Utena - myths

Akio favors Greek myth. There are possible references to non-Greek myths at the bottom..

Primary correspondences. Each of the three main characters has a primary fairy tale correspondence and a primary mythological correspondence. The primary correspondences are worked out thoroughly and maintained consistently. Utena is Ganymede; Anthy is Hera; Akio is Zeus. There are plenty of secondary correspondences too.

I marked what I see as the most important myths. You can’t tell from the names. Some of the unmarked ones are speculative or unlikely.

mythological characters
moons of Jupiter
Andromeda
Apollo
Astraea
Callisto
Cassandra
Cassiopeia
Castor and Pollux - important
Circe
Danaë
Europa and the Bull - important
Ganymede - important
Hades
Hera
Hercules
Hermaphroditus - important
Hypnos
Io and Zeus
King Midas has Donkey Ears
Leda
Mimas
Pasiphaë and the Cretan Bull - important
Persephone
Salmacis - see Hermaphroditus
non-Greek myths
  - Hathor (Egypt)
  - Marduk (Babylon)
  - Ohtori (China)

Utena does not seem to refer to the myth of Iphis and Ianthe (Wikipedia). Iphis was born a girl, but it was kept secret and she was raised as a boy. She fell in love with the woman Ianthe and was set to marry her as a man, an oncoming disaster since Ianthe didn’t know about the deception, then was miraculously transformed into a man after all. Surely Utena could have made something of that! It is halfway to being transgressive, like many of Utena’s references.

mythological characters

Akio corresponds to Zeus and Oedipus.
Anthy corresponds to Hera when with Akio, to Rhea when with Dios, and to Persephone when playing Mamiya for Mikage. See her complex mythological background below. She is Pollux of Castor and Pollux. She may be connected to Circe. She is Hathor of ancient Egypt.
Dios corresponds to Apollo and Cronus.
Kozue corresponds to Salmacis, discussed under Hermaphroditus.
Mikage corresponds to Hades.
Miki corresponds to Hermaphroditus.
Nanami is connected with Io, who was turned into a cow, and loosely to Danaë. See below for both.
Utena corresponds to Ganymede, to Astraea, to Cronus via her connections with Saturn and Dios, to Castor of Castor and Pollux, to the strong hero Hercules, and to Europa in the story of Europa and the bull. She might be Callisto too.

Anthy and Akio share a complex mythological background. As Hera, Anthy is Zeus’s (Akio’s) wife. Persephone is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter, so as Persephone she is Zeus’s daughter. In episode 26 Anthy tells Utena that Akio is like a father to her. Zeus and Hera are brother and sister and a married couple. Their parents are Cronus and Rhea, who were the former rulers of the gods. Cronus ruled over the Golden Age when there was no immorality and corresponds to Dios. His planet is Saturn; see celestial bodies - Saturn. Rhea corresponds to Anthy when she was with Dios. See Akio and Anthy - incest.

Mikage corresponds to Hades, who was the eldest son of Cronus and Rhea.

It doesn’t stop there. It’s a reference to Oedipus (Wikipedia), who killed his father and married his mother. In myth, Zeus overthrew Cronus. In Utena, Akio overthrows Dios. Overthrow is metaphorical killing; Dios is dead. Anthy as Rhea is Zeus’s mother, and in Utena she was responsible for turning Dios into Akio—she is symbolically Akio’s mother. (Both parents are needed: Dios accepted Anthy’s attempted help, so he cooperated in his own overthrow.) Oedipus brought a plague on his city through his unintentional misdeeds. It corresponds to Akio’s misrule of his world, which he believes is good and necessary.

It still doesn’t stop! Utena is associated in multiple ways with the planet Saturn that appears in the window behind her in episode 25. See celestial bodies - Saturn. Utena corresponds to Dios and Cronus. In the end, according to the parallel, Anthy will marry Utena (to the same extent Anthy married Akio), and they will restore the golden age. Compare Utena’s association with Astraea, whose return will bring a new golden age.

