Princess Tutu

Apr 23, 2008 08:56

is rad.

It is a rad show.


Yes, so. I've now seen it all.

And basically I do not think I will ever look at a good unfinished fanfic the same way again, what.

Look, this author dude. This COPY of a dude that he WROTE HIMSELF was foiled in his tragic plans by the reincarnations of characters HE KILLED OFF. I cannot get across how excellent that is.

Also, Fakir. ♥ Augh, Fakir. ♥ The entire series built up to a final battle between the prince and the monster raven, and that final battle turned out to be a boy writing about a duck, and it worked because Fakir. Also, because while I had spent the entire show enjoying the dramatis personae as archetypes, it was only in the final episode that those two achieved the emotional complexity of complete human beings. I accepted them as full, rich characters, and in that moment the story became theirs and not the prince's. In retrospect this is precisely what the series explicitly intended.

I'm used to poor anime, which tell you what's going on with your characters. I'm used to good anime, in which character development is shown and not told. I'm frankly more than a little boggled at this thing which both shows and tells, and does not tangle itself in its redundancy.

Holy crap, it really doesn't. All of its redundancy is deliberate, and the interaction between the different styles of storytelling as they express the same thing is itself purposeful. Drosselmeyer tells Tutu that she cannot overcome her role as a duck, but it's when she is still Tutu - in that moment before giving Mytho the pendant, after her pact with Fakir - that her character overcomes the tragic princess archetype, and Fakir begins to write. Her character movement coincides with Fakir's actions to counteract Drosselmeyer's words, and only two of these things actually happen onscreen. That first one exists entirely as created in the mind of the audience. That's why this show is crazy good.

MEANWHILE, there are levels to this thing I haven't even begun to understand thanks to my totally limited knowledge of Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and ballet poses. Augh. I might have to buy this show. ♥

**edit: Aotoa. AOTOA. Ohhhhh.

gawd that is terrible. Just terrible. Gawd.

anime, stories

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