That force is, to put it simply, a joke—a pet project for the royal family, without the technology to actually get a man into space, and secure in the knowledge that it won’t happen anytime soon. They still test the technology, though, using human subjects—and those subjects often die. The members of the Royal Space Force do little except attend funerals for their own.
Our first view of Shiro Lhadatt is at one of those funerals. He arrives late and out of uniform, apparently still recovering from a night on the town and general dissatisfaction with the life he leads. These opening minutes with the Force establish what life on Honneamise is like. It’s an elaborate example of “world-building,” one that many have commented on. But to focus on this depiction of a planet and its civilization is to miss the point. The artifacts and technology of a new locale aren’t important in themselves; they’re just tourism. What matters to an audience are the people who live in this place: who are they, are their problems like ours, what can we learn from watching them? Popular culture, after all, has never been merely an exercise in world-building, whatever the culture. Bilbo Baggins isn’t memorable because he’s a hobbit, but because of the trials he faces in his travels.
In the Royal Space Force, Shiro doesn’t have a life with much to offer: abusive training by day and haunting the pleasure quarter by night. One night, though, he sees something absolutely out of place in the quarter: a woman standing on a corner, preaching to the passers-by about the love of God. Shiro wouldn’t have listened to her any more than the others, but she thrusts a leaflet into his hand.
He finds the leaflet the next morning when he wakes up back at the barracks—having stumbled into the bed of the dead soldier. It’s a very bad omen to sleep in a dead man’s bed, but it’s also a symbolic rebirth, prompting Shiro to ride the trolley to the end of the line, where the leaflet said a religious meeting would be held. Shiro finds that he’s the only one at the “meeting,” at the home of the woman preacher, Riqinni. She lives with Mana, a child who could safely be called repellent. This surly and uncommunicative girl-child, adopted by Riqinni, is the opposite of the kawaii (“cute”) children usually seen in anime.
Shiro has dinner with Riqinni and Mana. In talking about the Royal Space Force to someone outside the military, for the first time Shiro sees in someone else’s face the excitement such exploration can raise. It excites him as well, and he goes from being just another slacker to volunteering for the first manned launch into space. This makes him not only a media figure to promote the Royal Space Force, but also a target for those opposed to the space program. To complicate matters, the head of the force announces that their space -vehicle will be a “warship,” which has the effect of accelerating the push to develop space-ready technology.
While Shiro trains, forces are at work around him that threaten to sabotage the launch. The project has become so expensive that only the royal family, in a sweetheart deal with an auto manufacturer, can come up with the money to continue. Money is diverted from other projects, to the point that anti-monarchy radicals are gaining more and more support. Meanwhile, the Army has decided that the launch serves no useful military purpose, so it creates a purpose: the launch site is moved to the very border of a hostile neighboring state. The Army wants the launch to serve as a provocation, tempting the other country to invade.
Things are also shaky on a personal level for Shiro. The house where Riqinni and Mana live used to belong to Riqinni’s aunt. So much money is owed that the electric company bulldozes the house, while all Riqinni can think to do is pray. Her absolute faith hasn’t taught her much about dealing with the real world.
One rainy day, Shiro goes to visit Riqinni, who now lives with Mana in a small warehouse and does farmwork by day. As she changes out of her wet clothes, Shiro’s old habits reassert themselves and he tries to rape Riqinni. She knocks him unconscious. The next day, she apologizes to him, taking the blame for his attack on her. This adherence to her religion shakes Shiro to the point that he starts going back to the pleasure quarter to hand out leaflets with her.
Launch day coincides with an invasion of Honneamise by the neighboring republic. After all that’s happened, it’s almost anticlimactic that the rocket successfully puts Shiro into orbit. Although the Defense Ministry had written him a speech he was trying to memorize as the first words from space, he abandons that speech for a passage from Riqinni’s holy book, and a message that mankind (on that planet, at least) has no reason for war, because there are no borders.
