One Of Those Is Not Like The Others, And He's Winning

imagine making a magical girl series where the characters quite literally sexually assault each other and then naming the main character AFTER A CANONICAL SEXUAL ASSAULT SURVIVOR

Gushing Over Magical Girls was a mistake

had to put them in these ugly ass outfits i saw on pinterest

reverse Hol Horse: the gun is a Stand user and it conjures a man, but non-Stand Users just see this:

Do you know who prevs icon is?

revoLESBIANary GAY uTRANSa: AROlescence ACESPECalypse, by creative team BI-paPANs

Gay people

fake and gay

Regarding Touga's age in flashbacks

Touga appears as a child in two significant flashbacks in the series: in episode 9 where he and Saionji find Utena hiding in a coffin after she just lost her parents, and in episode 10 where Nanami gives him a kitten for his birthday, with all that that ended up tragically entailing. (It may be worth noting at this early point that neither of these flashbacks are from Touga's own point of view; ep 9's is Saionji's memory of the event, and ep 10's is of course Nanami's memories.)

The assumption I've seen throughout the entire fandom is that Touga is younger in Nanami's flashback, in which he has short hair, and a bit older in the coffin flashback, in which he has long hair. It's a perfectly reasonable and logical assumption, and one that I wouldn't question either -- if not for two things.

The first of those two things is head writer Enokido's notes on Touga; to sum them up very briefly for those who don't already know, they say his unpleasant backstory as depicted in the movie was also intended to have been his series self's backstory, with some additional details included to account for Nanami and Saionji. A specific point from both these notes and the movie itself is that Touga was ordered by his original parents to grow his hair out, as that was what Mr Kiryuu wanted. If we take Enokido's comments on Touga's backstory as applicable to the series canon -- as I personally do, as it heavily informs my entire reading of Touga as a character -- then they need to be reconciled with what's depicted in the series itself in one way or another.

The second thing is simply that I noticed some curiosities in the series character design sheets, which I'll go into past the readmore. Before that, I just want to pose the question I'm exploring here in the first place:

Could Touga have actually been younger in the coffin flashback than in Nanami's flashback?

Please note that this is more of a thought experiment than anything; I'm not trying to push this as The Actual Canon Truth, even if this does inform my personal headcanons regarding Touga's (and Nanami's and Saionji's) history. I just want to put forward some bits of evidence with my own thoughts and speculation on them. Without further ado...

First up, here's one of the design sheets for Touga and Nanami as kids from ep 10's flashback:

It says that Touga was 12 and Nanami was still 7 (keeping in mind that her birthday is a couple of months after his). I personally think they both look a bit younger than those stated ages, but I digress.

It could possibly be said that whoever added the notes on these design sheets might be pulling the characters' childhood ages out of thin air, but evidence that Touga is intended to be 12 here did make it into the episode itself:

Twelve candles on a cake for a kid's 12th birthday would make a lot of sense.

Meanwhile, here's the full-body design sheet for Touga and Saionji as kids from ep 9's flashback:

This one doesn't give any ages for the boys; I'm mainly posting it here for the sake of comparison. Your mileage may vary on which version of child Touga looks older or younger, and I'm a little back-and-forth on the matter myself; that said, it does strike me how dainty he looks in the design sheet for the coffin flashback, though I wonder if it might just be because of his clothes.

What had me questioning Touga's (and Saionji's) age in the coffin flashback in the first place is that, in the manga, it's stated that Utena was 6 years old when her parents died. That would've made the boys about 9 at the time, as they're three years older than her. Having said that, though, the manga and anime are different continuities with different takes on a lot of things, so just because the manga says one thing doesn't mean it definitely applies to the anime version as well. So how old was child Utena in the anime, then?

As with the boys, the design sheet for Utena's appearance in the coffin flashback doesn't specify an age for her, either. This would ostensibly make their ages at the time ambiguous -- but I'm not giving up here. There's another character who was a similarly-aged child at the time.

