Tenjou Utena

the fool who revolutionized the world, general overview -- version 1.0 July 2003

Utena is the existence of purity and innocence among those involved with the Rose Bride and the End of the World, not so much in the context of being sheltered and simple-minded but in holding pure ideals, being almost too pure, too spotless and uncorrupted in the eyes of the other Duelists--hence the white rose. This they read as a weakness and naivety (and indeed it can be both at times), when it fact it is Utena's strength, and in the end the reason that she becomes the true Prince.

Utena's involvement with Anthy stems from seeing Anthy submissively take abuse and not assert any opinions or objections, from seeing Anthy quell her own self-worth. Utena wants to defend Anthy and to set her free, not to shelter Anthy but to build her confidence and self-worth so that she will assert herself and her desires and opinions and become an autonomous individual. A large degree of Utena's ego comes from being able to play the role of the prince and defend a princess, to affirm her own strength by playing the noble hero. At the beginning of the show, she is unaware of this situation and it being the reason that she defends Anthy, but before dueling Akio and after watching Anthy attempt suicide (in the pain of being used and defended mindlessly with her protectors having no regard for her as an individual but wanting to build their own egos or reach their own goals) she realizes this and apologizes to Anthy, saying that she was only playing a role to feel like a prince.

Utena, however, still does not realize why she wants to be a prince at this point: she does not want power, but she genuinely wants to defend Anthy and all people as individuals. This is what makes her the true prince, Anthy's true prince, after her final encounter with Akio. It can be theorized that the revolution Utena brings (which cannot be seen by Akio or anybody else that seeks power) is that of truly wanting to rescue Anthy herself, as a person, not to use Anthy's power for the revolution. Thus, the revolution becomes paradoxical in nature: it is not brought about by using Anthy's power as the Rose Bride, but by rescuing Anthy herself. That is the nature of the true prince, the illusion of Dios that once was. Dios was so pure and perfect that he was thought to be an illusion (if he is not in truth an illusion), the ideal--"too good to be true"--which is why perhaps Anthy believed that Utena could not be her prince, not because she was a girl, but because she could not believe that such a person could exist.

The symbol of coffins that shows itself throughout the duration of the show is something equivalent to a self-fulfilled prophesy: society says that you fit into this role (coffins that all exist within the World's Shell--society, which is an illusion), so you must fulfill it. Utena is shown curled in a coffin after the death of her parents, still a young girl fulfilling the role of princess saying that there is no point in going on living if we're all going to die someday. Then, a prince shows her something eternal: a girl undergoing eternal suffering at the points of the swords of hate, only able to be rescued by a prince that she believes in. Utena starts to cry for the little girl and then asks the prince to rescue her. The prince says that he cannot be her prince, so Utena says that she will become a prince herself. This is when she receives the Rose Signet, and also when she moves from fulfilling the role of the princess coffin into fulfilling the role of the prince coffin. Though switching coffins is deemed unacceptable by society, she is still within a preordained coffin set by society: the role that says "this is how to be a prince, this is what the prince does; to be a prince, you meet these standards". Utena is still sleeping within a coffin, fulfilling a role, even though it is not the role set to her. The other theory for the revolution (or the other part of a complex, multi-faceted revolution) is that Utena breaks free from all roles--she is not a prince any longer by fulfilling the coffin set by society; no longer does she affirm her identity through recognition of fulfilling that coffin. She becomes a "prince" in its true essence (which, ironically, has a definition all its own), not a prince by society's standards. She becomes something free of all coffins and restraints, a true individual untied by the shells (hence the world's shell of society) and coffins. Her being is free to do as it pleases, to transcend all roles and boundaries, not just switch coffins.

A rephrasing of this idea in simple, not-drawn-out not-overly-wordy prose (so uncharacteristic for this site) occurred in a late night role play with Chrissy. I should write more things on the spur of the moment. They tend to make more sense in retrospect.

Chrissy: And being a prince is an honor that you've earned dammit.
Utena: ..."prince"...
Utena: Isn't that a coffin in itself?
Lauren: No.
Lauren: You take on the nature of that which is embodied in the "prince". You just happen to overlap the coffin.
Lauren: But you're not inside it.
Lauren: You take the best qualities assigned to it.

A side note remembered while watching episode 35 "The Love the Blossomed in Winter" during the flashback sequence--young Utena says "Don't open it (the coffin). Living is sickening. Why do we keep on living if we're all going to die someday?" This may be a subconscious reference to "living" in the sense of truly being alive outside of a coffin or a shell--what is the point of "living" at all if we're all going to die someday? It is an empty movement, the cycle of conception to egg to embryo to death, as beautifully illustrated by Saionji's third duel song "Virtual Star Hasseigaku", a song that I tend to blast constantly in the car. Ideal and meaning in life is illusion, and when the illusions are stripped away, nothing but empty movement remains. There is no point to life, but dying is just as pointless as living.

