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mikogalateaI call this meta, but really, it's more like a several-hundred-word splurge of feelings on these characters. Anyway, I originally wrote this nearly five years ago on Tumblr, but with that site being what it is right now, I thought I'd rescue it over to here. It's pasted over completely as-is; I wouldn't mind polishing it up eventually, because at one point I liked the idea of submitting a tidier version to Empty Movement as an essay, but for now I just want to preserve the original thing.
Without further ado...
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Maybe it's wrong to feel like this, but at the end of the day, I feel sorry for both the Kiryuu siblings.
They were both sold to horrible adoptive parents who went on to rape Touga every night and completely ignore Nanami. What's more, both the movie and Enokido's notes tell me that their real father knowingly sent them to a paedophile, as he was the one who ordered Touga to grow his hair out just like "what the customer wanted". I have to wonder just what made their real parents do that in the first place. (Were heavy debts involved? Was the sale a guilt-ridden decision, or a spiteful one? The world may never know.)
Touga became more and more warped from the abuse as he developed fucked-up coping mechanisms (ranging from wearing "masks" around his sister and Saionji to acting like he enjoyed being raped) and in turn, Nanami became increasingly warped thanks in great part to Touga's own manipulation of her, which I believe started from a very early point. I tend to think that Touga had relatively good intentions ("relatively" being the operative word, naturally) in what he did -- keeping their father's attention away from her, ensuring she never found out what was really going on -- but before long he found that he enjoyed being a control freak, having that kind of power over someone vulnerable. I bet the way he played with Nanami's head then, and Saionji's as well for that matter, is how his terrible behaviour in the series got its start; it's like a role reversal on how he was treated by his adoptive father.
And what effect did that have on poor Nanami? For all that she acts like a haughty queen bee for much of the series, she actually has miserably low self-esteem; as ep 32 makes abundantly clear, she thinks she's worth nothing without her brother, and the main reason she believes that is because he's made her life revolve around him for so long -- which makes it all the more cruel when he disowns her the way he does. She may be an extremely unpopular character in the fandom, but damn it, she's just thirteen years old and goes through so much for someone so young; I find it impossible to hold too much against her.
There is no excusing the way Touga treats Nanami. I cannot emphasise that enough. There's such a bitter irony in what he pulls on her, though; he basically sacrificed himself to spare her from being sexually abused when they were children, yet in the series, he throws her under the proverbial bus in his pursuit of power. Meanwhile, from Nanami's point of view, the only person in her life who treated her with any kind of affection for so long is now using her just like any other disposable pawn -- right down to trying to force himself on her. I wonder if Touga doesn't have an incest squick, and/or if he thinks "I love you" must automatically mean "I want to have sex with you" no matter who's saying it -- even though Nanami never wanted anything of the sort regardless of whether or not he's actually her brother, not to mention that the poor girl's already traumatised from walking in on Akio and Anthy.
Did Touga ever actually love Nanami? I'm inclined to believe that what he told Keiko was a horrible pack of lies (and again, there's no excuse for what he did) but having said that, while I think that he must have cared about his sister a long time ago if he went as far as he did to protect her, he probably resents her now. After enduring so much abuse from his father and not being able to do anything back to him, I wouldn't be surprised if he learned to blame Nanami for it; perhaps he convinced himself that if she never existed, then he would never have been sold off and violated. It's unbelievably unfair on Nanami, who bears no fault whatsoever for what happened to him, but AFAIK that kind of displacement isn't exactly unheard of. =/
Nanami herself must have put up so many walls of denial about how messed up things have been between her and her brother, too. She clings hard to him, yet she has a complex about him abandoning her that's obvious from as early on as the first comedy filler. She's also quick to blame others (be they other girls or innocent kittens) for problems involving him because she can't bear to take him off the pedestal she's always put him on -- a pedestal he created for her to put him on, no less -- which makes it all the more painful for her when she finally starts to see him for the lying bastard he really is.
I also got the impression that she'd known something wasn't quite right about her family's blood types, but chose not to consider any deeper implications about it, for longer than we think. I know the adoption/sale happened when Nanami was much too young to remember, but I wonder if some part of her knew on an unconscious level that her current family wasn't her own, and if she flaunts her rich-girl status partly to overcompensate for the possibility (fact) that she wasn't actually born into such wealth. I'll admit I might be reaching a bit here, though.
