In your opinion, do you think Akio "fell" from being Dios? Or was he evil all along? Adolescence seems to go for the latter interpretation, though it doesn't seem entirely clear in the show either way. What little we see of Dios himself, he seems condescending toward Utena.
Content warning: incest, sexual abuse, sexual abuse of a minor, suicide
Okay. We took our time. Sorry for the wait.
Given we write our Media, Myself & I essays on complex dissociation, allow us to tackle this from the perspective of cognitive dissonance of an irredeemable abuser who sees themselves as both a saviour and a victim.
Before we begin note that Utena is a show that requires an allegorical read to fully understand its narrative. Our reading is subjective. It may not match every reading. We'll do our best to explain the line between text and interpretation. Challenge us if needed. We do not believe we have the correct read.
So. Prince Dios and Akio Ohtori.
To be blunt and swift the TL;DR version is this: Prince Dios is a projection. He is an ideal. He is an unreachable concept.
Now. Let's tell the literal read and then interpret.
The backstory that Utena is provided is that Prince Dios was a brave prince who traveled the world and protected women and loaned them his strength. We see him do this for Utena in both the misremembered fantasy of the fairy tale intro and the reality based story of a traumatized/grieving Utena having a brief encounter with the prince after discovering the martyred rose bride.
At a certain point this dashing prince grew weak. Unable to live up to the demands of the world. The people grew angry with him and brought about their entitled wrath. Anthy in an act of martyrdom took on the hatred of the world for depriving the world of the brave Prince Dios.
Akio then goes on to set up the dueling game under the stated goal to release Dios from his egg prison, like the chick of the poem. He is engaged to marry Kanae Ohtori, the daughter of the head of Ohtori Academy. In order to literally wield the power of the establishment, Akio changes his name to meet his fiancée. He then takes on the title The End of the World and uses his position of power to groom and sexually exploit the students of the academy while sexually abusing his scapegoated younger sister.
That is a very broad and swift version of the literal story. Apologies if there is any misremembering. Utena is a dense show with contradicting versions of stories filtered through character biases and misremembering. We did not commit to rewatching 39 episodes before speaking to this.
Dios is said to exist in a floating Castle of Eternity that lays above the dueling ground. During Utena's battles the ghost of Dios blesses Utena and allows her to overcome her opponent in her bids to defend the rose bride.
At the end of the show we discover that this castle (representing the ideal heteronormative Happily Ever After romance) was just a projection in the chairman's office that uses the literal planetarium projector that lives in that office. The egg that Dios is said to be trapped within is a literal projector.
He is a projection. An illusion.
The backstory that we are given describes the brave prince and Akio continually asserts that it is who he was and what he desires to awaken.
Which brings us to the magical thinking interpretation that we hold.
In Adolescence the death of Akio is brought about by Anthy being awake, lucid and looking him in the eye when he rapes her. He attempts to flee from the scene of his monstrous act but Anthy had stolen his car keys. His agency. Unable to handle looking at who he had become he opts to jump from the top of the tower as Anthy had attempted to do at her lowest point.
Unlike Anthy, there is no one to catch her and beg her not to go through with it.
Akio is a monster.
In the final arc of the show he has isolated his two victims and left them both so cornered and bereft of hope that they are looking at death as a potential escape.
Yet when confronted in episode 38 and shown Utena's example of true selfless heroism in episode 39, he has excuses for everything. Justifications for all his acts. He talks about how martyred Anthy is by the hateful world that stripped everything from the pair of them.
Akio cannot look himself in the mirror. He deflects all accusation by spinning tales, scapegoating his victim and blaming her for her own abuse and sanitizing his acts by normalizing them.
In my read, as an illusion/projection, Dios is who Akio believes himself to be. He was once a hero, a prince, a paragon of chivalry and in his mind he should be that. That is who he was told he was and so if he is not that then there must be a reason, a cause, a blame. Because Akio IDENTIFIES as a good heroic prince.
