#kunihiko ikuhara

[chacke3d]

this is like sketches from last year but tis what it is. drew musical anthy and a old pic of ikuhara

[maggiecheungs]

REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA 🌹 EP 37: THE ONE TO REVOLUTIONISE THE WORLD

[roseillith]

ADOLESCENCE OF UTENA (1999) dir. KUNIHIKO IKUHARA

[thefloatingstone]

A true visionary

[53v3nfrn5]

少女革命ウテナ (1997)

[andycasadonte]

“People find it hard to doubt those they’ve fallen in love with. They can’t imagine they’re being used”

Utena

From 2018

[5-pp-man]

[emilylovescookies]

utena and anthy!

[ubyr-babaj]

Another thing I really loved about RGU is how it deconstructs Anthy's cynicism without calling her unreasonable for holding these beliefs. Anthy lives in an objectively different world from Utena. This world IS cruel, this world IS uncaring, the only value Anthy has in it is her passivity and sexual availability to the people in power, the only stability she's allowed is the safety of her martyrdom. Anthy has every reason not to leave her coffin because the world she knows hated her into becoming the Rose Bride.

[chaos-of-the-abyss]

akio and the coffin

it’s fascinating how akio both literally IS the coffin of ohtori academy and, simultaneously, is trapped by it. ohtori academy is in many ways a manifestation of the ugly side of adolescence, of clinging on to something in your past and refusing to move forward in your life. every character has something they continue to hold on to despite the fact that they ought to let it go for the sake of growing and maturing. for example, saionji has his inferiority complex regarding touga, his refusal to let go of the simplicity of their childhood together when he felt that they stood on the same ground, and that touga saw him as an equal. everything he does in the series is an attempt to make himself feel as though he is finally on equal grounds with touga. if he would only stop tying his self-image to the perception that touga is somehow above him, that touga looks down on him, then he would be able to let go of that sense of inferiority and move on. but he can’t. juri refuses to let go of the pain she feels regarding her past with shiori, and continues to see shiori as someone who is “innocent”, albeit cruelly - someone who is unknowing of the pain she causes juri through her actions when in fact, shiori in seducing the boy she thought juri loved was deliberately acting to hurt her. if juri would only realize and accept the true intentions behind shiori’s behavior, then she could get one step closer to understanding shiori, to being understood by her, and moving past the pain of shiori’s betrayal. but she can’t. 

most of the characters, except utena and anthy of course, remain in ohtori by the end of the show. while they’ve all made progress in “maturing” thanks to the events they experienced throughout the series - both saionji and touga’s as well as juri and shiori’s relationships have gotten visibly better, as shown in the final medley of scenes - they still have more growing to do, hence why they remain in ohtori academy until their time comes. one day, the show suggests, they might also revolutionize their own worlds - their own selves - and finally leave the coffin of ohtori behind as well. 

so where does that leave akio? i think he can be said to literally be the coffin of ohtori in that he is explicitly shown to try to manipulate others into remaining stagnant, to clinging on to whatever toxic things they are struggling to process and come to terms with, though this is of course only shown via the characters he most directly interacts with. naturally it comes across most clearly with anthy, although i think utena and to a less direct extent, touga, are the other two people who are the most straightforwardly influenced by him. when it comes to anthy, she clings to her love for the person her brother used to be, the older brother who, at least as she perceived, was kind and caring and wanted to protect people. to protect that older brother, she willingly took on the hatred of the world, and continues to endure the pain of it to this day for what is implied to be centuries. but akio has shown time and time again, through the repeating dueling cycles, that if he was ever kindhearted and genuinely caring, those parts of him are gone now. i do believe he cares about anthy to an extent even now, but whatever affection he has for her is paltry in comparison to his desire to reclaim his power as prince dios. it’s for that purpose that he set up the entire dueling system, for which he freely allows duelists to treat anthy like a prize and an object. and additionally, because anthy is so integral to the power he has now in ohtori, he uses emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual abuse to keep her tied to him. he’s willing to not just let her wellbeing come last, but puts it at the bottom of the list of priorities, and actively tears it down himself for his own benefit. anthy knows all this - but because she still holds onto that love that she had for who he used to be, she stays with him and does his bidding. and that’s what akio wants. he is the coffin, wishing to keep people in their states of despair, conflict, and pain, therefore ensuring that they are compliant and vulnerable to his manipulation. 

