Utena - Akio’s arc

Aiko. <- PreviousNext -> Anthy.

Akio gets pink spinning roses as he greets Utena for the first time.
Akio

Akio is the patriarchy in Utena’s allegory.

See design - costumes - Akio and Anthy - Akio and Utena - taking Ohtori.

symbols
characteristics
Akio’s plots
the power of the dead

symbols

Akio is darkness. He lives in the dark material world of Manichaeism, and his color is black. He is the moon of night, to contrast with Dios who is the sun of day. As a fairy tale, he is Princess Kaguya. In myth, he is Zeus. In Christianity, he is the devil and acts as the serpent in Eden to tempt Utena into sin.

Akio is associated with the Apocalypse. His goal is to become all-powerful and bring stasis to the world, effectively ending it. I suspect a Christian parallel that I haven’t dug out.

Akio is a bull. Zeus is associated with bulls in general. In particular, in the First Seduction he is the bull of Europa and the bull. In Pasiphaë and the Cretan Bull, he corresponds to the Cretan Bull (in Utena, not in the myth). See animals - cattle for other bulls that point to Akio.

characteristics

Father. “Patriarch” literally means the ruler of a family. In a traditional society of the kind Akio rules over, it is the father of a household. Akio is called a father in episodes 26 and 37, with hints elsewhere. Akio corresponds to Zeus, who fathered umpteen children. With his promiscuity and disregard for others, he practically has to be a literal father. He is a literal patriarch, or will be one after Mr. Ohtori dies: The patriarch of the Ohtori family... of which he will be the only surviving member.

In the allegory, Akio is the symbolic father of the twins Anthy and Utena. Akio fathered Anthy by creating her role as a lover of and believer in the patriarchy, and at the same time fathered Utena by creating her role as Anthy’s savior. The prince story shows that the two have the same origin.

Parents are a theme of episode 26. Kozue rescues nestlings abandoned by their parents; Kozue and Miki have been abandoned by their parents (Kozue openly sees it that way, and Miki distrusts adults). Miki takes on the parenting role of nurturing the nestlings. Utena envies them for having parents at all. Akio uses his “the three of us are practically family” line on Utena, becoming a metaphorical husband—or possibly father. Husband and father are related—a husband is expected to be or become a father. In bed at night, Anthy tells Utena that Akio is more like a father to her. (More literally, she says “parent”.) Utena wonders to Anthy whether parents always care about their children. Nanami and then Kozue refer to Daddy Long Legs, who is named after a father and becomes a husband. There is a punning reference in the shadow play: The gambling shadow girl bets her whole purse, and the croupier announces “You went bust,” using the word tousan which has a homonym meaning father.

Utena is metaphorically pregnant when she leaves the Academy, with Akio the father, and it is reasonable to decide that she is literally pregnant too. See afterstories - pregnancies. In the shadow play of episode 37, I read “Papa” as both figurative and literal. See the discussion there.

It’s also reasonable to decide that Utena is not literally pregnant: Akio is the representation of a freedom-destroying abstraction, so he is infertile. He can only ever be a symbolic father.

Image manager. Akio’s illusions are images, and one of his illusions is that he is good rather than evil. Bad things may happen, but none are his fault. He presents his belief system as the natural and only correct one, and uses that to maintain his power.

Selfishness. Akio is utterly selfish. He manipulates, exploits, defrauds, and murders at will. It’s an extreme but not unfair representation of the self-serving nature of the patriarchy, which can do all those things.

Too many people die at times that are convenient for Akio. It can’t be a coincidence. Utena’s parents, the three members of the Ohtori family (not only Kanae), the real Mamiya, Ruka. Akio intends to kill Utena.

Rule breaker. In episode 30, Akio tells Utena honestly that both of them are rule breakers. Akio freely breaks the rules that he sets for others. In arranging for Saionji and Touga to become a couple, he controls them by inducing them to break his rules.

Akio gets others to do his dirty work. By his nature, he must. It makes others complicit and places blame on them, and it keeps his hand hidden so that others do not know what is going on (and so he is not caught). But those are side benefits, not the reason. The patriarchy exists as a collective behavior pattern. It relies on its members to do its dirty work because that is all it consists of. And its hand is hidden: People do not realize the cultural control they are under. Cultural behaviors are learned and practiced unconsciously. The metaphors that depict Akio as the patriarchy are worked out in realistic detail.

When Anthy leaves, Akio loses his most loyal adherent. But he has many others who must be peeled away to fully defeat him; see the sequence of heroes.

Anthy poisons Kanae. Anthy backstabs Utena. In the case of the backstab, Akio cannot defeat Utena himself; her miraculous sword skill is too great (in the story), or her prince role-play is too convincing (in the story’s meaning). Making Anthy complicit in his crimes binds her to him. He can go further: In the case of murdering Kanae, Akio can make it Anthy’s fault altogether, saying “This is your doing, you are the one who detests Kanae. I’m going along with it for your sake.” It’s similar to how he leads Utena by the nose while convincing her that she is making her own decisions. In fact, he requires her to make her own decisions, once he has prepared her mental state. It’s another realistic depiction of how cultural control works. People decide for themselves, but they learn from their culture what they are supposed to do.

Examples of his hidden hand: He gets Touga to test Utena in the Student Council arc. He manipulates Juri through Ruka in episodes 28 and 29. And Anthy of course constantly “cultivates” others.

Nanami’s motivation for getting her minions to do her dirty work is different. She wants to preserve her reputation—she fears loss of the power she has gathered.

Akio normally hands down Anthy’s orders as general directives, and gives her freedom to carry them out as she thinks best. In the story, it makes the best use of Anthy’s skill of manipulation. In the allegory, it is because that is how culture works. Your culture tells you what is good or bad, and what is normal or weird—and it can be vague about details. You decide for yourself what to do about it. All the characters live in Akio’s world, and all react differently.

