Yesss I love Touga! I heard somewhere (maybe someone was referencing the manga?) that Touga grew his hair long to make himself more attractive to his predatory stepdad, thus protecting Nanami. That may be him jumping into the river to save the drowning girl, him becoming traumatised and thus ‚like a ghost‘ himself. I wonder if sleeping with Akio is him trying to do that for Utena.
Touga has certainly led a f****d up life! Let's keep supporting him! That's a really interesting theory! I didn't talk at all about Touga's relationship with Nanami in this video (which is certainly a large part of his personality), so hope to touch on that in future videos. Thanks for the comment!
I didn't think of it as him trying to protect Utena, not until the last episodes, when he tried to defeat her in a duel so he'd go in her place, and when I first watched it I kinda got the impression that the last "photoshoot" with Touga, Saionji and Akio was those two trying to gather information from him, but I'm not sure
I think all the characters are incredibly three dimensional and deep, but Touga is definitely one of my favourites in the sense of that I find him so interesting and makes me think so much.
Your take on the scene with Shiori in the film is really interesting, ill have to think on it. I've previously thought of it as her being another predatory figure, like Touga's adoptive father. One think i like about Touga's role in the series is that he's (from the outside) perfectly living up to the Prince ideal, and yet he's still unhappy and unfulfilled. Ive always liked that RGU's feminist perspective is that we all suffer from regressive gender roles, even people that live up to the masculine ideal
Hey welcome back! I love your Utena breakdowns. It's crazy how over 2 decades after the original show aired we can still have ongoing meaningful discussions about it. Thanks for your analysis. It's very well-constructed and goes nicely with the prior ones. I hope we get to see more!
Quite insightful he's certainly one of the most complex characters in the show! I feel his manga portrayal as a full-on good guy by the end did shine through his characterization in both the movie and anime! The boy drowning motif was associated with Ruka in the anime I think and in the manga it fully replaced Utena backstory with the boy saving Utena from drowning either being Dios or a mysterious boy who drowned but it is more implied than anything else. It does relate to Touga trying and failing to help Utena in the coffin in the anime. It was an actual gut punch seeing Touga being cast as this character in the movie it really shined a new light on what he is supposed to represent, he really jumps from archetype to archetype depending on the source material you take and it feels like you can only get a full picture of this character by going through everything. I actually dyed up my hair like his manga counterpart which is his most unambiguous positive portrayal. Also thanks for the recipes!
I fully agree with everything you said here. I love when people think critically about Touga rather than hating him for the surface-level stuff. Thank you for the video! I hope the spaghetti was delicious.
y'know, I came here expecting some deep symbolic analysis of Touga, and found instead the somber personality examination of him to tug on my heartstrings... and then the cooking segment was a hard swerve! Very good stuff, I loved this.
In my opinion Touga was dead the whole time the whole series, when he drowned in that princely manner Akio recruited him, offered him living like a living corpse in his world and try to be prince. Once Akio is dead, the power which kept Touga alive is gone, but also in a parallel way Touga is also ready to let go, move on, not be a prince. It’s funny how much of a prince narrative there is in the series, not so much in the movie. I see the movie as a continuation of the series. Looking forward to learning how you understand the movie. This was very interesting, thank you
you're back! was already happy to see you'd uploaded a new video, but doubly so when i realised it was about touga. he's one of my personal favourites from the series and i really think you did him justice in this video. his essence was certainly captured. loved the outro to this one as well, and i'm very excited for whatever you next upload whenever that might be (movie analysis has me especially intrigued after you touched on it briefly!). thanks for another great video :)
Thank you so much!! It's you guys that makes me want to keep making these videos! I hope to upload again soon! If I don't please know it's just 'cause I'm struggling in my own life lol
It's so annoying that people will baby and apologize on behalf of characters like shiori but flatten and shit on characters like touga tbh it's a big problemo in the utena fandom
@@wormwoodcocktail I wanna meet those people too cause everyone I see talking about her either calls her vile or telling her to go screw herself😂 (or occasionally say that she's suffering from internalized hate but the vile comments are still right behind any sort of defense)
@@wormwoodcocktail Seriously! No wonder ppl were saying that she has internalized homophobia. Juri can barely breathe and shiori would have the knives out, my gosh man.
