In my school, the student council was voted in by a popularity contest and was essentially a bunch of cheerleaders sitting in a room talking about hair spray. The Seitokai at Ohtori Academy have bigger things to worry about, and with the gravity of their responsibilities, it’s safe to assume their joining the council was more serious as well. We’re given no convenient flashbacks to explain the recruiting process the Seitokai underwent, but we can rely on vague recollections and deductive reasoning to give us some idea. The traditional school-wide election, if done at all, was a formality. Akio would never leave his pieces to be moved by children, and the Seitokai was no volunteer operation. These people took convincing.

    A few lines exchanged in episode two do tell us something about this process:

    The Rose Signet is, with exception to Utena, considered the symbol of a contract made with Ends of the World. Saionji expresses surprise in episode 1 that Utena bears it despite not being on the Seitokai, and much later, in episode 22, it’s noted that Ends of the World must back the Black Rose duelists or they wouldn’t wear his signet. This indicates that membership on the Seitokai and involvement in the dueling game was a joint offer. The two are unequivocally combined in the minds of the council, falling under the same umbrella of responsibility and reward.

    We know the identity of Ends of the World is hidden from the duelists. The way Miki and Touga speak here, it sounds like their letters just appeared out of nowhere with a ring and instructions on how to duel, and that upon their compliance, everything, their membership on the Seitokai and the dueling game, fell into place. Juri’s comment supports what you can then assume: the theatrics of the arena were used as proof Ends of the World was serious.

    What motivated them to test his claims rather than laugh over the absurdity of an illusory castle and a Bride with a magical sword? There’s a certain ambiguity surrounding the initial motives of the duelists. We know what they’re chasing now, but that leaves the question of what was going through their heads when they decided not to throw that first letter in the trash.

    None of the duelists can be summed up quite as well as Touga. He saw power and grabbed it. He’d have required the least encouragement; upon hearing his job title, he was in. Touga wants to do and be everything, and though he climbs the ladder, he’s convinced a spot’s waiting vacant for him at the top. It’s his birthright. He would have jumped either offer, the Seitokai, or the dueling game. Both? He’d be on that faster than a fangirl on SephirothXCloud shounen-ai.

    Drive and ambition in such excess doesn’t come out of thin air. In a series that puts so much emphasis on psychological development, we’re given little to work with concerning where Touga got this extraordinary power-lust. Most of the characters are given a fleshed out late childhood to explain their personality. Miki had his psychotic sister, Juri had her infatuation with Shiori, and Saionji had Touga. But what’d Touga have? We don’t get any flashbacks in the show meant specifically for him. Though he appears in several, he’s never the character the scene is explaining; in the flashback to Utena’s coffin, though Touga plays no small part in it, Saionji is center stage. He appears a major player in all of the Saionji and Nanami flashbacks, and so needs none of his own to illustrate who he was at the time.

    Who was he? Exactly who he is in the show. Plainly he had an early start with this god complex, so we have to leave the safety of flashbacks and go to his formative years.

    We spend most of the series watching Touga live a life of luxury. He does this so well that even when we’re told otherwise, it doesn’t always sink in that Touga was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Here’s what we can assume by circumstance: Touga and Nanami were born to a poor family. The nature of this family beyond their eventual inability to raise Touga and Nanami is unknown, but secondhand evidence tells us it was a loving environment.

    Children seen to be show-offs are rarely simply that—Touga’s flaunting started out as a way to garner attention and approval. He had far too much drive and determination in this pursuit to be someone chasing a dream or a longing otherwise foreign to them. Touga remembers what caring and love feel like—emotions certainly never experienced at the hands of his current parents, who by all evidence regard their children as trophies. It also seems odd that his parents would wait until he was four and send off both siblings. The only reason they’d have waited so long would have been to sell a beautiful youth on the black market in his prime. Yet had that been the case, they’d have done the same with Nanami, who was too young at the time to sell to the same buyers Touga would’ve attracted. Instead, it’s more likely they wanted to keep their children but found the second to be too much. Faced with the hard reality, they decided it better to not separate the children, and sent them away in hopes they’d have a better life in a wealthy home.

