Completed: Princess Tutu… again

Originally published December 7, 2011on tumblr


well technically i wasn’t doing these completed segments when i finished the series back in 2006…. which on retrospect seems like a really long time ago.

*looks at time* 12:31 am…. i blame the dentist since my face just started to stop feeling frozen a little while ago… hell it still feels kinda funny….

this is probably my most rambly Completed so if you want the tl:dr ver it’s at the bottom…
anyways…. onto the story.

SO… onto the backstory.

One day… probably in 2005 but maybe 2006…. i guess it doesn’t matter… anyways i went to a con with a group of friends and we discussed what shows we had been watching.

He warned me that there was a really stupid show out there right now… even the title was stupid… “princess tutu” he mentioned how it had no plot and how this one character jumps out a window for no reason and also no pants… he said i should probably just stay away from it.

And based on that description…. i did…. i mean the title was bad enough but the whole thing sounded silly and honestly i didn’t see it around much so i never though about it until…

one day my mother noticed that there was a channel offered called “anime on demand” it was only 7 bucks a month to have and as long as i paid for it she was willing to activate it.

so i said sure… i figured i’d try it and if it didn’t work out i would cancel the subscription.

well it was pretty much all ADV titles… since i think they technically owned the company. one of the titles on the list was Princess Tutu…. i remembered my friend saying it was silly…. but there were 2-3… maybe even 4 eps up and i am forever curious.

So one day when a friend of mine is over we watch it.
and despite the overall silliness…. we both fell in love with the show…. or at least i did and i assumed cause she had a good time that she liked it as well… anyways… thats how we started watching it.

so…. onto the description right? um… i’ll do my best but i find describing this show is one of the hardest things to do…

however i’ll start at the beginning… which is more like the middle…. ugh ok…. try to simplify this.
We start off with a shot of a prince dancing on a lake, a girl seems to be watching him…. except she’s not a girl… she’s a Duck…. thats odd… she laments about his sad eyes which seem to harbour no emotion (yes i know i used an emotion to describe the lack of emotion but there’s no other way to describe it) anyways she wishes she could just dance with the prince… she awkes from the dream and fall out of bed.

Oh she’s a girl NAMED Duck… (or Ahiru in the japanese ver which means…. you guessed it…. duck) and oh my she has ballet class to get to…. in an hour… alas she is a little slow and rushes off anyways…. when she gets there she sees the boy, Mythos (said Mewtos… don't ask why i don’t have a clue) anyways she has disturbed his morning practice and gets flustered and tries to run off…. and trips over her own feet… Mythos dives and catches her but seems to minorly injure his ankle (i say it’s not a big deal cause over the course of the ep he seems to be pretty fine) Fakir soon comes in and scolds Mythos for leaving without his permission (controlling much?) and right after mythos leaves to go back to the room.

what a creep… anyways now it’s actually time for ducks class… and oh god does she just suck at ballet…. granted how good can you really be when your teacher is a giant cat…. oh i forgot to mention that didn’t i…. anyways he constantly threatens to make Duck marry him but she manages to get away.

ah but there is another character that has to be introduced. The ‘special’ Ballet class is giving a demonstration to the beginners…. and they are led by Rue… who also happens to be Mythos’ partner… theres no way Duck could compete with that…

so fast forward a little we learn that Mythos is crazy…. he is willing to do whatever it takes to protect someone else…. even at the cost of his own life. A bird cant seem to get the hang of flying while it’s siblings dance outside of mythos’ window…. so he does the logical thing and jumps out the window head first with no pants to grab the duck.

“oh no, it looks like our story will come to an early end” and eerie voice speaks to duck “you better remember who you are so you can save the prince.” this creepy voice belongs to drosslemier (oh look a ballet reference…. i’ll get into those at the end) who seems to be the one directing this story.
anyways Duck remembers that she is in fact Princess Tutu and with the help of her pendant she transforms and saves the prince by dancing…. and the bird is saved as well, she scampers off and realizes she’s changed into the duck in her dream….
and thast pretty much the end of the first episode.

and sadly…. that barely gives any idea of what the entire story is about…. but i needed to do that before i discuss the plot….

