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jewlwpet · 5 years

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Let’s dissect the titles of each track on Seazer’s upcoming new Utena album!!

(EDIT: IMPORTANT UPDATE: J. A. Seazer made some last-minute changes to the tracklist after I made this post; I discussed those changes here).

1) 青銅製の人形俳優譚オルフェウス洞窟劇場/Chant of Bronze Puppet Actors: Orpheus Grotto Theatre

There was a famous real-life “Grotto of Orpheus” that Seazer is most likely referencing! It doesn’t exist anymore, but you can see a detailed engraving of it here. It was made by Tommasso and Alessandro Francini for Henri IV of France. You can read about it and see another engraving here.

My guess as to what the song will be about: The grotto of Orpheus existed to glorify the prince by showing that he had so much power at his command, he could create a marvel like this. However, the object of wonder was a mechanical illusion: empty movement, so to speak. This was around the same time that some scientists began voicing the idea that perhaps the whole cosmos was like a machine built by God. This suggests the question, though it went unvoiced, of whether we ourselves are merely puppet-actors upon a cosmic stage.

(More under the cut--this will be long).

2) 宇宙卵プロトゴノス ―すなわちアンドロギュヌスのポラリザシオン(分極作用)―/Cosmic Egg Protogonos ―Namely Androgynous Polarization (Polarizing Action)―

This one is actually pretty straightforward if you understand Seazer’s language.

This song makes use of the Orphic creation narrative. Seazer used it before in a now lost version of Absolute Destiny Apocalypse (original source now here). Note: At the time when I posted that translation, I was under the mistaken impression that it was the same as the version on the Ohtori Kuruhi CD (because Seazer frequently does use pronunciation totally different from how something’s written). It is not; that set of lyrics is in fact the one used again more recently in the “complete version” in the Barbara CD.

Protogonos (literally “first-born”), also called Phanes (“bring to light”) ( "You scattered the dark mist that lay before your eyes and, flapping your wings, you whirled about, and throughout this world you brought pure light. For this I call you Phanes.") was described by Damascius as “the first [god] expressible and acceptable to human ears.” They hatched from the primordial Cosmic Egg, generated by Time (Chronos) and sometimes also Inevitability (Ananke).

Another tradition claims that a triad of the first three “intelligible principles” hatched from the egg. “What is this triad, then? The egg; the dyad of the two natures inside it--male and female--[Ouranos... and Gaia... Heaven and Earth], and the plurality of the various seeds between; and thirdly an incorporeal god with golden wings on his shoulders, bulls' heads growing upon his flanks, and on his head a monstrous serpent, presenting the appearance of all kinds of animal forms . . . And the third god of the third triad this theology too celebrates as Protogonos (First-Born).”

Another fact about Protogonos: They were a dying-and-rising god.

Since the title seems to focus on the severance of male from female (androgynous polarization), here are some passages that focus on that (source).

And he [Epicurus] says that the world began in the likeness of an egg, and the Wind [the entwined forms of Khronos (Chronos, Time) and Ananke (Inevitability)] encircling the egg serpent-fashion like a wreath or a belt then began to constrict nature. As it tried to squeeze all the matter with greater force, it divided the world into the two hemispheres, and after that the atoms sorted themselves out, the lighter and finer ones in the universe floating above and becoming the Bright Air [Aither (Aether)] and the most rarefied Wind [probably Khaos (Chaos, Air)], while the heaviest and dirtiest have veered down, become the Earth (Ge) [Gaia], both the dry land and the fluid waters [Pontos the Sea]. And the atoms move by themselves and through themselves within the revolution of the Sky and the Stars, everything still being driven round by the serpentiform wind [of Khronos and Ananke].

Ere land and sea and the all-covering sky were made, in the whole world the countenance of nature was the same, all one, well named Chaos, a raw and undivided mass, naught but a lifeless bulk, with warring seeds of ill-joined elements compressed together.... Though there were land and sea and air, the land no foot could tread, no creature swim the sea, the air was lightless; nothing kept its form, all objects were at odds, since in one mass cold essence fought with hot, and moist with dry, and hard with soft and light with things of weight. This strife a God (Deus) [probably Phanes], with nature's blessing, solved; who severed land from sky and sea from land, and from the denser vapours set apart the ethereal sky; and, each from the blind heap resolved and freed, he fastened in its place appropriate in peace and harmony. The fiery weightless force of heaven's vault flashed up and claimed the topmost citadel; next came the air in lightness and in place; the thicker earth with grosser elements sank burdened by its weight; lowest and last the girdling waters pent the solid globe. So into shape whatever god it was reduced the primal matter and prescribed its several parts.

Incidentally, the repeated severance and rejoining (solve et coagula) of male/female and above/below, was a key component of alchemy (of course, the materials they worked with were inanimate, but the alchemists insisted on gendering and even sexualizing them, always).