    It probably didn’t take Touga long to realize that (with ironic exception to the Kiryuus themselves) he had a talent for getting love and adoration from others. This is a sweet high for anyone, and it would have been doubly so for Touga. So he devoted himself to it. Nanami wears the scars of this ambition still, as evidence fingers her for one of the young Touga’s lab rats. Success after success after success, and by the flashback of him and Saionji finding Utena, Touga’s been feeding off the attention others pay him for so long he no longer relies on or needs it. He simply expects it.

    Touga considers himself the top of the food chain. The power, the money, the women—these aren’t symbols of his greatness, because he doesn’t need anything or anyone to tell him what he already knows. Touga doesn’t pursue anything in an effort to inflate or confirm his ego anymore. Instead, he claims these things not as prizes, but as endowments naturally befitting a man of his standing. A woman whispering adorations in his ear tells him nothing he doesn’t already know, she’s there simply because a man in his position has such things. (Also, he likes sex.)

    That’s the state of mind he had when he accepted. The highest position a student can hold in school politics? Leading members of an ultra-secretive group fighting for a prize no one else knows exists? Being the speaking voice of the ominous taskmaster behind it all? Of course he should do all these things. He’s Touga Kiryuu, and it’s his right to claim the head of every table. And that whole Power of Dios thing? Yeah, the kids can toss it around all they want. He knows it belongs to him.

    Touga isn’t the only member of the Seitokai with a superiority complex. He’s just the only member whose superiority complex isn’t built on a foundation of termite infested balsa wood. To hear Saionji tell it, being on the Seitokai and possessing the Rose Bride are glories meant for him alone, because he’s the best and he deserves it and he’s fucking awesome. Sadly, no one is less convinced of this than he is. In fact, if not for his rabid competition with aforementioned president, it’s unlikely Saionji would’ve successfully convinced himself he was worth the position at all. It’s no stretch to imagine Saionji being offered a place in the Seitokai before Touga and shrugging it off as ridiculous frippery unworthy of time he could devote to his swordsmanship. That’s the nature of Saionji’s dismal self-esteem. He plays patronizing and acts as though everything is below him, because to give worth to anything will make his loss of it all the more crushing. However, glutton for punishment as he is, he can’t resist a chance to lock horns with (and get owned by) Touga. The odds are high that Touga’s newly acquired position was dangled in front of Saionji to convince him to sign on to the Seitokai.

    Aside from his need to compete with Touga, Saionji took VP for the prestige and honor that comes with the title. Ironically, Saionji is uninterested in the actual power his position affords him. The ego doesn’t come from the influence he has, but that it marks him as special. His special uniform, his special signet, his special title—he’s not drunk with power, he’s drunk with status. Saionji’s the kid in Boy Scouts that had all the badges. Not because he enjoyed earning them, but because he enjoyed being seen wearing them. This is the same motivation behind leading the kendo club, though kendo is an exception in Saionji’s life where he actually does have an ego to speak of. He earns his accolades in competition and he knows it, though even there it’s a bittersweet victory at best. He only dominates that arena because Touga doesn’t play in it—a point Saionji makes with no small amount of bitterness.

    Saionji was drawn to the Seitokai for the status high. His motivation to duel stems from a desire to ‘see something eternal’. Touga offers an explanation for this during Saionji’s ride in the Akio Arc: Saionji wants eternal friendship. A lot of things changed in Saionji’s life that fateful day in the church. It exposed him, in a most brutal way, to the lack of permanence in life. Saionji was introduced to death, but what he remembers is the end of the friendship he’d shared with Touga.

    As a child, Saionji was an innocent. If he had a slightly rough home life, he was still woefully ignorant to realities harsher than his father’s temper. A stark contrast to Touga, who’s driven by more than curiosity when he uncovers the coffin Utena’s hiding in. This is a trend that continues into the series—Saionji still has a juvenile innocence about him that Touga lacked from the beginning. Despite the school he goes to, the friend he holds dear, and the ruthless woman he loves, Saionji is genuinely surprised by every act of cruelty he sees—especially the ones he causes himself. Years of exposure have yet to dull the hurt Saionji feels when Touga looks down on him or when Anthy ignores him. Saionji was made to look at something he wasn’t ready to see, and rather than scab over and heal, every harsh reality and moment of cruelty Saionji witnesses opens the wound anew.

