to break the world's shell and make what he finds his own. This goal not only speaks of his power-lust, but also of his understanding of the dueling game. His mid-orgy phone conversation in episode 9 ("The Castle Said to Hold Eternity") shows he's able to communicate directly with Ends of the World, and by the tone of the conversation, has been able to for some time. He's in the best position to 'know' ('know' being what Ends of the World tells him) what the dueling game is for. Because of this Touga displays a better understanding of what the revolution really is than the other duelists ever do. Though he's still miles off, he's not looking for a magical genie to grant wishes—he knows that's not what the duels are about. What he does know is that the Rose Bride will give him power, and that's all he needs to have a reason to fight.

    However, he also had another prize in mind: Utena. To paraphrase the shadow play girls later in the series, Touga wanted the only fish that didn't jump on his hook, and because he couldn't catch it, it became a fascination. At this point, his interest in Utena is entirely as a playboy. Touga is a textbook narcissistic personality—girls were born to please him, and the one on the planet that didn't bend to his will invariably piqued his interest. Touga is accustomed to barely having to lift a finger to earn a girl's affection, and it would indeed be a rare trophy to hook the true challenge. Based on information he's provided courtesy of Juri, Touga spends several episodes convincing a pathetically hopeful Utena that he's the prince she's looking for. Episode 9 is built around events staged by Touga to convince Utena of this. Shortly after, he sets his sister Nanami against her, and by association to the challenger (a precedent that you don't see reached again) he observes the duel from point blank range to see the Power of Dios in action. The events he orchestrates prior to his duel are testimony to his ruthlessness. Saionji is kicked out of the school, Nanami is driven blindly into the dueling game, and he suffers what could have been a fatal wound—all for the sake of his revolution.

    Touga's plan is not complicated, despite his theatrical execution of it. He uses Utena's weakness for the vague memory of her prince against her. Touga's in an utterly ideal position to do this. As Seitokaichou, from where Utena's standing he's both at the top of the feeding chain in the school, and he's the 'leader' of the duelists. It would make sense for him to be the prince. Utena has this idea in her head from early on, but was turned off from the possibility when she discovered his promiscuous heart-breaker reputation. Touga makes up for this with two major events, and a few meetings with Utena in the episodes leading up to the duel. The first is the entirety of episode 9, culminating in his injury, inflicted when he blocks the murderous rage of Saionji and saves Utena's life. He plainly points out this was a 'princely' thing to do, and Utena was inclined to agree—after all, she wasn't aware her life was put in jeopardy so that he might make this statement. The second event is Nanami's duel, or specifically, Utena watching him give Nanami a rose signet. Seeing him do this, something Utena assumes only her prince is qualified to do, really pushes the idea home. His 'selfless' actions in episode 9 and his 'brotherly' behavior after Nanami's loss work to change Utena's opinion of him, while his regular hinting at being her prince and his ability to bestow her precious rose signet on others show her proof.

    Touga believes by severing Utena from the role she plays protecting Anthy, he will both gain the Rose Bride, and soften Utena to the prospect of being a princess instead of a prince. His princess. The logic of Touga's plan is not in and of itself flawed. Touga's failing is his male chauvinism. He's not alone in this arena, many among the male cast are chauvinistic to a fault—Akio and Saionji specifically. However Touga is by far the worst of them in this regard; he's confident without a doubt that once Utena's protective tendencies are shattered, she will run to his side—just like a woman should. He underestimates Utena's desire to be Anthy's 'prince', and he overestimates the hold Utena's prince has on her. Touga believed once he proved he was the prince from her past, that her attachment to him would be unshakable. This is why he allows himself to be so smug when he wins—he doesn't think she will challenge her prince in the duel arena or in his pursuit of her. Unfortunately for him, he overestimated the power of the 'proof' he provided; it failed to over-ride Utena's unrealistically lofty opinion of her prince. His attitude post-victory was a fatal blow to his plan, because he might have been able to regain Utena's trust in him after the duel if he'd carried himself differently—Utena still thinks he's her prince even when he knocks the rose off her chest. She stops believing this almost entirely when she sees his reaction, because where he was almost apologetic before, his behavior post-victory is smug and uncaring. But he doesn't think it necessary to keep the prince act going. After all, he's Touga freakin' Kiryuu, and Utena's just a girl…she'll come around.