Utena’s association with Saturn ties her to destruction and renewal, that is, to revolution. Anthy’s association with Persephone ties her to death in the underworld, and to the sowing and reaping of crops in the upper world—that is, to the destruction and renewal of life. Anthy’s connection with death fits with her use of poison, which is part of her femme fatale character archetype. Utena and Anthy are aspects of the same thing: Utena represents destruction and renewal with change—revolution, a boyish concept (and she is slated to die). Anthy represents destruction and renewal with continuity—eternity, a girlish concept (and she is immortal, that is, eternal). See Anthy on reincarnation and the passing on of knowledge from parents to children in episode 27.

The multi-level mythological correspondence is awesomely detailed and beautifully worked out.

Cronus’s downfall and Oedipus’s downfall are both due to attempts to bypass a prophecy. The prophecies predicted a bad end. Cronus fulfilled the prophecy by trying to avoid it, while Oedipus fulfilled it because his father tried to avoid it. It’s a common motif in Greek myth: Divine prophecy is always fulfilled, and it is no use trying to avoid your fate. Akio’s fate is not told in prophecy, but he will never be able to pass the Rose Gate no matter what he does. His attempts only achieve his own step-by-step overthrow. Akio thought he had foretold Utena’s fate, and he was wrong.

moons of Jupiter

Akio is Zeus, and Zeus’s planet is Jupiter. Utena does not make any direct reference to the planet (unlike Utena’s Saturn). It may make indirect references. I noticed that Utena has mythological connections with all four of Jupiter’s major moons, though the connections with Io and Callisto are a little weak.

The major moons of Jupiter are the Galilean moons, the four bright enough for Galileo to see through his primitive telescope (and for you to see tonight with a pair of binoculars). They are Io for Nanami - Europa for Utena - Ganymede for Utena - Callisto which has thematic resonance.

Andromeda

Andromeda is referred to indirectly. See Cassiopeia below.

Apollo

Apollo (Wikipedia) is a complex god. He is god of the sun, of truth, of protection from evils, of medicine, and of music and dance. Dios shares all of these domains. Dios is the sun. He is associated with truth. His goal is to protect all girls by rescue. In the final showdown, he promises to treat Utena’s injuries. In episode 3, Dios’s follower Utena rescues Anthy using music and dance.

A sculpture of Apollo appears in episode 31.

Astraea

Akio alludes to the Greek goddess Astraea (Wikipedia) when talking with Utena in episode 20. Astraea corresponds to Utena.

Callisto

Beautiful Callisto was a companion of Artemis, goddess of the moon and the hunt—and of chastity. All Artemis’s companions had to take a vow of chastity. As so often (Europa, Io), Zeus fell for Callisto and “seduced” her, which is Greek myth-speak meaning he tricked and raped her. He transformed himself to look like Artemis, got close and impregnated her. Callisto tried to hide her pregnancy, but Artemis eventually discovered it and kicked her out. Stories vary about who did what next, but agree that Callisto was turned into a bear Sho-ock! Kuma shock!, bore a son, and was placed in the sky as the constellation Ursa Major (the big bear).

There is a lot of thematic resonance with Utena: The moon, Zeus’s illusionary appearance, lesbianism, trickery and rape, pregnancy, being turned into an animal, being turned into a constellation. The Big Dipper is important in episode 37, and it is part of Ursa Major.

I feel it’s a stretch, but it’s possible to interpret Callisto as Utena. She loves Anthy, which corresponds to being a companion to Artemis, who is the moon. Though Anthy is not a bit chaste. Akio tricks and rapes her, by a totally different plan than in the myth. Utena might be pregnant (though if so, probably not until later), and tries to hide the relationship from Anthy. In the end, Utena takes the path of the pointer stars of the Big Dipper to the North Star, the truth and the exit from the Academy. It is her own realization, so we can say that Utena becomes the constellation pointing the way out—she is a sign in the sky for others to follow.