But he's a groomer who has a whole cult of indoctrinated victims who isolate and prepare further victims for him to prey upon.
At the end of this post I link to SulMatul's video series on Utena. Video 3 is specifically about abusers and how they control their victims. I am not even going to pretend my Tumblr Dot Com Ask answer can approach the level of detail and research of that video. So if you want a full answer, skip this and go to that.
SulMatul quite correctly focused on the danger of the abuser's methods and what they do to their victims. I'll type a little about the mental gymnastics a person must commit to in order to hold true the idea "I am a good prince who is kind to women" while sexually abusing them.
Let's talk about Cognitive Dissonance.
Leon Festinger coined the term in his writing When Prophecy Fails to describe the act of holding contradicting beliefs that do not stand up to scrutiny of reality. When presented with contradicting evidence the mind has a tendency to adjust their beliefs to accommodate the current reality.
In this writing he spoke about cults that had specific prophecies with concrete dates and studied how their belief structures endured the date of their prophecies passing without the believed acts coming to pass.
Cognitive dissonance allows these challenged beliefs to remain truth in the face of evidence to their falsehood.
Akio's most consistent method of doing this is to normalize his actions or scapegoat his victims.
In Cognitive Dissonance theory these justifications are reflected by the acts of Rationalization, Just-World Fallacy, Confirmation Bias and Selective Perception.
Let's talk about them one by one.
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Rationalization
Rationalization (ego defense) is the mind tackling emotional conflict by concealing the nuance of their own beliefs through throwing up (not necessarily accurate) information to justify, downplay or avoid the conflict.
"It's good that we invaded that country because the people were suffering under the corrupt regime and can have a better life now that we have enacted war upon them" is an all too common version in reality where people justify invading a foreign nation without allowing themselves to believe they are evil.
For a good example of Akio's behavior we can look at the conversation between Akio, Touga and Nanami in the back of his car during the 3rd arc of the show. Nanami has come to live with Utena, Anthy and Akio in the chairman's building and witnessed Akio having sex with Anthy.
She plans to flee Ohtori and is instead cornered by her brother and Akio who take her on a car ride. The car rides symbolizing Akio using his position of power and his adulthood to give the youngsters a taste of the power and agency that adulthood grants you. Often the car rides represent sex but agency is the more appropriate read. Sex is just one of the many things only an adult should be able to do. Driving a car is another.
During the car ride Nanami tries to say outloud what Akio did but cannot stomach to speak the words. Akio merely laughs and responds:
"What do you see with your eyes? Merely your own world. The world you perceive. The world in which you exist. A world like a labyrinth with no way out... where you are doomed by your limited point of view to endlessly wander the same path. But what you need to see does not lie there."
Touga, under Akio's instructions, then attempts to force himself on his 13 year old sister in the back of the car. When she pushes him away he demands "Isn't this what you wanted?!" she refuses, "Even though we're not really brother and sister?!"
It is revealed that they are and Touga knows they are. That very episode ends with Akio asking when he intends to tell her the truth. Both men in the car knew. But the instruction was to normalize the behavior, minimizing it, obfuscate it. Downplay. Warp and bend the truth until their victim caves in.
Akio's above speech is an attempt to tell Nanami that he is not wrong for assaulting his sister. She is in the wrong for viewing it as immoral. If it's so terrible then why does she seek romance from her brother? If she cannot be made to understand through words then actions will suffice.
Here Akio's is trying to play that he is not a monster. Nanami just doesn't understand. But she can be made to understand. After all. Isn't this what she wants, too?
All of that with the horrific unspoken implication.
Akio believes this is what Anthy wants.
He believes his assault on Utena is what she wants.
If these children didn't want what he shows them then they'd reject it and him, surely? After all. They let him do it to them. He isn't forcing them...
This implication, unspoken for now, eventually does find voice though...
