Princess Tutu – Fakir’s Role as a (Fan) Fiction Writer
For my fan fiction class, I chose to analyse the following anime music video:
I love Princess Tutu, but I sadly haven’t watched it in years. I have most of it on DVD, but I’m missing the last volume. (One day, one day!) I’ve watched Chapter of Egg (the first half of the series) several times, but I’ve only seen Chapter of Chick once all the way through on fansubs years ago, and once again sans the last volume when I purchased the DVDs. I really need to rewatch the series because it is a fantastic show! I apologize in advance if any of the details are incorrect in my analysis (I tried my best!).
Princess Tutu is an animated series about the power of stories. Through the twenty-six episodes, the heroine, Ahiru, pushes her way through different folk stories and fairy tales in order to return heart shards to Prince Mytho. Marissa Panaccio’s stunning fanvid, which features the Swedish song Håll Om Mig (Hold Me Now) by Nanne Grönvall, illustrates that Ahiru is confined to the roles that Drosselmeyer and Fakir, as author figures, have set up for her through the use of storytelling. Pannaccio uses motifs of transformation and control to show Ahiru’s false sense of freedom and safety within the two author’s stories.
Once I rewatch the series (if I can ever track down volume six, egad, I want it), I want to develop this concept more. I had to limit myself to two double-spaced pages, so some of the concepts are not as fleshed out as I would have liked.
This fanvid shows the striking difference between Ahiru as a duck, Ahiru as a human, and Ahiru as a super heroine. Ahiru’s natural state is a duck; she can only become a regular girl who becomes Princess Tutu with the assistance of Drosselmeyer, an old man who writes stories. The other main characters are in similar positions; Rue is the Raven, Mytho is the Prince, and Fakir is the Knight, all because of Drosselmeyer’s power as writer and god. Panaccio shows clips of all four of the characters dancing as their regular selves and as their transformed selves. At 0:27 to 0:29, Panaccio uses clips from outside of the canon episodes showing Rue as the Raven dancing with Ahiru as a girl. The promotional video clips are much more detailed and dramatic than what actually occurs within the series; by placing promotional clips alongside normal clips, the difference between Rue and Ahiru is stressed. Rue, Mytho, and Fakir all dance identically in both of their forms, but Ahiru can only dance well after she transforms into Princess Tutu. Clips of Ahiru dancing terribly with Rue and Mytho in the dance are juxtaposed with scenes of Ahiru as Princess Tutu dancing beautifully for theatrical effect. In addition, all clips of dancing are sped up to increase the appearance of their intensity and determination, particularly when the dancing is meant to be used as a weapon against another character. In this anime music video, Ahiru requires a strong lead in order to survive in the world of ballet, and in this way, she is always dominated by her partner.
In the original series, Drosselmeyer’s purpose was to narrate cliffhanger endings of the episodes for the viewers and to influence Ahiru’s choices. His scenes are nearly always framed with turning cogs, representative of the pieces of fairy tales that hold together the framework of the series. Panaccio digitally alters the cog animations to contain footage of control from 1:25 to 1:40: quick scenes flash by in the circles that feature seduction, manipulation and brute force. By putting clips of this nature into the cogs, Panaccio infers that the love-polygon is not a product of their own desires; they are actually under control of Drosselmeyer, who, as a writer, wants to satisfy his readers. Interestingly, directly prior to the cog sequence, at 1:24 a clip of Mytho, Rue, and Fakir is shown for a split second in which the three characters are on stage, frozen under stage lights. This gives the impression that they are merely actors in Drosselmeyer’s grand stage production. Directly in the middle of the cog sequence, there is a short clip of Fakir pulling Ahiru’s hand away from Prince Mytho’s; this is the first suggestion of defiance against Drosselmeyer’s story that appears in the fanvid. From 2:09 through to 2:20, Ahiru is shown as a puppet being manipulated from strings above while Fakir furiously writes on paper. His writing goes against Drosselmeyer’s story, which has a tragic ending for the character of Princess Tutu: she is destined to die in exchange for saving Prince Mytho. In this way, Fakir is writing his own fan fiction, because he is a “fan” of Ahiru and is unsatisfied with Drosselmeyer’s conclusion to her story. Ahiru does not have control over her own existence, because only her canon author and her fan fiction author have the power to alter her destiny. The video wraps up with a scene of Ahiru dancing as a duck, with her own strength of character, but fades into another where she transforms from a human girl into Princess Tutu. When she is Princess Tutu, she is a simply a pure, helpful character archetype rather than herself; Panaccio shows her audience that Ahriu being herself is not enough to satisfy readers. The final clips show Prince Mytho jumping from his bedroom to save a baby bird who cannot fly; Ahiru herself, under the manipulation of her two authors, still needs to be saved.