Cassandra

In The Tale of the Rose in episode 34, the shadow girls repeatedly warn Utena to be careful. For Utena, the message flies in one ear and out the other. It’s somewhat like Cassandra warning the Trojans about the Trojan Horse and being disbelieved. If there were an element of Utena that I could point to as corresponding to Cassandra being cursed to be disbelieved, then I would conclude that the parallel is real.

Cassiopeia

The W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia (Wikipedia), named after the mythical Cassiopeia (Wikipedia), represents Utena’s bad end, the case where she submits to Akio and neither helps Anthy nor survives. Celestial Utena will be punished as Cassiopeia was for her hubris. Cassiopeia appears in the amusement park lights in episode 33, more obviously in the sky in episode 34, again after Utena spends the night with Touga in the arena, and is explained in after the Routine Date. Cassiopeia’s hubris was in championing the beauty of her daughter Andromeda (Wikipedia). Andromeda corresponds to Anthy: Utena’s hubris (according to Akio, who corresponds to Zeus) is in championing Anthy. The story of Andromeda and the sea monster makes Utena into the hero Perseus. The monster is of course Akio himself.

Castor and Pollux

Castor and Pollux are inseparable twin brothers. They are represented by the constellation Gemini, two of whose stars look identical and are named Castor and Pollux. Utena and Anthy correspond to them; see Anthy and Utena are twins.

It is this version of the myth: Castor and Pollux have the same mother and different fathers. See Gemini. Castor was fathered by a mortal man and is mortal; he corresponds to Utena. Pollux was fathered by Zeus and is immortal; he corresponds to Anthy. In episode 26, Anthy tells Utena that Akio is like a father to her; see Akio as a father. Their mother is Leda (below). Zeus transformed himself into a swan and raped her. She laid an egg that the twins hatched from. Symbolically, that is what Utena and Anthy do when they leave the Academy—they hatch from the egg of the world. Castor and Pollux wear fragments of the eggshell on their heads in the form of white hats. Anthy’s white cap when she leaves the Academy refers to it.

Castor and Pollux are inseparable, like Utena and Anthy. In the myth, even death did not separate them. When mortal Pollux died, immortal Castor gave up half his immortality so they could be together. Anthy gives up her immortality when she leaves the Academy, but perhaps only half of it. When Utena disappears from the Academy, she is ambiguously alive or dead—half alive and half dead like Schrödinger’s cat, the state that Castor and Pollux end up in. See afterstories - Utena’s fate.

Circe

Anthy has some similarities to Circe. I don’t know whether they are intentional or meaningful. Both are associated with magic. Circe can turn others into animals; Anthy turns Nanami into a cow. Circe is knowledgeable about drugs and poisons; Anthy is associated with poison, and possibly provided Akio’s date rape drug, used against Kanae and against Utena. Circe is the daughter of the sun god Helios, and Dios is the sun, which kind of makes sense for Anthy. If the parallel is real, then Utena should correspond to the hero Odysseus. Odysseus follows divine advice to avoid Circe’s tricks, and they become lovers; his goal is to save his crewmen who Circe transformed. Utena plays prince to Anthy, inspired by the arguably divine Dios, and they come to love each other, and Utena’s goal is to save Anthy who Akio has transformed into a witch.

The parallel of Anthy with Circe is good, but not detailed enough to be convincing. The parallel of Utena with Odysseus is muddled. Odysseus is wily, not naive like Utena.

But if you do accept that Utena = Odysseus, that would make Akio into a lying Calypso (Wikipedia). Calypso promised Odysseus immortality if he would remain on her island and be her husband, as Akio falsely promises Utena an eternity in the castle in the sky if she marries him.

