Princess Tutu: the rewatch, Disc 1: Hope, Adventure, Mystery, Author's Prerogative

[timepiececlock]

Am I staying up all night to watch PT and knit? Yes. And yes, I knit now! I started tonight. I'm making a purple scarf. It's great. I can't purle though, the book's explanation just confuses me.


Disc 1

I had forgotten the actual degree of abrupt little asshole Fakir was in the first episodes. I mean, really. He's quite the nasty bitch.

I'm "eh" about Mytho's dub VA; he's alright for the soft-spoken stuff, a little jarring for the louder stuff. Ahiru/Duck's dub VA is quite talented; some of those lines must be murder on your throat. Rue's English voice is lovely and Fakir's is positively splendid. I still wish they had used his actor for Sasuke in the Naruto dub.

I'd forgotten how often, in these first episodes, they repeat the line that the princess is fated never to be with the one she loves. Ahiru says it about five or six times, Drosselmeyer says it twice that often, and even Rue repeats it once. I know how that dialogue reads in the beginning of the show, but having seen the end and knowing how the cards fall... that prediction takes on new tragic meaning, as does Drosselmeyer's fanatic insistence that the audience "never forget that Ahiru, as her true self, is a duck." It's something the audience and Ahiru forget over the course of the series... we start to see her as a girl who turns into a duck, not a duck that turns into a girl. That change in perception (or misperception) correlates with the fact that as the series progresses, Ahiru begins to operate as if it were that way, particularly in her relationships with the other characters. It reminds me so much of The Last Unicorn, as Ahiru is forever changed by being human, and what her true identity is begins to blur as she becomes more than what she was. The transformative aspect of this series is beautiful. The first half of the series we discover who these characters are as pieces of them are revealed... the second half of the series takes those newly-revealed characters and this time transforms them.

Comments

*uploads and uses THIS icon because I am worse than any tin man!*

[rasielle.livejournal.com]

RASHAKA!!!!!!111

I finished reading The Last Unicorn today and--!!

It must be crossed over with Princess Tutu. O_O It must. It's strange; as I read it (especially as I got closer and closer to the very end) I found myself thinking of Princess Tutu over and over again, and comparing them and noticing they shared patterns and just... akldjfkdjf <3

Gosh, the unicorn was such a tragedy. Such a beautiful, beautiful tragedy - not unlike Ahiru herself. The natural order of things, indeed. ;_;

*also using this bombshell of an icon!!!*

[rasielle.livejournal.com]

AND! I love the side characters here just as much as I loved the ones in Princess Tutu - in fact, in both pieces, I didn't perceive the side characters as side characters at all. Dude, trying to imagine Fakir as a side character physically hurts; it doesn't feel right. I'm probably wrong in even trying to think it is so. Same for Schmendrick! Huzzah, meta series!

I love it when creators do this, when they make the quirky, humorous, powerful and earnest side characters just as important as the lead couple. I love it when the story's not just about the few important people undergoing the important, important turning point and climax; I love it when it's everyone's story! Though I wish we got more of Molly. Why do I feel like we're Molly, and that we might know her better than anyone else?

What an icon! I've never seen that image before

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I haven't read the book, though I plan to one day. I did love the characters in the movie, however. I particularly loved Schmendrick

[rasielle.livejournal.com]

(I haven't seen this PT image before either, nor have I yet to see it beyond this icon. Isn't it sad? I can't get over Tutu's expression. I wonder, how different are Tutu and Ahiru, really?)

Oh man, I thought you read the book. But if you've seen the movie, then you should understand my diatribe, to an extent. ^^;; Luckily, I didn't get too carried away and give away nothing terribly important.

While I was reading it, I kept imagining that it would make a great animated movie - it also helped that you once mentioned the movie in a previous PT discussion. Peter S. Beagle describes the landscape with a lot of vivid details, bringing Tolkien to mind, but his metaphors were very whimsical and reminiscent of fairy tales. The writing is also clever, and he makes so many allusions to other works that even I caught a few of them, to my delight. ^^ It was a great, colorful, yet inexplicably wise book, and it would sound fantastic read aloud, especially to children.

Schmendrick was complex in the novel, I thought; he didn't get as much of the spotlight that the unicorn did, but we were frequently given parts of the story from his perspective, and he developed so well despite being so flawed. Reminded me of Fakir when it comes to drastic character development, despite their different roles - and excepting that Fakir seemed to get younger and Schmendrick older.

And I kept finding the same metaphysical suggestions in The Last Unicorn that exist in Princess Tutu! The mention of the roles of heroes, and and and the unicorn vs Amalthea, and Princess Tutu vs Ahiru, and their asymmetrical, bittersweet endings... Gyah ;_; It tickles my fancy that The Last Unicorn is something Fakir could've thought of writing, when I think solely of the ending. In any case, it was the same brand of wisdom, I think, and the same contemplation on Right Choices in stories.

[rasielle.livejournal.com]

*anything terribly important - curse you, vague thought process!!!

Drosselmeyer+Fortuna=OTP!

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

see my new post for reply!

<-- *in Haggard's country*

[rasielle.livejournal.com]

There were so many great lines in The Last Unicorn! I'm wondering right now what sort of icons they'd make with Princess Tutu screencaps.

Also, I'm going to dig around for that thread in which you first brought up The Last Unicorn during PT discussion. Stories without endings - I remember that bit!

Re: <-- *in Haggard's country*

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I haven't read Two Hearts yet, but I finished tLU. Pretty much every line in this book could be word-switched for PT.

Fakir: "Life is short, and how many can I help or harm? I have my power at last, but the world is still too heavy for me to move."

Duck: "I have been mortalhuman, and some part of me is human yet."

And the line about regretting! "I am not like the others now, for no duck was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret."

"The townspeople are free from the story and the lost Prince has his heart again. No sorrow will in me as long as that joy--save one, and I thank you for that, too."


It's odd. I am so Unicorn/Lir in this book and so Ahiru/Fakir in PT, but I am absolutely convinced that Fakir=Schmendrick. But that's okay too, because even in a book where two characters like them aren't meant to be romantic, they still have this awesomely complex relationship.

I feel like there's not a little bit of Ahiru in Molly Grue as well, and definitely some of Rue in Amalthea (though the Unicorn is all Ahiru, an older and wiser version).

Ack! I can't wait to read the novella sequel. I'm so excited. Will report back later with results. Have you read it?

Re: <-- *in Haggard's country*

[rasielle.livejournal.com]

Eeeee, you've read it! Now I can flail! *does so*

There's a bit of Ahiru/Fakir in Unicorn/Lir, I think, in that they both end with a mountain of duty, not a little bit of tragedy, and a separation they can work against. But yes, the similarities between PT and The Last Unicorn aren't perfectly clean-cut. It excites me so greatly to think that two people can write this same metaphysical fairy tale without ever having to meet.

I DIDN'T KNOW THERE WAS A SEQUEL. O_O I can't believe it; there's actually a sequel! It didn't even occur to me that it might have a sequel; tLU by itself was so good that any more of it would sound too good to be true. Like PT. ;_;