    And she does. She challenges him to a second duel, crushing any chance he had of obtaining her affections. However, it's not just an underestimation of Utena that loses him his second duel—it's an underestimation of Anthy. Though no doubt his chauvinism didn't help, this miscalculation is not entirely his fault. Touga only knows about the Rose Bride what he's observed, and what Ends of the World's told him. That is to say, he truly does think she's just a brainless doll, taking on the complementary personality to her victor. This is proven in how he treats her as his bride—Touga, who is used to making every woman feel like the center of the universe, practically ignores Anthy's presence. He will leave her to sit for two hours while he goes and gets laid, and he carts her around like a fashion accessory. He doesn't think she has much of a mind of her own, so it doesn't dawn on him that she might not be wholly obedient. Anthy's spell on the sword is broken when she looks at a losing Utena and is reminded of Dios. With the spell that was melting Utena's sword gone, Touga's edge is lost, and Utena takes advantage of his surprise and confusion to end the duel. This is not the first (or the last) time Anthy tips the duels unfairly in Utena's favor—too bad Touga wasn't watching Miki's duel, he might have been better prepared.

    In the end, Touga's failing is that he wanted both Utena and Anthy. Had he set his plan entirely on gaining Anthy, he could have won her, and had he foregone Anthy, he could have earned Utena. But the way he saw it, he was entitled to both, and that narcissistic outlook caused him to gain neither.

    Concerning his reaction, you have to at least loosely mention the real life circumstances surrounding his disappearance. For the Black Rose Arc, Koyasu Takehito (Touga's voice actor) left Utena for other projects. This means that Touga's deep depression may or may not have been part of the original storyline. That said, I'm going to work under the impression that's what they meant to do with Touga, as it does fit his personality. Utena's defeating him seriously wounded his pride, and though he does eventually get back on his feet, he never gets quite as confident and arrogant as he was in that first arc again. Touga's entire psyche is built on his superiority complex. All his life he's gained prestige, power, and women like they exist to belong to him. It's no wonder that Touga Kiryuu, Seitokaichou, skilled swordsman, Casanova, and king of the campus, would have an ego that could sink aircraft carriers. Then along comes Utena, who manages to defeat him in romance and in the duel arena—two places he's thus far treated as personal playgrounds—and his confidence is crushed.

Utena

    Utena kicks off her tenure at Ohtori Academy with all the good intentions in world. At the same time she's a boiling pot of contradictions, the worst being that she's desperately seeking her prince...while trying to be one. Utena's behavior in the series shows her pursuing being a prince with much more vigor than searching for one. Not because she's isn't looking, but because she really believes the ring will lead her to him, and that she doesn't so much have to look for him, as he will find her himself.

    Of course, he knew where she was all along—the one that found her was Touga. Utena's unshakable faith in her prince and her undying desire to find him make her impressionable; Touga only needed say the word and she was utterly convinced of who he was. He succeeds in this despite her already founded disapproval of him. Utena hears rumors of his behavior with women and doesn't think her prince would behave that way. Her prince is perfect and pure, and would nev—wait, did he say prince? OH MY GOD! IT'S HIM, IT'S HIM. At this point Utena is still full of youth and innocence, and she's so hopeful and desperate to find her prince that she would believe almost anyone who led her in that direction. She deludes herself into believing, against her better judgment, that Touga's THE one, and in doing so jumps right into his trap.

    Despite her disapproval of his romantic liaisons, Utena suspects he might be her prince from very early on, way back during episode 3, and his first attempts at gaining her affections.

    At this point, Touga does not know about Utena's prince (he's told later on by Juri). This is entirely him using his patented Touga macking skills. However this freak occurrence of wording immediately puts it in Utena's head that he could be her prince. Impressionable though she is, she doesn't make a move on Touga; at this point, it's only a suspicion. And again, she believes her true prince will pursue her. Touga does find out about her prince, and when he does, he's given a way to win the Rose Bride, and a way to gain Utena's confidence. Episode 9 is the biggest leap forward in his endeavor, and by the end of it, Utena's mind is wide open to the possibility he's her prince. There she was, being a prince to Anthy, and as it turned out, she needed a prince of her own. This was quite a slick move on Touga's part, had the conditions been any different, it wouldn't have worked so well. Utena still needed to grasp to the notion she could (and did) save Anthy. Had Touga protected them both (by a different situation, or by interfering sooner) he would have assaulted her position as Anthy's protector. Instead, he does this by winning the duel later on. Had he done it this soon, he would never have had a Rose Bride to maintain ownership of.

    However, at this point all's going according to plan, and Utena's opinion of him starts changing for the better. By the time he challenges her to a duel, she's completely convinced.

    Logic would tell Touga she was crying, and it would also tell him the prince kissed her. At this point, I would think it unlikely he knows her prince was Ends of the World, as that information would have severely discouraged Touga's ambitions of gaining Utena himself. Much in the way Ms. Cleo can fool naive people into believing she can read their future, Touga's vague use of obvious information convinces Utena to believe he was her prince all along. 100% cold-reading.

