Princess Tutu – Of Adorable Ducklings and Frightening Swans

Production

Princess Tutu is no spring chicken. Get it? Cause the main character is a duck…

Princess Tutu aired close to 20 years ago and I won’t pretend you can’t tell. For one, it’s in old school aspect ratio which always instantly gives it away. There’s also the slightly faded colour palette that is so common in older titles. However, if it wasn’t for those two elements, I would have thought Princess Tutu to be a thoroughly modern anime.

The designs are fantastic, and the cinematography gets very interesting. They aren’t too frequent but there are some really great camera angles. The animation is, for lack of a better word, interesting. As the name may have given away, there is quite a lot of ballet in Princess Tutu. The action often takes the form of dancing. And occasionally, the animation looks a bit stunted. But I quickly realized that it looks a little like those old-fashioned wind-up ballerinas. The pertinence and narrative tie-in of that is just too strong to be a coincidence. Not to mention that there are more than a few really impressively animated scenes.

I will say that action that involves a lot of characters on-screen does result in loss of detail and character model integrity.

All in all, it’s a solid production all around. Some elements do date the visuals but not in an unpleasant way.

Story & Characters

Princess Tutu is something of a high-concept magical girl anime. All the classic elements are there. Lots of wild and powerful magic. A handsome prince to save and a noble knight to confuse the heart. A ruthless rival who might become an ally all in a schoolhouse setting filled with gossip and shenanigans.

Also anthropomorphized animals. Not everyone is an animal mind you. Just some occasional people. In one of the first episodes, Ahiru seems shocked that her teacher is a cat but she’s the only one who seems to care at all. And that’s when I realized this isn’t your average MahoShoujo. We are going surreal!

At its core, Princess Tutu is first and foremost a story about stories. It’s about how fiction treats its characters and how a story can build momentum and almost become its own thing. It has a subtle metacommentary on plot structure and classical genre construction. That may not sound exciting but it’s absolutely amazing.

The first act is a retelling of Swan Lake. Retelling might be too strong a word. There are enough similarities to recognize Swan Lake if you are familiar with the story but it’s also very different. And it upends the core themes. Maybe more of an hommage.

Even more interestingly though, the second act does the same with Coppélia. This is absolutely amazing because Coppélia is awesome and batsh*t and isn’t referenced as often anymore.

And the entire thing is narrated and occasionally interrupted by Drosselmeyer. He’s the character that serves as a framing device for the Nutcracker. I think he’s the prince’s uncle but his character is pretty mysterious.

Now may be as good a time as any to tell you that I’m a pretty big ballet fan. I’m not sure if it’s my Eastern European blood guiding me. I have always enjoyed both the music and the contrived storylines of classic ballets. Seeing them updated and effortlessly dropped into an anime like this, was an utter delight. I won’t pretend that it didn’t make for an often very odd show but the bizarreness was charming.

Although my personal tastes surely lead me to a deeper appreciation of Princess Tutu, please don’t think that you need to know or care about ballet to enjoy this anime. Like I said above, it is at its core an exploration and love letter to stories. And more specifically, to fairy tales.

My notes are filled with scattered sentences like the nobility of a random heart or Fakir is a character whose story no longer needs him: Cool or Is it better to love or to be loved? I’m not sure what I’m hoping to get across by sharing these. Maybe that Princess Tutu is three stories one on top of the other.

Princess Tutu is a wildly unique magical girl anime that will take you on a heart-pounding adventure and make you discover a timeless romance. Princess Tutu is a love letter to the great narrative history of ballets and fairy tales of the last century. Princess tutu is a rumination on the very nature of stories and storytelling.

I’m actually not sure how to properly describe this series for you. I’m not even completely sure how to put my own feelings about it into words. All this time writing about what I think of animes and as soon as something speaks to me a bit more deeply, I’m at a loss. In a way, the fact that Princess TuT put me at this sort of loss, is what I,m flailing to get across here.

Princess Tutu about a little duckling that becomes a princess. I was a little girl who wanted to be a princess. So I liked it!

You might like this anime if:

You like fairy tales. You like Ballet. You like deeply allegorical anime that explores the female condition or you just wanted to be a princess or a prince. Or both!

I save all my screencaps on my Pinterest and you can find more there if you are interested. But I still like to show you a few in the post. If you’re like me, screencaps are something that really helps you decide to watch an anime or not.