Danaë

The parallel between Nanami and Danaë (Wikipedia) is so loose that it is likely unintended, but I thought I’d write it down anyway. Nanami is adopted into a wealthy family—that is Danaë’s shower of gold, arranged by Akio who is Zeus. Much later, in Nanami’s Egg, she believes she will have a child with no apparent father. Under Nanami’s character archetype, belonging to a wealthy family caused her ignorance; she became interested only in social status and how others viewed her. See the 18th century description of Nanami under A Vindication of the Rights of Woman.

Europa and the Bull

The First Seduction is parallel to the myth of Europa and the bull. I discuss it under the episode 33 constellations, because the bull is the constellation Taurus. See Europa (Wikipedia). In the myth, Zeus as a bull, superhumanly attractive because he is a god, silently tricks Europa into riding on his back, then suddenly carries her over the ocean and seduces (rapes) her. It is silent kidnapping, then seduction. In the First Seduction, superhumanly attractive Akio tricks Utena into riding in his car to a hotel (via the amusement park), then silently seduces her and rapes her. It is kidnapping, then silent seduction, a reversal.

Here’s an excerpt from Ovid’s version of the myth (Anthony S. Kline’s translation at The Ovid Collection of the University of Virginia). Points that match the First Seduction are that Utena gives flowers, Akio behaves unthreateningly at first but Utena keeps her distance, and Utena gradually loses her fear. In Utena, the white is for the prince that Akio pretends to be, and the hand on the chest indicates desire. It seems likely that Utena placed her hand on Akio’s chest at some point in the First Seduction, though we don’t see it.

Agenor’s daughter [Europa] marvelled at how beautiful he [Zeus as a bull] was and how unthreatening. But though he seemed so gentle she was afraid at first to touch him. Soon she drew close and held flowers out to his glistening mouth. The lover was joyful and while he waited for his hoped-for pleasure he kissed her hands. He could scarcely separate then from now. At one moment he frolicks and runs riot in the grass, at another he lies down, white as snow on the yellow sands. When her fear has gradually lessened he offers his chest now for virgin hands to pat and now his horns to twine with fresh wreaths of flowers. The royal virgin even dares to sit on the bull’s back....

Ganymede

Ganymede is Utena, and as a central reference is discussed separately. Anthy is equated with Ganymede too.

Hades

Mikage corresponds to Hades. His underground lair is the dark underworld of death that continues forever without change—Mikage seeks eternity. The sculpture garden has a copy of the sculpture The Rape of Proserpina, which is Latin for the Greek myth of Hades abducting Persephone to rape her and make her his wife. In Utena it is reversed: Anthy playing Mamiya seduces and controls Mikage.

Hera

Anthy corresponds to Hera (Wikipedia), powerful queen of Olympus and second to Zeus, who is Akio. Anthy’s name is derived from Greek antheia, an epithet of Hera. Hera is goddess of women, marriage, and family, matching Anthy’s roles. Hera is jealous and vengeful, like Anthy.

Hera has the power to induce madness. A person she drives mad will do crazy irrational stuff. That sounds like a lot of Utena characters under Anthy’s influence! Hera can teleport, like Anthy.

Hera has three sacred animals: The cow, the cuckoo, and the peacock. The cow and cuckoo are prominent in Utena. I don’t know of any peacock appearances.

Hercules

Properly Heracles (Wikipedia) or Herakles in Greek. Pasiphaë and the Cretan Bull was my clue that Utena is Hercules, but there is more evidence. Utena is undefeated in contests of strength; the only time she shows physical weakness is after being backstabbed, which corresponds to Hercules being poisoned (see below). The myth of Hercules bears striking similarities to Castor and Pollux above, and is mostly consistent with Utena as Castor. Hercules is both a mortal hero who dies and an immortal god; see Utena’s fate - Castor and Pollux for my conclusion that Utena ends the story half alive and half dead. The mother of Hercules was the mortal Alcmene. She bore twins, Hercules fathered by Zeus and Iphicles by Alcmene’s mortal husband. That’s much like the birth of Castor and Pollux in Utena’s version of the myth.

