“Everybody’s Fool” – Song Analysis

an evanescence song and how it relates to utena -- version 1.0 31 December 2003

I have to admit that Chrissy discovered this song and related it to Akio before I did. It is eerily accurate in representation of Akio and Anthy.

The lyrics to this song are copyright Evanescence, found on the "Fallen" album, track 3.

The song is imagined to be from Utena’s point of view.

Perfect by nature
Icons of self indulgence

Akio and Anthy as they are known in the series are not “perfect” by nature or any means otherwise. They put forth the façade very well, however. Akio is well loved by everybody, as is Anthy. Dios, however, was ‘perfect’ by his very nature. It was his definition. He was the perfect prince by society’s standards.

The “icons of self indulgence” can refer to Akio, who is very self indulgent and mercenary, or the Student Council, or Mikage, or the Black Rose Duelists. All of them duel for themselves and their own wishes, caring not for Anthy but for attaining their goals.

Dueling aside, the students of Ohtori Academy are all wealthy and enjoy the luxuries of life. Money in itself and even a luxurious lifestyle do not make anybody any better or worse than the next person, but many of the students in the Academy flaunt it and live as if it is one of their defining features. Miki utilizes the money he is given without flaunting it or thinking it makes him any more or less valuable, while Touga and Nanami take great pride in flaunting it -- Nanami by far being the worst. The Academy contains an atmosphere of class separation and old money with one’s relations and blood background being detrimental to one’s worth. Fine cars, fine clothes, fancy parties – all of these contribute to the Ohtori self-indulgent atmosphere.

Just what we all need
More lies about a world that
Never was and never will be

This is pretty self-explanatory and surprisingly accurate. Akio spouts lies and weaves illusions about a world that never was and never will be, an illusionary world crowned by a castle in the sky. This is the world of shining things and eternity, of the power to revolutionize the world and miracles, the world where the Prince on a White Horse rescues all of the princesses of the world. Akio keeps lying and painting pictures of this world to goad his Duelists into dueling and playing his games, both with his tongue and his planetarium projector. The prince, Dios, Utena’s dream, is said never to have existed in reality by Akio and said to once have existed by Anthy. Akio is a refraction of “Dios” as an ideal, this is known, but it is unknown whether or not there was a true Dios.

Have you no shame, don’t you see me?
You know you’ve got everybody fooled

Akio has no shame. The only indicator that he has any of the sort is when he cries in the last episode, but this may be another ploy to manipulate Anthy or he may cry for himself and his lost identity that he can never reclaim alone. He may genuinely cry for Anthy; it is difficult to tell. This is nebulous and has many interpretations. Akio manipulates without regard for anybody’s feelings or will. He sees all people as pawns. Some pawns may be golden or more valuable (perhaps rooks or bishops), but they are still expendable in his final analysis.

And he does have everybody fooled. The Student Council, Mikage, and Utena are all eating out of the palm of his hand and following his games. They are blinded by his illusions. Even Anthy has consciously blinded herself to his illusions so as to believe in him and a prince who can save her from her pain.

Look, here she comes now
Bow down and stare in wonder

Anthy, the Rose Bride. The Duelists see her as a perfect ideal to display in a birdcage or to use as a pretty tool to attain their goals. She is an ornamental prize, but nonetheless a useful trophy. Many students are smitten by her aura while others fear her or are just annoyed by her. Indeed, the fact that she is considered so perfect is the reason that common girls such as Keiko, Aiko, and Yuuko strike out at her; she makes them insecure and just annoys them. It is no more complex than that. She captures the attention of the most popular boys in school: Miki, Touga, Saionji – while all of them but Touga ignore the common girls.

Anthy is not a Primadona, but she does hold a mystical and otherworldly aura that has captivated innocent people such as Miki. She plays the sort of person that the given subject in front of her wants to protect. In a way, she is similar to Monou Fuuma from X/1999: she has no identity of her own, but can appear as anybody’s ideal or what they want to see, a sort of catalytic mirror. She is the ideal princess on the outside: innocent, beautiful, submissive, and readily protected. As noted by Utena in the manga, she “lives on a different scale” than everybody else. She seems detached from reality and absorbed in a higher, more ideal, and mystical truth.

