#to utena. who just emphasises how much anthy means to her. that she's important. and akio inserting himself in that Status

[allegedallegory]

the chairman's panopticon-ass tower is also built to be comphet hell (phallic symbol, everything akio has going with the projector, the elevator, the back-lit screen in front of i guess? the bedroom? and the half-moon bed that simultaneously brings anthy & utena close while also being symbolically pulled apart-- it also places them at the same level, unlike the bunk bed! they're quite literally eye-to-eye) but it -and akio- fails at accomplishing what it set out to do.

note: the more i think about it, the more i realise their shadows on the screen do merge-- intrinsic to each other, so the screen ends up giving us more representation, however briefly.

utena and anthy don't just connect and be honest to each other despite it all. they don't just let everything fade back into barely-there subtext as the genre has historically been subjected to. what necessitated the subtext to be subtext eventually breaks down when the illusion the system set up does, and it's clear as day at the end of it. every single heteronormative role provided to utena is, by the end, thrown out, destroyed, not worn. and you don't get some grand 'i love you' from either anthy or utena. you don't need to. it's all there in what they do-- in anthy accepting and choosing to reach for utena, in utena consciously continuing to choose anthy, and in anthy deciding to leave. you get one single photograph of them, and it's one we've seen them take before with much of the context seemingly left out, or written out of our frame. but then you see the picture in its entirety. or at least, in a different light.

and the tower never could censor them or obscure them completely.