A French animated film by Michel Ocelot (Kirikou and the Sorceress).
Azur, a young nobleman in late medieval France, grows up obsessed with the stories of his Arab nurse Jénane, particularly those about the captive Djinn Fairy. Reaching adulthood, he mounts an expedition to North Africa in the hope of liberating her: but he finds himself in competition with his foster brother Asmar, Jénane's son.
Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest provides examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Wildlife: The Scarlet Lion.
- Ambiguously Jewish: Ok, the giant Star of David on Wise Man Yadoa's wall isn't exactly ambiguous, but neither his nor any other character's religion is ever mentioned in the dialogue (the closest we get is when Jénane mentions "know[ing] two faiths").
- "Arabian Nights" Days: Skirted. It's far from a stereotypical version, but it's still a fantasy Qurac with djinn.
- Back for the Finale: Jénane, Crapoux, the Princess, and Wise Man Yadoa are all brought to the Djinn Fairy's cave for the final scene.
- Badass Boast: When Azur declares his intention to cross the seas and liberate the Djinn Fairy.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Not exactly stated, but Azur, Asmar, and Jénane are the three best looking human characters and also the most virtuous/heroic.
- Big Brother Instinct: Both Azur and Asmar towards Chamsous-Sabah.
- Big "NO!": Azur when he thinks that the slavers have killed Asmar.
- Berserk Button: Don't even consider to bring up such offensive nonsense as superstitions and racial discriminations when Jénane is around.
- Child of Two Worlds: Jénane Lampshades the fact that she and Asmar are partly this due to having lived many years in France.
- Costume Porn: One can't help but gasp at the sight of some of the most elaborate and lavish clothes worn by some of the characters over the course of the movie.
- Dance Party Ending: An unusually decorous one, dancing a period-appropriate pavane.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Chamsous-Sabah comes from a family with a past made of killings and fratricides of all her male relatives.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Racism and sectarianism are part of the societies depicted.
- Disability Superpower: Played with. Crapoux is amazed by what the “blind” Azur can deduce from sound alone, but it's neither heightened hearing nor the fact that he can actually see that's responsible – Azur just listens.
- This actually leads Crapoux to inadvertently guess the truth – that Azur isn't really blind – only to back down when Azur (quite truthfully) points out that he didn't need his eyes to gather any of the knowledge he's just revealed (including the fact that Crapoux's own claimed disability isn't real).
- Disappeared Dad: Asmar has no father and his fate is not mentioned.
- Disney Death: Asmar.
- Disproportionate Retribution: All Jénane has done is be a more successful merchant than Wad – so he attempts to arrange the murder or enslavement of her son and foster-son.
- Fish out of Water: Azur in North Africa. He wasn't prepared for the hostility his blue eyes would cause, finds himself a beggar (because of the shipwreck) when he's been rich all his life, and because of the need to feign blindness is reliant on the very unreliable Crapoux as a guide.
- Food Porn: The feast Jénane has prepared for Azur counts as this: everything on that table looks absolutely delicious, especially when we see Azur and, shortly after, Crapoux eat it.
- Gilded Cage: The Palace is this to Chamsous-Sabah. See Dark and Troubled Past above.
- Graceful Ladies Like Purple: Jénane after the timeskip.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Wad can't stand that Jénane, a woman from a poor background, is a more successful merchant than he is.
- Happily Adopted: Kind of. Azur is not in fact adopted: he still lives in the household of his biological father: but he absolutely regards his nurse Jénane and her son Asmar as his real family.
- Heart Is Where the Home Is: The European Lady of the Fae comes to help her cousin, the Lady of the Djinns, choose between the titular heroes who both seek her. The Lady of the Djinns initially dances with Frenchman Azur while the Lady of the Fae goes with Maghrebine Asmar. Eventually, the four characters find that they're happier exchanging partners.
- Hero of Another Story: Remarkably, despite being one of the title characters, Asmar is effectively this while the two are questing separately. The film follows Azur but their occasional encounters show that Asmar is meeting equal success and equally marvellous adventures offscreen.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Azur expects to be able to go back to being this with Asmar. They do by the end of the film.
- Hidden Depths: Crapoux might present himself as a cunning con-man outcast, but he has some detailed knowledge about the Djin Fairy and what one has to do have free her. Plus, he's rather close to Wise Man Yadoa.
- Horse of a Different Colour: Both the Scarlet Lion and the Simourgh get ridden on.
- Human Traffickers: The gang hired by Wad.
- Hypocritical Humor: Crapoux mocks the Arabs as superstitious, only to declare within seconds that black cats are terribly bad luck – which he insists is “scientifically proven”.
- Innocent Blue Eyes: Azur's are regarded by most of Asmar's people as Creepy Blue Eyes if not Occult Blue Eyes.
- Interspecies Romance: The film ends with two human-fairy marriages on the cards.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Azur and Jénane are shocked when Asmar greets Azur with hostility: but Azur has grown up cocooned in privilege while Asmar and Jénane faced poverty and discrimination, largely because of the callous way they were treated by Azur's father.
- Kid-Appeal Character: After the timeskip, the only child character in the movie is Chamsous-Sabah, who fits this role after Azur and Asmar both grew up into young adults.
- King Incognito: A princess variant. Chamsous-Sabah dresses as a commoner to visit the city with Azur in the night.
- Like Goes with Like: Teased, then subverted. When the dance begins, Azur pairs off with the Elf Fairy and Asmar with theDjinn Fairy – white with white, North African with North African. However, very soon afterwards, the Elf Fairy admits her attraction to Asmar, and it turns out that all four are more than happy to swap.
- Magical Jew: Wise Man Yadoa may not have actual magic but he's a constant provider of good advice.
