Ootori Akio: The Dark Prince Acting Dean of Students/ "The Ends of the Earth" Tarot Card: The Devil/The Tower Duel Rose: Pale lilac Quote: "Allow me to show you the Ends of the Earth." His name connotes: The phoenix reborn at dawn Visit Sympathy for the Devil

His Story

Akio is what is left of the ruins of the Prince, Dios; they are the same being, but Akio is Lucifer to the angel that Dios was, a fallen, corrupted and broken man, worldly, controlling, and a tempter, with an almost hypnotic power that he exerts over all around him. His innocence lost, he slavishly devotes himself to 'revolutionizing the world', possibly in maliciousness against the people who he once tried to save, who he feels betrayed and turned on him. He is the person that is the Ends of the Earth, who sends the letters (at the bidding of Himemiya?) which give the orders to the Student Council and Utena.

He is a beautiful and alluring man, very fashionable, in a position of great power over the school as its acting dean of students. He is engaged to Ootori Kanae, but this seems rather literally to be a marriage of convenience; he wants her power, but nothing to do with HER (in fact, he seduces her mother!).

Apparently, the Ootori clan who owned the school had no male heir; to continue their family name, Himemiya Akio became Ootori Akio upon his engagement to that clan's eldest daughter, a fairly routine transaction among families with no firstborn male heirs. Nonetheless, his engagement is a sham; he rarely interacts with Kanae, preferring Utena; Utena makes the mistake of letting herself believe he is her prince, and surrenders to his charms in a hotel outside of the school's borders. Touga and Saionji are also drawn into his web of hedonism, and Anshi suffers directly from his domination.

Akio covets Utena, and much of the series revolves around the unspoken tug of war between himself and his sister with Utena in the middle; veiled looks, obscure comments, and meaningful glances are exchanged constantly by Akio with his sister as he struggles to wrest control of Utena away. As the story progresses, tension mounts and the world becomes a series of harsh checks and balances, brother against sister, each making attempts to block the other's progress... with Utena the golden pawn between them. It could be said, in the end, that neither truly wins; Akio gains Utena's body for a time, but Anshi keeps her soul...

Akio infects a good deal of the cast with his blatant, wildly unfettered sensuality; his appearance blasts the story into a more 'adult' arena as he promises to reveal for the first time to each of the characters the real "Ends of the Earth." His job, which he fulfills with glee, is that of the serpent, leading the innocent into their destruction. Yet he is also as bound as Anshi to his 'role', and seems to have no care to escape or change it.

Or so it would seem. But at the end, he shows himself pained, yearning for his lost innocence, for the power of Dios, the Prince whom he once was...to become the Prince, and take Utena as his Princess, to dwell within the Castle of Illusion together, forever, in glory... he knows, but refuses to admit, that he, himself, and his choices are truly what stand in the way of regaining his glory.

In essence, he has blinded himself to life, choosing to retreat into the safety of the ritualistic Duellist's Code of his construction. He seeks the revolution of the world without realizing that it occurred literally under his nose, and is left gaping in Anshi's wake when, at the end, she finally turns her back on his lack of vision.

Could such a man as Ootori Akio, though, TRULY submit to such an end?