Protogonos bears some resemblance to the Gnostic demiurge, (shaper of the material world, creator of humans, associated with severance and procreation). However, the Gnostics denigrated the demiurge, whereas Protogonos was venerated. One could also make

3) ミッシング&ブーピープ ―快楽の園の修道院のイメージ― /Missing and Bo-Peep -Image of the Monastery’s Garden of Earthly Delights-

Okay. Bo-Peep is, of course, a little girl in a nursery rhyme who’s lost her sheep but gets them back, wagging their tails behind them (wagging meant bringing). There’s an extended version where it’s specified that they’d actually lost their tails (but she found those too and reattached them). Before all that, “bo-peep” was used to refer to the children’s game of peekaboo, and in the Middle Ages, it was also a euphemism for being stood in a pillory. The Garden of Earthly Delights is a triptych by Bosch (viewable in detail here--arguably technically safe for work but only because it’s Art [tm]). From Wikipedia:

As so little is known of Bosch's life or intentions, interpretations of his intent have ranged from an admonition of worldly fleshy indulgence, to a dire warning on the perils of life's temptations, to an evocation of ultimate sexual joy. The intricacy of its symbolism, particularly that of the central panel, has led to a wide range of scholarly interpretations over the centuries. Twentieth-century art historians are divided as to whether the triptych's central panel is a moral warning or a panorama of paradise lost.

There’s also speculation that Bosch’s art (as a whole) is based on “esoteric knowledge lost to history.” The ambiguity is perfect for RGU.

I like this interpretation:

According to art historian Virginia Tuttle, the scene is "highly unconventional [and] cannot be identified as any of the events from the Book of Genesis traditionally depicted in Western art". Some of the images contradict the innocence expected in the Garden of Eden. Tuttle and other critics have interpreted the gaze of Adam upon his wife as lustful, and indicative of the Christian belief that humanity was doomed from the beginning... Art historian Charles de Tolnay believed that, through the seductive gaze of Adam, the left panel already shows God's waning influence upon the newly created earth. This view is reinforced by the rendering of God in the outer panels as a tiny figure in comparison to the immensity of the earth. According to Hans Belting, the three inner panels seek to broadly convey the Old Testament notion that, before the Fall, there was no defined boundary between good and evil; humanity in its innocence was unaware of consequence.

This is of course very different from the traditional Christian view of Genesis, which is that before the Fall, there was no sexual desire. In many Gnostic texts, however, “original sin” is something that existed before the creation of the world; thus there was no innocence of any kind in Eden. The “original sinner” in this view was generally said to be Sophia (Wisdom, an Anthylike figure sometimes known as “the Bride,” who was both revered and maligned), an attribute of the Godhead, which was made up of syzygies, complementary pairs of principles, described variously as spouses and/or siblings, who (because they were God) reproduced without lust. But it was this same Sophia who breathed life and spirit into humanity, making them more than just bodies.

In this belief humans were inherently sinful creatures from the very beginning; it was also said that it was wrong for the demiurge to separate Eve from Adam (I believe this was the same text that said “This world is a mistake”--by the way, the demiurge was supposedly brought into existence by Sophia, but they’re enemies).

There’s also this idea that Bosch followed the ideas attributed to a Gnostic sect called the Adamites (unfortunately, the only contemporary sources we have on them are anti-Gnostic propaganda, so we cannot know how much of it is based in reality), which basically advocated freedom from all moral laws; the last image seems to suggest otherwise, but it certainly is, at least, a theme.

Incidentally, this triptych has been used for the covers of at least two books by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, whose works Seazer draws on extensively according to my research.

Anyway, for my attempt at putting the pieces of the title together... However you interpret the triptych, it’s not something you’d expect to see in a monastery. Wikipedia indicates a general consensus that it was probably commissioned by a lay person, not a member of the clergy. So the title suggests a contrast, or a confluence of opposites, rather like that title from his last Utena album, “Monastic Life is a Flesh Apocalypse.”

4) 幾何学とエロス/Geometry and Eros

This is, word-for-word, the title of a 1974 essay by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa, whom, as I said before, I have known Seazer to draw from very frequently. It was published in this book, which also contains an essay on the “cosmic egg” concept and an essay on the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili.

I have it from book reviews that “Geometry and Eros” discusses the 18th-century French Neoclassical architext Ledoux and the supposed “spiritual analogy” between his works and those of his contemporaries Fourier and Sade. Now, unfortunately, there are two different “Fourier”s from this time period that are both feasible candidates: the mathematician Joseph Fourier and the utopian socialist philosopher Charles Fourier. I lean towards the latter, however, because Shibusawa had published a translation of his essay “Archibras,” which Seazer drew on for Tsuwabuki’s duel song, Conical Absolute Egg Archibras. I suppose Ledoux would represent “geometry” and the other two “eros,” assuming I have the right Fourier.

Apparently, Shibusawa criticized Emil Kaufmann’s commentary on Ledoux, but I don’t know specifics on that.

5) 少女錬金術師/Girl Alchemist

The main question is whether this is Utena or Anthy, because the meaning would be different in either case. But alchemy is about unifying opposites, and they both do embody opposites, just in different ways. And they are opposites of each other, even though traditionally, in alchemy, the union of opposites is exclusively framed in heterosexual terms--think Angel Androgynous. This heterosexual union--often, incidentally, described as one of brother and sister--is meant to lead to the birth of the “philosophical child,” which can be interpreted as a new self. It’s kind of like Nanami’s Egg, actually, though that did not use the incest metaphor since one of RGU’s themes is how incest inhibits individuation.

Interestingly, while almost(?) all the surviving alchemical texts (at least in the Western tradition, which is what I’ve studied) were written by men, many of them stated that the first alchemist was a woman, and a Jewish woman at that. Unfortunately, all we know of her is from what men wrote about her.

There’s a quotation attributed to her that has an interesting interpretation by Jung, which you can read about here. Alchemy as a metaphor for psychological individuation is something he wrote about extensively, and it definitely makes sense in this context although it’s not, imo, the only meaning alchemy has in RGU. Marie Louise von Franz wrote about it extensively also! The two of them worked closely together as well as individually.

