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greenhairandpronouns-tournament:

The Green Hair and Pronouns Tournament: Round 1, Match 17

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Kyouichi Saionji from Revolutionary Girl Utena vs. Beetlejuice from Beetlejuice

Kyouichi

Beetlejuice

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why you should help enable saionjisweep

some say saionji doesn’t have pronouns, and they’re hypothetically right. saionji himself would insist, certainly in early canon of the show, that he does not have pronouns. however, unfortunately for him, he does have pronouns and we don’t let him fucking forget it. be a part of that. help us make the eggiest egg recognise The Truth.

for people who don’t know, saionji is perhaps the most pathetic and wormy character of all time and is collectively bullied by the entire utena fandom because. well. he deserves it. and it’s really fucking funny. but that’s not necessarily what’s important here; what is important is the fact that as a character, saionji’s entire character conflict is centred around gender anxiety.

but what do i mean by that? well, let’s talk basics: at the start of revolutionary girl utena (for those who don’t know, classic clusterfuck symbolism hellscape anime that is intricately concerned with exploring queerness and systemic abuse amongst other things) saionji fucking sucks. without getting too much into the nitty gritty, he basically performs toxic masculinity to almost parody levels to compensate for his own perceived inadequacy. he’s got a massive fucking inferiority complex and is obsessed with being better than everyone else, which in his mind would mean Being The Most Masculine (patriarchy moment).

unfortunately for saionji he is really shit at being masculine unless he’s being violent, which he does in such a brash and open manner that the status quo is just embarrassed by him a la ‘hey man look ok we love oppressing women but we’re more subtle about it, and also we aren’t fucking faggots’. saionji is gay btw, and yes he’s also embarrassing about that. ANYWAY, what’s important to extrapolate from this, as well as flashbacks we get to saionji’s childhood, is that this toxic manly masculine masculinity is not something that comes naturally to him by any means, he’s desperately shit at performing it, and the world around him doesn’t even really want him to do it (in the sense that he’s not doing it Right, and must be excluded and mocked).

so what do i mean when i say saionji’s all about gender anxiety? well, exactly what it would imply. he is desperate to prove that he’s a man to the world, because both he and the world seem to know that he’s not a man, or he shouldn’t be one, or he can’t become one.

over the course of the show, saionji moves away from his masculine manly aspirations because he gets disillusioned so many goddamn times, and when he does we occasionally see him acting in a manner that feels more authentic to who he truly is. but it’s not really this fun self actualisation arc, it’s actually. well. hard to explain without getting into the nuances of rgu but the trajectory of his character is to basically switch from one toxic gender norm to the other, ie masculine manly man to feminine womanly woman. he’d get so mad if i said that but it’s basically what he does because he’s unable to reconcile this inclination to femininity with his misogynistic ideals and becomes trapped in this in-between of wanting to do helpful things but feeling unable for all these gender-related reasons.

he’s just got so many pronouns and his central character conflict is entirely about the shame of repressed queerness and femininity (aside a couple of other things, but they’re more relevant to his character relationships). his character offers some really great commentary on the ways in which patriarchy frames, views and treats femininity, and interrogates the passivity ascribed to women closely.

also, there’s a scene where he wears a frilly apron with hearts on it and cooks a bunch of eggs (because she’s an egg) in a forbidden forest (queer metaphor). ummm final point in the earliest character designs that have been released he was meant to be a woman and he had great tits. ok godbless vote saionji if you love transgenderism

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