Welcome one and all to the penultimate edition of my Princess Tutu watch. Everything comes to a head this week! As Fakir rescues Ahiru, Kraehe learns the truth about the Raven and Mytho succumbs to the blood. Will Ahiru get the happy ending she wants or will Drosselmeyer win in the end? Well its time to dive in and talk about it.
Starting off we have episode 23, Marionettes. In recent episodes Princess Tutu has been really focused on the more story based aspect of its setting. Going in on things like authorship of stories, the responsibilities and power authors have with their characters. When the focus is on Fakir this can be a rather uplifting and positive notion, as he doesn’t want to abuse this power. This week though we see the other side of this power in Drosselmeyer. Where Fakir doesn’t want to control or abuse, Drosselmeyer will only be satisfied with his story and his ending. He is all about control over the story and forcing it to fit his desires. Going so far as to stop the story entirely by taking Tutu out of it until she bows to his control. Simply put, he wants a tragic ending of his own design, without caring what his characters want.
All of this is presented clearly in his interactions with Ahiru. The entire time she is in his clock world, she is treated like a puppet. Unable to control her own body, only able to speak her mind, but nothing more. Drosselmeyer is taking the choice away from her in the most obvious way. The best example of this is of course the tea party. Where the entire time Ahiru is arguing with Drosselmeyer, only to still be forced to drink the tea and for him to dismiss and belittle her desires. He doesn’t understand that over the course of the story, Ahiru has grown as a character. He still believes she is still the same little duck with the same selfish desires for Mytho. As an author, he doesn’t know his own characters, and like in many real world novels, this leads to a disconnect in the actual story.
Contrast this to Fakir, who by the end isn’t sure who actually wrote the story. Was it him, was it his story and his ideas? Or did the story write itself through him, did he just transcribe the feelings of the characters and their actions? Up until now Fakir has had difficulty writing anything about Mytho. He was trying to do exactly what Drosselmeyer is, forcing the story to fit his own desired ending. Yet nothing he could do worked, and he just sat there staring at a blank piece of paper. It wasn’t until he focused on Ahiru, and her feelings, and writing what she would do that he was able to write. So that begs that question: Do storytellers write stories? Or do the best stories write themselves, as expressions of their own truths and their own characters? Are those the only ones that become real?
To go on a tangent for a moment, it’s a very interesting question about writing, writers block and what we do. To give Fakir some credit, writing is hard. Everything the tree told him last episode about the “voice that is voiceless” and all that? It’s a crock of shit, its the sort of snobby things wannabe writers say when someone else has writers block. When in reality, you have to do what I am doing right now. You have to sit down, stare are a blank document, and think. And you have to continue to think, and write, and feel it out until something feels right. I’m not even writing a creative story right now, like I would for say a tabletop campaign, this barely qualifies as creative writing. And yet the struggle is still there. So don’t worry Fakir, I understand. Writing is hard.
Getting back to the story at hand, and the question of characters, authors and stories, we have Rue. Rue who has slowly been rebelling against her role as Kraehe for awhile now. Rue who has finally learned exactly why she never felt right as Kraehe, because she was never a crow to begin with. Rather she was just a normal human girl, kidnapped by the Raven, and lied to as she grew up. There is a whole argument to be made here regarding parents, children, and never questioning what we are taught growing up. Of finding who we really are as people independent of those who raised us. But I think the more interesting, and more relevant to Princess Tutu at least, bit here is that of choosing who you want to be.
Up until now, Rue has all but resigned herself to her role as Kraehe. She relished in it early of course, when she thought she could get everything she wanted. When she believed the Raven, believed Mytho could love her and it would all work out. But as that proved to not be the case, as her Mytho changed, she never really tried to fix it. Rue accepted she was what Mytho and the Raven called her, an ugly crow, as her lot in life. So it’s nice to see that when shown otherwise, when given a choice between being Kraehe or Rue, she chose to be Rue. She chose to side with those who made her happy, with Mytho and Ahiru, instead of the forced father figure of the Raven. Of course most of this is covered in the next episode, but Princess Tutu laid good groundwork here.