6) 人間人形 ―空想・イン・ザ・架空―/Human Puppet -Fantasy in the Imaginary-

(I’ve got nothing, other than the metaphor of puppets which I already touched on).

7) 絶対天秤卵/Absolute Balance Egg

This is not a new song. It’s taken from 2006 Banyu Inryoku production, Illusion-Flesh Verse Drama “Black in the Dark.” Of course, this is nothing new; even the duel songs were recycled (and this was Ikuhara’s idea, not Seazer’s), so this is just an extension of that. I found its tracklist in this review; it’s described as an “improvised reverberation poem of flesh burning up in the dark,” which must be from a playbill or something because it’s such a Seazer description.

Apparently, the “intro” (written in katakana) to this song was taken directly from “Paint it Black.” I can’t guarantee this will carry into our version, but if you hear anything that sounds suspiciously like The Rolling Stones... I called it.

Actually, I should note: It’s possible that Absolute Balance Egg is from an even older Seazer production and was recycled in both this play and this CD. One can never rule that out.

8) 人間人形 ―空想・イン・ザ・架空―/Philosophical Bread (?) Seed

This sounds like an alchemy thing, and I’m not ruling that out, but the results that I found searching “philosophical bread” showed me it’s a very common metaphor used in many contexts. Generally it refers to “higher learning” of spiritual matters, sometimes specifically “to know the mind of God.” Sometimes it’s treated as the ultimate endeavor, sometimes as pointless. Seeds, I suppose, would be the beginning of that.

Note: "Bread,” in Japanese, is パン (pan) , and the Greek god Pan sometimes has his name written the same way. It’s very possible that パン is actually referring to the god here and shouldn’t be translated as “bread,” but we don’t know at this point. Either is plausible.

9) 法王驢馬寓意画意オペレッタ1 ―その声は人間の鳴き声に似る―/The Pope Ass Allegory Symbolism Operetta 1 -That Voice Is Like the Cry of a Human Being

The Papal Ass or Pope Ass, known from its use in a highly influential pamphlet by Martin Luther and Melanchthon, is often described as a caricature of the Pope. However, it’s not satirical like most modern political cartoons.It’s in fact based on the “monstrous birth” reports that were very popular at the time; this genre was referenced in the Rose Egg Sophia CD. To fully understand what the Papal Ass meant to its original audience, it’s necessary to have some understanding of the genre, so I’ll go into that.

It’s important to understand that such records are not always made-up, although they are frequently exaggerated. For instance, researching the term クシュポデュメー (no, I don’t know how to spell it) from Rose Egg Sophia’s Puchibanshou song (doragon no kodomo, offspring of a dragon) led me to a description of a “dragon” born with two heads, four arms, two legs, and one pelvis, said to have been part of the court of James III of Scotland. As a matter of fact, this bodily description corresponds to contemporary reports of a pair of conjoined twins known as the Scottish brothers, who were part of this king’s court. Many so-called “monsters,” from medieval times up until the xth century, were people. This particular one, however, was an animal, an actual donkey (or ass).

Luther wrote this for an updated 1535 version of the pamphlet:

The Papal Ass is itself a dreadful, ugly, terrifying picture, and the longer one looks at it, the more terrifying it seems. However nothing is so completely terrifying as the fact that God himself made and revealed such a wonder and such a monstrous image. If a human had invented, carved or painted it, one would scorn or laugh at it. However since the highest Majesty himself created and depicted it, the whole world should be dismayed and quake, for from it one fully understands what he thought of and intended.

From Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany by Jennifer Spinks:

I was able to find a book, Monstrous Births and Visual Culture in Sixteenth-Century Germany, that goes into great detail on how this was used by the early Protestant movement and has an entire chapter on this pamphlet: “Monstrous births could be viewed in positive and sympathetic terms, as the previous chapters have demonstrated. Yet this 1523 pamphlet by the two most important figures of the Lutheran Reformation forms a decisive shift in attitude, in which interpretation and representation became not only more polemical – and particularly anti-papal – but took on a notably apocalyptic aspect.” Of the Papal Ass and one of its contemporaries, the moon-calf, the author says, “The bodies of the monsters became texts to be read and argumentatively decoded using highly visual language.”

Notably, Luther and his coauthor did not invent the Papal Ass; they only named it. As Jennifer Spinks writes in this book:

The Papal Ass, washed up on the banks of the Tiber in Rome in 1495, made its way to Germany in visual form via an engraving by the Bohemian artist Wenzel von Olmutz, published in the late fifteenth century. Several decades later, and perhaps prompted by his colleague Melanchthon... Luther first became intrigued by the then-nameless monstrous birth and sought to incorporate it into his eschatological world view. He wrote a homiletic epistle that year (on the second Sunday in Advent, concerning Luke 21:25–33) titled ‘A Christian and well-substantiated proof of the Day of Judgement, and of the signs that it cannot now be far off ’. Although they were not referred to in Luke, Luther explicitly added monstrous creatures to his list and framed this addition as an attack on Rome and the papacy.

As for the pamphlet that made the Papal Ass famous, however, the section devoted to the Papal Ass was written by Luther’s coauthor, not Luther himself. Spinks states:

Melanchthon analyses the creature one body part at a time, utilizing biblical references, and conveying a central message about the corruption of the church in Rome as revealed by its bizarre physical structure. He begins his analysis of the Papal Ass with a reference to the Book of Daniel: ‘God has always indicated his grace or wrath by many signs, and in particular He has used such miracles for speaking to the rulers, as we see in Daniel’.