@@cycymaca Like, I suppose the conceit of her character is that she likes Juri, feels inferior to her, and this preemptively rejects her to maintain power. It makes sense that way, but I’d be lying if I said I found her sympathetic.
Thank you so much for an explanation about the Shiori moth scene, first of all. I used to tell people that i thought it was about people like Shiori enabling that kind of abuse by willful ignorance, but i like your idea that Touga's abuse runs so deep that it's stronger than the reality he experiences better. I honestly think the series does a shit job at characteristizing Touga (i often tell people that it feels like Ikuhara forgot he was making a teenage romance story with Utena and Touga after the first arc, and then hurriedly tied that up when he remembered near the end of the show), but the movie did so much for him. I like your idea about Touga wishing for self-sacrifice in the service of something that would make his death "worth it," because i think that's a common depression fantasy for a lot of emotionally repressed males. Thanks again for the video, you always do great work and i enjoyed thinking about your ideas. Until next time :) EDIT: Also! If youre taking suggestions, i love Ruka's character and would love your take on him and Juri. I see him as a lens focused on Utena's character, maybe like a vision of what Utena could have been for Anthy.
With regards to the series I read somewhere that his voice actor wasn't available during the entire Black Rose Arc which is why they had to write him out of the story for a bit. So it's not entirely their fault, just up to circumstances. (I kind of wonder what the show would be like if that never happened.)
That was super interesting, thank you for sharing your thoughts ! Utena is an anime that weirdly enough, I enjoy taking apart almost more than I enjoyed watching. I hated Touga on my first watch, but now I feel like I'm starting to understand the character better. It's crazy to find out how every character is a victim of Akio's system in the end.
Amaziinnnggg video! Loved how in depht you went into analyzing Tougas character. I think his manga counterpart only adds to his character, what with him practically being a tritagonist by the end of the manga. Another character I'd love to see covered would be Chigusa. She's one of my favorite Utena characters, but barely anyone talks about her since she's relegated to the game. Her identifying outside the princess/witch dichotomy is so interesting. In a way , she's Juri, Mikage and Touga all wrapped up into one deliciously conplex package.
Thank you for covering Touga, as much as i agree he was being a piece of shit, it was also self sacrificial if we view it through idealists lenses. Even worse so if both universes (movie and anime) he goes through same sht. He truly is side character with main character traits.
Strange that I never gave Touga much thought, guess i was too bogged down trying to figure out Anthy - does she symbolise Women as a whole as say the biblical Eve does? And Akio is Adam (Kadmos)? Anyway good video, got me thinking, Touga really did his share of evil deeds on the show, but we do see him try something different over time. I still hated Nanami more, plainly for displaying such gleeful bourgeois supremacy (I'm basically a peasant), but they are all very wrong and evil at one point or another, most of all Anthy. But if they all had a repentence and forgiveness arc like Zuko in Avatar, no number of episodes would have been enough.
Don't get down too much on Nanami, we are all just playing with the hand of cards dealt to us in the first place!! But this life is a maze where we are all just searching for some sort of exit (whether we know it or not). Haven't gone too far down the Greek mythology rabbit-hole yet (which is certainly relevant to Utena), but recently I've been thinking more about Anthy in terms of how she could be seen as a part of Utena's personality. Particularly the contrast in the skin color of Utena and Anthy (are Anthy and Akio supposed to be of some Indian ethnicity??), especially considering how Utena is portrayed as jet-black in all the flashback sequences, makes me think about how Anthy could be representative of a part of Utena's personality, say the anima or perhaps self if we're talking in Jungian terms. To be honest, I actually haven't done a solid rewatch of the show recently, so I hope my thoughts in this video are in line with the events and flow of the show. But stay tuned for new vids! I'd also like to make some videos about Mawaru Penguin Drum (also by Ikuhara), in case that's a show you're also familiar with. Thanks for all the support!!
