had a great chat with @mitsybubbles yesterday about the concept of revolution in rgu and she had some amazing points that i literally didnt even think about and im gonna talk about them now hiii
the big concept of "revolution" in rgu as akio sees it isnt actually a revolution as in overthrowing anything or breaking out of bonds, its a revolution in the other definition. a turn, a cycle, a revolving thing.
this is something that i literally only really understood yesterday but it makes so much sense, everything in rgu is based on cycles so of course the revolution akio talks about isnt actually a revolution, its just a cycle. thats what "bring the world revolution" means to him, it means to cycle the world back into what it was once more. so many of the songs sing of cycles and eternity turning back on itself its almost too obvious and i don't understand how i never figured it out!
like ZUM itself is the most prominent song we hear and its so blatantly obvious its about cycling through the same things over and over again, and the fact that its played as utena walks up a spiral staircase? to an arena in which she either wins or loses and then has to go back down the staircase and back up again whenever the next duel is? like come on how much more obvious could it be!!!
"birth records, baptismal records, death records..." "...day and night reversing..." "absolute destiny apocalypse" the absolute destiny its talking about is the revolution, itll happen again and again just like birth and death and day and night, a cycle endlessly repeating itself
now to talk about just some of the most obvious "cycle" imagery in rgu but ill only be talking about the ones i have in my brain right now, like in episode 33 we see the carnival outside the window in the hotel room, whats the most prominent thing we see from those carnival lights? the ferris wheel, going round and round and round forever. also a nod to the fact that what akio is doing to utena has happened many many times before and one of the examples we see is kanae, although she gets discarded because utena is more suited to the role he wants her to play. and speaking of the carnival ride we see it in the last episode too just as utena gets stabbed, going in circles because thats what happened before and will happen again to the next duelist
another example we see is akio's car, wheels and all. bringing duelists out into the end of the world and back into ohtori again, a never ending cycle of going back to their old ways by making them duel again even after they dont want to anymore. another "revolution".
now this concept of revolution is akio's, the neverending cycles of hatred, he's used to them. he probably subconsciously doesn't even want to break out of them, he knows the prince doesn't exist in the coffin, he knows dios maybe never even existed and he's afraid of what he'll do if that turns out to be true. if he opens the coffin and doesn't find his idealised version of the self. so he doesn't even really try to open the rose gate, he's happy enough to just continue his own revolutions and his own cycles over and over again for eternity.
but utena's revolution? its real revolution. its the other definition. she genuinely revolutionizes everything thats been given to her, it takes her a while sure but she does. she breaks out of the cycles that akio has put her into, she breaks free from it all and actually revolutionizes ohtori and the people inside it. her revolution is what saves anthy because she's not scared of what she'll find inside the rose gate, she's not scared of the swords of hatred, she's not afraid of her past self, she is nothing like akio. the one thing she wants is for anthy to realize how much she wants her to be happy even after she gets stabbed and left to bleed out on the ground. her revolution is caring and ive already talked about this in another post but yeah!!! there are two kinds of revolutions in revolutionary girl utena, two definitions, but only one of them is an actual Revolution.
also i feel like this plays into the concept of "naive" utena because of course she doesn't understand that akio/end of the world means revolution in the cyclical sense, but neither do the other duelists, they all think theyre battling for an actual revolution, for an actual chance to break out of the world's shell, but what theyre fighting for is actually just a return to the egg, a repeat of all thats happened and will happen again.
end of post also unrelated but i wrote most of this in the bathtub, i feel like an old greek philosopher about to jump out and scream eureka because i found out what volume is anyways thanks for reading once again have fun
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