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Just-World Fallacy
Just-World Fallacy is the cognitive distortion that claims that there is an arbiter of morality and fate that ensure that people "get what they deserve". This can be "criminals deserve to be assaulted in prison" or "our neighbors deserves to lose their home for not having a rainy day fund" or more terrifyingly "She was asking for it."
The idea that there is some cosmic fairness that justifies the incongruity.
Or in Akio's case "Anthy took Dios away from the world so she deserves to be abused as The Rose Bride."
But also, when taken to task about assaulting Anthy by Utena he says this:
He plays on the projector the sequence where he forced himself upon her in the back of the car.
The entire context of this scene is about the toxic behavior abusers use to control their victims, minimize their accusations and escape accountability. I am not arguing that Akio believes what he is saying here but...
He is using an accusation levied at Utena to escape blame.
Not resisting when an engaged man kisses you and routinely raping your biological sibling are not comparable.
Not only is Akio saying that Utena's failure to resist was consent. He is saying that if it was assault then she deserved it for being in a romantic situation with an unavailable man.
"Isn't it unfair to pretend only you are noble and in the right?"
Here is Akio recognizing the fallacy and using it as a weapon to attack Utena with. The entire confrontation in Episode 38 is an abuser levying attack after attack on the ego of someone confronting him and every single attack is a confession.
He truly believes that his victims deserve the treatment they receive and if they don't deserve it then neither does he. He gets to both be right for how he acts and absolved if his victims justify it for themselves then they justify it for him too.
He outright says that Anthy is responsible for the prince no longer existing. That he once viewed her as a goddess who would sacrifice for the one that she loved, her brother; but now she is nothing more than a witch.
The implication of course being.
A witch deserves to be treated like this. For depriving the world of Dios.
...and if she doesn't deserve it...
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Perhaps she desires it.
Confirmation Bias
Confirmation Bias is the unconscious behavior of seeking and absorbing information that validates and supports pre-existing beliefs, using it to further justify and evidence that belief. For instance specifically searching for 1-star reviews of the new Avatar movie because you hate the series and want the new one to be bad.
Or perhaps a more topical example, dismissing a news story inconvenient to your political beliefs as "Fake News"
He can look at his perpetually traumatized sister and sees her complying with the script that he has instilled into her. Every time in the show Anthy has claimed to be the rose bride, to obey the winner of the duel, to be disposable, to deserve this.
She's a victim speaking the words of her abuser.
And her abuser hears he speak these words, words he has planted in her lips, and can believe them to be true. To justify the actions that cause those words to exist in the first place.
She is a victim of abuse and acts like a victim of abuse and because she acts like a victim of abuse he treats her like a victim of abuse.
Just like Utena not rejecting the kiss or allowing him to have sex with her in the love hotel, a lack of rejection is consent.
For an abuser they can self-justify their acts by claiming that they are merely playing a part that they have been forced into.
"Don't make me hurt you."
Princely Dios is vanquished from this world because the cruel witch forces him to act the part of a monster. It's not his fault. It's hers. She's the one choosing this. This is the product of her choices. Her free will.
In episode 38 Akio is candid about this. He is no longer the prince and it is Anthy's fault in his eyes.
So if he is accepting that he is a monster (because Anthy wants it/made him) then how can he believe himself a good person, how can he believe that he is still capable of being a prince?
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Selective Perception
Selective Perception is the cognitive bias that leads a person to highlight things they are predisposed to agree with while ignoring or dismissing things which contradict their worldview.
A classic one is a football fan seeing two instances of a sliding tackle and claiming that the one from their team was to take possession of the ball and not deserving of referee intervention but the opposing team was trying to injure the other player and deserves a red card.
It's taking the same information and using it to reinforce their existing behaviors no matter the context. The reality of the situation is that both teams are capable of unsportsman conduct, but tribalism and selective perception enables one to see the same act as virtuous by the in-group and nefarious by the out-group.
A horrifying version of this cognitive bias can be seen in this simple statement he makes during the duel with Utena.