Honestly, I reckon Touga may also have his own walls of denial. For all that he yells at Nanami for not knowing what she really wants (more like he can't believe that she doesn't want him sexually) I don't think he's as sure of what he wants as he thinks he is. He certainly latched on to Akio as a powerful person to emulate and put up with manipulation and sexual abuse (which he would never acknowledge as such lest he go straight back to square one) to that end, but by episode 35, Saionji seems to suss out that he no longer really wants Akio's power as much as he claims and is deluding himself. With that in mind, at the end of the day, all the shitty things he did throughout the series were for the sake of something that he ultimately didn't want that much; in other words, Nanami gets screwed over for essentially nothing. That's too harsh for words.
And why did Touga want power in the first place? It's all so he could rise above having felt so utterly powerless as a child, and he would do anything and step on anyone to ensure he never felt that low again. It's only thanks to Utena that he starts to change his mind, but even then, the attitudes he'd developed are so ingrained into him that they prove difficult to unlearn; he was never going to suddenly become a good person overnight, and I think it'll be a very long time before he gets anywhere near that point.
I'm glad the ending offers hope for these fucked-up siblings. Nanami comes out stronger for all her suffering, starts defining herself on her own terms, and begins to see value in herself as her own person, while Touga also seems to be on his way to improving. Their final scene, and the piece of official art based on it, even imply that their relationship has mended into something much healthier, although I can see Nanami having trust issues for a long time yet and Touga is going to have to work hard to make up for everything he pulled on her.
All in all, although they have one of the most rage-inducing relationships in the series, the individual characters of Nanami and Touga are very sad to me. No matter what they do or how much I want to smack the stuffing out of Touga at times, the fact remains that these are extremely screwed-up teenagers who'd had some awful life experiences that had profound effects on their psyches. I certainly can't blame Nanami for turning out the way she did after how she was neglected and manipulated, and while Touga does a lot of terrible things that he absolutely should be held accountable for, it's also not his fault that he became such a mess as a result of what his adoptive father did to him.
Come into my arms, both of you -- at least after I've set Touga aside for a good hard slap first.
-
I may-or-may-not repost more of my old meta from Tumblr here, depending on if I find anything else I want to rescue while going through my old posts.
Without further ado...
-
Maybe it's wrong to feel like this, but at the end of the day, I feel sorry for both the Kiryuu siblings.
They were both sold to horrible adoptive parents who went on to rape Touga every night and completely ignore Nanami. What's more, both the movie and Enokido's notes tell me that their real father knowingly sent them to a paedophile, as he was the one who ordered Touga to grow his hair out just like "what the customer wanted". I have to wonder just what made their real parents do that in the first place. (Were heavy debts involved? Was the sale a guilt-ridden decision, or a spiteful one? The world may never know.)
Touga became more and more warped from the abuse as he developed fucked-up coping mechanisms (ranging from wearing "masks" around his sister and Saionji to acting like he enjoyed being raped) and in turn, Nanami became increasingly warped thanks in great part to Touga's own manipulation of her, which I believe started from a very early point. I tend to think that Touga had relatively good intentions ("relatively" being the operative word, naturally) in what he did -- keeping their father's attention away from her, ensuring she never found out what was really going on -- but before long he found that he enjoyed being a control freak, having that kind of power over someone vulnerable. I bet the way he played with Nanami's head then, and Saionji's as well for that matter, is how his terrible behaviour in the series got its start; it's like a role reversal on how he was treated by his adoptive father.
And what effect did that have on poor Nanami? For all that she acts like a haughty queen bee for much of the series, she actually has miserably low self-esteem; as ep 32 makes abundantly clear, she thinks she's worth nothing without her brother, and the main reason she believes that is because he's made her life revolve around him for so long -- which makes it all the more cruel when he disowns her the way he does. She may be an extremely unpopular character in the fandom, but damn it, she's just thirteen years old and goes through so much for someone so young; I find it impossible to hold too much against her.