Melanchthon, she writes, “presents God in the guise of an artist who uses his creations to convey visual messages.”

The Papal Ass... has an almost jarring, collage-like combination of sharply delineated but ill-matching body parts. Step by step, Melanchthon describes and interprets these individual elements. He begins with... ‘Firstly, the head of the ass represents the Pope’. The Pope, he indicates... has brought the church into a worldly and physical, rather than spiritual, state. The low state of the ass in the animal kingdom is underscored through a reference to Exodus 13:13, in which first-born children and animals are consecrated to God: ‘but every fi rst-born donkey you will redeem with a lamb or kid; if you do not redeem it, you must break its neck’. That is, God does not value donkeys (or asses) as he does other creatures. That the head of the Papal Ass is formed in this way is a true sign of the creature’s low state.

Next, Melanchthon addresses one hand, which ‘like an elephant’s foot rep-resents the spiritual regime of the Pope’. As forcefully as an elephant, the Pope’s ‘regime’ makes its way into and corrupts souls with innumerable and intolerable laws. Melanchthon adds, in a metaphor that it is easy to imagine seizing the imagination of audiences: ‘like the great heavy elephant it tramples and grinds down everything that it comes across’. The human-shaped other hand of the Papal Ass, in turn, represented the Pope’s worldly ‘regiment’; that is, those secular rulers who gave support to the papal office. In Cranach’s woodcut accompanying the text, these hands are neatly displayed one above the other, emphasizing through contrast the peculiarity of the elephant hand. The right foot of the creature, in the form of the foot of an ox, is aligned by Melanchthon with the elephant-shaped right hand. The foot represents the servants of the church: ‘the papal teachers, preachers, priests and confessors, and particularly the scholastic theologians’. That is, it refers to those responsible, in the Pope’s name, for oppressing the ‘poor folk’ (‘arme volck’) with their activities. Identifying papal supporters with the End Times, Melanchthon refers the reader to Matthew 24:4: ‘There will come false Christians and false prophets’. The other foot, in the shape of a claw, is aligned with the human-shaped hand. It represents canons, as worldly servants of the popes. Melanchthon’s language becomes still more physical in the next section, in which the female belly and breasts of the Papal Ass are described: “[these] represent the body of the papacy: that is Cardinals, bishops, clerics, monks, students ... their life is simply guzzling food, boozing, unchaste lechery, and leading the ‘good life’ on earth.”

Melanchthon’s understanding of the belly and breasts as especially potent symbols was to be intensified in a revised 1535 edition of the pamphlet... In this 1523 version, however, he turns fairly rapidly to the arms, legs and back of the creature, with a metaphor that is a little less obvious: the scales on these body parts represent secular rulers, who tolerate the failings of the papal system, effectively protecting it as they cling on to its ‘body’. This passage makes a particularly intriguing visual appeal to the reader or listener. The innocuous scales represented in the woodcut must be imaginatively reconfigured by the reader into a multitude of earthly rulers. Much more anthropomorphic in form are the faces of the old man and dragon (‘trach’) that emerge from the Papal Ass’s backside. The man represents the coming end of the papacy, already growing old; the dragon represents the bulls and books published by popes with the purpose of universally enforcing their will. Melanchthon’s tenth and final point shifts away from the body of the creature and to the location where it was found: Rome... The distinctive shape of the Castel Sant Angelo in Rome is carefully delineated, and for those not familiar with the famous tower, the fluttering flag with the crossed papal keys could inform even the least educated of the connection with Rome and the papacy. The tower to the right is the Tor di nona, used as the papal prison. Dramatically, in his final point, Melanchthon claims that finding the creature dead, ‘confirms that the papacy is coming to an end’.

Also:

In 1535 Melanchthon prepared a new edition of his text on the Papal Ass, still illustrated by the original Cranach image. Melanchthon’s expanded text takes sharper, more polemical aim at the papacy in a number of short new passages, including one on the ass’s head as a demonstration of the foolishness of the Pope, and another on the human hand as a sign the worldly, aggressive ambitions of the Pope. Two particularly substantial new sections dramatically increase the anti-papal and also the apocalyptic import of the Papal Ass. Several new pages on the breasts and belly of the creature emphasize the themes of whoring and sin (and implicitly, perhaps, refer to the whore of Babylon), while the ‘shameless female belly’ (‘vnuerschampt frawen bauch’) represents the Antichrist’s worst excesses.