Utena is a child when she is spouting ignorant ideals at Akio in defiance of him. She is an adult in his mind when she offers dubious and uninformed consent to have sex with him.
But for a version of this specific to how Akio views himself as a prince despite being a monster one need only look at episodes 38 and 39 to see how often Akio comments to himself (or the reflection of Dios) that Utena is just like how he used to be and that she is doomed to fail in her quest to save Anthy because he was unable to save her too.
As far as he is concerned the only outcome of being a hero is to fail. When he tells Utena that she is selfish and ignorant and does not know what she's trying to do she states, in defiance of all "I will become a prince" destroying the illusion of Eternity and Dios entirely.
Akio cannot maintain the projection of princely goodness against Utena's true demonstration of it.
It may have been destroyed for good if not for Anthy, seeing this illusion crumble, literal backstabs Utena. As so many abuse victims choose to do when someone tries to pry them out of their coffin.
...as Adolscence proves... a victim can not be rescued from hell. They have to be given the support and agency and understanding to walk out for themselves. Heaven knows I've been the backstabber and the one to walk away in the past. Without structured support and care I may well have gone back of my own free will. Recognizing that terrifies me.
Episode 39 has Akio and Dios existing as separate entities viewing Utena's attempt at rescuing Anthy, once again reinforcing that living up to these ideals is an impossibility and if Akio cannot be a prince, it is impossible for anyone to be. Because Akio is a good person who just failed. Utena must be the same.
Watching as Utena displays her heroic determination, Akio merely sees her as a reflection of the warped self-perception of his princely persona and he feels no threat to her outshining him or proving him wrong because obviously she will fail as he did.
Akio, the man who keeps Anthy imprisoned in an abusive relationship and routinely assaults her, truly looks at a selfless and valiant attempt to rescue her and dismisses it as worthless because he tried and failed and in assuming that views himself as a fallen hero and not an abuser. When provided evidence of someone living up to the ideals he claims himself to display he downplays them while also attempting to identify with them.
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In comparison to Akio. When Anthy attempts to commit suicide and is stopped by Utena, she begins confessing that she trapped Utena in the cycle of abuse with her and that she was cruel and manipulative during their entire relationship.
Here's a transcript of the conversation copied from this SRT file (Red is Anthy, Pink is Utena):
"Forgive me, Miss Utena. The pain I feel comes with the curse of being the Rose Bride."
"The pain I caused you…! You were swept up into all this against your will. And even knowing that, I…! I used you and your naivete. I took advantage..." "Forgive me, Miss Utena. I've cheated you. I've used you. I've betrayed you from the very beginning. I--"
"No."
"I… I never realized the pain you were in. I never noticed how much you were suffering. And despite that, I…! I kept acting like I was a noble prince who would save you!"
"The truth is, my protecting you was just for my ego! And the night I learned about you and Akio…! I thought that you had betrayed me. Even though you were suffering so much…! After I had said we should help each other, come what may…! I was the one who cheated you! I was the one who used you!"
"I was the one who betrayed you…!!!"
Anthy choosing to jump from the tower throws Utena's identity of being a heroic prince who will rescue her under attack and rather than accept Anthy's programmed self-abuse and martyring words, she rejects them and accepts responsibility. Admits that she was performing the heroic act for the sake of her own ego and that she viewed Anthy as a prop to be the hero that she had sworn herself to become.
That's maturity. That's accountability.
The ability to know your motivations and desires and see the evidence of the way those motivations and reality do not match and truly and openly reflect on the reasons why.
When Anthy tried to jump from the tower and showed Utena just how failed her attempts at heroism were, she owned it.
When Anthy looked Akio in the eyes and showed just how far from the heroic ideal he was acting, he chose to jump from the tower himself.
That's the difference between a hero and a coward.
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If you enjoyed this, please check out our essay on Anthy's parallels to Laura Palmer and Nanami.
Or SulMatul's Patreon which has a 4 part breakdown of the whole show.
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