#and the duels as a theatrical reenactment of the existing dynamics between the characters

[idkhowtopickausername]

It’s so significant to me how Utena and Anthy’s motivations are so complex and how that manifests in the finale, like Utena asserting that she’s going to be a prince right after Akio tried to coerce her into taking on the princess role is simultaneously an act of defiance and a way of reasserting the aspects of her gender and sexuality that the idea of princehood came to represent to her after Akio tried to stamp them out of her, and also a somewhat sincere attempt at expressing her intent to help Anthy, but it’s also regressing to an idea of self-centered heroism that she acknowledged to Anthy the night before as a form of betrayal. And this is true of what the idea of princehood represents to her throughout the story—it was an idea given to her by Dios that ultimately feeds back into the academy’s hierarchical system, but it comes to represent a variety of things to her, some of which are good and some of which aren’t.

Anthy stabbing Utena is simultaneously a self-destructive act of pessimism and a refusal to accept the possibility of love and hope for herself, a sincere attempt at protecting Utena from a worse fate, and a manifestation of accumulated bitterness and mistrust towards Utena’s willful ignorance and tendency towards casting herself as the hero at Anthy’s expense. They acknowledge how they have betrayed each other on the rooftop and then go on to betray each other again in much the same way—Utena saying she will become a prince and be the one who frees Anthy, and Anthy leading Utena into a fight that she doesn’t believe she can win and using Utena’s instinct to help her as a way to get behind her and stab her.