    Saionji learned that nothing lasts forever, including the friendship he cherished so much as a child. Utena poses to them the challenge of showing her something eternal and Touga walks away, accepting that he can’t do this. Eternity is a child’s fantasy, and Touga takes it as a matter of reason that there is no such thing. Saionji is at the same loss Touga is to show Utena something eternal, but he clings helplessly to the idea that such a thing exists, just out of his reach. He’s realized he needs something eternal too, and he can’t relate to Touga’s coldness concerning it.

    Despite having absolutely nothing to do with Utena’s change of heart, Touga flashes a smug and self-satisfied grin to see her out and about the next day. Saionji’s world crumbles as he takes this to mean Touga did know of something eternal, and that he showed it to Utena, a stranger, rather than to his best friend. Saionji felt betrayed, and in that moment came to understand that his best friend hid things from him, used him, and would ignore him if he were so inclined. By this point in their friendship, Touga has begun to pick at Saionji’s flaws, and being no idiot for all that he’s a fool, Saionji saw this. Though they still associate, this marked the end of anything that could be called a genuine friendship between them, and Saionji in the series knows quite well Touga abuses him and keeps him around for laughs and schemes. (The fact of the matter is Touga needs Saionji just as much as Saionji needs Touga. They spend most of the series dancing around this, and finally accept it in the end.)

    Saionji saw in the dueling game yet another kendo hall. Another battleground to fight Touga on. They were equals. Best friends. He loved Touga once, in the happy, all-encompassing friendship of youth. Now he chases in desperation and hope any chance to show Touga his worth, that he might come to respect him as an equal again.

    Most in his position would simply lament the loss of innocence. Saionji sees now how the world is, he knows his eternal friendship isn’t plausible, and he knows what he is to Touga. However, most aren’t given the chance to be duelists, and rather than mourn for days gone by, Saionji grasped the faint possibility that something that makes him happy can last for all time. Never ending in death or betrayal or the parting of ways. For all he hates himself enough to think he doesn’t deserve it, like everyone else, he just wants to be happy. Forever.

    Miki is by far the hardest case to argue. The early episodes of the series paint him to be a reluctant duelist, and most everyone else agrees his place is in the piano room, not the arena. The game they play was not the draw for Miki. He joined the Seitokai first and foremost, and the duels became the baggage that weighed down the benefits of his position.

    He appears to be a record keeper, who on top of transcribing the meetings, is seen to time them. This is a tedious job requiring patience no one else on the Seitokai can spare. Miki was drawn to this position in part because it suited him. Despite his shyness, Miki has enough self-esteem to realize where and when his abilities can best be applied. He can do this job better than anyone else.

    Though Miki shines in the classroom and the music room, his ego’s more invested in the former than the latter. For whatever reason, scholastic prowess has greater value for him than musical genius. Miki blushes and shrugs off most of the adoration he gets from his piano playing, but he’s more headstrong and proud when someone compliments him concerning his test scores. How it would look on a college application to have been on the Seitokai was no doubt prominent in his mind when he agreed to it. To say it never crossed anyone else’s would be a lie—Touga in particular would have appreciated how shiny his position would make his resume look. However, in Miki’s case alone it would’ve been a primary motive—partly for his resume, partly for his ego, and partly for his parents that ignore him anyway. The rest of them just make their college apps happen. Only Miki would toil over it.

    There aren’t many stereotypically ‘good’ people in the series; most of the cast is at the very best 100% self-centered and at the very worst 100% sadistic. Miki is neither of these. He has a genuine humanitarian bent, and membership in the Seitokai would have appealed to him for the opportunity it gave to help his fellow classmates. One of the primary functions of a student government body is to be the voice for the needs and wants of the school, which is something Miki would regard as a calling. Touga wanted power, Saionji wanted status—Miki didn’t see either of these benefits before he saw the responsibility that invariably comes with the position.