There is no excusing the way Touga treats Nanami. I cannot emphasise that enough. There's such a bitter irony in what he pulls on her, though; he basically sacrificed himself to spare her from being sexually abused when they were children, yet in the series, he throws her under the proverbial bus in his pursuit of power. Meanwhile, from Nanami's point of view, the only person in her life who treated her with any kind of affection for so long is now using her just like any other disposable pawn -- right down to trying to force himself on her. I wonder if Touga doesn't have an incest squick, and/or if he thinks "I love you" must automatically mean "I want to have sex with you" no matter who's saying it -- even though Nanami never wanted anything of the sort regardless of whether or not he's actually her brother, not to mention that the poor girl's already traumatised from walking in on Akio and Anthy.
Did Touga ever actually love Nanami? I'm inclined to believe that what he told Keiko was a horrible pack of lies (and again, there's no excuse for what he did) but having said that, while I think that he must have cared about his sister a long time ago if he went as far as he did to protect her, he probably resents her now. After enduring so much abuse from his father and not being able to do anything back to him, I wouldn't be surprised if he learned to blame Nanami for it; perhaps he convinced himself that if she never existed, then he would never have been sold off and violated. It's unbelievably unfair on Nanami, who bears no fault whatsoever for what happened to him, but AFAIK that kind of displacement isn't exactly unheard of. =/
Nanami herself must have put up so many walls of denial about how messed up things have been between her and her brother, too. She clings hard to him, yet she has a complex about him abandoning her that's obvious from as early on as the first comedy filler. She's also quick to blame others (be they other girls or innocent kittens) for problems involving him because she can't bear to take him off the pedestal she's always put him on -- a pedestal he created for her to put him on, no less -- which makes it all the more painful for her when she finally starts to see him for the lying bastard he really is.
I also got the impression that she'd known something wasn't quite right about her family's blood types, but chose not to consider any deeper implications about it, for longer than we think. I know the adoption/sale happened when Nanami was much too young to remember, but I wonder if some part of her knew on an unconscious level that her current family wasn't her own, and if she flaunts her rich-girl status partly to overcompensate for the possibility (fact) that she wasn't actually born into such wealth. I'll admit I might be reaching a bit here, though.
Honestly, I reckon Touga may also have his own walls of denial. For all that he yells at Nanami for not knowing what she really wants (more like he can't believe that she doesn't want him sexually) I don't think he's as sure of what he wants as he thinks he is. He certainly latched on to Akio as a powerful person to emulate and put up with manipulation and sexual abuse (which he would never acknowledge as such lest he go straight back to square one) to that end, but by episode 35, Saionji seems to suss out that he no longer really wants Akio's power as much as he claims and is deluding himself. With that in mind, at the end of the day, all the shitty things he did throughout the series were for the sake of something that he ultimately didn't want that much; in other words, Nanami gets screwed over for essentially nothing. That's too harsh for words.
And why did Touga want power in the first place? It's all so he could rise above having felt so utterly powerless as a child, and he would do anything and step on anyone to ensure he never felt that low again. It's only thanks to Utena that he starts to change his mind, but even then, the attitudes he'd developed are so ingrained into him that they prove difficult to unlearn; he was never going to suddenly become a good person overnight, and I think it'll be a very long time before he gets anywhere near that point.
I'm glad the ending offers hope for these fucked-up siblings. Nanami comes out stronger for all her suffering, starts defining herself on her own terms, and begins to see value in herself as her own person, while Touga also seems to be on his way to improving. Their final scene, and the piece of official art based on it, even imply that their relationship has mended into something much healthier, although I can see Nanami having trust issues for a long time yet and Touga is going to have to work hard to make up for everything he pulled on her.
All in all, although they have one of the most rage-inducing relationships in the series, the individual characters of Nanami and Touga are very sad to me. No matter what they do or how much I want to smack the stuffing out of Touga at times, the fact remains that these are extremely screwed-up teenagers who'd had some awful life experiences that had profound effects on their psyches. I certainly can't blame Nanami for turning out the way she did after how she was neglected and manipulated, and while Touga does a lot of terrible things that he absolutely should be held accountable for, it's also not his fault that he became such a mess as a result of what his adoptive father did to him.
Come into my arms, both of you -- at least after I've set Touga aside for a good hard slap first.
-
I may-or-may-not repost more of my old meta from Tumblr here, depending on if I find anything else I want to rescue while going through my old posts.