More from Spinks about what made this method of symbolism unique:

Some pre-Reformation publications had ascribed specific meanings to individual body parts in monstrous births, like the conjoined foreheads of the Worms twins. Yet none had so rigorously and polemically done so as Luther and Melanchthon’s publication. This pamphlet is at the heart of a tangible shift in the representation and interpretation of monstrous births, and one that fitted the aggressively polemical culture of the early Reformation... This period saw the rise of vigorous debates and fundamental shifts in visual culture. The most famous of these developments was the wave of iconoclasm, which saw the destruction of religious images and objects. More moderate ‘reforms’ of imagery included a move to remove any hint of lasciviousness (especially in female figures) in the images on church walls. Martin Luther had a pragmatic attitude towards the use of religious images, and contributed to a culture of visual propaganda that stood on the borderline of the religious and the secular. One of the most important aspects of the visual culture of the Reformation was the vigorous use of printed propaganda, deployed.. with remarkable success. Robert Scribner observed that ‘Luther and other reformers spoke of pious images as masks (larvae) behind which the devil lurked, hoping to lure souls to damnation’. This did not mean that Luther rejected the use of images, and Scribner provided examples of how what he called the ‘semiology of arousal’ (which went well beyond the sensual) could be ‘employed also for its revelatory effect, especially in Reformation propaganda, putting into practice Luther’s notion of the masks of the devil disguising diabolical reality’... Religious imagery nonetheless increasingly moved outside relatively controlled environments like church walls and elite manuscripts, and into the turbulent new world created by the widely available printed image.... Luther’s ideas about visual images are closely bound up with his views on the apocalyptic Book of Revelation – a connection seen in microcosm in the 1523 pamphlet.

The Apocalypse While Albrecht Dürer had created what many regard as the definitive illustrated series of the Apocalypse in 1498, a flood of other versions appeared in the first half of the sixteenth century.74 The increasing popularity of the Book of Revelation as a subject for illustration during the sixteenth century was evidently connected to the growth of an apocalyptic world view... In this environment there was a tangible value in giving shape to apocalyptic imagery, and a ready audience for the new editions that came onto the market. As Bernd Moeller has identified, the End Times (‘Endzeit’) were one of the four most popular subjects for sermons preached in German towns in the early Reformation period.

Another updated version was published in 1549 without Melanchthon’s permission, edited to include past writings of his that he had since renounced in favor of compromise.

Flacius... uses Melanchthon’s text on the Papal Ass... as a springboard to oppose any religious compromise... In an introductory text, Flacius argues that the papacy can be represented in both words and images as worse than the devil or the whore of Babylon from the Book of Revelation. He maintains the highly visual language used by Luther and Melanchthon, and even concludes by claiming that the arts of geometrical and arithmetical proportions are inadequate for the present times, which demanded instead a ‘new swinish art’ (‘newen Sewkunst’). Later in the pamphlet, Flacius adds additional texts that talk of the disastrous events leading up to the Last Days, specifically identifying the Pope as the Whore of Babylon, holding up her goblet, drunk on the blood of Christ, and seated on the back of the seven-headed beast which represented Rome itself (and also the ‘Roemische Reich’, or Roman Empire) and its support of the papacy. The increasingly voluptuous body of the Papal Ass accords with this emphasis on the Babylonian woman.

After this point, “wonder books,” which “collected together monstrous births and various other wonders and disasters across decades, centuries or even millennia,” became more and more common. Apparently, “negative and also apocalyptic rhetoric about monstrous births became still more deeply entrenched in this genre.” By 1569 (when Catholics started appropriating this trend for their counter-Reformation), “Monstrous births and the apocalyptic Book of Revelation were closely enmeshed, and overwhelmingly presented as such in German Reformation and Counter-Reformation print culture.”

Final note: The way “Pope Ass” is written in the title is nonstandard, which is why I went with the literal translation rather than the more common phrase “Papal Ass.” I did find one search result for this phrase that wasn’t about this album, indicating that it’s used in yet another Shibusawa book, 夢の宇宙誌 (this was also the only pre-Seazerian source I could find for クシュポデュメー).

未来のヒユネロトマキア ―狂恋夢・薔薇物語・愛の秘法伝授―/The Future Hypnerotomachia - The Strife of Love in a Dream・The Tale of the Rose・Love’s Secret Initiation -

So... there are many parts to this.

The Future Hypnerotomachia:

That's a reference to the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (”The Strife of Love in a Dream” is included at the end of the title in some editions; it’s a translation of hypnerotomachia) and possibly also The Future Eve (referenced in the Rose Egg Sophia CD, specifically in its version of Saionji’s duel song). You can look in my tag on tumblr for my thoughts as to what that book might signify in relation to Utena.

As for The Tale of the Rose, we all know it as the play in episode 34, but there’s another “Tale of the Rose” I think Seazer is referencing here as well. Seazer mentioned “the medieval Tale of the Rose” as one of the inspirations for the Rose Egg Sophia in its liner notes (I’m working on a translation, off and on). It’s this book. The Japanese title is written the same was as the title of the play is written on the tickets in episode 34; it does not have much in common with the play, but you can think of it as “a way duelists look at Anthy.” You can also think of it as something possibly taught uncritically at Ohtori; you can certainly see its worldview reflected in, say, Miki.

The last part of the title isn’t a specific text, as far as I know, but it does have a traceable origin in, once again, Shibusawa, specifically his essay collection 胡桃の中の世界.

Since this title is about the themes of two or three entire books, I think I will make a Separate post for how those texts relate to Utena--and, of course, a new, updated one once we have the actual lyrics. And possibly another one several years from now when I inevitably translate 胡桃の中の世界.

#revolutionary girl utena #shoujo kakumei utena #rgu #sku #j. a. seazer #tatsuhiko shibusawa #this post has been a long time coming

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empty-movement · 6 years

Text

The Comet and the Stars

CW/TW: Discussion of sexual assault, emotional abuse, events of episode 33, incest, um...everything? Look, it’s about Akio. :(

I discovered a comet earlier. It’s new. No one else knows about it yet. But I won’t tell anyone else about it. I won’t even name it. It’s amazing… The feeling of discovering a new heavenly body. You feel as though doing that makes it your property. But what’s in the heavens is in the heavens. It belongs to no one. ...It belongs to no one...