    Nothing catches Miki’s interest like responsibility. The events illustrated in his flashbacks set the standard for a habit Miki indulges rabidly over the course of the series. He feels obligated to take responsibility for everything. It’s all his fault, and it’s all his problem to fix. His intentions in joining the Seitokai were good, he wanted to help his peers, but he was driven largely by his sense of duty. He saw a chance to take on a huge responsibility and put himself in a position to horde blame, so he took it. Noblesse oblige, with great power comes great responsibility, etc, etc. Miki feels his talents place on him the burden of aiding others.

    As for the dueling game…Miki doesn’t quite get it. The other members of the Seitokai (save Nanami) have a very specific idea of what the Power of Dios is to them, and what they would do with it. Miki lacks this. His primary understanding of the Power of Dios is that his peers in the Seitokai want it, so it must really be great and totally worth pursuing. As for himself, he’s not quite sure what he wants to do with it. It could be said this is in part because he doesn’t believe he can get it, but despite being a genius, the bottom line is Miki’s too young and in a pool that’s too deep. He has no idea in hell what he’d do with the power to revolutionize the world. Would he return Kozue to her original innocence and rebuild their sunlit garden together? Would he capture Anthy for himself? Would he wish for world peace? He wasn’t sure; he just realized it would be a very nice thing to have.

    In the first arc, Miki’s fighting for ‘Anthy’s music’. Skipping hours of analysis, let’s agree to summarize: He wants to have Anthy for himself. Those two episodes center largely around Miki’s realization of this—he had a crush on her from the beginning, but it wasn’t until these events took place that Miki finds his ‘shining thing’. At this point, his sexual regards are still aimed almost entirely at Kozue, so those were likely the conditions he began dueling under. This negates the possibility that he began dueling because he liked Anthy and wanted to get closer to her.

    By the Akio Arc, Miki’s started to get a few ideas as far as what to do with the Power of Dios, but for most of the series, and certainly before it, Miki awkwardly stands among the duelists in pursuit of something he’s not quite sure he knows what to do with. The dueling game is a ‘grown-up’ thing to do, and despite his distrust of older grown-ups, he looks up to the rest of the Seitokai, especially Touga, as role models. The way he sees it, if they all want the Power of Dios so much…well it must be worth it.

    Touga’s the president, Saionji’s the vice-president, and Miki’s the record keeper. Juri’s role in the Seitokai is also well defined: Juri is the group’s ambassador. It’s her that manages the gossip chain and intelligence network in the school, and it’s her we see interacting with the faculty concerning school politics. It’s might seem hard to make sense of a character like her in this position, but she fits the job better than anyone else. Miki lacks the maturity to weed information out of people, Saionji’s methods would be illegal, and Touga’s too busy being the rumors to gather them. Juri’s reputation in the school is mixed—her peers like her but they’re all afraid of her. An ideal position for rumor hoarding, and her intimidating presence means she can keep up with the gossip running about the faculty without being some nosey obnoxious student.

    Was membership on the council a draw for Juri? Absolutely. She likes to drown herself in structure and activity. As long as she’s knee-deep in the Ohtori Academy rumor mill and going to lunch with horny members of the faculty, she’s not at home crying her guts out in the shower. Juri is a contradiction this way. The great motive in her life is suffering, but she can’t quite handle the amount she produces, so she distracts herself. The fencing club, bowling, fashion modeling, and now the duties of the Student Council. Since she uses the Seitokai as a distraction, it becomes clear why it looks as though she shoulders more responsibility than she needs to. Like Miki, Juri has a work ethic whose nature forces her to recognize her responsibilities before her rewards. Aside from serving as busywork, distraction, and yes, a pretty heading on her college app, Juri’s membership in the Seitokai is largely what she considers her payment for membership in the dueling game—the opposite of Miki, who sees the game as the unpleasant duty.

