The positive aspects that stand out in Princess Tutu are it’s orchestral soundtrack, where every piece is classical music and no other kind of music genre seems to be prevalent there. This, of course, gives the show the classy feel that others within it’s genre do not possess. Although it’s soundtrack is nothing but classical music, the Anime does not go full orchestral like something such as Legend of the Galactic Heroes per say, since that would be breaking it’s ballet code. Rather, the Anime implements classical pieces from artists that are ballet related, such as – Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Stravinsky and many others. It all feels classy and has this certain feel to it that other Anime don’t, even outside of it’s niche genre. Add in to the fact that the Anime implements certain classical pieces into certain moments perfectly, and you’ve got yourself a coherent work that is full of pieces that perfectly fit in with scenes, culminating in a product that is coherent from a directing standpoint. The soundtrack of Princess Tutu is not only unique, but is also very memorable, since many of the show’s viewers have heard the famous classical piece that is “The Nutcracker Suite” by Tchaikovsky, and if you say you haven’t, then I simply do not believe you. This certain piece plays throughout the show’s thirty six episodes in it’s opening theme, reminding it’s viewers that they are watching a show that takes itself seriously and succeeds in doing so. This particular piece is also used in most of Tutu’s transformations as well, and most of those transformation scenes are both memorable, visceral and are done very well. The other musical pieces did not stand out as much as The Nutcracker Suite, but they did their job in terms of conveying emotion. In the musical department, it definitely succeeds in bringing out it’s full potential, and has many pieces that both stand out, and are memorable at the same time. It certainly is unique in that department, since very few Anime use classical music as a soundtrack, much less ballet classical music.
Another positive aspect about Tutu is how it succeeds in it’s tonal shift. This is also a negative aspect of the show, but we’ll get into that later. The tonal shift in this Anime does not feel forced unlike most Anime that are presented to the viewers. Unlike Madoka Magica for example, the Anime requires a bit of patience and mental fortitude on the part of it’s audience, as it is slow to get from the light hearted stuff to the dark parts of the show, and it isn’t very clear storytelling either, since much of the show’s first half is littered with ambiguous symbolism all throughout, such as the symbolism concerning the crows. The Anime also does not have any semblance of shock factor added to it, nothing in the series resembles anything that is shocking or feeling forced – It all feels natural due to it’s willingness and patience to undergo slow but meaningful world building and character interactions in it’s first half. With well written character interactions as well, the Anime starts to show us the bigger picture slowly. Speaking about the characters, they all shine brighter than Tutu’s diamond or the prince’s shard upon reflection due to how impressively well written they are.
To start off with the characters, you’ve got Fakir, who is the best character in the show in my opinion. Fakir starts out as the typical jerk who does nothing but bully a character called Mytho into doing what he wants. Fakir’s brilliant character arc then takes a major one eighty turn to show the viewer that he isn’t what he is conveyed to be at first. Through pithy interactions with other characters such as Ahiru, we slowly get to see another side to Fakir that we never thought of seeing at first. He gradually starts to show emotions such as sorrow, sadness and grief to Ahiru, without even realizing it since she is in her duck form. As the episodes go by, we get to see more and more to Fakir, and we then start to realize that all is not what it seems when we get a backstory and a convincing reason for why he does what he does in the first place. I would say that Fakir is the best character in Tutu, not only because of his character development or change, but because of how subversive he is as a character, and how he managed to fool most of the viewers, me included, into believing he was genuinely an ugly hearted character at first glance. I would say that his development was done spectacularly, since unlike all of the other characters in Princess Tutu, we do get to see a backstory explaining why the knight Fakir does the twisted things he does. The ending to Fakir’s development is indispensable, because Fakir starts off as someone who is not willing to finish off the story Drosselmeyer placed him in, but after realization that he really cannot do anything else and is fated to doom, he finally accepts that his place in the story is to stop running away from his fears and write the ending to release Mytho, Kraehe and all the other characters from the doomed fate of DrosselMeyer.
