Akio deals with an unusual cast of characters in his day-to-day life—most of them chosen by him. He wears a lot of masks and plays a lot of games, and the rules change every time the other player does. This is a part of the site was, back in the day, called ‘Conquests’, referring to his habit of sleeping with anyone he exchanges more then five words with. The scope is now larger, though Akio's id would disagree.
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Akio and Saionji only share one scene together, but the circumstances in it are, to say the least, suspicious. Saionji becomes a third party to one of the sexually charged ‘photography sessions’ Akio has with Touga that, really, couldn’t possibly end in anything but sex. What’s odd about this is that Saionji’s on record as disapproving of Touga’s ‘relationship’ with Akio. (‘Why do you kiss his ass so much?’) Furthermore, nothing prior to this scene suggests he would be so comfortable posing seductively in a sexually charged (homosexual) situation; compared to many of the characters, Saionji's a prude. Yet, here he is.
Whether they have sex is really up to your assessment of the people involved; the show offers us no hint beyond the suspicious setting. Saionji has, considering his position, probably met with Akio a few times in
a professional manner; he speaks quite sociably, in stark contrast to his usually snobby, overly formal tone. This might be because Saionji is witnessing something that’s bringing a lot into focus for him. For all his open criticism, he spends the series placing Touga on a pedestal. The friend that’s always bested him. But here, Saionji is at the same time let in on Touga’s secret and placed on fairly equal ground with him (thereby bringing himself up a little), and shown exactly what Touga does to get to this ground (thereby, in Saionji’s eyes, bringing him down a little).
This event occurs at a point in the series where each member of the student council gains some kind of closure on the trials they’ve suffered in Ohtori Academy. Usually this closure comes directly from their final duels, but his last duel doesn’t really serve any purpose of this sort. (Possibly because it’s also the one that gets thrown off the script it was supposed to follow due to Anthy’s meddling.) This scene serves that purpose; actually seeing, and perhaps participating, in what he's criticized Touga for brings him down a couple pegs. He's not that great. Whether he also leaves it with a sore bum is really up to the viewer. Having sex with Saionji really doesn’t serve any manipulative purpose of Akio’s, and it wouldn't have been necessary to go that far to prove a point, but he doesn’t need a reason to drag a beautiful young man into bed, does he?
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His fiancée. We don’t see her much in the series, and neither does Akio. Ironically, the person Akio should have the most intimate relationship with seems to get the least attention (carnal or otherwise).
Though his formal introduction starts with the two of them kissing, the next time we see her, she's complaining about how little she sees him. This sequence ultimately reveals two frustrated women, mother and daughter, vying for Akio, and we find that even when Kanae protests, his attention still lands elsewhere.
Akio is many horrible things to many members of the cast, but only in the case of his fiancée can you call him outright neglectful. Why is this? In his inaction he seems to be making an effort to keep Kanae at a distance. While there may be a true need for this, all obvious answers point to simply not wanting her there. For one, having his innocent little Kanae around him all the time would be, though not totally crippling, a huge pain in the ass given his extracurricular activities. Also the possibility stands that Akio just plain doesn’t like her. We as viewers tend to see him in extremes, as a man that lives at a distance from everything around him, and that’s true, but in doing so we often dehumanize him a little more than we should. He’s above all the people around him, but even a sheep herder has a favorite sheep; he's certainly capable of liking or disliking his subjects. He finds Touga rather fun to be around, but clearly doesn’t take the same pleasure in Kanae’s company.
(It must be the sodomy.)
The reason for this, it could be speculated, stems from Kanae being thoroughly boring and unpleasant to keep up. The mask he wears around her is restrictive in the extreme, and he shows even less of himself through it than through the mask he wears for Utena, where faint whispers of the real Akio are what lure her past ‘just friends’ into lovers. It’s likely Kanae’s father saw very much the same mask, so perhaps his illness was not just to get Akio in his office, but also to keep him at a distance, too. While Akio could no doubt find some way to amuse himself with Kanae, strategically he’s chosen to support her on bare minimal effort and keep her far enough that she doesn’t get in his way.
Kanae's presence in the series ends on a very curious note: pallid and not quite conscious, she's being fed apple slices by Akio and Anthy. Take your pick as to what this means; the apple is seen at another point full of forks, mimicking the swords Anthy takes. There's also the ever-obvious poisoned apple of fairy tales. One, if not both, of the siblings would dearly love to poison her, and by this point, Akio probably could manage to keep his position without Kanae. Or you could take it to mean she's been poisoned with 'truth', somehow finding out Akio's real nature, or perhaps that he's having more sex with his sister than he has with her. |
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I like Mrs. Ohtori, and happen to think her scene is one of the sexiest scenes in the series. So she has a mini-shrine. Visit Mother, Dearest!!