@@m1nkey Oh Penguindrum, watched it only once, there's definitely stuff there, the doctor is a next iteration Akio, and there's a little girl who is simply Utena, or so I thought then, but I really can't be sure. I remember how Ikuhara originally wanted to use guns in place of swords for Utena and I was so happy he didn't, swords just make so much more sense to me, and behold, Penguindrum has guns. Haven's seen the Re:cycle either. But let me give you my take on Anthy: european fairy tales are a big part of Utena, and there the black skin colour simply indicates the Devil, specifically the black of soot as Hell is fiery. But our mystical siblings are merely brown, not black, and Anthy does wear a bindi on her forehead, so it points to India, as per shoujo media giving emphasis to the exotic and foreign, such as Europe and the Near East. Likewise Utena is black in the flashbacks in the manner of these 19th century silhouettes, to add to the confusion. Everything is deliberately vague to let you see what you want, acting as a litmus test of sorts if you can use it. For a long time I saw no wrong in Miki and now i feel a bit troubled by that. Maybe Anthy and Akio are to be seen as shadows? And at what point does using skin colour for symbolism start being racist? Always finding new questions in Utena!
Some anime fans, myself included, have noted that Touga's character design is just a recoloured version of Allen Schezar from Vision of Escaflowne, which debuted 1-2 years before Utena. Do you think Touga is a parody of Allen Schezar?
![Mangaka Reiji Yamada discusses the background of Utena and its creator, Kunihiko Ikuhara [Eng sub]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/MIxz7uIToAE/mqdefault.jpg)
Yesss I love Touga! I heard somewhere (maybe someone was referencing the manga?) that Touga grew his hair long to make himself more attractive to his predatory stepdad, thus protecting Nanami. That may be him jumping into the river to save the drowning girl, him becoming traumatised and thus ‚like a ghost‘ himself. I wonder if sleeping with Akio is him trying to do that for Utena.
Touga has certainly led a f****d up life! Let's keep supporting him! That's a really interesting theory! I didn't talk at all about Touga's relationship with Nanami in this video (which is certainly a large part of his personality), so hope to touch on that in future videos. Thanks for the comment!
I think that's from commentary from Enokido, not the manga (though I haven't read it so maybe it is mentioned there too)
That sounds right, thanks!
@@xanecho
I didn't think of it as him trying to protect Utena, not until the last episodes, when he tried to defeat her in a duel so he'd go in her place, and when I first watched it I kinda got the impression that the last "photoshoot" with Touga, Saionji and Akio was those two trying to gather information from him, but I'm not sure
I think all the characters are incredibly three dimensional and deep, but Touga is definitely one of my favourites in the sense of that I find him so interesting and makes me think so much.
Your take on the scene with Shiori in the film is really interesting, ill have to think on it. I've previously thought of it as her being another predatory figure, like Touga's adoptive father.
One think i like about Touga's role in the series is that he's (from the outside) perfectly living up to the Prince ideal, and yet he's still unhappy and unfulfilled. Ive always liked that RGU's feminist perspective is that we all suffer from regressive gender roles, even people that live up to the masculine ideal
Hey welcome back! I love your Utena breakdowns. It's crazy how over 2 decades after the original show aired we can still have ongoing meaningful discussions about it. Thanks for your analysis. It's very well-constructed and goes nicely with the prior ones. I hope we get to see more!
Thanks!! I'm sorry for the huge gap. Utena is always relevant!! Let's keep digging even deeper!
@@m1nkey as a fellow slow-working artist, don't worry about that at all (which if you're like me is easier to say than do).
Quite insightful he's certainly one of the most complex characters in the show! I feel his manga portrayal as a full-on good guy by the end did shine through his characterization in both the movie and anime! The boy drowning motif was associated with Ruka in the anime I think and in the manga it fully replaced Utena backstory with the boy saving Utena from drowning either being Dios or a mysterious boy who drowned but it is more implied than anything else. It does relate to Touga trying and failing to help Utena in the coffin in the anime. It was an actual gut punch seeing Touga being cast as this character in the movie it really shined a new light on what he is supposed to represent, he really jumps from archetype to archetype depending on the source material you take and it feels like you can only get a full picture of this character by going through everything. I actually dyed up my hair like his manga counterpart which is his most unambiguous positive portrayal. Also thanks for the recipes!