Speaking of fate, all of the characters in this show are doomed to a predestined, foreordained fate, the most significant of these characters being the titular character Ahiru, also known as Princess Tutu. Ahiru starts off as a naive girl who does not know any better about the world around her, and of course, this is authentic since she started off as a duck at the end of the day. Through her interactions with the likes of Fakir, Mytho and Kraehe though, she starts to gain a sense of humanity and a reason for why she needs to do what she does, which is to find the right path and end the story alongside Fakir. The interactions she undergoes lead her to develop subtly, until she reaches a point where she abandons her basic ways of thinking in order to become a better person. Of course, Ahiru is still stubborn enough to perform the ballet dance she always performs during the end of the show’s run, but that is to show the viewer that she has only abandoned her false ideals, which were to selfishly keep Mytho all to herself, and only kept her positive attributes intact. She realizes, just like Fakir did, that sticking to false ideals and accepting your place in the abyss is not the right decision to go through, that a fairytale cannot end on a tragic note. That is the best thing about Fakir and Ahiru, they start off as polar opposites, but have the same end goal, and through unfeigned interactions with one another, they develop so that they finally become two sides of the same coin. Perhaps the best episode to strengthen Ahiru and Fakir’s bond was episode 12, “Banquet of Darkness”, which shows both Kraehe and Mytho having vanished. Ahiru helps Fakir back to his dorm and binds his wounds. When Fakir wakes up, they decide to search together for Mytho, even though Fakir still refuses to team up with her. They search all over town but can't find him. Finally, Edel shows them the way. After they do go there, Fakir finally discovers that Ahiru is indeed a duck, and not just any type of duck, it is the duck he saw infront of him when he was crying and pouring all of his emotions out. When he realizes that, he starts to discover that maybe he doesn’t need to run away from his own emotions, which further strengthens the point of the Anime, which is to accept who you are and not run away from it.
For characters who also got synonymous development to Ahiru, you’ve got Kraehe, also known as Rue. Princess Kraehe starts off as nothing more than a companion to Ahiru, but through slow and meaningful bits of development, we get to see her true nature halfway through the show’s run. She is twisted, but she is sympathetic enough to root for her, even if she thinks and acts in a disturbing manner. While Kraehe does have some evil moments here and there littered throughout the show’s run, she still has some reasonable intentions behind her questionable behaviors. Just like Ahiru, she suffers from something that is known as a “Doomed Fate”, and she wants to change it just like Ahiru wants to, since the show implacably shows her as an opposite to Ahiru. She wants the same goals, has the same selfish desires, but is shady and drawn in dark black colors; unlike her brightly colored counterpart. This is not because she is malicious by nature, but because of her father’s abuse and using her to get to Mytho so that he could obtain his shards. Who is to blame for all of this mess? Who could be so evil and vindictive as to allow such a thing to occur in the first place? None other than a character called Drosselmeyer. Drosselmeyer is the main villain of the story, and he is a very weird and niche kind of villain to say the least. You don’t get much from Drosselmeyer’s type in Anime nor in any other form of media for that matter. He looks fun, feels enthusiastic and is cheery on the surface, but he is very selfish when you reveal the bigger picture about him and his end goals. Drosselmeyer is also a unique one, since he is a meta commentary on writers, something that is rarely seen in any form of media, much less in Anime. What is so fascinating about this guy is the fact that he raises an interesting theory by being present in the show, which is “Are writers evil people?” The fact that writers have the will to place their characters in such dangerous situations, and sometimes give the story the occasional tragic ending, would that make them inherently evil? That is what makes him a very interesting character, even if he is unlikable. Drosselmeyer has to be one of the most evil villains in Anime due to how selfish his ideals and ways of thinking are, and he is the different version of “The humans are the real monsters” and a fresh take on this too.
Although most of it’s characters were fairly well written with complex motivations, there were still some characters I personally did not like or saw that they didn’t have any real purpose in the narrative of the story. For characters I barely enjoyed, I would have to say the award goes to Mr. Cat, who is the ballet instructor for Ahiru, Rue and their classmates. This character did not really arouse any strong feelings of hate from me, but he was a tad bit irritating to say the least. He is an unfunny, one dimensional archetype that has been used over and over again in many Anime that came before Princess Tutu, and in many Anime that came after it. The side character that is used to get some cheap laughs from the audiences is the archetype I am talking about. This type of character can be used efficiently and can work well if given the right amount of care, and if they do not repeat the same joke over and over again. Unfortunately here, we see Mr. Cat say the same unfunny line over and over again until the nail finally beats us dead and it becomes trite. The “Will you marry me?” line he said was bone tickling the first five times I had heard it, but to say that I enjoyed it after a while, especially with the dark tonal shifts starting to show up into the show, would be rather preposterous. The character did have some strong parts to him at the end of the day, such as his backstory with his cat sensei; but other than that, he was a useless gag character placed in to amass some cheap laughs from the audience, and he certainly amassed nothing from me. Another character I personally did not find intriguing is Mytho, who is the prince of the story who’s lost his shards due to Drosselmeyer taking them away from him. The problem with Mytho, is that he is as lifeless and as underdeveloped as Mr Cat. Mytho basically has two emotions throughout the story: Either he is not feeling any emotions at all, which prevents the audience from feeling any emotional connection towards him, or he is being completely evil. I understand that Mytho cannot feel any emotions due to his shards being stolen and kept away in another places, but his character arc felt forced to say the least. What the show could have done to make it all the bit better is show some backstory to Mytho when he wasn’t so emotionally distraught and robotic, so that the audience could relate to him and to how he came to be like this.
