Ohtori Academy
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Ohtori Academy is the primary setting of Shoujo Kakumei Utena. It is a fictional Japanese school whose students include elementary, middle, and high schoolers.
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Etymology
鳳, the kanji used for "ohtori" in the academy's name, means "phoenix" in Japanese.
In the anime, Ohtori Academy is presumed to be named after its founders. Their descendants -- Mrs. Ohtori, her unnamed husband, and their daughter Ohtori Kanae -- carry on the family name.
Location
Fan speculation holds that Ohtori's real-world location would be in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. Kanagawa is a coastal prefecture in southeast Japan, just south of Tokyo, explaining Tokyo Tower's visibility from campus. The bios submitted to Mikage by the Black Rose duelists also place Ohtori in Kanagawa.
In the manga, Ohtori Academy is explicitly placed in "Hou'ou City," which appears to be a fictional location. "Hou'ou," like "Ohtori," means "phoenix" in Japanese. In the series, however, there are nighttime shots that show Tokyo Tower in the background.
Geography
The Ohtori Academy campus is shaped like a keyhole, the traditional shape of Japanese burial sites. The round portion of the "keyhole" is occupied by the dueling forest; the bottom portion is home to the rest of campus. Prominent sites on campus include the classroom buildings, the rose garden, the statue garden, and the phallic tower in which the school's chairman resides. It is unclear whether Ohtori's dormitories are located on campus.
Administration
The current chairman of Ohtori Academy is too ill to carry out his duties, so he has entrusted Ohtori's day-to-day operations to Kanae's fiancé, Ohtori Akio. (Akio is not a member of the Ohtori family; he presumably took the surname as a condition of marrying Kanae.)
While Akio is ultimately in charge of the academy's administration, the Student Council, led by President Kiryuu Touga, also takes responsibility for aspects of academy life. We hear anecdotally that the Student Council deals with student lodging and has been known to make administrators disappear from campus.
Student life
Ohtori Academy enforces a strict dress code by which all students must dress in school uniforms. Student Council members wear a special, more decorative uniform that distinguishes them from the rest of the student body. Tenjou Utena, a girl, wears a boy's uniform, obeying the letter of the dress code if not the spirit. (Oddly, however, we never see any boys wearing the alleged "boy's uniform" that Utena flaunts; the standard-issue Ohtori male wardrobe is much less flattering.)
The academy maintains at least two dormitories, of which one -- the east dorm -- is empty except for Utena and Himemiya Anthy. However, many students, including Kiryuu Touga and Kaoru Miki, live outside the dorm system.
Extracurricular clubs appear to be plentiful at Ohtori. Saionji Kyouichi is the head of the school's kendo club, and Arisugawa Juri leads the fencing club. It is likely that Ohtori is also home to a music club and cooking club, based on the music room and student kitchens seen in the first season. However, the most distinctive extracurricular activity at Ohtori is certainly the duels.
Graduation
Much is made in both the anime and the movie of the symbolic value of leaving Ohtori Academy, which the anime compares to a garden in which no one can ever grow up. "Leaving Ohtori" is synonymous with attaining adulthood. In the anime, Chida Tokiko, Tsuchiya Ruka, and Himemiya Anthy all attain forms of maturity through their "graduation." Much of the movie is devoted to the dramatic escape of Anthy and Utena from campus. By contrast, adult characters who remain at Ohtori -- like Ohtori Akio and Mikage Souji -- are painted in the anime as dysfunctional.
Characters occasionally leave Ohtori Academy temporarily -- as Nanami's trip to India or Akio's frequent visits to the End of the World -- but these trips do not carry the same symbolic weight as graduation.