What follows is a montage that is in part a tribute to Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The audience sees a series of impressionistic images, suggesting that Shiro’s life is passing before his eyes (we see him as a child reflected in a window). This is followed by yet another montage: the growth of a planet’s civilization, from primitive cavemen through to industrialization and flight. The last image we see, before the credits, is of Shiro’s capsule orbiting the planet.
What happens to him after that? Marc Marshall’s review of the film says that Shiro successfully returns to the planet, and that this is confirmed both by writer/director Yamaga and by the production-sketch montage under the closing credits.8 Except that the sketches are very rough, and don’t clearly show any such thing. If anything, there’s a scene in the movie that confirms Shiro’s true fate. After the launch, we cut to the pleasure quarter, where Riqinni is again trying to hand out leaflets, being ignored as usual. A single snowflake falls and melts on her outstretched leaflet. She looks up at the other falling snowflakes. Perhaps she alone is looking past them, knowing that Shiro is up there.
Like Tora-san, Shiro’s hopes for a family life amounted to nothing. Professionally, he succeeded beyond his childhood dreams—whether or not it cost him his life.
1. See The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1979).
2. As with so much else in Japanese, this is a pun, and a particularly delightful one. Daicon can be short for “big convention,” but a daikon is a white radish.
3. Helen McCarthy, The Anime Movie Guide (Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press, 1996), p. 58.
4. The Gainax website declares that this film “destroyed the entire concept of animation as just for kids.” It thereby conveniently overlooked such sophisticated classics as Galaxy Express 999 (directed by Taro Rin, based on a manga by Reiji Matsumoto), Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki), Windaria (see the previous chapter), Project A-ko, Barefoot Gen, Night Train to the Stars, and Dr. Osamu Tezuka’s Hi no Tori 2772. If The Wings of Honnêamise destroyed anime as a kids-only medium, the target was already pretty weak.
5. Ian Buruma, Behind the Mask: On Sexual Demons, Sacred Mothers, Transvestites, Gangsters, and Other Japanese Cultural Heroes (New York: Meridian, 1984), 209.
6. From Tokyo Classified (http://www.tokyoclassified.com/biginjapanarchive249/241/biginja-paninc.htm).
7. Donald Richie, “It’s Tough Being a Beloved Man: Kiyoshi Atsumi, 1928–1996,” Time International 148 (8), August 19, 1996. Available at http://www.time.com/time/internation-al/1996/960819/appreciation.html.
8. http://animeworld.com/reviews/honneamise.html.
Utena: Giri/Ninjo and the Triumph of Conservatism in Pop Culture
Sometimes it takes an upside-down school to point out how to do the right thing. One girl versus the End of the World, and class is about to begin.
At the risk of being a spoiler, I will defend revealing the outcome of the highly stylized, eccentrically symbolic 1997 TV series Shojo Kakumei Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena) created by the team known as Be Papas.1 My defense is to point to T. S. Eliot’s line: “In my beginning is my end.” Utena’s fate should come as no surprise—perhaps a shock but not a surprise. Her fate was foretold in the very opening of the first episode.
A Fateful Duel
The TV story (there’s also a manga story and a feature film, all somewhat different from each other) takes place at the Otori Private Academy.2 It’
s a vaguely European boarding school, with classes ranging from middle through high school. There’s a secret, though, tucked away in the back: a surreal-looking arena where fencing matches are held to determine the “engagement” of the Rose Bride, the dark-skinned and childlike Anthy Himemiya. The elaborate game is at the behest of whoever is sending dispatches signed “End of the World” to members of the Student Council; someone whom no one ever sees (echoes of Franz Kafka).
Utena Tenjo doesn’t enter this closed society; she’s already in it, although marginalized. She’s in the middle school, an aggressive athlete but an average student. Her one standout trait is wearing a modified boy’s school uniform (however, none of the boys seem to wear the red bicycle pants she favors). Her choice of apparel goes back to the time her parents died. A handsome prince (are there stories with princes who aren’t handsome?) praised her fortitude, then gave her a ring inscribed with a rose. She decided that the way to emulate and honor this prince was to dress and act like a prince. Years later, once she’s in Otori Academy, she notices that roses are the dominant motif.