This stanza conjures a mental image of Anthy walking down ballroom stairs in a gown while everybody around her takes notice. Akio has sent her out into the world, so to speak, and had probably fucked her no less than five minutes ago and plotted something utterly heinous while she smiled with her eyes closed and listened sans glasses. There is an illusion and a lie: images presented to the outside world hidden behind a mask. Everybody does this. The stanza is heavily ironic and scornful with and without the context of Utena.

Akio also has the catalytic power, but he uses it in a far more dominative sense.

Oh how we love you
No flaws when you’re pretending

Both Anthy and Akio put on a flawless façade to lead Duelists into doing Akio’s will. Akio is loved and revered by everybody – students and faculty alike — and is seen as perfect, handsome, chivalrous, valiant, intelligent, worldly, wise, and attractively rebellious. Part of Utena’s nervous chatter in episode 30 “The Barefoot Girl” includes the statement that Akio is a playboy: he is good at making women feel good. She also mentions that he doesn’t seem Chairman-like; he is more “bad”. This “bad” rebellious streak is irresistible to adolescents and young adults, especially to somebody as nonconformist and rebellious as Utena herself. He is detached from the mundane social norms that threaten to smother the students at an exclusive private school.

Akio pretends, and he is damn good at it. He is flawless, taking on the traits that the manipulated wants to see. He pretends to be a prince.

Anthy’s pretending is far more painful for her, quelling her wishes and emotions to play the part of the Rose Bride. To the Duelists who want her power, a submissive, meek Rose Bride is their flawless ideal. Her mask has never once cracked until she fell in love with Utena and noted that Utena genuinely cared for her, and even then the said cracking took place late in the series.

But now I know she
Never was and never will be

Anthy was never a fully submissive doll to anybody but Akio. Every time that she submitted to somebody who was not Akio was to help Akio achieve his revolution. Even within her coffin while she was playing her role, she suffered, and was an illusion. In the last episode Utena fishes the real Anthy out of a coffin and rescues her, killing the false illusion Anthy. The mask that Anthy wore in front of Utena was not the real Anthy. There was a darker and far less innocent Anthy behind it.

You don’t know how you’ve betrayed me
And somehow you’ve got everybody fooled

Akio betrayed Utena big time, and he knows it; this is well established. He took advantage of her, manipulated her, spun lies that determined the course of the rest of her life, and lied about his own identity and that of Anthy. He took her virginity when she believed in the false prince ideal of Akio. It is not only that Akio lied, so to speak, but that Utena fell in love with those lies (which was Akio’s intent) and that he betrayed her when she was at her most vulnerable. Akio worked himself into Utena’s mind to psychologically strike. This is his forte. Utena’s pride and integrity were skewered, she was manipulated into violating her core ideals so that Akio could throw it back at her as evidence that she could never become the prince, and the prince for which she waited all her life was dead.

Anthy betrays Utena during the last duel when she was about to strike the final blow to Akio. She literally stabs Utena in the back, leaving her to die while Akio tries to open the Rose Gates. This is after Utena fought and sacrificed so much to save Anthy, and Anthy even whispers that Utena can never be her prince because she herself is a girl. In this Utena is betrayed, left without the support of the one person who could give it to her at that particular moment. The two people that Utena loved the most turned their backs on her after using her and exploiting her loyal and valiant spirit, though Akio was the one manipulating the weak-willed Anthy.

Without the mask where will you hide?
Can’t find yourself lost in your lie

Akio is nothing without his mask. Beyond his hollow, acting role as the ideal of a prince he has nothing of any value. His illusions and his ability to manipulate the strong into doing his will are his only powers. Alone, Akio is powerless. He can only run back to his coffin.