    Thus far, it hasn't dawned on Utena that she would have to choose being a prince or being a princess; hope and blind delusion have brought her to the assumption they won't come into conflict with each other. When Touga doesn't kiss her because they're two duelists in front of the Rose Bride, Utena is forced to make the logical connection. She'd been conveniently avoiding thinking about Touga this way, and she's managed to completely block out any idea that she can't be a prince to Anthy AND be princess to her prince. Which brings us to the next scene.

    In this sequence, had Anthy not barged in, what would she have done? Very possibly, she could have taken the ring off. The ring that binds her to Anthy. Here we're shown how this situation might have ended—Utena was considering ceasing to be Anthy's prince. What stopped her was Anthy herself walking in and disrupting her train of thought, a 'coincidence' that seemed less so by Anthy's confession that she really does want friends occurring shortly after. Had it not been for Anthy's manipulative role in these events, Touga might very well have got what he wanted, and we'd have seen Utena drop her prince act mighty fast. Alas, that was not part of Akio's plan, and would have made for a rather short series.

    When the duel finally comes around, Utena's convinced her place is with Anthy, prince be damned. Unfortunately, Utena's resolve is not as strong as she thought, and Touga uses his advantage over her to counter the Power of Dios and claim victory. Even during the duel, Utena still believes he's her prince. Even to the second of her defeat, she still holds on to that. It's not until Touga rather ruthlessly pounds into her head the nature of the Rose Bride that she changes her mind. Up until this point, Utena was thinking 'I have to fight my prince, but he doesn't seem to want to do it, either'. However with his vaguely apologetic manner gone, Utena's opinion of him changes radically. He's not HER prince, he's not ANYONE'S prince, if this is how he thinks of Anthy! He explains the nature of the Rose Bride to her, and though all evidence is to the contrary, Utena still swears it's a lie. She screams it at the top of her lungs—not to convince Touga or Anthy… but to convince herself. She sees the proof in front of her, but like much of the cast, Utena is amazing at self-delusion; her recovery of the Rose Bride is based largely on her total refusal to believe this 'truth', no matter how apparent it is. In no small degree, this makes her an absolute fool. But this is Revolutionary Girl Utena,, and being a fool who refuses to believe the obvious is something she's rewarded for.

    Utena does not think to reclaim Anthy herself. In fact, without Wakaba, we can only guess at how long Utena would have stayed locked up in her room. After her loss to Touga, the world as she knows it comes crashing down. She's lost her prince, after thinking she'd finally found him. She's lost her princess, after finding herself unable to protect her. Utena is an extremist, and her reaction is proof of this. When Wakaba finally drags Utena back to school, we see Utena wearing the normal girl's uniform. This is complete rejection of her prince compulsion, because her uniform means that much to her—it's a symbol of her being a prince. Absence of it is used later on in the series to show her distancing herself from that persona.

    Though she obviously isn't aware of it, it's also indicative of an subconscious motive mechanism Utena uses. When Utena wants to do something that she can't quite get herself to do, she will do the mirror opposite. She makes escapism so excruciating for her that doing the task she knows she has to do becomes easier than running from it. In this case, she presses the issue of being 'normal' (by wearing the uniform) to the point of absurdity. Subconsciously she knows she can't stand being normal, so she's doing everything she can to make herself snap back into her own personality all the sooner. Because the proper solution (taking back Anthy) is such a difficult thing to actually do, she's psyching herself into it by making the alternative more unbearable than it has to be. This is not the last time we see her use this strategy. Utena uses this same 'make it so awful you HAVE to fix it' attitude to deal with catching Akio and Anthy, and this is the reason she sees Dios on the carousel while she's on the floor dying in the last episode.

    However, this IS the subconscious at work, and in this case it's only working toward making her mentally ready to do something difficult—she doesn't quite know what her righteous course of action would be until Wakaba tells her to take back whatever it was she lost. By the time she realizes Anthy was what made the difference, and that she CAN win Anthy back, she's quite sick of her girly uniform and silly normalcy. She's ready to take back who she was, and she doesn't look back.

    Certainly, she does this in part because she's a prince. Reclaiming Anthy is the right thing to do, because as far as Utena knows, she's not forcing any mode of thinking on Anthy or using Anthy to further a personal end. She sees Anthy belonging to anyone else as Anthy being used, only Utena's motives in fighting are just. She wants to 'save' Anthy, and she knows that's no one else's intention. That Utena doesn't realize she wants to save Anthy for her own reasons is proof that this early in the series Utena's got a lot of growing up to do. The name of episode 12, where she wins back Anthy, is called 'For Friendship, Perhaps', and that 'perhaps' is there for a reason.