Utena remembers that she was rescued by a prince on a white horse (Dios) who gave her a rose ring and told her "never lose your strength or nobility, even when you grow up"--an altered memory of what truly happened when she received the Rose Signet. In this version of the memory, it is the prince that inspired her to be a prince herself, while in fact, she was the one that wanted to be the prince in the first place. She was not a princess that was rescued; she took the initiative to become noble herself. Dios merely lead her to her reason for becoming noble: the suffering Rose Bride. Utena still seeks her prince from long ago and wishes to be with him, or a part of him in some way: she does not know if she wants to be with her prince or become her prince, or if she can somehow have both situations, to be a prince to people and have a prince for herself. At this point, she is still stuck in a state in which she worries that she may have to fulfill one coffin or another: be a prince or a princess, not both.

Utena's involvement with Akio plays upon this worry to a large degree. Akio is stuck within the world of coffins, rooted firmly in his own coffin (role as the prince) from which he takes validation and security--this was part of his downfall from Dios and one of the key ways in which he is the opposite of Utena. Akio tried to coax Utena back into her princess coffin by making her feel feminine, using that to make her feel that she is, in fact, a princess after all, and should retreat back into her princess coffin and be protected and stop trying to play prince and defend Anthy. The same thing happened when she lost a duel to Touga, but she was able to reclaim herself by affirming her role as the prince by defeating Touga and reclaiming Anthy, the part of herself that makes her role complete--her princess to defend. With Akio, however, there was no duel, no external stimuli to battle--Utena lost to her own femininity and longing to be with the prince. Utena knew this, and allowed herself to slowly slip back toward her princess coffin, taking on the role traits of being passive and submissive. The largest hit to her ego was allowing Akio to take her--in the full sexual context--after kissing him and going on some dates in which she took on her princess coffin role. The blow to her nobility consisted of knowing that Akio was already engaged to somebody else--Ohtori Kanae--and in performing an act that Utena herself considers to be a horrible breach of her personal honor code, further affirming her self-doubt that she cannot become a noble prince.

Utena's ultimate defeat of Akio came from breaking free of all the coffins and from refusing the fulfillment of one of her dreams--to be with her prince and be defended--in place of setting Anthy free. Utena broke free of all illusions--the coffins, the world's shell, the prince, the castle, the motifs and symbols of the roses, the swords, the duels--leaving behind what would be a voluntarily blind existence in an illusionary paradise for the sake of rescuing the person that would be kept in hellish captivity. She left the shelled, preserved. scripted world of the Academy for the "outside world". She was not an illusionary prince fulfilling a coffin but a true prince, something that transcended and was pure and unbound. She was, paradoxally, a fulfillment of one of the prince coffin requirements: rescue a coffin princess. She truly did this for her sake, unlike the other coffin princes.

If all of the coffins, shells, and roles constitute the players upon the Ohtori Stage, then Utena is the player that, after rewriting her given role to fit another template, looks over her script, reluctantly plays the hollow, meaningless dueling game, learns that the world is a hollow play, throws the script into the fire, and walks off the stage. Unlike the other players, she doesn't rebel by switching roles and performing the acts that are socially accepted as rebellious behavior to validate rebellion--an oxymoron, the "rules of revolution" and "qualifications of revolution": something prewritten and paradox to the nature of revolution.

There is an alternate angle to take to Utena's source of power, or perhaps just an alternate source of power in itself. Utena's second duel song Nanibito mo Kataru Koto Nashi contains the lines "I can become anyone // I can become anything", meaning that Utena is something that has not taken on an absolute form as of yet; she can take on any form. She is still pure and adaptable, not so driven into a coffin, role, or mindset as to be unmovable and closed-minded.

Utena's interactions with others in the academy are significant. She is a catalyst for bringing out the purest, most noble inner selves of the people that she meets. She is friendly, open, outgoing, cheerful, and truly compassionate and caring of others; it is this genuine compassion that makes people open to her and trust her. She values her friends and hates to see them unhappy. She excels in athletics and struggles in academics. She is very popular and well loved around school, with droves of fangirls blushing and calling her "Utena-sama" and taking turns lending her a towel after she plays sports. She has an open disregard for authority and advice from adults that goes against what she believes and tries to get her to conform to the conventional norm. She wears an altered male uniform of which the school guidance counselor openly disapproves (granted, it seems that the counselor is much more worried about the fact that Utena is crossdressing than actually out of uniform; the uniform is not the official Ohtori Academy male uniform). She challenges every rule and conventional norm that she sees as useless or binding. Utena has an open hatred for manipulators, bullies, liars, cheaters, and people that abuse others or harass people because they are different, meek, or passive, and always steps in to stop any sort of abuse that she catches. Utena also has a tendency to sink into bouts of depression and self-doubt in matters concerning her prince or her status as a girl trying to be a prince, sometimes believing (after a defeat or after feeling a strong attraction to somebody that reminds her of her prince) that a girl can't be a prince after all--something that she forgets as soon as she sees somebody that needs help or rescuing.