Akio spends the series frantically searching for his other half, Dios, the half that holds true power. He cannot find himself so long as he weaves lies and manipulates. This is where the paradox starts. The Dios he wishes to regain was utterly self-sacrificing, and Akio’s intentions are utterly self-serving. Dios cared genuinely for people while Akio cares only for himself. Both are hollow puppets going through the motions of some ideal (being the prince, revolution) by social standards and in that trying to affirm themselves, but so long as they do this and take separate paths they will never fuse together. Akio also has no awareness of who he truly is without the definition of his mask and his coffin, hence he cannot find himself while lost in his lie.

I know the truth now
I know who you are
And I don’t love you anymore

Utena learns the truth about Akio in the last few episodes of the series, renounces her love for him out of disgust, and turns to fight him for all he has done to her and Anthy. She no longer sees Akio as any sort of prince. Even after Akio reveals himself to be the “prince” and offers Utena eternity with him in the castle, Utena throws off the offer of a perfect dream coffin (a lie in which she would forget Anthy and leave her to suffer while she herself lives her dream) in exchange for fighting in reality. Akio was always Utena’s cardinal enemy and cared nothing for her, and now she knows it.

It never was and never will be
You’re not real and you can’t save me
Somehow now you’re everybody’s fool

Dios was a lie, Akio’s feelings were a lie, Anthy’s lies were a lie, the lies were a lie, the castle was a lie, the Duels were a lie, eternity, Mamiya, everything – it was all a lie. It never was and never will exist in reality.

Akio is not the real Dios. He made himself out to be Utena’s prince and subconsciously convinced her (though she never admits it consciously) that he may be her prince and that on some level he can save her again, so to speak. It could be from the chaos of the duels and her life or from her feelings and self-doubt and anguish (most of which he caused himself, by the way), but in any case he cannot save her. Utena’s relationship with Akio held some small hope, probably subconscious, that he could save her from the chaos and from the burden of being a prince and being noble. In a way, it was a plea for escapism to become reality. Akio is not a prince by any means, unless one counts him as Prince of the Coffins or a Coffin-Bound Prince of the Corpses.

Utena, by this time, has been subconsciously becoming adept to the idea of actually becoming a prince herself and not just acting out the role until her real “prince” can take over for her and allow her to relax into the role of being a princess. Akio’s drawn out psychological assault (seduction and then accusations in the dueling arena) almost extinguished this flame completely, but it takes on a new and powerful light as soon as she realizes that she must fight to save Anthy and herself. She also realizes that being a “princess” in Ohtori terms is no cakewalk.

The second-to-last-line can also apply from Anthy’s point of view. After being rescued by Utena, there is the well-known-and-analyzed-to-the-hilt scene in which Anthy lays her glasses on Akio’s table and leaves with Chu-Chu. She tells Akio to continue playing prince in his coffin, and being his right-hand confidant and illusionist she would know better than any all of the lies he must spin to maintain his image and legend. Anthy blinded herself to Akio’s lies and illusions in hope that he would become Dios and rescue her while subconsciously she knew that Dios was gone forever. The blinding was her proverbial self-made coffin from which she went along with Akio’s plans and could take on the role of his lover. After Utena frees her from her symbolic coffin, she challenges Akio without her self-blinding lens (perhaps symbolic of laying her glasses down, as she does every night when she sleeps with him—however, assuming this she would see Akio as he is when she is at her most vulnerable and would love him for that, a subject for a different essay altogether). In short, and as I have said before: Akio is not the prince; therefore, he cannot save Anthy. She disses and dismisses him, as one of my friends likes to say with a great deal of relish.

And now, Akio is left in Ohtori without his key illusionist and prize. He has always been painfully aware of his true nature and how incomplete he is, hence his obsession with the duels, and he knows that without illusions and manipulation he is powerless. His key tool is finally seeing him for who he is and rejecting him for the true prince, leaving him as nothing but a fool with a planetarium projector and no way to regain any sort of power. He never had the power in the first place because of the very requirements to become Anthy’s prince – truly and selflessly care for Anthy – but now he has not even the façade to stand upon.