But it isn't successful at all. Success for him would've seen Juri stop loving Shiori and love him instead, which didn't happen. Juri is still pining painfully away for Shiori. The only thing that could possibly have changed is Shiori herself, but we are only given two cryptic and ambivalent clues that something may have shifted there, in the two moments we are shown that Shiori appears to be following Juri around at a distance.

We don't know what this means. It could mean that Shiori's mindset toward Juri has changed - or it could mean that she is more obsessively vengeful toward her than before. Either way, the events of the arc have only tangled them further together with each other, the exact opposite of what he wanted. So, as I say, a complete failure.

Just as he deserved.

Last edited by Aelanie (02-25-2017 05:43:35 PM)

Aelanie wrote:

I consider him as bad as Akio: a lying, manipulative and brazenly abusive man who employs a colossally unwarranted self-righteousness to justify his terrible, selfish, and destructive behavior.

Whoa there! I'm not a fan of Ruka, he strikes me as a fumbling schoolboy in the world of making shit happen the way you want it to. But he seems to me more a figure like Touga, in that he at least bothers to build some self-righteous construct around his behavior. Akio...doesn't. To put it not very delicately, maybe you're putting a greater weight on Ruka's behavior because of its target and result? You're more invested in Juri and so his actions would hit you harder, but I just can't grasp the notion that Ruka is as bad as Akio. I mean, Akio would probably have banged Juri somehow, just for the sport of it.

He might have failed spectacularly, but he's too far gone for you to dispute it in his face. He died a hero in his mind.

I see no basis for this, none at all. He knows his plan failed. He failed to turn Juri away from Shiori, and failed to turn her toward him. The way the final duel of the arc ended, there can be no doubt that he understands he made no difference whatsoever.

Whoa there! I'm not a fan of Ruka, he strikes me as a fumbling schoolboy in the world of making shit happen the way you want it to. But he seems to me more a figure like Touga, in that he at least bothers to build some self-righteous construct around his behavior. Akio...doesn't. To put it not very delicately, maybe you're putting a greater weight on Ruka's behavior because of its target and result? You're more invested in Juri and so his actions would hit you harder, but I just can't grasp the notion that Ruka is as bad as Akio.

I stand by what I said. Akio most certainly does justify all of his bad behavior as being necessary and desirable toward his vaguely defined goals (meaning, in effect, "whatever I want to happen is what should happen"), and I'm every bit as invested in Anthy as I am in Juri. Ruka is Akio without the power and authority, it's only a matter of scale. If we're talking raw intensity and magnitude of evil, sure, Akio is clear winner. But the nature and character of their hubris is the same.

I mean, Akio would probably have banged Juri somehow, just for the sport of it.

She would not bang him though, and did not. I've said this before, but Juri was not able to be tempted, either literally or figuratively, by Akio.

Last edited by Aelanie (02-25-2017 09:32:57 PM)

Aelanie wrote:

I mean, Akio would probably have banged Juri somehow, just for the sport of it.

She would not bang him though, and did not. I've said this before, but Juri was not able to be tempted, either literally or figuratively, by Akio.

I'd go with raped, instead of "banged," because that's what Akio does.

But, Aelanie is right, as far as sex goes. Akio does not effectively tempt her sexually or have sex with her.

However, I can't go as far as "Juri was not able to be tempted," because her entire cynical drive in life is a desperate bid to prove something true that is entirely motivated, at its core, by Akio's manipulations. His promise of, in her case, the miracle that proves the nonexistence of miracles, is a huge temptation, an amazing lure and bait set for her to pursue.

I'm not so big on Ruka, but Akio is like an evil praying mantis who doesn't so much seduce as get you close, rip your head off, and fuck the corpse while you kinda feel it's your fault for getting so close. Ruka: not so great guy; Akio: the Devil.

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

However, I can't go as far as "Juri was not able to be tempted," because her entire cynical drive in life is a desperate bid to prove something true that is entirely motivated, at its core, by Akio's manipulations. His promise of, in her case, the miracle that proves the nonexistence of miracles, is a huge temptation, an amazing lure and bait set for her to pursue.

In my view though, Juri never actually believed it. Her participation in the duels is a self-aware exercise in cynical futility. She is never shown to be invested in the "end goal" or the Rose Bride - I've mentioned this before, but I believe Juri had by far the best insight into Anthy's true nature and her role in manipulating the duelists - and only really becomes motivated when she gets irritated by Utena's earnestness. But that was a personal score to settle, just as it is in Ruka's arc with Ruka himself. At no point was she interested in the duels for their own sake or their supposed "reward".

