“utena should have realized that she’s basically participating in a sex trafficking ring” she does she thinks it’s bad and she does everything in her power to help anthy because she is aware that the system is wrong. “utena should have asked more questions about the duels” she does and anthy shuts her down every single time until she starts to feel like maybe she’s the weird one for finding it weird. “utena should have known that akio is end of the world” he’s literally just a guy who is nice to her, she is not privy to the same information that we are, and once it is revealed to her, she actually understands the situation pretty well. “utena is a dumb jock” utena is canonically good at math. “utena is naive” utena is a manipulated child.
Abacusynth is a synthesizer inspired by an abacus, the ancient counting tool used all around the world. Just like an abacus is used to learn the fundamentals of math, the Abacusynth can be used to explore the building blocks of audio synthesis.
akio knowing jack shit about astronomy but pretending to because it suggests a knowledge of the outside world, what lies beyond not just the gates of their school but the borders of their world, their planet. his cosmology is not one of curiosity; it is constructed, fabricated, and imposed. he controls the tools through which his students are allowed to imagine a possible future, a possible world beyond ohtori’s walls. he limits their flow of information, feeds them false information. he doesn’t care about the stars, he only cares about the illusion of stars, projecting them within the frame, teaching them to fear the real ones. just as he fears the real stars, of a thing that exists beyond his control, of ever leaving his cozy coffin, he imposes that worldview and that fear onto everyone else, because the less they know, the more afraid they are, the more he can impress them with his false knowledge, groom them with his conditional power, control them through his projected illusions.
he’s pretending to be an expert in a subject he clearly knows nothing about (like, you don’t need an astro degree to know that most of what he says is patently false) to impress a bunch of children. he is an adult who is still trapped in his illusion of an idealized childhood and would do anything to reclaim it including (but not limited to) torturing his sister who loved him. he wants the approval of children and to control children because he possesses all the maturity of one, riding endlessly on his carousel, trapped in the revolution of stasis rather than the revolution of change, of potential, to imagine a possible future, to imagine a possible world, to imagine a limitless universe. his soul has been calcified, his statue permanently figured in a pose of despair. because wouldn’t you despair if this was your sad, pathetic life? wouldn’t you be too embarassed to simply start over, to leave your coffin and accept a reality that does not center you and accommodate your every petty and cruel whim? the central truth about akio lies in the fact that he doesn’t actually care about the stars, and what that truly means: he’s pathetic, and he’s scared.