Goodnight, big brother.

Must you still torment me?

For twenty years, this scene has driven me nuts, and taking my cue from the man himself, I've just ignored it. The gist is obvious enough: Akio is gloating about seducing Utena and it backfires on him, but any dramatic weight or potential for analysis has been eclipsed for me by an unforgivable sin. In all previous translations, Akio uses ‘comet’ and ‘star’ interchangeably.

This is absurd coming from someone who, according to Ikuhara, probably teaches astronomy in the university. It also breaks the comparison he's making. I brought this up with our translation buddy at Nozomi, not asking him to fix it but more bemoaning my fate. After all, Akio does clearly use two different words…

It turns out that I didn't give enough credit, either to Akio or to Enokido, who wrote the episode, on why it’s worded this way. Though Akio begins by saying suisei, which is explicitly the word for comet, he continues into his little speech using hoshi. The latter is generally translated as ‘star’, but is actually not specific beyond ‘celestial body.’ (Had I been a Sailor Moon fan, I would have known this, as hoshi is used to refer to planets in it, apparently.)

As close as I can get to the experience after twenty years, this is like me getting to analyze a piece of Utena for the first time. It was a fascinating look at something I knew I wanted to explore, but couldn't, because it was broken. It’s fixed now. And I am digging in, because I’m Akio trash, toxic relationship trash, space trash, and analysis trash. (And also, this was homework/research for the Akio fic I wrote for the upcoming Utena Future Zine.)

This scene immediately follows episode 33, The Prince Who Runs In the Night, which ended with Utena and Akio having sex in a hotel room, an event framed by Akio and Anthy as ‘delivering roses’, and alluded to by Akio as ‘beautiful stars.’

Here, at the beginning of episode 34, The Rose Seal, having just had sex with his sister, Akio is in the mood to gloat. He begins to describe having found a new comet. This seems...unlikely. You’ve never seen Akio use a telescope. The entirety of his exploration of space is contained within a planetarium, a representation of the night sky, beholden to the accuracy bestowed by its creator. It’s incapable of letting him ‘find’ anything. Of course, that’s not a flaw. It’s a feature. Akio is choosing where the stars shine, even if outside of his world, this would not be up to him.

The stars are a metaphor, both in the context of the series, and Akio’s own use of them in conversation: the heavenly bodies he discusses are the people he controls. Everything Akio has said relating to the stars or the mythology surrounding them is ultimately about someone in the story, and there is always a contextual clue to indicate this.

Later, he will go on to say “Actually, I have no interest whatsoever in the stars.” You can take this as him rejecting his own framing device, or you can take him as using the metaphor still: he doesn’t care about people at all. I think it's both. He never shows an interest in space that isn’t clearly bound up in its comparison to people, and he shows somehow even less regard for the people those stars represent. They’re at best playthings, and at worse, just a means to a repetitive, futile end.

It’s obvious that Utena’s the comet he has discovered, that no one else knows about. This is an unsubtle reference to ‘discovering’ Utena's virginity, and taking for himself the one piece of Utena that Anthy could not have ‘known about’ herself. Whether she wanted it or not is far less important than that it's something Akio was able to deny her. Right out of the gate, this is not nearly so much about his comet, as the person he's speaking to.

It is interesting though to consider if Akio is aware at all that Anthy's feelings for Utena could be romantic in nature. The choice of sex as a means to drive them apart does seem to speak to that, but it's also probably the move he'd make regardless of the nature of Utena and Anthy's relationship. Anthy's refusal to look at the ‘real’ stars Akio enjoys so much in the previous episode is framed rather like jealousy, but it's hard to say exactly for who or over what. Her reaction to this event is...complicated, despite her complicity implied by her assistance in “delivering the roses.” This is an especially eerie way to reference Akio's sleeping with Utena, given the bouquet, red and white roses mixed, follows them to the hotel room, sits on a chair, and is eventually is set in a vase. After all, the destination is already there. A similar bouquet is delivered to Akio’s office way back in episode 15, when he is first alone with Utena, suggesting Anthy’s awareness and involvement in Utena’s fate, including this rape, has been there from the start.

Having established this as a discussion about Utena, he goes on to say he isn’t going to tell anybody about this new comet, nor is he going to give it a name. A secret thing that’s yours because you found it… is no small power trip, and if he were talking about a comet, one could certainly imagine a few precious moments where the possession can be savored before the pleasure of sharing your discovery takes over. There is certainly some of this in how it pertains to Utena, but more pointedly this is an act of aggression. And this, the fact that comets aren’t stars, is why the mistake in translation literally destroys beyond repair this entire bit.

Comets are temporary visitors in the night sky, they flash brilliantly but ultimately will only be there for a little while before going on their way along a much larger orbit. (Ruka is another comet, shown coming down in the window in episode 28, then departing in 29.) Stars, for all intents and purposes, are fixed bodies. Things that reliably stay where you expect them to. They aren’t going anywhere.* Akio is reminding Anthy that Utena, sweet as she is, is a temporary visitor in their sky. She may shine brighter than most, but her path will eventually lead her away. Don’t get too attached, Anthy, to a thing that will soon disappear.

To Akio, there’s no point naming her. He only concerns himself with what's in his domain, and if she’s going to leave it anyway, she can do so namelessly. This is exactly what happens: the students forget her, struggling to recall her name not long after her departure. By refusing to name this comet, he’s rejecting her in advance of needing to do so, anticipating her departure, and planning her erasure. I’m not going to name her, because she isn’t going to be part of our world.