    Juri fights for ‘the power of miracles’. Or to disprove said power. She doesn’t really know. Juri’s invested so heavily in being unhappy that she’s lost the capacity to consider being any other way. Her words in Akio’s car were 100% truth.

    Juri means that. Though she could just as well use that power to gain Shiori for herself, she’s so comfortable in her angst and drama and surety that she’ll never be happy that it doesn’t qualify as a valid option anymore. Juri claims she wants to disprove that miracles exist, because to do so would free her from the grip Shiori has on her. At the same time, she bets everything on the promise of what Ends of the World offers her: a miracle. Either result would effectively end the deep depression and malcontent she lives in, which is why she fears both answers—the lonely, unhappy life she leads is a motive in and of itself. She can’t imagine living or being any other way, and so ultimately in spite of her claims and her dreams, she fights to stay exactly where she is. Without an answer. To see that miracles don’t exist would mean she could never have the one she loves, and to possess a miracle would end the misery. Furthermore, much of Shiori’s appeal is her distance—Juri only wants what she can’t have. Her entire world revolves around this unrequited desire. To have her, or to know beyond any doubt that she’ll never have her, would bring that world crashing down.

    Was she like this when she began her career as a duelist? Not quite. Fresh from the severing of her friendship with Shiori, Juri’s angst party would have had a different atmosphere. Her adamant denial of miracles would have started not as a fear of getting one, but as anger for not getting one when she needed it. Juri wasn’t always a malcontent, and there was a time when she thought she might have a chance. When she found she didn’t, Juri became bitter with the loss, feeling if she didn’t get that one miracle, they clearly don’t exist. This is an extreme reaction, yes, but don’t forget there are people who swear god doesn’t exist because he didn’t save their dog.

    The dialogue I mention earlier in the essay uncovers a lot of Juri’s motivation to duel, so I’ll repeat it here:

    Miki speaks with a scholarly interest in what he saw, it certainly impressed him, but it was not the motive that drove him. Touga disregards the illusionary castle entirely, choosing to quote Ends of the World’s offer of power as why they must fight. Juri’s reaction seems the most emotional. Miki and Touga were not seduced by that scene, but it touched something in Juri. There’s little falsehood in her, and when she says that the miracle she saw forced her to join the game, she means it. If any of the Duelists had questioned Ends of the World’s claims, it would have been Juri, but even her protests were silenced by the theatrics of the duel arena. She saw Ends of the World could maybe produce miracles, and so perhaps maybe he could produce one for her. Maybe.

    The hurt she felt was much fresher when she first joined the Seitokai, and it’s probable that while already quite fond of her misery, at the time she still had something left of a real desire to escape it. That shadow of a hope is what attracted her to the game, but time’s gone by, and apparently it’s not delivered as fast as Juri wanted it to. She continues to duel, but she’s convinced herself she’s only chasing her tail.

    Nanami is a strange case among the duelists. She didn’t sign on to the Seitokai as part of the agreement to be a duelist, and she’s not a participant in the game because she wants to be. Akio offers her nothing and cannot claim her allegiance. Touga is Nanami’s Ends of the World, and she plays the game he sets for her.

    She’s dragged into the game with no knowledge of what it is, beyond that it’s an interest of Touga’s. That’s really all that concerns her. The floating castle and the Power of Dios went unnoticed; all that mattered was the ring her prince gave her. In this way, Nanami makes a strange comparison to Utena. They both fight independent of the lure of Ends of the World, they both fight on behalf of a loved one, and they were both set on their harsh paths by ‘princes’.

    Nanami’s intention is to hurt Utena. She disregards the rules of the game, and has no interest in gaining the Rose Bride. Nanami’s only motive in joining the dueling game is to defend her brother. This upstart Utena is getting way too much of his attention and she doesn’t share Touga with anyone. That’s her _only_ motive for the first duel. It doesn’t come with the baggage of permanence in the council that the others carry. She ignores the Seitokai and the dueling game after this until Touga’s unfortunate psychological coma, where she takes the helm as his stand-in Seitokaichou. She says she has the qualifications (the rose signet), and the rest of Seitokai doesn’t arguee her claim to ownership.