Utena performs quite a few feats of strength. In duels, she is forced back sometimes by skill or trickery, but never by brute strength—when the combatants press sword to sword, Utena holds her ground. She wins fights outside of duels by strength (episode 7 Juri, episode 23 Mikage). In Anthy’s suicide attempt she lifts Anthy with one hand from a position with bad leverage. In episode 25, she casually carries a heavy stack of books.

Hera hates Hercules and often works against him. She tries to prevent his birth in the first place, drives him mad repeatedly, and more. Anthy is Hera: Anthy hates Utena. She says so in the preview at the end of episode 36 (her word is keibetsu, often translated as contempt or scorn), and it shows clearly in the backstab. (Anthy loves Utena too. Anthy is like that.)

As an infant, Hercules strangled two snakes that Hera sent to the twins, one in each hand. In Utena the snake stands for Akio, who is the serpent in the Garden of Eden. It can correspond to Utena saving herself and, indirectly, Anthy.

Hercules died by poison. He killed a treacherous centaur with arrows poisoned with the blood of the hydra. His use of poison was wrong, and the poison later came back to him. Poison is Anthy’s weapon: Utena betrays Anthy with Akio, poisoning their relationship, and Anthy returns it with a fatal backstab—a reversal where Utena uses poison and Anthy a sword. The mortal part of Hercules died, and the immortal part ascended to Olympus. It fits with Utena’s half-death when she disappears from the Academy.

Unlike Utena, Hercules solves some problems by ingenuity. Utena makes do with ingenue-ity.

Hermaphroditus

Hermaphroditus (Wikipedia) is half male and half female. Despite being both sexes, in English he is referred to as “he”, and I gather the same in ancient Greek. He is named after his parents Aphrodite and Hermes. Miki corresponds to Hermaphroditus: He is gendermixed but considered male, he is derived from Sailor Mercury (Hermes is Mercury), and he is shy as Hermaphroditus is in some versions of his myth. Miki takes Anthy as his “shining thing” and comes across to me as asexual; Hermaphroditus is a symbol of marriage because he unites the sexes, and (I gather) does not seek sex with others because he is “already married”—and it was no choice of his; he’s unhappy in the marriage in the same way that Miki is often unhappy with Kozue.

Kozue is Salmacis. In episode 15, Kozue sits by a pool and tries to grasp its water in her hand (it is her illusionary heart). It equates Kozue with the water naiad Salmacis. In Ovid’s version of the myth (Anthony S. Kline’s translation at The Ovid Collection of the University of Virginia), when Hermaphroditus was 15 and still purely male, he came by her pool, and she fell in love. (15 matches the episode number, though not Miki’s age.) He turned her down, and she forcibly clung to him and prayed (to “the gods” not further specified) that they be together forever. The prayer was granted by merging them into a single being, and that’s how Hermaphroditus became a hermaphrodite. Episode 15 starts with Kozue at a swimming pool. Later, under the influence of the black rose, she tries to kiss Miki and he pulls back. In episode 26, she rides on Miki’s back, clinging to him like Salmacis clinging to Hermaphroditus. When Wakaba rides on Utena’s back in episode 2 (mentioned under sex symbols - columns and arches), it is depicted as the consummation of a marriage; Salmacis merging with Hermaphroditus means marriage. The comparison makes Kozue (and “the gods” meaning Akio) responsible for Miki being gendermixed. Kozue is blamed, like Anthy, for something that she apparently could not be the cause of—and worse, it doesn’t deserve blame in the first place. At the same time, it says that Kozue lives in illusion (a pool of water), and that her desire is an illusion.

