Touga Kiryuu

Touga Kiryuu is a member of the Ohtori Academy student council and a duellist who wears the Rose Signet.

Touga in The Anime

President of the Student Council and Ohtori's resident playboy, Touga is an arrogant and handsome young man whose desire to be powerful drives him to cruel and unscrupulous deeds. He is the only regular Council Member who deliberately involves himself in Akio's plans, and the only person besides Akio himself (in the anime's first arc, before Akio appears) who causes Utena to doubt herself. Despite his talent and intelligence, Touga eventually realizes that he's nowhere near as influential as Akio or as strong as Utena, and this causes him to change his ways as he tries to discover a new method to gain power. His Dueling Rose is red.

Although he says that he wishes to be noble, he has little empathy towards anyone, and his powers of manipulation are second only to Akio. He also shares his playboy attitude and has many female conquests. He is a childhood friend of Kyoichi Saionji, although their relationship took a turn for the worse at a point in their childhood that is the centerpiece of their respective personal journeys.

Toward the end of the series, however, Touga's facade of chivalry is replaced with an apparently truer concern for Utena, to the extent that he very subtly attempts to substitute his head for hers on Akio's chopping block. Togua also confesses to Utena that he loves her. Arguably, this is also an example of Touga's inability to see Utena as who she really is, rather than in a stereotypical feminine role.

Touga in the manga

The Manga portrays Touga with a more obvious and definite personal love for Utena. He vows to serve her when she defeats him in their second duel, and tries his best to protect her from the machinations of Ends of the World. In the anime, this does not happen until the end of the series, and Touga's concern for Utena is far more ambiguous. Also, at the end of the Manga where everyone in the academy had forgotten Utena ever existed, Touga was the only one besides Anthy to have remembered Utena and able to wish Anthy luck hoping that she can find Utena and bring her back.

Touga in Revolutionary Girl Utena: The Movie

In the movie Touga's significance is amplified and his bad traits completely removed. He is not a flirtatious, over-confident playboy, but a man who sees and knows Utena, and loves her. He is her childhood love and a significant figure in Utena's psyche. His seeming abandonment of Utena is the reason for her wish to become a prince, but as the movie progresses, Touga is revealed to be a ghost, who died to save a young girl (Juri) while he was with Utena. Near the end of the movie, Utena's repressed memory of his death is uncovered and she accepts it, allowing his spirit to vanish from Earth.

In the movie adaptation only, Touga is shown to have suffered from child abuse, as he tells Shiori about having been “sold” to an older man for sexual purposes.