V yvxrq zbfg bs gur svefg bar (nygubhtu vg qvqa'g ernyyl srry zhpu yvxr Gerx gb zr). Ohg V pbhyqa'g fgnaq gur raqvat naq ubj Xvex jrag sebz guveq lrne pnqrg gb Pncgnva va n fvatyr fjbbc.
I had the Star Trek roleplaying game printed back in the 80s, and that was the explanation it used for the difference.
This is true. It might also be worth mentioning that Utena isn't actually wearing a bathrobe, she's wearing a yukata, a light kimono. It's pretty common to lounge around in a yukata when you're staying at the kind of traditional Japanese place she is.
At the four junior highs I taught at, the female students were universally addressed as -san and the male students were universally addressed as -kun. This went for both teachers and students (assuming they were using last names). Usage of the two honorifics outside of the school environment was different.
Some of the "bad girls" used boku (or even ore) as their pronoun of choice.
Thanks for tracking that down. I just spent about half an hour reading through all the stuff I could find on this (mostly Japanese-language wiki pages) and I didn't find anything mentioning the age of 16. As far as I can tell, it's 18 in every prefecture (at least as far as sex is concerned). So I don't know.
Based on my personal experiences, I think both of those things are true. I taught 12-15 year olds and certainly got the impression that more of them were sexually active than I and my peers had been at that age. Some of the girls were also dating guys who were college age and this didn't seem to raise an eyebrow from my fellow teachers. I think it was viewed as something stupid for the girls to be doing rather than damaging.
In any case, I had some friends who ran into problems with their younger female students asking them out and the girls were not particularly dissuaded by being told "it wouldn't be appropriate, you're my student, you're too young, etc." (saying "I don't feel that way about you" worked, though).
To the best of my knowledge, Japanese law doesn't vary by location (they don't have a federal system). But you're right that while the age of consent in Japan is nominally 13, in practice it's more complicated as other laws make it illegal to have sex with someone under 18 "for the sole purpose of satisfying sexual desire" or to cause someone under 18 to do something "obscene". So the actual age of consent is 18 for most practical purposes.
I'm not surprised that so many people hate Ruka. I am a little surprised that so few people hated Shiori. If actions are the only thing that matter, surely she should be damned as well.
From my readings, and what a gay friend reported to me after diving a bit in japanese gay bars 4 years ago, there's seems to be this mentality that you can have a double life (have same sex lovers) as long as you have a "socially acceptable" front life (wife and kids). Basically, as long as you don't show your gay, everything's fine. Though, that was some old reading (testimony from the 70's and 80's, and those stories my friend reported me were from 40/50 yo men), in my more recent research it seems people are more tolerant. But since it's quite a private matter, it's not something japanese people talk about in the open a lot.
Even within the last 5 years, I had a gay Japanese friend tell me that when he came out to his mother her reaction was "that's fine, so long as you still get married and have kids."
I think that since the concept of "marriage for love" is largely considered a fantasy by previous generations (and even among current young people it's something to aim for but not necessarily expect to achieve), they don't view this as being a particularly unreasonable stance.
Was Shiori polishing Juri's sword the whole time? The subs I'm watching didn't give me subtitles for the locker names. If that's the case, just... wow. That's incredibly sad and disturbing.
I don't think so. It's not explicitly shown which locker the sword came out of, but Shiori was leaning on Ruka's locker just before it fell. I'm pretty sure there was no actual sword polishing going on, in any case.
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