I fully agree with everything you said here. I love when people think critically about Touga rather than hating him for the surface-level stuff. Thank you for the video! I hope the spaghetti was delicious.
y'know, I came here expecting some deep symbolic analysis of Touga, and found instead the somber personality examination of him to tug on my heartstrings... and then the cooking segment was a hard swerve! Very good stuff, I loved this.
In my opinion Touga was dead the whole time the whole series, when he drowned in that princely manner Akio recruited him, offered him living like a living corpse in his world and try to be prince. Once Akio is dead, the power which kept Touga alive is gone, but also in a parallel way Touga is also ready to let go, move on, not be a prince. It’s funny how much of a prince narrative there is in the series, not so much in the movie. I see the movie as a continuation of the series.
Looking forward to learning how you understand the movie. This was very interesting, thank you
Cool theory! Maybe winning the duel would bring him back to life
you're back! was already happy to see you'd uploaded a new video, but doubly so when i realised it was about touga. he's one of my personal favourites from the series and i really think you did him justice in this video. his essence was certainly captured. loved the outro to this one as well, and i'm very excited for whatever you next upload whenever that might be (movie analysis has me especially intrigued after you touched on it briefly!). thanks for another great video :)
Thank you so much!! It's you guys that makes me want to keep making these videos! I hope to upload again soon! If I don't please know it's just 'cause I'm struggling in my own life lol
It's so annoying that people will baby and apologize on behalf of characters like shiori but flatten and shit on characters like touga tbh it's a big problemo in the utena fandom
How do people defend Shiori????
@@wormwoodcocktail I wanna meet those people too cause everyone I see talking about her either calls her vile or telling her to go screw herself😂 (or occasionally say that she's suffering from internalized hate but the vile comments are still right behind any sort of defense)
@@cycymaca I guess Ikuhara said in a commentary that she canonically likes Juri, but her actions are so counterintuitive.
@@wormwoodcocktail Seriously!
No wonder ppl were saying that she has internalized homophobia.
Juri can barely breathe and shiori would have the knives out, my gosh man.
@@cycymaca Like, I suppose the conceit of her character is that she likes Juri, feels inferior to her, and this preemptively rejects her to maintain power. It makes sense that way, but I’d be lying if I said I found her sympathetic.
I love your explanation and deep dive into Touga's character. I'm glad that I've found your channel since Utena content is pretty scarce. Thank you!
Thank you so much for an explanation about the Shiori moth scene, first of all. I used to tell people that i thought it was about people like Shiori enabling that kind of abuse by willful ignorance, but i like your idea that Touga's abuse runs so deep that it's stronger than the reality he experiences better.
I honestly think the series does a shit job at characteristizing Touga (i often tell people that it feels like Ikuhara forgot he was making a teenage romance story with Utena and Touga after the first arc, and then hurriedly tied that up when he remembered near the end of the show), but the movie did so much for him.
I like your idea about Touga wishing for self-sacrifice in the service of something that would make his death "worth it," because i think that's a common depression fantasy for a lot of emotionally repressed males.
Thanks again for the video, you always do great work and i enjoyed thinking about your ideas. Until next time :)
EDIT: Also! If youre taking suggestions, i love Ruka's character and would love your take on him and Juri. I see him as a lens focused on Utena's character, maybe like a vision of what Utena could have been for Anthy.
With regards to the series I read somewhere that his voice actor wasn't available during the entire Black Rose Arc which is why they had to write him out of the story for a bit. So it's not entirely their fault, just up to circumstances. (I kind of wonder what the show would be like if that never happened.)
I really enjoy how chill your content is - thx for the recipe and great character analysis :) will stay tuned
So excited for this video! Thank you for taking the time to do it. ❤
That was super interesting, thank you for sharing your thoughts ! Utena is an anime that weirdly enough, I enjoy taking apart almost more than I enjoyed watching. I hated Touga on my first watch, but now I feel like I'm starting to understand the character better. It's crazy to find out how every character is a victim of Akio's system in the end.
