your local edgelord

Tokiko was a meaningful person to Nemuro and there were lot of positive and even beautiful aspects between them

Some of Tokiko's actions had harmful consequences to Nemuro

Some of Tokiko's behavior towards him can be viewed as manipulative

Tokiko did not tried intentionally manipulate him or otherwise be malicious

In Akio's plans, Tokiko had a certain role and was supposed to manipulate/groom Nemuro into certain situation

Tokiko was herself unaware of Akio's plans

Tokiko had positive influence on Nemuro

Tokiko had negative influence on Nemuro

Nemuro idolized Tokiko greatly

Nemuro (specifically later as Mikage) saw Tokiko as a competitor or traitor who must be beated

We actually know very little of Chida siblings in general because we only see them through somewhat tampered memories

To look at the actual night sky with all of its stars is to be faced with the fact that her brother, someone she loves deeply, has raped her, and will still rape her unless she gets away from him. To look at the actual night sky would be to also acknowledge her brother's rape of her other classmates as well, something she ignores and has to in order to not break away from the comfort the lie brings to her.

[I.D.: digital fan art of akio, utena, and anthy from revolutionary girl utena, set against a background of roses with a spotlight shining on them from above. utena is in the very center, holding the sword of dios. on her left and slightly in front of her is akio, and to her right and slightly behind her is anthy. akio has a hand on utena’s chest, and is leaning in to kiss her with his eyes closed. utena’s mouth is wide open and so are her eyes, looking forward to the camera and slightly to the right, toward anthy. anthy has her eyes closed with a sad, weary expression. her arm goes under utena’s arm and grips the sword right before the tip. the other arm firmly holds utena’s other wrist, and head rests against utena’s shoulder. / end I.D.]

happy pride heres an utena based on that one anne hathaway image

Ikuhara talks about Akio's dilemma being all about power. do you stay perfect and powerless, or do you embrace power and thus become corrupt? if we read Akio's warped personality as largely being a maladaptation to what happened to Anthy, this makes sense. in the aftermath of her trauma, Akio was left with two main facts: he didn't know how to help her, and it was his weakness that put her in that position. the narration says that Anthy was the "only person in the world" who truly loved the prince. so Akio, Dios, the prince who's supposed to save all the girls in the world, failed to save the one girl who he should have done the most to protect.

the prince Dios died when Anthy became the Rose Bride. this is outright stated by Akio in episode 38. it was only ever her love for him, her earnest belief in him, that made him a prince at all. without her, he doesn't know what to do. I think he probably tried to find a way to save her despite not being able to be her prince. I think that's why he started the dueling games. I think that's how they ended up where they did.

akio is relatively privileged compared to the kids he abuses but the final things he says to utena about how he felt both of their original worldviews just weren’t compatible with the real world made me feel shrimp emotions and whisper “oh my god” when i thought about the implications of that for too long.

and it kept going with how utena yells at him to shut up and her initial idealism to help a friend is proven right where dios wasn’t. anthy, who he thought was fundamentally impossible to help, walks out. everyone, even the boys, are on the fast track to happiness and its many endpoints. they are already feeling happiness. even mikage’s being forced out was similarly incredibly lucky for him in the long run, mamiya can’t suffer anymore either (i am partial to the concept of reincarnation), tokiko already has something somewhat approaching maturity and she’s fairly unimpressed with akio and genuinely sorry for how she treated mikage and mamiya…