at the same time, akio is trapped by the coffin like everyone else. he, like all the other characters, has something that he ought to move on from for his own sake as well as the sake of the people around him: his goal to reclaim his powers as prince dios. akio has failed in this goal every single dueling cycle that happened before the show’s events, and as displayed in the final episode, he definitively fails the one that takes place during the show as well. he can attempt the cycle over and over and over again, redo and tweak and modify the dueling system however many times and in whatever ways he wants - it’s all useless. there is no sword that can break open the rose gate. there is no way to reclaim his powers. they’re gone, that part of his life is over, and if he accepted that fact, it would allow him to move on and heal from what he experienced. but he can’t. at the very end of the series, right before anthy leaves ohtori for good, he’s typing away just as diligently as he ever did and, completely oblivious, tells anthy that he’s rewriting the rules of the rose crest, that he’ll be counting on her again. and i didn’t pick up on this until rewatching the episode, but it really just hits you then how utterly stupid he looks, working so hard and speaking so confidently about the upcoming dueling cycles as if any of them are ever going to matter in the slightest. i love anthy’s response to him too; i love the subtle but at the same time so blatant scorn in her words: “you really don’t know what’s happened, do you?” because once again, throughout all this, akio has learned nothing. he hasn’t realized it’s useless, what he’s trying to do; he hasn’t realized all the effort and pain and anguish he’ll cause in people for yet another dueling cycle will never make any difference. he is unable to come to terms with the reality that he will never have his powers as prince dios back. he refuses to move on. 

akio is the coffin of ohtori, wanting to keep others in stagnation and regret. he’s also trapped by the coffin, incapable of maturing past his own stagnation and regret. and it really, really says something that all of the other major characters of the show, who have been in ohtori for far shorter a time than he has, have been able to make visible strides in their growth. anthy, who is the only one comparable to akio in terms of duration at ohtori, revolutionizes her world and leaves. meanwhile akio, as deluded and self-unaware as he is, hasn’t made a single step of progress in all this time. the only thing he does is call in bewildered desperation after anthy as she finally leaves him behind, still totally clueless as to what has happened. 

tldr; i once saw an author say one of her characters represents inertia, in fact he is inertia. i think that’s a spot-on explanation of akio, at least in terms of what he symbolizes in the story. i want to beat him in the dick with a cactus

[utopikia]

"witch"

cr. revolutionary girl utena settei (scanned by lin)

[haveyouseenthisseries-poll]

[maggiecheungs]

REVOLUTIONARY GIRL UTENA ↳ EPISODE 23 / EPISODE 29 / EPISODE 39

[roseillith]

ADOLESCENCE OF UTENA (1999) dir. KUNIHIKO IKUHARA

[kushanna]

Revolutionary Girl Utena | 少女革命ウテナ (1997) dir. Kunihiko Ikuhara

Episode 17: Thorns of Death

[animefeminist]

Becoming Monstrous: Yurikuma Arashi and transmisogyny in the school system

Content Warning: Discussion of queer/transphobia (including slurs), online and workplace harassment, grooming, systemic violence

Spoilers for Yurikuma Arashi, referenced spoilers for Puella Magi Madoka Magica

“This is the nature of systems: the moment you reject them, you are forced to realize that they’re the very ground you’re standing on.” -Ikuhara Kunihiko

Two bears are presented with a choice: will you be invisible, or will you eat humans? They look like teddy bears, and they are on trial. wo girl bears–two lesbian girls–Ginko and Lily, standing before three male judges deciding whether or not they should have the right to exist. In order to have their love approved, they declare: they will eat humans. They transform, taking on human form as they don hypersexualized bear girl outfits, and they enter the world of the school.

Yurikuma Arashi places this strange set-piece towards the middle of its first three episodes. It exemplifies the show’s style, told as it is in enigmatic parables. Ostensibly, Yurikuma is about a human girl named Kureha seeking answers about the deaths of her mother and girlfriend while getting into a love triangle involving the two bears who have infiltrated her school disguised as humans.

However, everything in Yurikuma Arashi is more symbol than literal representation, and I have often mulled over its meaning as I’ve navigated entering the teaching profession as a nonbinary Chinese person. Like the bears, I’ve often asked myself: what do I sacrifice to be allowed to exist within the school?

Read it at Anime Feminist!