    The show leads you to believe Utena is taking back Anthy. Her friend. But in reality, Utena is taking back is what being in possession of the Rose Bride means to her: that she's a prince. In that regard, Utena's just as selfish as the rest of the duelists. They all want something from Anthy that they believe she can provide. What makes Utena different is that she doesn't HAVE to revolutionize the world to get what she wants. Utena gets the illusion that she is Anthy's prince. That she's important to Anthy, and that she can save her. Up until the very last minutes, that's exactly what she is working under. An illusion. For the majority of the show, Utena believes Anthy wants what Utena would want. She doesn't ask Anthy her opinion on the matter, and had Anthy said something else, she would never have believed it. Even though she sees how Anthy's victor can change Anthy's feelings, she refuses to think the same could apply to her, and like the others, she forces her thoughts and ideals on Anthy, without asking what Anthy wants.

    In the end, despite her rabid disapproval of dueling and fighting over Anthy, there she goes… dueling and fighting over Anthy. She doesn't want Anthy as a friend, though that's the excuse she uses to win her back. She has to possess Anthy, because despite her denial of it (she certainly doesn't realize it) she feels just as compelled to own Anthy as the other duelists do, for reasons of her own. It doesn't really matter who or what Anthy is, Utena just wants to play prince; and in doing so, fights over her in the same petty way as everyone else.

Akio

    ;Though Akio is not yet revealed as a character during these episodes, he is nonetheless very much involved with the events that take place. While it could be argued most of the duels have little to do with Utena, these two are about as personal as it gets for her in the arena. To understand what might have driven Akio to place his pieces in this fashion, you have to understand what his goal was.

    Despite what it looks like in the last episodes of the show, Akio's goal is NOT to make Utena a princess. Akio wants to possess a prince's sword. So he had to build Utena's character to the point where she would remain a prince, no matter what. To the point where he could bring her to her knees and she would not falter. To the point that neither her love for Dios, nor her love for Akio, could bring her to betray her duty to Anthy. Knowing this, take into consideration Utena's attitude before these duels and after. After her duels with Touga, Utena is jaded about the nature of her prince. She no longer believes him to be Touga, but she's become a lot more skeptical about what he might be. This isn't conscious on her part; she doesn't realize her faith in her prince has been injured. There are primarily two reasons why this works in Akio's favor. First, the torment she endures dealing with Touga has put doubt in her mind that she may ever find him, and thus, opens the possibility of her finding someone else. In the mindset she is at the beginning of the series, Akio would have had a considerably more difficult time gaining her affections; at that point, she truly only has eyes for her prince. Second, now that she's been fooled once, she's become more wary of tagging every guy she sees a possible prince. Had Akio come to her before Touga's duels, whether he suggested it or not, she would have made the connection herself. Subconsciously, she'd be doing this to legitimize her attraction to him—she would only have felt comfortable falling in love with him if she assumed him to be the prince. The problem here being that Utena's inner conflict concerning falling in love with Akio vs. her romantic dedication to her prince was necessary, and would not have happened if she thought for a second he could be her prince.

    The name of the episode wherein Touga challenges Utena to duel is 'Graceful and Ruthless; The One Who Picks The Flower'. Touga is the one picking the flower, and the flower is Utena's unyielding faith in her one and only prince.

    Akio could not have picked that flower himself. Whoever was going to do this would be dead to Utena thereafter, and unsurprisingly, after this Utena utterly abhors any thought of Touga. That's why Akio couldn't do it himself; to have her hate him like that would have presented serious problems. Remember that Akio never directly challenges her memory of Dios. He seduces her on his own terms, with no mention of her prince, with the intention of severing her romantically from the Dios figure she draws her inner strength from. If we assume the power of the prince's sword exists in real time, it becomes evident that Utena must not be in love with anyone when Akio takes her sword. For her to be in love with Dios or Akio would cause her to waver in the vital moments, and the sword's power would be lost.

    So he lets Touga do this dirty work, and then he replaces her love of Dios with her love for him over time. He does this knowing that while he cannot destroy her love of Dios (only replace it—no argument Akio could have presented would have destroyed the idealized vision of Dios that Utena has) he can easily stop her from loving him. (By being a bastard and getting caught screwing Anthy.)

