Princess Tutu is a Magical Girl anime about a duck, who's a girl, who's a magical ballerina. She is surrounded by Shoujo archetypes in a fairytale-esque world. She uses the power of dance to collect and return pieces of an emotionless prince's heart.
It works.
Explaining why is not easy. It's setting is weird even by fantasy standards, with anthromorphic characters taking ballet lessons with normal people. The justification makes things even weirder: the setting is the creation of a writer, whose being dead won't stop him from interfering, providing commentary and messing with the Fourth Wall. He seems to be the Big Bad and his motive for messing things up is to make the story more interesting.
All this weirdness is used for clever comedy and drama, and done in a way that makes your Willing Suspension Of Disbelief go “Sure, why ever not!”
This Post Modern villain and the opening narration, which is usually a short disturbing fairytale summary, make for a much darker (Unhappy endings, suicide and blood. You know, for kids!) and smarter anime than the premise alone suggests. The characters also work better than you'd think, particularly Ahiru/Duck, who is insecure, sweet and strong. Her transformation into Tutu is a better metaphor for 'growing up' than most of her counterparts, because she doesn't beat the crap out of her enemies, but is all about accepting and dealing with emotions. Not to mention you can't not want to hug her as she goes through the plot without complaining.
While I think the demographic of teen girls likes this best (even the ones that generally dislike things that teen girls should like, such as myself), I'd recommend this to anyone that likes a clever fairytale and doesn't feel their cool is threatened if they root for a ballerina.
Season one
Princess Tutu is a Magical Girl anime about a duck, who's a girl, who's a magical ballerina. She is surrounded by Shoujo archetypes in a fairytale-esque world. She uses the power of dance to collect and return pieces of an emotionless prince's heart. It works.
Explaining why is not easy. It's setting is weird even by fantasy standards, with anthromorphic characters taking ballet lessons with normal people. The justification makes things even weirder: the setting is the creation of a writer, whose being dead won't stop him from interfering, providing commentary and messing with the Fourth Wall. He seems to be the Big Bad and his motive for messing things up is to make the story more interesting. All this weirdness is used for clever comedy and drama, and done in a way that makes your Willing Suspension Of Disbelief go “Sure, why ever not!”
This Post Modern villain and the opening narration, which is usually a short disturbing fairytale summary, make for a much darker (Unhappy endings, suicide and blood. You know, for kids!) and smarter anime than the premise alone suggests. The characters also work better than you'd think, particularly Ahiru/Duck, who is insecure, sweet and strong. Her transformation into Tutu is a better metaphor for 'growing up' than most of her counterparts, because she doesn't beat the crap out of her enemies, but is all about accepting and dealing with emotions. Not to mention you can't not want to hug her as she goes through the plot without complaining.
The show borders on Melodrama on occassion and has moments that would have been stronger if they had been less disturbing (I'm looking at you, Out Of Clothes Experience, although I would rather not) and the dancing gets kinda silly, but it's tone is usually good. I'm wondering about the Darker And Edgier second season and what is going to happen to the seemingly happy ending it has now.
While I think the demographic of teen girls likes this best (even the ones that generally dislike things that teen girls should like, such as myself), I'd recommend this to anyone that likes a clever fairytale and doesn't feel their cool is threatened if they root for a ballerina.