He goes on to say how wonderful and fun it is to discover a comet and then keep it to himself. No one finds comets if they don’t look for them, and if they’re looking for them, they’re doing so out of passion for the hunt. But he’s talking about Utena, making it about how much pleasure he takes in the hunt of innocence, and its subsequent destruction. Though certainly no excuse for his actions, this seems to me like it would be a satisfying preoccupation for the fallen prince, denied his former glory by the endless, fatal demands innocent princesses placed on him. Ohtori Academy could be read, cynically, as an elaborate mockery of a fairy tale world that he has created just to play out this story, over and over.

But what’s in the heavens is in the heavens. Or more simply “A comet is a comet.” On some level, Captain Obvious is aware of the nature of the coffin he lives in. He makes reference to the world outside and is to some limited extent in communication with it. He knows within his sphere, time is arrested. He knows, I think at varying levels of conscious awareness, that the world he’s the ends of is not the entirety of the earth. In this comment, he extends the temporality of Utena’s presence to not just being true for Anthy, but him as well. Utena will leave, and who will be left? Just the two of them, still together under the same sky, though their comet is no longer in it.

The comet belonging to no one is an elaboration of this point, and probably the closest Akio inadvertently gets to a moment of genuine self-awareness. The discovery of a comet makes him feel like it’s his...but it’s not. It’s a comet, and it will leave the sky they live under regardless of what either of them does to it.

He repeats this line again. It gnaws at him, because it strays too close to the subject of his own limitations. This started as a threat that he can ruin this creature Anthy’s grown fond of, and as he expanded the point, it became tinged with reassurance that Utena is a passing fling for both of them. But Akio, in a hurry to absolve himself of any real culpability, ends up admitting, certainly by accident, that Utena isn’t a passing fling because that’s what he’d prefer. Akio won’t keep her because Akio can’t keep her.

On some level, he is aware that his control is not absolute. This comet that has appeared is not his to keep, and while he may budge its trajectory to his own ends, ultimately...he can’t force it to do anything. He can’t force anyone to do anything. He can trick, cajole, coax...but his perception of his own capacity to control the world around him does not line up accurately with reality, and he knows this. Deep down.

Because while illusions may belong to him, reality belongs to no one…

Anthy leaves when she does knowing he’s been made vulnerable by his own contemplation. Not only does she not care to offer any comfort, she is ignoring both his empty threat and his hollow reassurance. After all this peacocking, and the dark place he inadvertently led himself, she tells him by her passivity that, oops, sorry. She wasn’t listening.

Must you still torment me?

Yes. Because I don’t belong to you, either.

The give and take of love and resentment in Akio and Anthy’s relationship reaches levels of toxicity that would make Chernobyl blush. They dance constantly around their codependency, swiping at one another, and then soothing each other in turn. “No one will ever know you as well as I know you.” becomes both a reassurance and a threat on their lips.

It’s Akio that does all the talking, and one could assume that’s usually the case, but Anthy wins this round by doing the one thing more dangerous to Akio than anything else: she ignores him. Hating him is a glue that binds her to him, and his rubbing her face in what he’s done to their young comet smacks of an attempt to reinforce that attachment, negative thought it is. As long as she’s wrapped up in her hatred and resentment of him, she’s not going to be able to move on. Their hostility to one another is heavy with that awareness on both sides: they both know the ‘love’ the other has for them depends on that hatred, and neither really believes it could mean anything any other way. Neither dares invest in the idea that they could be genuinely loved for their own sake, so neither tries.

A fair bit of Akio’s dialogue in the climax of the series also seems geared to elicit contempt from Anthy, seeking this bitterness as a validation of her attachment. There’s a bit of lip service to the idea of them loving one another, but the form that takes is a hostile one, and it’s that hostility Akio is trying to drag from Anthy now. Anthy, knowing why he’s doing it and what he hopes to achieve, denies him...and enjoys it. After all, it’s how she swipes at him in turn, by reminding him that her veneer of compliance, her passivity as the Rose Bride, is a weapon she can aim just as readily at him. And he sees every day what it does to others, just as she’s made to watch what he does to their makeshift prince.

Akio’s seduction of Utena is a military action ending a cold war, and this scene is our first glimpse at what open hostility between these powers looks like. The Akio Arc and the Apocalypse Arc are not a distinction officially made by the series creators, but the presence of a ‘recap’ episode implies it, and the shift from one story arc to the next marks a gross change in the tone of Akio and Anthy’s relationship past any capacity either may have to salvage it. Akio is clearly aware what he has done angers Anthy, but he misjudges the severity of her reaction, having let himself be pretty much blind up to this moment to the distance Utena is putting between them.

But...why does he change terms? Why not just continue using the term that appropriately describes the subject? Well, I used to think this was done because it sounds better or something, and that certainly could be the case. However, it also creates a double entendre that isn’t exactly necessary to the point, but certainly enriches it. Hoshi is ‘celestial body’, hoshii, with the extended vowel, is ‘want.’ They do absolutely sound different in Japanese, however, they don’t sound so different that a Japanese speaker wouldn’t notice their similarity. Consider this:

I discovered something interesting earlier. It’s new. Something that no one else knows about yet. But I won’t tell anyone else about it. I won’t even name it. It’s amazing… The feeling of discovering something new to want. You feel as though doing that makes it your own. But...I want what I want. Though what I want belongs to no one.

