In fact, if I was as young and naive as Dios once was, I would have called her a waifu material may be not on par with CC, but close enough. However, I am wiser than that and know better.
In fact, she is the real villain of this story. Surely no one would suspect a girl with such an innocent face to be the villain, however that is precisely why Anthy maintains that 'innocent' persona. To avoid casting any suspicion on herself. She is not some amateur plotter like Nanami who cause some mess and get caught.
In fact, Nanami's character is useful as it helps the viewers to bridge the gap between naive idealism of Utena with sophisticated 5-dimensional scheming of Akio and Anthy.
In fact, that poisonous snake Nanami was completely terrified of Anthy and Akio during her stay with them in the End of The World Ark. As she finally understood that this duo is on a completely different level compared to her.
The Which
Anthy and Akio are the only two people who fully understand what is going on. They are also the only people who not only know everything there is to know about manipulating people's feelings, but actually actively use it in their everyday life for their selfish ends.
Many people criticize Akio for being a bad guy as Utena do accuse him a lot in the final episodes and he admits to many lies as he explains Utena how world works.
Most viewers do not understand and most likely does not even try to understand anything from their conversation, which is a real shame as it is one of the best parts of the story.
Alas, things such as allegory and symbolism is hard to get for an unprepared mind which is a shame as people who understand such things make for a good conversation partner. Perhaps the only kind of people I can reasonably enjoy a conversation with.
As far as I know no one could even notice that Anthy is even more of a villain than Akio is. If you are not getting it, then keep watching attentively until you get it.
I guess you really need to have a real first-rate intelligence to get that aspect of the story. In fact, this is one of the things that can be used to measure people's intelligence.
The Rose Bride
While Anthy acting as Rose Bride is partly for Akio's sake, that is not as if he simply forced her to play the part.
Anthy does it for Akio, but of her own free will. And she quite enjoys what she is doing. I would even say she actually believes that whoever wins the duel deserves to order her around. As winning such a duel does proves strength and women respect strength.
Her true loyalties however lay with Akio as she showed during the better between Akio and Utena, by backstabbing Utena.
Utena does try to make Anthy more sociable and Anthy often 'agrees'. However, that is not because she really thinks so, but merely because, as a Rose Bride, she obeys anything whoever she is engaged to says. When Touga won a duel against Utena and Anthy became his bride she easily refuted whatever Utena told her and agreed with Touga that she is better off alone in her cage. In fact, it was much easier for her to agree with Touga than with Utena. However, Utena kept winning duels and overtime her opinions overrode those of others.
The Savior
Anthy did saved Dios from something in the past. Akio too said that he could believe in that and in her back then. The details are scarce so a lot of this is speculation.
Possibly he managed to impress her with something in particular and in turn she was willing to go for some significant sacrifices for him.
However most likely when both of them were younger and naiver they could believe in each other and love each other honestly.
However, as they aged and became more experienced and cynical, their love evaporated.
Akio wanted to find someone like Anthy used to be. That is why he became chairman of the Ohtori Academy and used this position to institute these duels in hope of finding someone as self-sacrifacial as Anthy used to be.
Anthy went alone with his plans, out of lingering love for him and possibly did not hope to get anything out of it. Though she very much enjoyed playing Rose Bride as she enjoys discreetly prank Nanami with things like Cowstian Cowbell and that egg.
Ultimately Anthy ended up becoming the biggest beneficiary of Akio schemes as Utena chose her and she made peace with the fact that her new 'prince' is female.
I personally very much sympathize with Akio. I can see many parallels between him and me. So I hoped that he will manage to find his eternal love.
I do hope I will be able to find this kind of eternal love for myself.
The kind TrueHellDei possibly was.
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