Spoilers possibly ahead but i’ll try to avoid it.

so…. the story is about a prince and a raven who were fighting inside a story when the author died…. they got tried of fighting forever and came out of the story. so they did the logical thing and came to the real world…. the prince sealed the raven by shattering his heart and losing his emotions…. but the story can’t go forward in conditions like that…

Enter Duck…. who is a Duck but also a girl Named Duck who is really Princess Tutu… she is the only one capable of finding and returning the princes shattered heart. she loves the prince so much but cannot confess her love because if she does she’ll vanish into a speck of light.

but not everyone wants her to return his heart… Fakir who is the knight who protects the prince in the story especially doesn’t want the story to move forward since his fate is to die in vain…
Also rue seems to know that mythos is a character in a book, if he regains his heart then he will grow further away from her since she is a girl who can confess her love all she wants but never will be loved in return.

Finally Drosslemier is constantly trying to guild the story to a tragic ending like he originally intended.

the overall story is split into two chapters (i felt it should have been three… but again… i’ll get to that at the end) The chapter of the Egg and The Chapter of the fledgling.

Egg mostly focuses on different stories which have come to life through the powers of heart shards… princess tutu dances and they go back to the prince…. with pretty sad outcomes since the emotions she seems to be finding are mostly negative.

At this point i was getting a little annoyed with the show since nothing really happened…. the episode 12 hit. not only did it introduce me to my favorite classical music piece but it also made me cry like a baby… anyways the story seems to end at episode 13…. it’s cute most things are resolved and people are happy… well the good guys at least…

so when episode 14 was posted on the list i was jumping for joy.

Fledgling takes a much darker approach and many of the characters start to show true colours which changes which side we think thye are on…. since most of the characters defied the fate they were supposed to suffer in Egg many of their roles change to fit this new tale…. it’s all going great too until the characters try to fight against the fate Drosslemier set before them…. ah it’s so dangerous not knowing your place.

i can’t say how the show ends without spoilers and i think i’ve done a good job of not giving anything away so yeah…. i will say the last few episodes did make me cry…. but i cry with sad stories…. and happy ones…. damn i just like to cry.

I think i’ll talk about those things i mentioned earlier….

every episode is based off either a ballet, an opera or just a simple piece of music… each episode carries themes from the title given (the German title that is…. since the Japanese and English don’t always match it) as well as having many of the music pieces…. Each character eventually gets their own theme though so near the end of the series you have many different music pieces.

Fakir for example is Scheherazade mov 2, Drosslemier is The nutcracker suit which makes sense since that's where the name comes from. i think duck’s theme is completely original but i could easily be wrong… i’m too tired to do research at the moment.

so why do i love the show?

the plot, the character, the music, the happy moments, the sad moments, the twists and turns as well as how it manipulates your emotions so you feel certain ways about certain characters… it is probably one of my favorite shows ever. it’s one i always worry about lending to people because it is silly and i worry that if people don;t like it they will question why i love it so much….

however the show isn’t perfect…
The look of the whole thing has caused some critics to dub it a childrens anime… which i will disagree with…. yes children can watch it and enjoy… and probably be terrified at certain points…. but i would not show this to someone under the age of 10…. and my definition of child ends at 10…. then it’s preteen and teenager…. so i guess i’m arguing semantics…

i also hate that EVERYTHING is solved with dancing…. later on it is handled much better but for the first half of the first chapter…. it’s just silly….

SO…. TL:DR i love princess tutu, if you have the chance give it a shot but watch the first 13 episodes… if you don’t like it by that point then stop

in my opinion the second half of the show is better then the first…. but you need to watch the first to get all the setup.

and remember…
The beginning of a story is a happy accident… the End is the fate for which its met… All stories must come to an end.