Anthy appears as a child in flashbacks in episode 34, one of which takes place very shortly after ep 9's coffin flashback. According to the design sheet, she was 7 years old at the time, and she's noted to be the same height as child Utena. Therefore, I find it reasonable to conclude that Utena was also about 7 years old when she lost her parents, which would've made Touga and Saionji around 10 at the time.

That's the evidence I'm putting forward to support the possibility of Touga being younger in the coffin flashback than in Nanami's flashbacks, with the admitted underlying assumption that the design sheets can be used as reliable sources for characters' ages as children. I think it would address discrepencies in his hair length with regards to his backstory as given by Enokido, but there's still a couple of other things that ought to get a closer look in that case.

All of Nanami's childhood photos of herself and Touga that we see in episode 31 show him with short hair. What's with that?

My speculation on this is that Touga deliberately curated the photo album so that it would only show him with short hair as a kid, in order to hide the reality of his and Nanami's situation as "adopted" kids sold to a paedophile from her. It probably helps that in all these photos, he and Nanami look roughly the same as they did in her flashback in ep 10, suggesting that they could all be from around that time. I've also considered the possibility that there could be some Mamiya-esque shenanigans surrounding the photos (in that they're showing a falsehood, like the photo of the fake Mamiya that turns into one showing his real self during Mikage's duel), but that feels like too much of a stretch to me.

It's also possible that Nanami might be misremembering Touga's hair length in her flashbacks in the first place; the Kaoru twins offer precedent for this, as their "Sunlit Garden" flashbacks in episode 5 show Kozue with a completely different hairstyle depending on whether it's Miki or her remembering that time. Personally, though, I find it more likely that Touga really did have short hair at the time, especially if we assume from everything I gave further up in this post that he'd just turned 12. Apologies for the horrible following thought, but I wonder if, by the time Touga had reached that age, he was getting a bit too old for Mr Kiryuu's sick tastes...

Putting that nastiness aside, there's one more flashback involving Touga I want to talk about, and it's one I wouldn't even have thought to include if I hadn't rewatched the episode it appears in recently: Tsuwabuki's flashback from episode 6! (Always leave it to the comedy episodes to surprise you!)

Tsuwabuki is presumably in preschool here based on his clothes, Nanami is in the girls' elementary school uniform, and Touga is in the standard boys' uniform as worn by middleschoolers and highschoolers. For all this to line up, I think their most likely ages here are 5-6 for Tsuwabuki, 8-9 for Nanami (putting her in third grade) and 12-13 for Touga (putting him in seventh grade, or his first year of middle school as per the Japanese school system).

Yet Touga has long hair here! If he had short hair when he'd just turned 12, how could it have grown out so much in only a year or so? (To say nothing of the growth spurt he seems to have had in that time...) I could chalk things up to Tsuwabuki idealising him as a big strong older brother in his memory -- middle school Touga apparently fought off a great big rampaging bull, after all -- which would explain why he looks basically the same here as he does as a highschooler. That said, Touga doesn't necessarily need to have had long hair in order for Tsuwabuki to idealise him the way he does; I doubt his hair length matters too much either way for that, so I don't see any reason for Tsuwabuki to misremember his hair in particular. This could lend some credence to the idea that Nanami misremembers Touga's hair length in her own flashback, but I question that for the reasons I already gave further up.

(As an aside: it might just be a matter of the lighting in that specific shot, but had Touga already dyed his trademark lighter streak in his hair in Tsuwabuki's flashback? He noticably doesn't have his highlight in either of the flashbacks with him as a child, which the design sheets for both of them make a specific point of noting. I might talk about the possible significance of his highlight in a different post.)

I think that's about it for my rambling and speculation on this, at least for now. What do you think? Is any of this plausible? Not plausible? Is it at least an interesting thought experiment to read about either way, or is it just a load of codswallop? Are there any blind spots I might've missed that I ought to address? Any other questions or comments? I'm curious to know.

reblog ONLY if prev is a mutual, i want to see how far this post can go

say in the tags what part of tumblr you’re on i’m so curious so see how this goes

this image came to me in a dream

might be enjoyed by @catboysaionji

Goodbye hug

It's for the better