- Malevolent Architecture: The caves where the Djinn Fairy is imprisoned are full of this, in particular the three doors.
- Marry Them All: Or, in this case, marry them both, as Chamsous-Sabah suggests to the Djin Fairy before learning she actually can't. Chamsous-Sabah shrugs and says she has no other ideas.
- Meaningful Name: Azur's name references his plot-relevant blue eyes.
- Missing Mom: Like Asmar's Disappeared Dad, Azur's mother isn't in the story. We're never told what happened to her though it seems highly likely she suffered Death by Childbirth.
- National Geographic Nudity: At the beginning, when the boys are babies and Jénane is feeding them both, her nipple is briefly shown.
- Non-Specifically Foreign: Although Crapoux is presumably French like all the white human characters, he seems like this when disparaging elements of Arab culture in favour of his own: the things he prefers/misses from home include clogs, bagpipes, and apple sauce. The impression is that the writers used whatever from somewhere in North-west Europe seemed most ridiculous or unappealing compared to the things he was dismissing.
- Obfuscating Disability: Azur feigns blindness to hide his “unlucky” blue eyes; Crapoux feigns a limp to get Azur to carry him (partly from laziness, partly because he thinks his begging will be more successful with a handsome young blind man in tow). It's also possible that Crapoux doesn't actually need glasses.
- Older Sidekick: Crapoux to Azur.
- Our Elves Are Different: The Elf Fairy.
- Our Genies Are Different: The Djinn Fairy looks human and spends most of the story as a Damsel in Distress.
- Panthera Awesome: The Scarlet Lion.
- Persecution Flip: When the very white Azur — who as a nobleman's son was hyper-privileged in France, while his family's Muslim servants faced discrimination - arrives penniless in North Africa, his blue eyes make life very difficult.
- Politically Correct History: Pretty much averted. Jénane and Asmar face racism in France, and Yadoa has had to flee his home there; their own country is somewhat more tolerant, with places of worship for all three Abrahamic religions in the city, but we do see a ruined Christian church by the desert road, and Azur's "unlucky" blue eyes bring hostility from anyone who sees them. Slavery also exists in the setting, and even free servants (in both countries) don't fare well if they talk back to their masters.
- Prejudice Aesop: A positively
Anvilicious one. Racism is bad, ok?- This verges on a Broken Aesop, both because the character design implies that Beauty Equals Goodness, but also because the only Black characters are the gang who menace the white Azur and Arab / Berber Asmar with – of all things – enslavement.
- Princely Young Man: Azur and Asmar are called "princes" in the title and by the Djinn Fairy, who is apparently foretold to be rescued by a prince: but in fact neither is. (Azur is a non-royal nobleman, Asmar a commoner.) They are, however, brave and handsome young men on a well-resourced expedition, and extremely well dressed.
- Qurac: Asmar and Jénane's country is Arabic-speaking and apparently in North Africa, but a lot of both the design and the mythology are more Persian than Arab or Berber. There's even a Simourgh, an iconically Persian creature.
- Racist Grandma: He may be neither female nor even all that elderly, but Crapoux's massive cultural chauvinism is Played for Laughs in exactly the way this trope usually is.
- Really 700 Years Old: The Djinn Fairy's plight was already legendary decades or more ago but she appears as a young woman.
- Rebellious Princess: Chamsous-Sabah has never been allowed to leave the palace – so she gets Azur to help her sneak out.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Asmar is the more overtly passionate red to Azur's phlegmatic blue. It even comes through in their actual colour coding (Asmar's red clothes, Azur's blue eyes). Heck, Azur's name even means blue.
- Rescue Romance: Apparently ordained by Fate.
- Rags to Riches: Jénane and Asmar go from being servants in Azur's father's castle, to penniless wanderers, to the richest family in town by the time Azur finds them again.
- Riches to Rags: After he is swept off his ship by a giant wave, Azur is reduced to beggary... before being reunited with the now wealthy Jénane, who kits him out in fancy clothes and finances his expedition to rescue the Djinn Fairy.
- Rule of Three: The three doors in the caves. Oddly, Azur is prepared to brave them with only two of the magic keys – it's just as well that Asmar has found the other one.
- Scenery Porn: This movie's backgrounds look amazing, full of intricate details and fastiduously ornate.
- Sharp-Dressed Man: Both title characters like their fancy duds.
- Speaks Fluent Animal: The magic herb provided by the Princess allows Azur to converse with the Scarlet Lion - by making actual lion-like growls.
- Spiteful Spit: Azur gets one by an old man due to his blue eyes, the same man who tells him about the alleged bad luck he carries with them.
- Standard Hero Reward: The Djinn Fairy is apparently destined to marry her rescuer. Nobody, including herself, considers that she might have anything to say on the matter until Azur and Asmar sharing responsibility for her rescue means she has to make a choice; even then, any personal preference she might have still doesn't enter into the decision-making process until the Elf Fairy turns up and suggests they pick one man each… then suggests a swap.
- Take a Third Option: Crapoux suggests that the Djinn Fairy should resolve her dilemma by marrying him instead of Azur or Asmar. She does not take him up on this.
- Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Asmar fits this trope as a young adult, and the Elf Fairy surely agrees.
- Temporary Blindness: Azur may possess perfectly functional eyes, but he really is walking around with them closed.
- Tragic Bigot: Even though Crapoux is a comic character, it's not hard to see that his disdain for the Arabs is a result of the fact that he was reduced to beggary when his own quest failed.
- True Blue Femininity: The Djin Fairy wears an elegant blue dress.
- We Used to Be Friends: Asmar is not pleased to see Azur or interested in rekindling their friendship.
- Wise Beyond Their Years: Chamsous-Sabah of course.