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

Akio is like an evil praying mantis who doesn't so much seduce as get you close, rip your head off, and fuck the corpse while you kinda feel it's your fault for getting so close.

I'm absolutely protective of Akio's nastiness, I don't pretend otherwise. I do have an emotional investment in a character with a massive moral compass that he keeps locked up in a basement.

I'm kind of joking when I say Akio would fuck Juri. I know that presents rather a lot of major hurdles, and in any serious effort to do so he'd almost definitely fail. I said it to illustrate something about Akio that does distinguish him from Ruka and anyone else, and it's the part I am protective of, I admit, but I don't think it's a viewpoint that has no rationale behind it. Simply put, Akio has a sadistic sense of whimsy. The closest comparison is Hannibal as he's portrayed on the television show--he'll do things if they cost him nothing, simply to see how it pans out. It would be in the spirit of that 'Hey whatever, I run shit anyway' mentality that he'd try to fuck Juri. I mean, if he really cared enough to, he could probably switch genders and his entire personality, a la Mamiya, but that would be less fun. But DD is right, it wouldn't necessarily be sex appeal, but that Akio could play very well to that cynicism she tries to frame the world in.

Thanks for expanding on the point, Aelanie! It sounds like you're attributing to both of them the same characteristic 'maleness' that the show criticizes, to put it in grossly broad terms. In that I definitely agree with you. Neither really considers the reactions and emotions of the people around them as anything but part of the game. It's just that one is a total amateur.

zeedikay wrote:

The life of Dios/Akio is one of compensation disguised as charisma.

So you've basically covered all ground in this sentence and I no longer have anything of value to add to the conversation. Can I steal this?

Giovanna wrote:

zeedikay wrote:

The life of Dios/Akio is one of compensation disguised as charisma.

So you've basically covered all ground in this sentence and I no longer have anything of value to add to the conversation. Can I steal this?

Go ahead! I'd be happy to let you have it. I have like eight in the shed.
In opinion news, the scariest characters in the show have to be Suzuki, Yamada, and Tanaka, aka those three guys who after the sixth episode mutate into an uncanny barbershop trio. I know they're supposed to be comic relief, and be sort of unremarkable and indistinguishable from each other (I had to look up their names) but they sort of tipped over towards creepy after they introduced themselves.

Aelanie wrote:

I didn't want to characterize it in such a blatant way, but essentially yes.

I'm nothing if not very blatant.

If premeditation is something not entirely on the scale, than I would say Touga's awareness doesn't get him any real exception, either. Self-awareness appears to have no impact whatsoever on where someone appears on the scale, after all, though I guess that's the headiest indictment of 'ALL MEN' in the show. These characters are all insanely toxic regardless of how premeditated they are.

Touga's acute awareness of himself definitely makes him some other animal...I would argue he is probably the least healthy person to be involved with. Saionji is toxic and bad for the evenness of skin tone on your face, but there's room to try to 'understand' and help him, and the presumption (though it's not necessarily true) is that if you do everything right, Saionji will have no reason to hurt you. Akio is also obviously not the best friend to have, and is far worse for that he is aware he is doing terrible things, but Akio is no more aware of the human cost of his actions on a relateable level than a child is able to relate to the pain a lizard who just lost its tail feels. He has no frame of reference of his own for the little traumas and sufferings he inflicts, and while I am the last person on earth to give him a pass on that, it is its own kind of almost Saionji-like cluelessness.

Touga, however, is aware he is a terrible person, even when he isn't doing terrible things. One could argue he is doing Saionji a favor kicking him out of the school, and I think he would be the first to do so, and yet he knows the horrible way he chose to do so is no kindness in itself. That he could have probably accomplished the same thing with less trauma no doubt occurs to him...but he doesn't care. Touga is able to relate to the pain he causes, and that fact doesn't seem to even give him pause when he has the opportunity to step it up to Akio's level. The degree of hubris this takes is alarming--he believes he knows best for himself, everyone around him, and everything in general, such that the cost of his actions is not relevant when the result is considered. If this doesn't change he is going to be an obscenely evil, totally awful adult, but as a child he is still too unsure of his own goals, truly, to make a real success of that kind of ruthlessness.

