Bagheera wrote:Touga's a poseur, a lackey, and a wuss. At least Asuka failed on her own terms.
Asuka is also a huge poseur and often a wuss, although she counteracts her emotional cowardice with a certain amount of suicidal elan; she may not be a lackey, but she's enough of an ass-kisser to Kaji that one feels that this is more due to Kaji doing his own work than any achievement of hers.
The difference between the two characters is that
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Touga ultimately resigns himself to his own pathetically human nature and chooses to give up his hopes of princeliness, pursuing a relatively normal life with Saionji - the price he decides he has to pay for failing so many times to take Utena's power for himself
Tosh. Adulthood is power, something which is unambiguous in both shows: the difference is that SKU chooses to indulge some degree of foolish/childish heroism (as a greater power, that is), while NGE values survival over purity. To Asuka, adulthood is specifically the power to be free of her humiliating and miserable life. Her yuu aa nanba waan delusions are a defense mechanism she has built up to elevate herself from the shitheap: a synthetic adulthood, if you like, to give her the power her age does not. After it fails her, she is still entirely willing to jump to other delusions ("mommy will always love you") for protection.
I meant Kaji. Although something of an argument could be made that Akio is not exactly an antagonist, since
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after all he did as much to help Utena as harm her, and ultimately they're one archetype fighting within itself anyway - much like how it's difficult to unambiguously identify Gendou as the antagonist of NGE. The clearest thing Utena has to a genuine external threat to the protagonist is Anthy (and, intermittently, Touga).
I missed her.