Moving on we come to episode 24, The Prince and the Raven. As the title implies, and the ending of episode 23 sets up, this is primarily a Rue and Mytho episode. At the start, the Raven has taken greater control of Mytho, turning him into a raven himself, and Rue has rejected the Raven. It’s actually rather interesting to see how these changes have effected their relationship. As the more Mytho has succumbed to the Raven he has not necessarily become kinder, but more desperate. He no longer taunts or abuses Rue. Rather he comes to her, desperate for her love and affection, desperate to not be alone. Whether this is the true Mytho inside reaching out, or just the consequences of the Raven’s selfish form of love I don’t know. But it is sad to see the once so proud, so arrogant, Mytho reduced to this.
On the flip side though, Rue has finally come to terms with and accepted her mistakes. She has accepted that it was the old Mytho she loved, and that the raven before her isn’t what she wanted. However this is to little, to late, and she understandably blames it on herself. She understandably feels responsible for his current state, even though she herself is one of the Raven’s victims as well. So when Ahiru comes to her about restoring Mytho’s heart, it makes sense that she rejects it. For all that she has turned away from the Raven, she still fears him. She doesn’t believe they can actually defeat him and is content to live this tragic existence for the rest of her days. Her Prince forever a raven, while she is just a regular girl, unworthy of her true Prince. Effectively a punishment for her actions to this point.
Meanwhile we have Ahiru, who has to deal with one last trick from Drosselmeyer, insurance for the ending he wants. Because as it turns out her pendant that allows her to turn into Tutu is actually a heart shard itself. Her quest, her desire to be with Mytho, was doomed from the start. The only way she could ever succeed in saving him was going to be by returning to a duck forever. Say what you will about Drosselmeyer, but he had a plan from the beginning to get what he wants, and I love it. Because I really should have expected this, it fits fantastically into the whole selfish vs selfless love. I have always believed up until now that Princess Tutu would somehow, some way, manage to pull a happy ending out of its ass. And it still may, but it won’t be one where Ahiru gets Mytho.
The only bugbear I have in all of this is Uzura, who I still don’t particularly like. She just feels like a mascot character, a sort of Deus Ex Machina, in a lot of ways. Take for instance episode 23, where she just happens to escape Drosselmeyer’s notice, despite it being his own world. She manages to find her way to the bottom of the story and just… reverses it by turning a crank. She doesn’t really fit into the overall story and it feels like everything she does could have been achieved more organically. The only reason I can really think of for how she does all she does is that she exists outside the bounds of the story. Made out of Edel by Karon and Fakir, she isn’t bound by Drosselmeyer’s story. But that’s neither explained nor fits well. Effectively, Uzura feels unnecessary in Princess Tutu’s grand scheme.
Finally, we come to the finale with Ahiru, Rue, Mytho and the Raven. All of this goes how you would expect. Tutu comes to get the shards from the gates, confesses the truth about her pendant to Rue, and convinces her to let her try. Mytho escapes looking for companionship and the heart shards gather. The most interesting thing to happen here is actually the heart shards themselves. Whatever emotions they represent, whether it be determination or perhaps sacrifice or loyalty, they know what must be done. They ask Tutu not to return the last heart shard if the Raven’s curse cannot be broken. Effectively asking her to let him go, if it can’t be fixed. Its a nice final show of Mytho’s character before our finale next week. And with Rue, effectively a Princess, stuck in the Raven’s castle we can expect a classic hero’s tale to go down.
So all in all, how was Princess Tutu this week? Well for all the shift in story or odd change in focus, I still enjoyed it. Over the past 24 episodes I have come to really enjoy these characters. So even if the story becomes something I wasn’t expecting, so long as Princess Tutu stays true to the characters, I think I’ll like it. And isn’t basically what this shift in focus is about? Writing stories that are true to the characters, rather than changing them to fit your needs? Experiencing a piece of media, whether it be a novel or a show, as it is rather than what you wish it was? Maybe that’s all a bit out there, and even I don’t think it’s a perfect fit. But at the end of the day I’ve enjoyed my run with Princess Tutu, and i’m looking forward to the finale.
