Akio Ohtori - I Write Sins Not Tragedies (AMV)

Song | Panic! At the Disco - I Write Sins Not Tragedies
Anime | Revolutionary Girl Utena, Adolescence of Utena

TLDR; The AMV is done as if Akio is the one singing. It is based on the idea of “poisoned rationality” that’s in the song which for Akio means gaslighting people, including the viewer, into thinking his actions aren’t so bad or are somehow justified, trying to give a grey area to situations that don’t have one. It’s him telling us also to mind our business. The AMV is increasing his horrific deeds throughout and then finally presenting his crying and letting you decide if you’re going to forgive him now or listen to him and shut the "goddamn door" after seeing throughout what goes on behind the door.

I was listening to some MCR on YT and naturally got recommended similar songs from that time period and genre. So it ended up with me going through some nostalgic songs, including this one. I'd forgotten how good it was, just musically. The pizzicato violins sound like some Disney villain theme and really has this sneaky feeling to it. But what really made me want to do this AMV was a comment talking about how the line "poise and rationality" can be transformed to "poisoned rationality" and that just screamed RGU and Akio (the champagne "pain" line is a bit on the nose though).

To me a lot of RGU is about exploring the behind-the-scenes of ideals, behind the illusion. Akio is such a great villain because he makes sure that both the characters and viewers are fooled into not even realizing that what they're looking at is an illusion and for a very long time. One meta way to think about it is that the Anime itself is created by Akio. He's just a headmaster abusing the children in his school but put that into a backdrop of fantastical things with elaborate costumes, and an elaborate backstory of a prince, and you forget the real story. He creates 39 episodes, 24 minutes each, with filler, action, music, romance and he gives you so much to look at, and all these symbols and signs that point to something but only vaguely, just like in real life where, hidden in plain sight, are signs that can point to something but are masked by the enormity of life's own size and our own tendency to avoid them for more comforting things. Going meta again, the AMV then is this thing that no longer has Akio as the director, it's me, and instead of 936 minutes, it's 3 minutes, and the symbols are closer together and harder to ignore and at the end, the sign is finally pointing to him.

As an example of these symbols masking the truth, just look at the car Akio drives in. It's a symbol of his grooming the students and when first watching, I didn't even realize. It's a normal drive and then suddenly he speeds up even if they're uncomfortable, and to the surprise of the students "gets on top (*of them*)" of the car and the ride is continuing out of control. The signs on the roads are saying "stop," you're going over the speed limit, you're going over where I'm comfortable, and yet he continues. When I saw it as this and not as just a car ride, episode 37 with Anthy in the car became the most horrifying thing I've ever seen in an Anime. It's unfathomable. He's speeding up angry, violently raping her while Anthy is gasping for breath suffering as if a 1000 swords were piercing her. You see the pain and the aggressors anger and are forced to self-insert into the emotions instead of the act. And it shows how far he has fallen that he has become the same as the villagers that Anthy had tried to protect him from. Visually the expression on her face is also the same when the villagers finish stabbing her to when Akio is doing this. It's even worse as you realize this is the episode she tries to kill herself and then the reason becomes obvious; it's not about the prince or the end of the world or whatever Akio was talking about, it's because Akio had broken her.

One last thing is on this idea of twisting the truth and making "up" into "down", and "wrong" into "right". In episode 33 with Utena, she is calling out stop with every piece of body language that can convey discomfort without outright saying it but Akio never stops. Here is a quote from some analysis I read : "Like many of the [rape] cases we know of, she tries to reconfigurate it in her mind to think there was consent, something that Akio reinforces starting from that ending scene." The key word is reconfigure, try to twist into some way where it can seem right, putting on a poisoned rationality to cope or understand when the grand illusion is about to crumble. And that's what it is at the end, Akio realizing it's crumbling, he's losing to Utena and he uses it one more time, this sympathy card of the old good prince to make the weaker of his victims turn on an another. So, do you still shut that door or open it? Utena opens it.