Akio can get away with neglecting the person that publicly connects him to the school because really, Kanae
isn’t the one keeping him there. Mrs. Ohtori probably doesn’t see Akio any more than Kanae does; she resorts to using her daughter’s unhappiness as an excuse to visit him. Still, she would appear to enjoy the
time more, and doesn't really expect frequent visits. While it's not unreasonable to expect to see your fiancé often, extramarital affairs with your future son-in-law require discretion.
There’s very little pretense between the two of them. What there is seems to serve as foreplay, not
a necessary formality. 'Foreplay' is a term I use loosely here, Akio starts their encounter with a sadistic psychological onslaught that serves primarily his own amusement (and excitement). It’s unlikely Mrs. Ohtori gets a sexual kick out of having her sin rubbed in her face before it’s even committed, though it probably satisfies a need to be penalized for her unsavory conduct. She does respond to Akio’s taunting quite poorly; her behavior bothers her. After all, she has a sick, dying husband, and an unhappily engaged daughter, and here she is in the office of Kanae’s husband-to-be, about to get fucked by a man that smells of her child ’s favorite cologne.
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If you were to believe in soul mates, Kozue would get dangerously close to being Akio’s. While her carefully hidden tenderness kills the deal, she’s calculating, sexually manipulative, and brutally determined to get what she wants, even at harm to others. By all appearances, she might have done very
well for herself occupying Touga’s position, but because Akio needs a third party (Miki) to most successfully manipulate her, she instead falls to the back burner, while he keeps the independently vulnerable people closer to him.
Whether she actually has sex with him is up for debate, but considering her reputation and his, you almost have to assume they did it for the sheer sport. For a junior sexual delinquent, an older man (a handsome and powerful one at that) is a special notch on the bedpost, and Akio, well, he’s just a whore anyway. What’s interesting about this meeting of…let’s say personalities…is that Kozue’s particularly aware of what she’s doing, and is pursuing Akio with her own manipulative ends. One can imagine Akio finding her nerve quite adorable, in much the same way as the moments he no doubt caught of Touga contemplating a way to best him. Aww.
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Most of the people Akio gets dirty with are themselves the target of some manipulative scheme. Tokiko is one of the exceptions. Whether there was any preexisting sexual relationship between the two is up for debate;
there very well could have been one, or he might have initiated an impromptu make-out session when he knew Mikage would see it. That she does make the effort to see him when she visits her brother’s grave suggests it was more than a kiss—though their conversation is formal and her position back then would have brought her close to him in a professional capacity, one does have to wonder why Akio felt it necessary to bring the shutters of the planetarium down at the close of their conversation, since the show uses this event as the dimming of the lights—a prelude to a sexual encounter.
Either way she means less to him than she would if she were the vice-principal’s cousin’s house cat. She’s a quick and easy catalyst for his manipulation of Mikage, and perhaps an equally quick and easy screw on a quiet afternoon. The end.
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Akio doesn’t sleep with Wakaba, and doesn’t seem to encourage her schoolgirl lust for him in any notable way. Having already established a penchant for dangerous men with wavy hair, the least little provocation triggers her interest in Akio—after all, schoolgirl crushes work that way.
While he didn’t do a thing beyond act as he normally does (like invading on her personal space by leaning
into the opening door), Wakaba’s mini-seduction serves a very important purpose for another, less miniature seduction. Wakaba’s fawning over that angelic smile and her luck in scoring a ‘date’ with him spawns the jealousy that ultimately helps Utena realize what’s going on in her own head.
Again, Wakaba is a pawn. However, there is something about her placement in the scheme of things that deserves some mention. Her innocence is a stark contrast to everything else happening in the series. Her crush on Akio occurs at a point where it’s hard to find anything idealistic or uplifting. Akio is shown to be increasingly perverse, the other characters are making themselves look quite unsavory in their last ditch attempts at power, and our shining Utena is starting tarnish a little.
In the midst of all this, we have Wakaba. Endlessly cheerful, amazingly optimistic, and in the throes of a schoolgirl crush the rest of the cast has ‘grown up’ too much for. It’s easy to forget how young the students at Ohtori Academy are; Touga would be a charge of statutory rape if Akio was ever busted for his behavior. The students live under circumstances that force them to act, if not exactly mature, definitely not like people their age should. As if to remind us of this deviation from the norm, here comes Wakaba; even her innocent attraction to Akio is healthy and normal and exactly what she should be doing at her age.
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