While watching Anthy tend the roses in the academy gazebo, Utena takes a fateful step. As the story opens, Anthy is “engaged” to the school’s kendo champion, high-school student and Student Council vice-president Kyoichi Saionji. Saionji, however, is no gentleman, and Utena sees him slapping Anthy around. (We earlier saw the cad take a love letter sent to him by an admiring girl and post it on a bulletin board for him and his friends to mock.) Unable to hold back, Utena challenges him to a duel. She expects it will just be a little one-on-one in the kendo hall, but instead she is told to meet Saionji in the mysterious fencing arena.
This isn’t your usual duel. Saionji takes his weapon from Anthy, literally: she goes into a trance, and the handle of a saber pops out of her chest. Saionji draws the saber out of Anthy’s body without harming her. (At this point, one wonders why Anthy, who seems to possess supernatural powers, is so submissive. The answer must wait until later.) Utena would seem to be outclassed: Saionji is older and more experienced, while Utena is armed with a piece of wood. However, she not only wins the match, but the “hand” of Anthy.
The Coed Who Knew Too Little
Why was she allowed to battle for possession of Anthy? It was all a mistake. “End of the World” had warned the Student Council that a new duelist was coming to carry on the plan “to bring the world revolution.” Everyone presumed that Utena was the new challenger and ended up involving Utena in a game she didn’t even know she was playing. This sets the wheels of tragedy in motion.
In this respect, there’s a very clear Western model for what takes place in Utena: the classic films of Alfred Hitchcock. We have an outsider whose actions open the door to a parallel world, unguessed-at until then. This certainly describes Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window, Vertigo, and the remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much; Sean Connery in Marnie; Tippi Hedrin in The Birds; and especially Janet Leigh in Psycho. All of these characters take a small (and occasionally illegal, or at least unconventional) step off their accustomed paths, which leads them onto strange and even horrific new paths, often with disturbingly kinky sexual overtones. At the end of the path, someone is dead.3 A Japanese audience would have realized that something else was happening at this school: the constant head-on collision between giri and ninjo, between social obligation and personal desire. Personal desire seems to be winning, but also warping the student body.
The Confucian ideal underlying Japanese society, after all, is built on putting giri before ninjo. Deny one’s social obligations, putting ego first, and the foundations of civility start to crumble; neglect your obligations and you lose face. To the extent that pop culture is inherently conservative and ratifies the culture’s most common shared values rather than advocating anything avant-garde, the bottom line of this story will be that the students in the hothouse, “self-indulgent” (as one student describes it) atmosphere of Otori Academy ignore their responsibility and indulge their private passions at their own risk. They may meet the destined end of a phoenix and burn up, but may not be able to rise out of the ashes again.
In Utena’s case, the viewer gets a clue early on that she’s neglecting her destiny. From the beginning, we hear of her meeting the prince as a child and wishing to imitate him. However, what we hear is a child’s version of what happened; this is clear in the original Japanese dialogue, in which the tale is told with a child’s voice rather than that (in the English dub) of Utena the teenager. Yet Saionji recalls the encounter differently. He and Toga Kiryu, the Student Council president, were traveling together (we find out later that they were accompanied by Akio, the real villain of the piece) when they found a young girl hiding in a coffin. Toga eventually tempted her out.
Remember the Kojiki? The story of Amaterasu in the cave has just reappeared in a surprising guise. It reminds the viewer that Utena was never destined to be a prince. If anything, she should be a princess, if not a goddess. If she were more aware, she would follow her destiny rather than her personal wishes. Once again, we see someone who is headed for disaster because she doesn’t get it.