Obviously I just plain haven't considered Ruka so much, but he does seem to draw heavily from the Touga school of thought in that he knows best and that is more important than how he goes about it. He could arguably be tempered by having spent so long outside the school, and he does seem to have an adult-like narrowing of vision. His goal is clearer, and his methods consider a very short timeline. Whether he fails or not really depends on the interpretation, I suppose, but he does play the game aware of his own, literal, mortality. Adults often do, and children don't. In fact he's the only person in the show doing anything that factors in his own mortality--his actions are meant to be a legacy. The concept of a legacy is utterly alien to Akio, who presumably hasn't even had children despite depositing baby juice in like half the school population, and Touga hasn't gotten to that stage of maturity yet--he's young, and legacies are that thing his father no doubt harps on between phases of gross sexual abuse.

At the end of the day, as my wife is fond of saying, Touga is the most garbage person.

...

Akio is also obviously not the best friend to have, and is far worse for that he is aware he is doing terrible things, but Akio is no more aware of the human cost of his actions on a relateable level than a child is able to relate to the pain a lizard who just lost its tail feels. He has no frame of reference of his own for the little traumas and sufferings he inflicts

Here we differ though. The end result  is certainly the same, but my conception of Akio is that he more than anyone is actually blind to his own evil through the sheer totality of his hubris, as I alluded to earlier:

Akio most certainly does justify all of his bad behavior as being necessary and desirable toward his vaguely defined goals (meaning, in effect, "whatever I want to happen is what should happen")

Akio is so far off the scale of human relatability, that if he could even be described as having a "code of ethics", it can be summed up just like that. "Everything I do is right and good, because it originated in me and services me. Anyone who says otherwise simply doesn't understand the perfection of my ideals," which again those ideals are "I'm great and everything I think and want is how the universe should be." Even Anthy's suffering is couched in his own mind as a consequence of the world not conforming to his wishes, and is thus cruel and imperfect. To him, I'm sure, in the final confrontation Utena is the one being "evil" for resisting his wishes and attempting to deny him what he wants.

As said, this not a human mindset. It's the mindset of, if you will, a "fallen angel" who doesn't realize/accept they have fallen. (The show's own invocation of Lucifer could be said to suggest this as well.) I really think that Akio believes he is actually a far better and more perfect being than Dios. This is why Anthy's lingering love and preference for Dios "torments" him, because he really cannot understand how he is not better in every way. Even his tears toward Anthy in the final episode are born of self-pity for her not loving him as much as he thinks he deserves.

So yeah, that's my conception of Akio. You talk of "a life of compensation", and while it certainly is from our outside perspective, to my mind he himself is not aware of its being so.

Last edited by Aelanie (02-27-2017 12:23:01 AM)

Aelanie wrote:

The end result  is certainly the same, but my conception of Akio is that he more than anyone is actually blind to his own evil through the sheer totality of his hubris

I think we agree more than not!

DD, I definitely got a dog kicker mentality from like most of the movie cast? There was an overall more open air of aggression from everyone, which seemed to work well for portraying similar emotional conflicts in brief. I don't think it transfers well to the series, but then I admit a certain totally unmanageable bias against the movie, so what lines are there to draw I'll refuse to spite them, probably.

MAkio is very much a creature of shame and guilt, and he's impotent with it. Series Akio is uh...probably not impotent, and I don't think I saw anything I'd interpret as shame or guilt, either. Even when he responds directly to Anthy's pain it's just to throw the blame out on others.

I don't like "the Sunlit Garden". I think it's trite and over simplistic. It makes for pretty backing music, but I'd never pay it much mind if there weren't an entire plot placed on it, and with that emphasi, I've come to find it annoying. Okay, it's a piece written by child prodigy Miki so it can't necessarily be expected to have any depths, but given that it's played on a constant loop for a number of different episodes you'd expect it to have a lot more impact than it actually does. I'm not saying it's bad, but the more I hear it, the more I'm convinced that it's a synthesiser away from being elevator music.

zeedikay wrote:

Decrescent Daytripper wrote:

But, Shiori or Juri? Definite dog-kickers.

(I'm tempted to respond to future "Nanami killed a cat" references with, "Juri kicked a dog! (Probably.)")

Juri always seemed more to be the type to me that'd stare at a dog, hoping that no one notices that she's mentally calling it dumb. Her negative moods tend to lean towards the "wallow in misery" than anything else, series wise.

She was enough of a bully to Utena and angry when she thought she could get away with it.

I still don't like canon!Shiori.

baaaaaaaaa.