Shiori Takatsuki (Utena the movie: Adolescence Mokushiroku)

[gaisce]

Title: The Poison Vine
Author: gaisce
Spoilers: Heavy spoiler analysis for the movie and episodes 7 and 17 in series

Comments

[shati]

I wanted to toss in that I see a Shiori-Anthy parallel in both movie and series, too. And I like your comment that

the villains in Utena are people who have made the wrong choices and illustrate what could go wrong, or could have gone wrong, with the heroes - not roadblocks so much as cautionary tales.

(Though I do think Akio is a roadblock. End of the world, after all -- he's a boundary by name, too. Not to mention his literal role as one at the end of the movie.)

Anthy's probably the biggest warning to Utena in the series (princess dress!), and Mikage and quite possibly a huge chunk of the other characters are warnings as well, because there's really no limit to the number of symbolic twins and opposites you can make by reshuffling the Character Deck. But in the movie, I don't really see the creepy Utena-Anthy parallel (at least not with the suggestion that Utena's becoming a Rose Bride herself), and Mikage isn't there. Movie Shiori mirrors both Utena and Anthy, I think; both have their ghosts to let go of, and Shiori has odd connections with both of those storylines -- gaisce mentioned the Touga thing, and Shiori also has the video of Akio and Anthy. Movie Shiori is someone who won't change -- won't move on, won't face herself, just digs up other people's corpses. Rather like series Akio.

[sarahtheboring]

Ah, I'll have to think about the Shiori-Anthy (series) parallel; I'd never seen that. Nice. I like the summation of the movie connections, though - she does kind of embody the whole maladaptive/Black Rose-y/not-letting-go spirit.

You are right about Akio, though; I should have thought of that. He's an exception in any case. We never really know what motivates him, which isn't the case for most of the others.