Life and a dream: worldbuilding
The best point to start, I believe, when analysing the similarities between these two works, is looking at the world they are set in, and how it operates.
While it is slightly unclear how the outside world communicates with the Academy, we do know that the world of Othori functions almost entirely based on dream logic. The magical world of princes and princesses that Utena remembers from her childhood is much more cruel and complex, but it still finds a concrete application in Othori, with its own princes, princesses, witches, and knights. While not magical, LVES Poland is a kingdom as well, with its princes and princesses, its astronomers, and its soldiers.
In both worlds patriarchal society rules over the lives of both women and men and determines the whole of the plot, to the point that a woman's personal quest to find identity is the motor of the whole story (Rosaura and Utena), and the entire reason why the dynamics of said world exist as they do is given by the theft of a woman's agency (Clorilene and Anthy).
While I have just compared Clorilene to Anthy, it is much more fitting to consider Segismundo to be Anthy’s counterpart, something I will go over in another post.
What is relevant to this part of the analysis is that Anthy not only has a near identical role to Segismundo regarding her part in the story, but the two share the power to shape the reality in which they find themselves, much more than the people who think they are in power (Akio and Basilio) actually do.
In Act I, Segismundo is locked in his tower and has been for his whole life. In Act II he is drugged and brought to the castle, in order to prove whether he would be a just prince. He proves violent, so they drug him again, bring him to the tower, and tell him it was all a dream. In Act III the people of Poland free him, and with the help of his allies as well as Rosaura, he takes on his father, and at the very end, when Basilio is on his knees, Segismundo spares him, proving a just prince, and earning his place in the system that had harmed him up until that moment.
While it is true that LVES’s plot is much less revolutionary than Utena’s, we see that the same levels of reality are present in Anthy’s life.
Ever since she became the Anthy we know today (the Rose Bride), she has been trapped inside her coffin, something that is both a semi-physical state and something that influences her behaviour. A near-perfect counterpart to the coffin is Segismundo’s tower: trapped there since birth, his somewhat animalistic behaviour is given by his life in the tower, which, like Anthy’s coffin, he cannot leave without external help. This is their constant reality. Even when Anthy is projecting herself outside the coffin and inside the world of Othori, she is still trapped in the coffin, even when he is brought to the castle or freed in Act III, Segismundo still believes he is or ought to be in the tower. Even when they look like they are outside the tower/coffin, they can never leave it behind. It takes a truly revolutionary act (Utena opening the coffin, Segismundo sparing his father) to free them.
Anthy is almost an illusion when in Othori, rather than her real self, both in material presence and in behaviour, something given by her existence in the coffin and her living in the patriarchal world of Othori. When she is in the Academy, she must act according to a specific role, that of the Rose Bride. While it would probably resonate more if we compared Estrella to Anthy’s role as the Rose Bride, Segismundo is under a very similar obligation. Once he is let into the palace in Act II he is immediately placed under scrutiny, and his cruel behaviour is only part of what he does: he first questions how can he be outside the tower, then grows violent when the truth is revealed to him and goes as far as to kill a servant, but he is also charming and somewhat respectful towards Estrella, and still charming though absolutely not respectful towards Rosaura. Segismundo is a worse actor than Anthy, and he has no interest in being one for a long while, yet the big and small cruelties they enact are narratively similar, and they both perceive this world of princes and princesses like a dream world, something that exists without consequences as it is caught in a never-ending cycle between sleep and wakefulness. Anthy and Segismundo can indulge in their own version of violence as they are still complying to what this figment of a world expects of them, as a beast/witch as well as a prince/princess (bride). What Anthy does to Mikage is in a way what Segismundo does to Rosaura, what Anthy does to Nanami or Kanae is in a way what Segismundo does to the servant. All because to them, this is all a dream
As we said, Anthy’s coffin has been opened by Utena, so she, of her own free will, can have the opportunity to decide to walk out. She doesn’t feel the need to kill or dethrone her brother, as she is doing just that just by walking away. Similarly, once the people of Poland let him out of the tower, and Rosaura gives him a new perspective on his dreams, freeing him from the more noxious aspects of his doubt, Segismundo doesn’t kill his father, he doesn't fulfil the prophecy. He doesn’t need to, because he has the power to do what he wishes, namely helping Rosaura, and, interestingly, Estrella (even though she has been on the other side of the war, something I will come back to when I speak on Estrella). If we take into consideration the context in which LVES was written, we should see this as a happy ending: he gets to be prince, even though he had a prophecy looming over him and had been brought up almost as a beast, because his depth of thought led him on the right path, so now the kingdom will be his. On the other hand, a more modern perspective may lead us to consider this: Anthy breaks out of the coffin and can leave Othori, but when Segismundo breaks out of the Tower he joins the world of the castle, the way Anthy had been living in Othori. With this point of view Segismundo’s story would be an overlapping of the end of the Rose Bride (canon) and her creation (pre canon), which is not too difficult to reconcile, as the cyclicality of RGU is one of its most prominent features. If we consider Adolescence to be a sequel to RGU, we may perfectly see how Segismundo goes from the tower to a new prison under patriarchy in the palace, the way Anthy goes from the coffin to retrapping herself in Othori in Adolescence, before finding ultimate freedom when she escapes with Utena.
