absolute destiny: apocalypse

In episode 26, Nanami sees Kozue outside of her dorm late one night. She explains that she’s meeting her Daddy Long-Legs (or あしながおじさん in Japanese).

This is likely a reference to the 1990 anime 私のあしながおじさん (My Daddy-Long-Legs), which is an adaptation of the 1912 novel by Jean Webster.

The story follows an orphaned girl, Judy, who is sent to college by an anonymous benefactor. She him “Daddy-Long-Legs”. This benefactor requires that she sends him letters. Eventually, following her graduation, her friend’s uncle proposes marriage to her, which Judy denies. She did not believe herself to be high enough status to marry him. She later finds out that this uncle was her benefactor all along. When he falls deathly ill, she agrees to marry him.

Kozue’s reference is rather clear. She is aware of the power imbalance between herself and Akio, but she accepts their “relationship” either way. There is a perceived benefit to his abuse. She sees her connection to him as a way to shed her purity, and grow up faster.

Unlike Mitsuru, she’s well versed in the ideas of being a “grown-up”. This of course does not mean she is one, and this is through no fault of her own. It’s rather naive to believe she’s an adult, when she’s only thirteen.

Kozue sees herself as an orphan. She feels no connection to her parents, and has no affection for them. They have not protected her from the world as a parent should.

Akio almost reads as an avuncular figure to Kozue. He gives her a sense of sheltered freedom. She’s able to rebel, while still having a real adult by her side. He is the one with the power between there of them.

Kozue’s reference to Daddy-Long-Legs solidifies the idea that Kozue believes her abuse is transactional.

In Elisabeth, Der Tod is supposed to be a conscious figure that administers the final kiss of death. “My mission is to destroy / I do it coldly” Der Tod is originally positioned as both a manifestation of Elisabeth’s suicidal ideation and all of old Europe's ideation. He is also like an anthropomorphic Hegelian spirit of history, driving everything to its inevitable conclusion / the empires collapse.

Mikage occupies a structurally similar position. Like Der Tod, he represents broader historical logics within his own respective story. That being the cycles of disembodied rationality and its continuation and consolidation of patriarchy and heteronormativity, as well as eternity as a violently reactionary return to the past, etc. Where Der Tod is aware that he is history’s agent (and is why he is interested in Elisabeth), Mikage has a completely distorted false sense of his own self. His seminars / evil elevator therapy sessions promise transcendence, preservation, etc but end up accelerating the same collapses they are trying to resist. Mikage, unlike Der Tod, while still being a ghost, is absolutely not the spirit of history announcing its conclusion. He is just some guy desperately trying to halt it while unknowingly ensuring its continuation.

He believes he is preserving or reaching toward something living, when in reality Mamiya has been already dead the entire time. Mikage is an agent of death through his blindness, delivering a “kiss” that has already arrived too late.

Not only that, but during the Meiji restoration and US occupation, nobility were reorganized under the British model, making "Prince" the highest title, just like in Ohtori.

Utena's basic structure includes the premise of a Japanese world order restructured along the lines of British nobility, and this is shown in aesthetics and the class character of the student council and Ohtori Academy as a whole.