Hypnos

Hypnos (Wikipedia) is the ancient Greek god of sleep. Hypnos lives next to Lethe, the river of forgetfulness; in Utena, sleep is associated with forgetting. He is associated with poppies; red poppies appear in episode 35. He is married to a goddess of hallucinations, which is to say, illusions. Their children are dreams. His brother is Thanatos, god of death; those near Akio have a high risk of dying. If Utena does not intentionally allude to Hypnos, then it should.

Io and Zeus

Nanami turning into a cow is parallel to the myth of Io and Zeus, though the parallel is not particularly close. Io is another of Zeus’s lovers. It is the version of the myth where Hera (meaning Anthy) turns Io into a heifer. The parallel is broken when Utena removes Nanami’s cowbell; in the myth, Zeus restores Io’s humanity.

King Midas has Donkey Ears

The shadow play of episode 24 riffs on the myth of King Midas having the ears of a donkey (Wikipedia).

Leda

Leda (Wikipedia) was born a princess, and was married off to the king of Sparta. Zeus fell in lust with her and, since he always does the logical thing, transformed into a swan to rape her. (He wants to hide his affairs from Hera.) Leda becomes pregnant by Zeus and by her husband on the same day. Nanami has ties to Leda, and I think they must correspond. But I haven’t figured out all the details.

Leda’s myth comes in many versions, though as I write her Wikipedia article does not mention all of them. I think it is a version in which Leda lays one egg, which hatches into Castor and Pollux. It could be a version where she lays two eggs. There are two kids in each egg, and they’re divided up variously, but the others are Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra, big names in the Trojan War. They are two girls plus two boys, and two mortals plus two immortals, which goes with Utena’s half-and-half motif, but I don’t see a way to fit Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra into Utena (though the song of Wakaba’s duel could be related).

Nanami lays an egg like Leda, or believes she does. The egg is visually equated with the egg of the world, and Nanami’s elevator spiel reinforces the equation. That’s in episode 27, and then in episode 32 she goes on a car ride that corresponds to Zeus raping Leda. Time reversal is normal in Utena. Leda’s egg hatches into Castor and Pollux, who correspond to Utena and Anthy—who hatch from the egg of the world when they leave the Academy. Nanami is their mother, though she’s a year younger, and Akio is their father.

The swan is a large bird; see Ohtori, which means large bird. The swan is white for the prince that Akio pretends to be. The ancient Greeks knew that Utena would come around eventually.

The episode 31 shadow play has another egg, this time an egg that Nanami hatches from. She is a cuckoo, with several points. One, she was forced into another family, like a cuckoo, when Akio got her adopted by pairing her with Touga. Two, the story is the ugly duckling: Nanami hopes to grow up to be a beautiful swan. That is, she wants to be like Akio, and it is not going to happen. She has it exactly backward; the swan overpowers her. Three, Zeus transformed himself into a cuckoo (so very logical) for his courtship with Hera (I’m sure that Utena goes with this version of it). Being a cuckoo is not so different from being a swan after all—both can be Akio, a beautiful swan and a cheating cuckoo.

Mimas

Mimas was one of the giants who rebelled against Zeus’s (Akio’s) rule. In episode 36, Mimas stands for Touga. See breaking Utena from Anthy - Mimas.

Pasiphaë and the Cretan Bull

It took me months to figure out how this myth aligns with Utena. I’m slow sometimes. See Pasiphaë (Wikipedia). There are variants, but it generally goes like this: King Minos of Crete was the son of Europa (see Europa and the bull above). He married Pasiphaë, an immortal witch (like Anthy). In return for a favor from the sea god Poseidon, he was to sacrifice the Cretan Bull, a beautiful and powerful white bull (compare the white bull Zeus became for Europa). The bull was sometimes a gift from Poseidon, sometimes was born into his herd; either way, I read it as a test from Poseidon, though I haven’t seen a source that spells it out. Minos sacrificed a lesser bull instead, and Poseidon punished him by cursing Pasiphaë with lust for the Cretan Bull. Who did he punish exactly? She wanted to become a cow to satisfy her lust, but settled for the next best thing: She engaged Daedalus to build a fake cow that she could hide inside. In due course she gave birth to the Minotaur, whose name was Asterion or Asterius, connecting him to stars. The Cretan Bull is later captured by Hercules but released, and eventually killed by Theseus, heroes who can correspond to Utena.

