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timepiececlockAm 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.
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.
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Re: MORE SPOILERS!
Date: 2009-01-16 06:21 pm (UTC)It's weird for me to say that this is one of the most feminist anime series I've ever seen, even though it involves a magical girl in a skimpy top who prances around with flowers and classical music. But it is! And I love Ahiru so, so much for being sweet and modest without being stupid or fawning. She's so practical! And resourceful. And if someone blocks her she just finds a different way. But at the same time she's girly too.
Re: MORE SPOILERS!
Date: 2009-01-16 09:29 pm (UTC)Besides the stuff that you mention, you have the entire Rue arc. First of all, any other anime, she and Ahiru would not have been friends (she even told Ahiru she loved her!) and she would not have been painted as such a sympathetic character.
Also, I love what it ended up saying about how you don't have to be pure to love and have you love returned.
Re: MORE SPOILERS!
Date: 2009-01-16 09:56 pm (UTC)Re: MORE SPOILERS!
Date: 2009-01-18 02:13 am (UTC)Rue is a character that can't win for losing, and oh, hearing all the 'no one can love you' was brutal and then that moment when Mytho is like, 'I love you best'? I kinda got misty.