    Nanami commands the council (if you could call dumping her work on Keiko ‘command’) throughout the Black Rose Saga, and continues to hold her position through the Akio Arc. Though Touga’s returned to the scene by this point, he never reclaims his place as the President in any official capacity, and Nanami continues to run it while he plays insider.

    This is a duty Nanami takes, again, on her brother’s behalf. She feels it’s her responsibility to fill Touga’s shoes in his absence. While she does this with her typical zeal and determination for the glory of her Onii-sama, you don’t get the impression she wants the Seitokai for herself, and it means nothing to her aside from the value she knows Touga places on it. She stands more as another personality in the cryptic Seitokai dialogues than an actual figure of authority. In episode 25 she expresses a sentiment you never hear from the other duelists.

    Nanami sympathizes with Saionji’s refusal to be a subordinate to Ends of the World. In another translation I have, her line is given as ‘Jeez…it’s not like I want to do it either!’ Nanami’s exasperated tone gives her away: she feels trapped in her position. She doesn’t want to be a duelist in the official capacity, and she regards Ends of the World with disinterest. The only indication she receives letters from him at all is that she’s eating one in episode 28. She never refers to them directly, and seems out of the loop when Juri and Miki refer to a specific subject put forth in a letter they received. As for Ends of the World himself, she really just doesn’t care. For all she knows, he could be some long-legged older man.

    Ultimately, it’s all for Touga. She duels because someone’s stepping in on her territory, and she joins the Seitokai to take care of things while he’s gone. Nanami, for all her self-centered pride and enthusiasm, is dedicated in full to her prince. She is in her own way just as self-centered and power-hungry as her darling brother, but to her, the spotlight belongs to him. She simply gets to bask in it. Or she doesn’t—the primary motivation for both her duels is perceived distance from him. Touga’s glory is her glory. His Seitokai is her Seitokai. His martial arts are her martial arts. Nanami lives vicariously through the successes of her older brother—a trait she perhaps learned from the parents they see so little of.

    How much of this was genuine affection between siblings who had only each other to count on relies entirely on your idea of who Touga is. As for Nanami, real or not, she recalls a very close and loving childhood relationship with her brother. It’s not hard to see where her dedication comes from, after all he was a prince to her—he was her constant companion when she was lonely, a defender against her meanie parents, and everything a big brother should be. That closeness, when they had no one else, is the most important thing in Nanami’s life, and she’s never let go of that need for his love and protection. Above and beyond that, Touga was such an integral part of her youth that she relies on him for her own sense of who she is. Nanami can only see herself reflected in his eyes, and she’s lost when his gaze lands elsewhere. As long as Touga’s fixated on dueling arena, Nanami will stand in it, and when the games are over, she’s the first one to take the ring off.

    The duelists seem to assume membership on the council necessary to be part of the dueling game, but aside from a minor inflammatory comment from Juri, no one’s surprised or disturbed when Ends of the World breaks his own rules. Utena is the only duelist never to step foot on the council’s meeting balcony, and despite this, she’s the victor for almost the entire series. The exception that allows for Utena to duel is a source of unspoken discomfort for the Seitokai, who see that her circumstances make her special, and desperately ignore this fact. They do so with enough success that even watching them from afar, it’s hard to point out where the proof is, except that you can see it in how they behave around her and how they speak of her. The duelists are never under any illusion whose game they’re playing—Ends of the World dictates when they duel, how they duel, and clearly knows who will win. All this structure and then comes Utena. She knows nothing of the game, isn’t on the Seitokai, and claims she got her signet from a prince in her youth. Yet the duelists go out of their way not to question how this came to be, and how she keeps winning, and why Anthy goes out of her way to help her. Perhaps if they did, they’d see what they are—spokes on a wheel, nothing more than trials to be overcome, with no hope of their own for the power they were seduced with. And that would be a hard reality to face, that they were played, and that their motivations, hopes, and dreams made fools out of them all.

Essays
Personality + Relationship + Narrative + Miscellany + Music

Context
Introduction + Characters + Reference + Submission

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Analysis of Utena + Empty Movement