The visuals in Princess Tutu are pretty neat and haven’t aged at all in my opinion. You could release Princess Tutu today and nobody would be able to notice that it is an old Anime. This is all thanks to it’s inventive studio - Hal Films, who were responsible for some of the most visually striking Anime such as Aria: The Origination and Kaleido Star. The scenery looks absolutely stunning and fitting for a fairytale story, and the character designs all look visually striking as well. Some people might complain about the character designs being a tad bit too girly for their liking, but I rather found them to be fitting of the magical girl genre and the tone this Anime was striving to convey, especially with how it helped subvert audience expectations at the end of the day. From the character designs, my favorite one has to be Kraehe’s, since her character looks both innocent when she is acting as the normal classmate Rue, and malicious when she actually becomes the vindictive princess Kraehe. While Mytho was not a character of my liking, I did find his design to work well at the end of the day. When he lacked the emotion he needed, I found his design to be very homogeneous of a robotic person, and it worked quite well. When he turned evil, his design also worked well in convincing me that he was indeed bordering on vitriolic actions. I still had some contentions with the animation, since I felt much of the show’s budget was thrown into certain iconic scenes, such as Ahiru’s transformations into her princess form. The other parts of the show really did not feel well animated as those specific scenes. Aside from a bit of contentions I had with it’s animation, I still have to give it credit where it’s due, this show looks visually pleasing.
Now that we are done with the positives for the show, I will have to get into the negative stuff that rubbed me off the wrong way. Princess Tutu had some issues that cannot be overlooked, and are less subjective opinion and more objective deficiencies on the Anime’s part. My first gripe with Princess Tutu is how it juxtaposes comedy scenes with serious scenes, and how unnatural it all feels at times. There isn’t anything wrong with juxtaposition, sometimes it can lead to some pretty hilarious episodes in some Anime, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the case here with Princess Tutu. This show does not know how to balance it’s humor with it’s twisted stuff. In one episode, you will get a character being controlled and taken over, performing some questionable shenanigans throughout the episode’s run. Then, in the very next episode, you will get the same comedy scenes recycled over and over again. Add in to the fact that the twisted stuff takes place at night, while the beatific moments take place during the day, and you’ve got yourself episodes that are so other worldly different and contrasting in tone that it just doesn’t fit in properly with the narrative. I talked about how Princess Tutu is a work that is coherent in it’s specific scenes, but to say that it is a coherent work in it’s episodic structure would be a lie. This Anime does not know how to balance it’s different tones, just like most Anime that try to be different but fail.
Another problem I have with Tutu is the fact that it does not know how and when to introduce plot elements into the show. The Anime starts off with barely anything resembling a princess or any crows, then with unnatural info-dumps and unforshadowed events at points, it completely ruins it’s appeal. The slow pacing is also a pain to get through, since the show takes it’s sweet time to build upon it’s lore and magical elements. Some filler episodes are present here and there as well, such as the typical slice of life episodes where they learn and dance, which detracts from personal enjoyment and borders it on meandering.
The plot becoming rather redundant after a while also detracts from it’s value. This can be seen in the episodes where Ahiru transforms into Princess Tutu and saves the day. It became predictable after a while, seeing Ahiru transform multiple times over the couple of multiple episodes so that she can defeat the multiple monsters of the week, or so that she could save Mytho from a being in danger. The episodic structure is rather vacuous and could have been trimmed and done a bit better, since it does contain filler episodes that do nothing to move the plot forward.
All in all, Princess Tutu is a work that deserves respect for it’s ambition, it’s choice of music, it’s beautiful visuals and directing, but failed due to some questionable execution. Had the Anime executed it’s narrative in a better way, then it would have been truly a masterpiece, but unfortunately it failed at times. Princess Tutu is a work that is still to be enjoyed, it provides a good lore, many metaphors and a meta commentary that is hard to find anywhere else, much less Anime.