Reworded to this, his speech doesn’t radically change in meaning. He’s still gloating about a thing he’s found and enjoyed, and he’s still eventually tripping over an awareness that he can’t keep it. The flavor of it changes though, it sounds far more world-weary, like someone aware of how infrequently a new thing to interest them comes along. That novelty is rare, and Akio, selfish creature that he is, would make it belong to him if he could. He can’t, though...and why is that?

Perhaps he’s aware that the very act of possessing this comet ruins what he likes about it. Under any condition where Utena becomes his possession, she stops being the innocent, spirited little prince he’s having such fun playing with. He knows possessing her would destroy what he enjoyed in the first place. This is a conundrum he shares with his ‘competitor,’ Touga. This interest, this distraction, is one that is entirely impossible for Akio to keep. It will elude him, and the satisfaction he feels at the destruction of a noble thing will be fleeting, leaving him only with the wreckage of Anthy’s anger, and none of the pleasure he feels now.

This is absolutely not to say I think Akio is remotely in love with Utena. I actually kind of had a hard time typing that sentence even. He enjoys the pursuit, perhaps, but more importantly, Akio lives to bring others down to his level. If everyone else turns out to be total garbage, it validates his decision to take the easy way out. To be garbage himself. Utena interests and pleases him so because she has that much farther to fall, and he appears, against his better interests given Anthy’s reaction, compelled to push her. But if Dios’ fundamental ambition was to save others, it seems reasonable to assume Akio’s is the opposite--he’s compelled to destroy what innocence crosses his path, and whether that is out of the programming inflicted on him by his very nature as a living archetype, or whether that’s a retaliation against others for the wounds he perceives have been inflicted on him and what’s his, meaning Anthy...I suppose depends on your reading of what exactly he and Anthy are. The former has been used in the past to frame Akio as unable to help himself any more than Dios does. I’ve never really liked that reading, because it removes the burden of responsibility he has for his actions by removing his agency in deciding what he does or doesn’t do. That just feels cheap to me, utterly out of line with the richness and complexity to be found literally everywhere in the series.

I think the world Akio and Anthy inhabit, that they’ve created for themselves, is such a dark place because both of them feel most comfortable there. Akio lashes out madly in hostility toward literally everyone that crosses his path, and though it is smoothed over and made attractive by his methods, the fact remains that Akio structures everything around him to service this ambition. He misleads, hurts, and ruins others, and does so with the point of view that he has a right to this. (‘Foolish mortal’ is translated this way because the word he uses, ikimono, literally implies like...minimal sentience.) The vengeance he takes on the world seems almost an addiction at this point, one he indulges to his own detriment as Anthy’s approval shifts from irritation to far beyond tolerance.

This moment of reflection, where he admits, albeit briefly, that the toys he plays with aren’t his own, is one of very few moments in the series where you could even attempt to read his behavior as self-aware or something he struggles with. It suggests on some level Akio is aware that the world at large buzzes about without him, and that his petty tortures are ultimately meaningless, either as a means to real satisfaction, or as revenge for a wrong as great as the one inflicted on him. People are not his in the end, and they are capable of walking away from a garden he cannot. This is an interesting insight for him to have at the beginning of such open hostilities between him and his sister. What has been obvious to us as viewers for a very long time is starting, maybe, to sink through to him: Anthy is capable of leaving him. Not threatening. Not using the distance as a bludgeon...but actually leaving.

If Akio could be capable of regret for his actions, this would be a moment for him to be so. He begins by gloating, but ends this dialogue aware that something went wrong with this particular ‘discovery’...and his greed for its destruction, his selfishness, and his resentment toward all things innocent and pure are all little satellites orbiting what I think is the biggest insight Akio risks having here. Akio is not entirely sure what he just did to this girl will be without consequences. That he might have gone a bit too far, a bit too late, and left himself with an Anthy he can’t be nearly so sure of anymore.

The open hostility between the siblings from this point forward stems from that spiraling trust he has in his grip on what, so far as he believes, sustains him. The game played now aims as much to sever Anthy from her attachment to this little creature as it does to creating a prince out of her. Akio is starting to be afraid.

Thanks for reading, if your crazy ass got this far! I know Akio isn’t exactly the hot topic everyone loves to talk about, but I find him uniquely compelling for all the reasons we don’t want to talk about him, and if any of this was interesting to you, I’ll be glad of it! :D As always, any feedback or whathaveyou is welcome. If you need some seriousness bleach, here, have a stupid picture:

PS. Happy birthday, Akio! Sorry about the long essay totally ripping into your weaknesses and calling you a scared little man.

* Akio pointing out Venus (‘the morning star’) as a comparison to himself earlier in the series is especially rich given this entire framing device. Venus, like the other planets, masquerades as a star, and you can’t really tell the difference without a telescope. However, unlike the fixed stars, it moves about freely in the night sky, appearing to be one thing while behaving in another way. Just as Akio appears to be the Trustee Chairman of the Board, but moves about across his sky as Ends of the World. Just as he appears one of us, he is something altogether different, and altogether closer than we realize.

#SKU #RGU #Shoujo Kakumei Utena #Revolutionary Girl Utena #Anthy #Anthy Himemiya #Akio #Akio Ohtori #Analysis #Meta #Discussion #cw: abuse #cw: incest #cw: akio existing #cw: nerdy fucking space shit again

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