![]() If I am right, it’s meant to say that Utena pulled ahead at first. Whether the staff knew othello or not, the audience was not expected to. I suspect that the disk counts on the board are supposed to tell the audience who is winning at each point, even though in a real game they don’t. Since the game is nonsensical, I doubt the animators knew that. He removed the telephone so that she cannot call out. He drove her there, so that she cannot return home until he chooses. It is similar to one of the tricks Akio uses in the hotel to control Utena’s actions: He physically restricts her options so that she has few choices other than to do what Akio wants. When they have no good choices, then you can flip disks your way and keep them. Instead you play to restrict your opponent’s options. Then your opponent can easily flip them back. In othello, to win you don’t immediately try to flip as many disks as you can to your color. I can read another metaphor in the choice of othello as the game. I think it’s an example of the effect I was talking about in flawless art. It is possible to read the nonsense of the game as a second metaphor, pointing out Akio’s nigh-godlike powers of manipulation, to the extent that he can achieve the impossible: As he can get away with illegal moves in a game, he can get away with impossible actions in reality, whether by cheating or by skill that surpasses psychology. They made up something that looked vaguely right when shown briefly, and called it done.Īnd yet, and yet. They probably didn’t have time or budget to find an othello player and work out a plausible game, and that’s all there was to it. The character details are essential to the message of the scene, and the game details are not. They were producing episodes on a television schedule, and reports agree that it’s hard. I expect that in fact the staff was short of time. Does it? Doesn’t Utena pay awesome attention to detail? The othello game is a metaphor for Akio finessing the mating game to get his own way, and whether it’s valid othello or not doesn’t matter. He won the symbolic endgame, now he is pressing toward the real endgame. In the context of the scene, it’s meaningful: To win, he lured Utena’s attention to him and off the game. The slightly closer view of the board in the third picture implies that Akio has leaned forward a little at the end of the game. Was Akio using her inattention to cheat? (My answer: No-not in the physical game.) I also notice that the trays of disks are empty a little prematurely. Under the rules, there is no way for the three white disks in a vertical line on the right side of the board to have been flipped. This position also cannot be reached from the second. In the third position, black has won, though there are three moves left to play. ![]() Could they be playing some other game with the same equipment? (My answer: No.) That is virtually impossible in a real othello game. Besides that, only two of the 13 previously placed disks have been flipped. There is no way for the white disk in the lower left to have gotten there. The second position cannot be reached from the first, no matter how the players move. Once taken by white, black can never flip the corner back, so it’s permanently white, and white can use it as a base to get further permanently white squares. White is winning, because the black disk at lower right gives white access to the adjacent corner square. The first position we’re shown looks like a normal othello position that might occur between novice players. ![]() ![]() When she places a white disk on a square, lines of black disks are flipped to white according to a simple rule (not that it’s a simple game). But the board positions we are shown make no sense as an othello game.Įach disk has a white side and a black side. At least, they are playing on an othello board with othello pieces. In episode 33, Utena plays othello (or reversi to use the original 19th century name-there are slight rule differences) against Akio.
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