I don't know if I see them working out long-term, but I suppose they could be hot together. Even if their hair-colors clash.

I don't ship it, though I don't hate it either. I find their dynamic as presented in canon to be kind of fascinating towards the end, but like Lurv, I can't see it working out. Touga needs to spend more time unlearning his misogyny, and after what he pulled on her earlier in the series, Utena is quite right to not trust him. Still, I appreciate how he changes because of her and how he eventually tries to spare her from Akio's trap, even if his methods aren't quite right (but that's realistic character development for you; someone like him isn't going to suddenly become a wonderful person overnight!).

I also greatly dislike what most fanfics and whatnot seem to turn the pairing into. Touga is not some flawless knight in shining armour, and Utena is not a swooning princess who wants him to sweep her off her feet. That's just not them at all.

Admittedly, I'm fond of their relationship in the movie and movie-manga, and the role it plays in the story of those canons; but even then, it's for the best that Utena moved on from him and went on to pursue a happy future with Anthy.

I don't like it or understand the appeal of it. Touga, in both incarnations, is patronizing at best, manipulative and chauvinistic at worst. Utena made a clear choice for Anthy, and I wish people would get their hetero fix somewhere else.

(In the interest of transparency, I have to say that roughly 14 years of having to go to bat for Utena/Anthy against people who want to take away one of the few legitimate LGBT pairings in anime, merely because they just can't stand that FOR ONCE the girl chose another girl, have taken their toll on my tolerance.)

Last edited by Aelanie (08-06-2013 02:45:39 PM)

I have to admit that I am. It happens to hit a lot of things that are personally appealing to me:

1.) Motherfucking angst. I don't like Western romances because they end well and are cheery. I tend to love Eastern romances though because couples are star-crossed and shit almost never goes well. And that's probably my biggest thing against Utena/Anthy. I *love* them together in the series, but the fanfiction inevitably assumes that all their problems are solved now that they're out of Ohtori and they go skipping in a field of wildflowers. They're one of the healthiest couples in the show(which...isn't saying much), but its just...boring.

2.) Them not being able to get together in the series gives me a challenge. I have to try and think of what could bring a couple together, and that really gets me thinking about character development, relationships, and my creative juices flowing. With Utena and Anthy...uh...she finds her after the series is over and they bone. The end.  This being said though, I don't think I've seen someone write a convincing enough fanfic yet where they're together. I attempted, but it was really long and it's incomplete(it was technically going to be Touga/Utena/Anthy though, so...).

3.) I love fictional manwhores. I hate them more than anybody else in real life, but for some reason, I can't get enough of them in fiction.

4.) I have a soft spot in particular for Touga because his turn-around is subtle and goddamn wonderful. It's not like a lot of shoujo manga(including manga!Touga) where he's a bad boy, girl is perturbed, and he is instantly completely reformed. No, he's reluctantly finding himself unable go on with the way he's been living his life and is clearly disgusted with himself--both for being a prick and the same sort of sucker he used to make fun of. And he starts trying to do better, but he's not very good at it, and his turn-around is too late for it to do anything anyway because Utena's had enough of his shit.

5.) You know the sex would be hot as sin.

Last edited by Frau Eva (08-09-2013 12:33:43 AM)

Aelanie wrote:

I don't like it or understand the appeal of it. Touga, in both incarnations, is patronizing at best, manipulative and chauvinistic at worst. Utena made a clear choice for Anthy, and I wish people would get their hetero fix somewhere else.

(In the interest of transparency, I have to say that roughly 14 years of having to go to bat for Utena/Anthy against people who want to take away one of the few legitimate LGBT pairings in anime, merely because they just can't stand that FOR ONCE the girl chose another girl, have taken their toll on my tolerance.)