The pasta recipe was an unexpected twist! It sounds delicious!
Thank you so much for your video. You made me realise new things about Touga!
Amaziinnnggg video! Loved how in depht you went into analyzing Tougas character. I think his manga counterpart only adds to his character, what with him practically being a tritagonist by the end of the manga.
Another character I'd love to see covered would be Chigusa. She's one of my favorite Utena characters, but barely anyone talks about her since she's relegated to the game. Her identifying outside the princess/witch dichotomy is so interesting. In a way , she's Juri, Mikage and Touga all wrapped up into one deliciously conplex package.
Thank you for covering Touga, as much as i agree he was being a piece of shit, it was also self sacrificial if we view it through idealists lenses. Even worse so if both universes (movie and anime) he goes through same sht. He truly is side character with main character traits.
never had a first, so im firsting this
adding this to my watch later! i'll comment again when i finish. thank you for your service!
hope I didn't disappoint! thank you for your viewership!!
Great video
Strange that I never gave Touga much thought, guess i was too bogged down trying to figure out Anthy - does she symbolise Women as a whole as say the biblical Eve does? And Akio is Adam (Kadmos)? Anyway good video, got me thinking, Touga really did his share of evil deeds on the show, but we do see him try something different over time. I still hated Nanami more, plainly for displaying such gleeful bourgeois supremacy (I'm basically a peasant), but they are all very wrong and evil at one point or another, most of all Anthy. But if they all had a repentence and forgiveness arc like Zuko in Avatar, no number of episodes would have been enough.
Don't get down too much on Nanami, we are all just playing with the hand of cards dealt to us in the first place!! But this life is a maze where we are all just searching for some sort of exit (whether we know it or not). Haven't gone too far down the Greek mythology rabbit-hole yet (which is certainly relevant to Utena), but recently I've been thinking more about Anthy in terms of how she could be seen as a part of Utena's personality. Particularly the contrast in the skin color of Utena and Anthy (are Anthy and Akio supposed to be of some Indian ethnicity??), especially considering how Utena is portrayed as jet-black in all the flashback sequences, makes me think about how Anthy could be representative of a part of Utena's personality, say the anima or perhaps self if we're talking in Jungian terms. To be honest, I actually haven't done a solid rewatch of the show recently, so I hope my thoughts in this video are in line with the events and flow of the show. But stay tuned for new vids! I'd also like to make some videos about Mawaru Penguin Drum (also by Ikuhara), in case that's a show you're also familiar with. Thanks for all the support!!
@@m1nkey Oh Penguindrum, watched it only once, there's definitely stuff there, the doctor is a next iteration Akio, and there's a little girl who is simply Utena, or so I thought then, but I really can't be sure. I remember how Ikuhara originally wanted to use guns in place of swords for Utena and I was so happy he didn't, swords just make so much more sense to me, and behold, Penguindrum has guns. Haven's seen the Re:cycle either. But let me give you my take on Anthy: european fairy tales are a big part of Utena, and there the black skin colour simply indicates the Devil, specifically the black of soot as Hell is fiery. But our mystical siblings are merely brown, not black, and Anthy does wear a bindi on her forehead, so it points to India, as per shoujo media giving emphasis to the exotic and foreign, such as Europe and the Near East. Likewise Utena is black in the flashbacks in the manner of these 19th century silhouettes, to add to the confusion. Everything is deliberately vague to let you see what you want, acting as a litmus test of sorts if you can use it. For a long time I saw no wrong in Miki and now i feel a bit troubled by that. Maybe Anthy and Akio are to be seen as shadows? And at what point does using skin colour for symbolism start being racist? Always finding new questions in Utena!
@@m1nkey Actually! Utena and Anthy were originally the same character, either Ikuhara or Saito decided to split her and Anthy was born!
i like this video
good ending!
Some anime fans, myself included, have noted that Touga's character design is just a recoloured version of Allen Schezar from Vision of Escaflowne, which debuted 1-2 years before Utena. Do you think Touga is a parody of Allen Schezar?