Anthy is Pasiphaë and Dios is the Cretan Bull. Anthy saves Dios rather than sacrifice him (so unlike Pasiphaë she bears blame—how horrible and princely it is to save a life!). Poseidon is god of the sea, which is water, which stands for illusions: The illusion of the prince curses Anthy to fall in love with Dios. See loving Dios for the point when Anthy becomes metaphorically pregnant with the Minotaur—when she is metaphorically a cow. She gives birth to Akio, the monstrous Minotaur. Akio is connected to stars. Akio is a white bull in episode 33 (see Europa and the bull), so I think he is the Cretan Bull too; the aspect carried over from Dios. Utena is Hercules: No one outmuscles her. She captures Akio but releases him, and he continues his rampage. A later hero in the sequence of heroes destroys Akio.

That is why Anthy turns Nanami into a cow. She visits her own earlier misfortune on Nanami. I suppose she sees Nanami as like herself in bringing evil into the world. In any case, Nanami is shown as parallel to Anthy, which I think is big in Anthy’s motivation to harass Nanami.

In the origin myth, Anthy metaphorically gives birth to Akio, bringing him to life by corrupting Dios. In the end, leaving the Academy, Anthy metaphorically gives birth to herself. See final showdown - Rose Gate symbolism.

Persephone

Mamiya as played by Anthy corresponds to Persephone. When in the underworld with Mikage, Mamiya/Anthy is the spouse of Hades and dread co-ruler of the underworld. When in the upper world, Anthy is associated with plants and growth. Those are the two aspects of Persephone, representing the turn of the seasons and the cycle of life and death. See Anthy and Akio’s complex mythological background above.

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in book 14, in the lines about Aeneas visiting the Cumean sibyl to seek a way to meet his father’s shade in the underworld, Ovid mentions that Proserpine is the Juno of the underworld. The matching Greek gods are Persephone and Hera, Anthy’s mythological correspondences. Anthy is the powerful queen of the heavens (Olympus) and of the underworld. Mikage believes he runs the underworld, but Mamiya steers his decisions under Akio’s orders: Zeus is the monarch who rules over all, and Hades ultimately has to obey him.

Salmacis

See Hermaphroditus.

non-Greek myths

Hathor

Hathor (Wikipedia) is an ancient Egyptian cow goddess. She matches up with Anthy in several ways. See Pasiphaë and the Cretan Bull for Anthy’s Greek connection to cows. Hathor is associated with the sky and the sun (Dios is the sun); Anthy’s name makes her celestial. She is commonly depicted as a cow, or as a woman wearing cow horns and a disk of the sun. She is vengeful in protecting Ra, the sun god; Anthy is vengeful more broadly. Hathor helped dead souls into the afterlife, corresponding to Mamiya as played by Anthy. Hathor is usually peaceful and loving, but is also capable of violent rampage, like Anthy backstabbing Utena.

The goddess Isis (Wikipedia) later took on some of Hathor’s traits, but Anthy seems to correspond to Hathor directly.

Marduk

According to Wikipedia, the Babylonian god Marduk (Wikipedia), ruler of the gods, is associated with “water, vegetation, judgment, and magic.” Akio and Anthy between them have all those associations. It’s suggestive, but I don’t have any other evidence that Utena refers to Marduk. Greek gods and Babylonian gods are historically related, so maybe the associations reflect that.

Ohtori

Ohtori is (among other things) the Japanese name of the mythological Chinese Fènghuáng bird.

Jay Scott <jay@satirist.org>
first posted 31 July 2022
updated 29 November 2024