It's cool if you don't like the character. I was just asking if anyone like the idea of Utena and Touga. I agree he is manipulative but he does come around being okay at towards the end. I also like Utena and Anthy too. Actually I like both Utena and Touga together and Utena and Anthy together. Trust me I have nothing against Utena and Anthy at all. I think that both pairings are very interesting and complicated. I don not know about you but my favorite characters in the show are Utena, Touga, and Anthy so that is were I got the idea of Utena and Touga together and Utena and Anthy together. I apologize if you got offended by someone simply asking if anyone like a simple pairing from a entertaining show.

I think that, beyond the attraction, they are just so NOT on each others wavelengths at all and they'd annoy the heck out of each other once the sex got old.

kj924 wrote:

By the way just out of curiosity why do you not like straight relationships?

Mostly because they're what you see promoted by society all the time.

Yes and no.  I'm not a shipper.  I don't get way into the idea of one true pairings, unless it's maybe story that is centrally a romance and all it is about is two people getting together romantically.

That said, I sometimes enjoy playing with the implications of Utena and Touga.

But, it's like...it's clearly not exactly what's going on in the show.  Obviously, the idea of Utena and Anthy as a lesbian couple is not crazy. It's easy to see why anyone would draw that conclusion, and I never thought that was an accident. Though it's also true that, in the TV series, it's not canon-conclusive to the point that there's no other reading.

I never personally interpreted the show that way and, for me, when I started interacting with the rest of the fandom, the idea that I had to perceive the show as a gay romance kind of...took away something very meaningful for me. 

One of the things I struggled with when I was a teenager and met Utena (and, honestly, still struggle with as a 32 year old) was the tension between being female (which I viewed as very much an objective physical fact) and being "a girl" the way everyone else seemed to assume I must "naturally" be.

Some of the stuff I hated about being-a-girl was how I was apparently supposed to arrange my whole life around romance and relationships. As a voracious reader, this was frequently reflected even in otherwise girl-power-ish stories. Almost every story about a girl would inevitably become a story mostly about romantic or sexual relationships in some way.

While, obviously, lesbian and bisexual relationships are underrepresented--and I can see why many people find the idea of SKU doing that equally if not more inspiring--I always felt a story about a girl meeting her soul mate girlfriend was basically the same thing as a story about a girl meeting her soul mate boyfriend. In the end, just another damn romance! Another reduction of a woman's life as being centered around her romantic ties.

For me, the idea that Utena had way more important things to do than fall in love was awesome! The thought that, in order to be the kind of person she wanted to be, she had to ditch her romantic dreams and keep a promise she made to her friend and to herself... And that she put a friend and her own sense of right and wrong above the usual penultimate goal of girlness (tru wuv)!

THANK YOU, I always felt. Thank you for telling a different story about a girl. Thank you for talking about how it is wrong to put a bond with a "significant other" on a pedestal, because it can blind us to ugly truths when we idolize a romantic figure--as women are constantly encouraged to do. Thank you for showing how challenging it is to find and to be the best and truest version of yourself, especially in difficult circumstances (instead of worrying over who you're "meant to be with" and therefore what they would prefer you to be like). How hard it is to try to be good before you try be anything else.

Most of this awesome stuff only applies, you see, if Utena's romantic match is not Anthy. Otherwise Utena is just doing the "girly" thing and putting romantic love first and does what she does for her tru wuv, so the whole thing plays out as a pretty straightforward "love conquers all" tale, only with the true love's gender swapped.

That's a cool thing about Touga.  If we read it that Utena is genuinely attracted to Touga from the get-go, but he's an ass, and she's got more important things to worry about...and then that he does both fall in love with her and start to change his tune--it's still doomed.  And Utena did something really unusual and ballsy for a girl her age--she rejected what would, typically, be her "destiny" in a story like this for a much harder course.  (Though it's pretty similar for Akio, Akio is so much a villain it feels a bit different.)

So, I will never get why these also-uncommon, equally useful messages are bad to appreciate.

Last edited by rhyaniwyn (02-08-2015 10:43:04 PM)

I'm a huge Utena/Touga fangirl, though I'll admit there's problematic aspects to the pairing. I think it'll work out better in the manga-verse than the anime