Last line tag

Tagged by @zmwrites and also I'm especially proud of the ending of this chapter of Fire & Wine, even if it does come from me putting off Something Wicked rewrites:

Here, smart boy. Taste how bitter you are, how bitter you’ve made yourself. But he was smiling when I pulled back. Eyes ticking to the road, he thumbed something from my lips. “How is a god like you so pretty?” he asked. I could barely hear the question. “Well, I was raised a girl, for a time,” I said. Then a thought came to me. “So, think you’re as smooth a ride as the rest of your machines?” He actually laughed at that. The wind whipped and snapped against us as I fell into my seat. Reflective paint on the road blurred and glowed. We were grinning, showing our teeth. We were unstoppable. We were gods, and the world was laid bare before us.

Tagging, with no pressure, @fictionalbullshitter, @writing-with-melon, & @faytelumos

i always saw it as “this immediately sets akio and anthy apart, directly emphasizes how anthy is a target in the school, which akio sidesteps by acquiring enough material/political power” but maybe that’s indicting ikuhara too much as well as giving him too much credit?

No, I think this makes a lot of sense! I definitely think that Anthy's race is meant to comment on the otherization of dark-skinned people/"foreigners" in Japanese society as well as the sexualizing and commodification of their bodies due to Japanese imperialism in south and southeast Asia (as most people consider Anthy to be coded as Indian). It could also be a played-straight-at-first-but-then-subverted application of the child bride stereotype, with Anthy being seemingly okay with her designation as an object at first, but later revealing her true contempt for the abuse she has suffered, as well as the emphasis that her scenario should not be perceived as special or unusual ("in the end, all girls are like the rose bride.") Also, in the same ways that Utena is meant to be GNC but still has long, pink hair (the way male characters interact with Utena's hair throughout the series and what it represents about her gender is actually incredibly interesting, but that's for another post), Ikuhara may have wanted to design the "femme" character as having dark skin and short hair as a defiance of Japanese beauty standards and to be a design foil to Utena herself. This is even more out there, but there is a tiny possibility that Ikuhara researched lesbian subcultures in America for the purposes of writing the show and learned that dark-skinned women in lesbian communities were more often than not relegated to the "butch" role, and attempted to invert this. Once again, it's not likely, but I also wouldn't put it past him considering he has an interest in American culture and history and has commented on both in his work.

Akio is a little more complicated, because I genuinely do not know if his race has any real intentions aside from "he's Anthy's biological brother so he should be the same race as her." It's possible that Ikuhara also took inspiration from the "mysterious dark-skinned romantic lead" trope popular in shoujo manga at the time, mainly due to the popularity of Please Save My Earth. One major problem with Akio's race is that it's treated as secondary to his gender; despite Anthy experiencing othering due to her race, Akio's race never compromises his ultimate authority, which seems to imply that racism is something you can opt out of if you're an oppressor in other ways or have enough power, like you pointed out. This is kind of true in some ways but also an overly simplistic understanding of how racism works. I do believe that the flashback scene showing Anthy and Dios being attacked for their powers could be seen as a metaphor for racial violence, and in this case your interpretation of Akio would make a lot of sense, because it would mean that he did experience major racial oppression at one point in his life and responded by stepping on Anthy to establish his own power dichotomy with him at the top. The problem is that, also like you said, since this possibility is only explored in a single scene, we have no idea if it's intentional or not! And the worst part is, there is no way Ikuhara will ever tell us..... >_<