Student Bodies
Almost everyone at this school gets caught in this duty-versus-desire bind, and revealed in a light that’s not at all flattering. Miki, the youngest Student Council member and a talented pianist and mathematician, is so obsessed over having played piano duets with his sister (that’s all they did, but Miki’s obsession borders on the incestuous) that he doesn’t even recognize her lack of talent. His sister, meanwhile, seems to be one student among many being debauched by Toga Kiryu. For a time he’s “engaged” to Anthy, having beaten Utena in a duel to claim her, yet he flirts with other girls while his Rose Bride “fiancée” is in the same room. Kiryu seems to take his loss to Utena in their rematch in episode thirteen the hardest; he’s shown in the Student Council chambers, listening over and over to a recording of a message from “End of the World.” His sister, Nanami, is out primarily to make a name for herself, even at the expense of others. Juri Arisugawa, the best fencer at Otori, lost her yasashii spirit some time earlier when her friend Shiori stole the boy they both liked, making Juri the odd one out in a romantic triangle.4 And we’ve already seen Saionji in action.
Because “End of the World” has said that whoever is “engaged” to the Rose Bride must defeat all challengers in order to bring the world revolution, Utena fights all of the above before the series is a third over. The two duels against Kiryu are the most interesting. Utena loses the first duel because Kiryu plays the psychological card, suggesting to Utena that he was the prince who visited her as a child and gave her the ring with the rose crest. (In fact, he was, as Saionji’s recollection confirms.) Unable to defeat the person she wanted to emulate for so long in the arena, Utena loses her aggressive, princely personality and gives up trying to do much of anything in the academy, and even begins to wear a girl’s school uniform. Of all people, it took some tough love from Utena’s pesky friend Wakaba (the one who was always declaring her love for Utena), and the sight of Kiryu’s swinish behavior toward Anthy, to awaken Utena for a rematch.
At first it doesn’t seem like a good idea. Kiryu reveals another hidden power in the Rose Bride by telling Anthy to transfer the Power of Dios from herself to his sword. She does so by kneeling and kissing the blade in the closest simulation of fellatio possible on broadcast television. The glowing sword breaks Utena’s blade. Her resistance, however, actually extinguishes Kiryu’s blade, and she wins back possession of the Rose Bride.
The most interesting part of the duel is Anthy’s reaction to Utena’s rally. Anthy recalls to herself that this is like “that time”—and a tear falls down her cheek. Anthy continually gets slapped, shoved around, and humiliated, but there was no such provocation for this tear. It is a reaction to a past memory and a dread of the future. In Utena’s beginning is Utena’s end, and the Rose Bride knows it.
The Bride Who Knew Too Much
Of the two leading charact
ers in this thirty-nine-episode series, Utena is probably the most straightforward. Her roots are clear: she’s a direct descendant of Princess Sapphire, the sword-wielding cross-dressing princess in Dr. Tezuka’s Princess Knight and of Oscar de Jarjayes, the sword-wielding cross-dressing noblewoman in Ryoko Ikeda’s Rose of Versailles. Both of them had clear missions: to rescue damsels in distress (even if Princess Sapphire’s main mission was to rescue herself and her mother).
On the other hand, Anthy Himemiya clearly fits the bill of a damsel in distress. She’s slapped by Saionji, mistreated by Toga Kiryu, taunted by Nanami Kiryu, and befriended by only one person: Utena, who blunders into the academy’s hidden world of secret duels and “End of the World.” Yet we also know that a mystical power of sorts resides within Anthy. You would think she could take care of herself.
At one point she could, but that was before she too succumbed to the Otori affliction of placing ninjo over giri. Like a number of others (Miki and his sister, Nanami and her brother), Anthy gave in to feelings toward her own brother that bordered on the incestuous. We don’t see this brother, Akio, until the thirteenth episode, and the information about him and Anthy comes in bits and pieces (often in symbolic pieces that need decoding) right up to the end, when we finally realize what has been going on. Anthy’s status as perpetual victim is not that of a good person misused by evil people; Anthy herself committed an unforgivable act, and was living out her punishment when Utena came along.
In the mixed-up world of Otori Academy, symbolized by a castle hanging upside-down above the dueling arena, princes are supposed to save princesses, but can’t. Akio, one such prince, has been prevented by his sister Anthy from rescuing any more princesses. Although her motives were at worst mixed (she was concerned for his health, but perhaps also demanded his attention), she ended up trapping only his yasashii spirit, leaving behind a manipulative, lascivious, and very powerful monster for a brother. For this she suffers, only to be rescued by Utena.
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