He repeats his scripts. In keeping with the theater metaphor, Akio has scripts that he follows to achieve particular ends. He adapts them to circumstances but takes the same steps. He follows the same Cinderella routine with Utena, Mrs. Ohtori, and Nanami, with the same foot injury ploy for Utena and Nanami. He feeds the same “we’re practically family” line to Utena and Nanami. In the First and Second Seductions he uses the exact same psychological tricks carried out by different means. In corrupting Utena in episode 30 he overwhelms her resistance with a surprise smile, making no other move; in the First Seduction othello game he leans slightly toward her, perhaps smiling again; in the Second Seduction he tells her she is like a princess. They are three examples of the same psychological trick, the re-approach step of an approach-withdrawal maneuver. His practiced familiarity with his scripts and ease in adapting them must reflect that he has been doing this for a long long time.

Akio is all about conformity to his social norms. A culture achieves conformity by illustrating conventional ideas and behavior, and creates pressure to follow them (or you become a space alien like Nanami). Akio repeats his scripts because that is what he is made of.

Akio’s interruptions. When Utena is about to do or realize something inconvenient to Akio, he suddenly appears and intervenes. He can do it because Anthy belled Utena. Examples are in episode 30 (Anthy walks with the injured Utena and Akio drives up) and episode 35 (Utena in the greenhouse is about to remember some of the prince story).

Akio’s plots

Akio runs many plots, one after another. His plot against Ruka ran its course in the previous school year, so he may run a complete plot every year. For each plot, he needs many duelists. After dueling they learn better, so he can’t reuse them; he needs fresh ones for each candidate to open the Rose Gate. (Only Utena fights more than two duels, and convincing the duelists to fight a second time takes special measures.) To create the duelists he meddles in the lives of children. And there are hints that he meddles with children who do not become duelists. He puts his best candidates on the Student Council, and does not include Utena; he tells Utena that she will forget the goal he gave her; Anthy seems to choose Utena as a duelist to get away from violent Saionji, and looks disappointed in episodes 1 and 2 at times when Utena seems bound to fail.

In his interventions that we see details of, Akio follows the same strategy, with different means each time. He repeats his scripts. He shows his victims that they lack power—easy because they are small children. Then he offers a specific vision of patriarchal power, to tempt them to seek it. It is the devil tempting mortals into sin, just as he tempts Utena deeper and deeper into corruption in the Apocalypse Saga.

Examples:

Utena. As a little girl, she cannot save Anthy, but she might be able to become a prince.
Nanami. Her adoptive family grants Touga power but denies her, and she rebels and tries to seize her own power.
Touga. He can’t keep up with Akio, but he doesn’t stop trying until near the end, and then only because Akio cut down his confidence and support base.
Saionji. He can’t keep up with Touga, but he doesn’t stop trying at all.
Juri. Her feelings cannot reach Shiori, but she could try believing in miracles.
Mitsuru. Even Nanami treats him as a child, but if he can only defeat an adult.... Anthy falsely hinted to Mitsuru that Utena is adult.

The plots represent the patriarchy constantly gathering up new stories to back its legitimacy. In the story, Akio does it deliberately to reach his goals. In the real world, it is an unconscious part of the cultural stability mechanism that is likely built in to human nature. Human cultures resist change, at least some kinds of change. Sociobiologically, we can suppose that it is because cultural stability has been beneficial over the long human evolutionary history.

the power of the dead

As the personification of the patriarchy, Akio rules the world, or one aspect of it. He acts as a kind of government, and his power has the same source as a government’s power: It comes from his legitimacy (Wikipedia). At its root, he has power because people accept that he has power, and believe that he should have power. His cultural power comes from cultural narratives that people accept, which is to say, in stories that people believe.

Akio seeks the Power of Dios in his plots, but he’ll make do with less. Anything that increases his power makes a plot worthwhile. The dueling system selects the combatant with the greater patriarchal power, that is, the greater ability to inspire belief in the patriarchy. The champion portrays the most convincing patriarchal story. I conclude that Ruka was the previous champion before Utena. He was less successful than Utena, but look—he returns. Akio still has a use for Ruka and his story.

The Black Rose arc introduces the idea, and Ruka reinforces it: Stories live longer than people. In fact, a story of the dead can be stronger than a story of the living. With no living person inconveniently taking new actions, time and the system of control can edit the story to make it more convincing—which means more culturally acceptable, that is, more consistent with the system. It’s a theme of Utena; memories fade and stories are unreliable. Akio was there for the original events of Gu Bijin. The story has been romanticized over millennia, and worn away until almost no plausible details remain, but it is still a compelling story and he still has uses for it.

Mikage is dead. In the story, Mikage can still interact with others while dead. In the allegory (the meaning of the story), Mikage’s compelling story (“a hundred boys died!”) interacts with people; the living take actions because of the dead, or to put it differently, the dead influence the living. Ruka is dead too, and Utena is slated for death. Akio, I believe, regularly murders his dueling champions, partly to protect himself and partly to keep exploiting them indefinitely.

His victims learn better. The whole Student Council ends up supporting Utena (however ineffectually) because they saw up close how he cheats and lies, and cheating destroys legitimacy. If those who have power rebel against Akio, it’s a problem. So he offs ’em.

The power of the dead represents the patriarchy maintaining old stories and adjusting them to add to its legitimacy. Most heroic actions by women are forgotten, but occasionally a woman is granted a supporting role (Gu Bijin) or even a protagonist role (Joan of Arc) that bolsters the system. Akio hopes to keep protagonist Utena’s story, but when his plot fails she is quickly forgotten.

Jay Scott <jay@satirist.org>
first posted 11 March 2024
updated 23 January 2025