Anthy

    Anthy helps Utena win. Several times. The most obvious of these being Miki's Seitokai Arc duel, where she goes entirely out of character to cheer Utena on, then later her interference in Saionji's Akio Arc duel—an open rebellion, as it were, to Akio's wishes. But that's a long way off. At this point, Anthy's still carrying out Akio's orders in full, and her behavior concerning Touga's duels is evidence of it.

    Akio wants Utena to win. And for Utena to win, Anthy's got to put her foot in on occasion. Especially early on—most of the instances where Anthy helps Utena in some exceptional way occur during this arc. Anthy helps Utena along twice concerning her battles with Touga. One was deliberate and the other was not.

    The deliberate move I mentioned when I talked about Utena. After all of the pounding into Anthy's head that she MUST be a normal girl with normal friends, Utena finally hears, on the eve of her duel with Touga, that Anthy really wants to be just that. Whether this is genuine or not is certainly debatable, but nevertheless this is a line being spoon-fed to Utena. It's not, in and of itself, an honest confession. She's saying it to reinforce Utena's resolve to be a prince—a resolve that one scene prior, was fast beginning to waver. Though this reinforcement did not (and wasn't supposed to) win Utena's first duel with Touga, it strengthened her belief that Anthy needed her, and it became part of what it took to bring Utena around and back to the arena.

    The duelists are led to believe Anthy is a mindless trophy, simply the mark of the current victor. We, the viewers, know better. We've seen Anthy's passive aggressive behavior, and we've seen how utterly creepy she can be when she's alone. ('Rabbits, rabbits, rabbits, dance…') However up until this point in the series, the optimistic can still ignore the likelihood that Anthy is a total bitch. (For lack of a better term.) Then Touga's second duel comes along, and we see this.

    There are a million ways to write this off as anything but Anthy's honest thoughts. They're not Anthy's honest thoughts because she's Touga's Bride right now and can only think what he wants her to think. They're not Anthy's honest thoughts because she's abandoned her body to the soul sword, this is just something the writer's threw in. They're not Anthy's honest thoughts because it's actually Touga's thoughts projected from Anthy's point of view. They're not Anthy's honest thoughts because no one wants to think that's who Anthy is. All the evidence against that this is really what she's thinking is proof it's *exactly* what she's thinking. It's the simplest answer at a point when the viewer is making everything complicated, and it's a heavy dose of truth when the audience is least likely to believe it.

    Anthy frankly doesn't think Utena can win this duel, and as it would seem, doesn't assume she's supposed to. Akio's intention is for Utena to reach the duel named 'Revolution', but at this point, Utena's still being tested, and she's still liable to fail. And her imminent failure is what Anthy expects. Anthy's entire life has been built around a world of princes and princesses that she isn't a part of. She's watched Dios fall, and she sees the machinations of Akio firsthand. She simply doesn't have any faith in anything, and so she has no reason to believe Utena will win this duel. To her, it's just another failed experiment. Another life broken. Another pawn.

    Aside from being a skeptic because of the life she's led, Anthy is skeptic because she has to be to survive. She has to believe no one can save her, and that being the Rose Bride is her only option. She has to believe that to make her life bearable. Because for her to constantly be hopeful she might be saved would tear her apart, and to think that in the end it would be her decision is too much for her when she's not ready to do it. Anthy's pessimism in this scene is a self-deluding reinforcement to keep her from getting her hopes up. However, she fails to accomplish this, and for a moment she's reminded of the one thing that can move her.

    The result of this is that it breaks her concentration and the spell on Touga's sword is lifted. This was how Utena got her chance to turn the tide of the duel, but it doesn't seem to have been intentional on Anthy's part. It led to Utena passing the final test Akio put before her, and whether Anthy aided Utena in that endeavor or not really didn't matter—all the better, saves him from having to get another potential prince lined up. (Akio speaks of the Seitokai Arc duels in episode 13 ('Plotting a Locus') as though they were a test run of sorts, to make sure Utena had the potential to warrant further development. After Touga's duels it becomes evident Akio intends to make a prince out of her.)

    Touga's Seitokai Arc duels mark the point of no return for these four characters. Where Touga was once a king, after this he's only a lackey, and he's forced to contend with the reality that this world was not meant to belong to him. Utena's inner conflict between being a prince and being a princess is hereafter tipped in one direction—Utena's duty to Anthy is never again so contested by her love for her prince. With Utena's trial run out of the way, the gates are opened for Akio to make his move—this potential prince and proven herself, and now it's time to jump right into the action and make of her what he wants. And finally, from here on Anthy is faced with the dim hope that against all odds someone might be able to save her; she spends the rest of the series desperately trying not to get her hopes up, preparing herself for the time-and-again proven reality that all girls, even Utena, are like the Rose Bride in the end.

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