telophase | (no subject)

CAPSLOCK OF TRIUMPH

Dude, I cried through the last three episodes even when I couldn't figure out why I was crying.

OH GOD ME TOO. Fakir! Ahiru! Rue's dance of despair! Hand-stabbing! Authorial insertion! Swan Lake! Dancing duck! FAKIR/AHIRU WRITER/MUSE OTP.

Now I get to make you read my paper. :D

I was going "Come on, story of Ugly Duckling! Come on, story of Ugly Duckling! ..... AAAAAUUUGHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

It's on my hard drive here somewhere, I think .... *goes to rummage*

I love PT for being relentlessly about what it's about, and following through to the pain! on every story point until they end the way they must. Owww. Them's the breaks when you break out into the real world and give up a chance at a fairytale ending. (I say casually, even as my heart is shattering into a zillion pieces.) I hold firmly to the truth that since they are still actually fictional, FAKIR CAN WRITE A SEQUEL.

Basically all Tutu fic is post-series Fakir/Ahiru "AAAGH WE HAVE TO FIX IT / AAAGH WE HAVE TO WALLOW IN THE ANGST". Not that this is not a great story to milk, but...owww owww owww my heart. (The best I've seen uses the story of Orihime and the Bridge of Stars. OH GOD.)

Oh, Tutu paper. Eight months may be long enough after the paper to get over my emotional trauma from it and start actually editing it.

I could see the tragic bits arriving from a long way off, and as the characters salvaged what little bits they could from the wreckage of the story, it struck me that I think all the anime series that really are powerful, have some sort of bittersweet ending. I can't think of one that made me go AUUUGH! and run to press it on everyone that ended thoroughly happily.

There is probably a really good moral in that, somewhere.

(The only things I can think of that managed to make me go AAAAUGH at a thoroughly happy ending are both non-anime: Bridge of Birds, which was just so ridiculously over-the-top that it couldn't be anything else, and one of the Ninth Doctor episodes that managed to pull a completely happy ending out of the flaming wreckage that I won't go into because I'm not entirely sure who here has watched it and who hasn't.)

I think you have a point there. I just realized that if I don't cry on the last DVD of a series, I haven't really been that into it... hmmm... same goes really for video games - for me, anyway. The best ones make me laugh, make me cry, make me care, make me sit on the edge of my seat, and leave me wanting more :)

Yup. I think the formula on the majority of them is that the characters didn't get what they wanted, only got part of what they wanted, or they got it in a way they didn't expect or by giving up so much more, but there's a chance left open that they might in the future. The bit left open combined with the failure to completely resolve the story is what gives it the hope and the idea that the story continues.

I think it's part of the reason why Death Note, while excellent in parts, fails to cohere as a really great work. The ending is final, and even though the last chapter shows life continuing, there's no grand desire to complete the story on the part of the reader, because there's no way left open for the reader to do it.

*attempts to think of ways to post about this and encourage discussion without spoilers for any of these series ... aagh!*

I think another thing is that the "villains" (for lack of a better term) seldom are just plain evil. They have their own motivations, which are sometimes noble in their own way.

Ooh, fic? Links? *curious*

To Telophase: SQUEE YAY. Princess Tutu is my second favorite anime and I always get so excited when people love it too. :3

Oh, Tutu paper. Eight months may be long enough after the paper to get over my emotional trauma from it and start actually editing it.

. . . I *still* have to send you feedback on that. *hides*

Can I read your paper now?

I bawled all over everything OMG.

HA!

haHA!

My major regret is that

rachelmanija won't have seen it all by them time she comes here for AFest, so we can't go "AAAAAAUUUUUGGGGGGGHHHH!!!!!!!!" together.

SO NOT A STORY YOU WANNA SPOIL, no.

Princess Tutu is one of best things I've seen in a long time. I thought it was going to be a fun crack show when Ahiru dances to Waltz of the Flowers in the first episode and voila! There are flowers to save Mytho. And then it started getting darker, and then there was the second season, and then there was my heart broken in a million little pieces, but somehow in a good way.

Exactly!

Have you seen this music video? It's the only one I've seen that takes advantage of all the dancing in Princess Tutu.

Haha, figures it's on youtube. :D

I posted the link to the actual file @ amv.org if anyone wanted a higher res version. This one is definitely worth the effort.

I love that music video, I got it on my hard drive. And can I just say that Princess Tutu is the most satisfing "I got it because I thought it was crack" anime I've tried since well, I think it even beats out Fruits Basket.

I saw a totally kick-butt AMV of Princess Tutu. It actually looks... erm... good!

Here's a link to the AMV at animemusicvideos.org
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/members/members_videoinfo.php?vid_id=118208

OR alternately, from this site (where you can also get Yami no Matsui to the tune of the ding-ding-dong song...)

In the videos section
http://www.silverwolfie.net/main1.htm

That one's just plain awesome. It's what got me to watch the series in the first place. :D

And the song is kick ass

Indeed it does. Those characters are just so adorable, too. :)

OMG, that just fabulous. Thanks for the link!

I blame Telophase! >:P

Er... thank. I mean thank.

Now I'm desperately scanning my memory trying to work out where the incredibly slashy clip of Fakir grabbing Mytho (theirloveissotrue!) comes from - or is it a composite? Kruhe dancing with Ahiru is also perplexing me...

MUST. REWATCH. SERIES.
(*cough* again *cough*)

It's from the intro on the Japanese DVDs, I believe. I watched it LAST of the files a friend sent me - for which I am GLAD because they'd have confused me worse than anything had I watched 'em first. XD

I can't wait until there's a box set. *^^*

(I hope to never, never buy an anime disc-by-disc again. I've learned my lesson. >.<)

The only reason I don't want to by a box set is because of all the Etudes on the DVDs. That was the best feature ever.

*tempted* What were they? (And would they not be included in the box set? I know that ADV's "thinpacks" have the extras stripped off sometimes, but a regular box set should just be all the regular discs, shouldn't it . . ?)

They were little features on the DVDs that would go over all the music used in the episodes on that DVD. It'd be narrated by a character and was pretty useful.

Princess Tutu is the finest anime I've ever watched. It's just in a league of its own.

(I'd rather like to know how the creators pitched the idea to the financiers... I wonder if there was some subtle misrepresentation going on? "Oh, it's a nice bouncy fairytale about a girl who wants to be a ballarina! Perfect for the tweenie shoujo market!")

I was in tears through the last few episodes too. Though my favourite episode is still the penultimate one of the first season - I love the music and the character dialogue, and am disproportionately amused by Fakir's expression when Ahiru is berating him naked. *grin*

(I was also amused by the episode in the second season where the girls are asking Ahiru if she's "in the Fakir Faction". Hell, I think we're ALL in the Fakir faction by then)

I haven't seen many discussions/essays/analysis on the series, and I'm dyin' to read some. If you find any through your Extensive Anime/Manga Contacts, please post links!

(hmm, at some point I need to write up my crackpot theory that Fakir self-inserted himself as the knight into Drosselmeyer's story...)

It's like Trigun in that it sucks you in with the promise of lighthearted crack and then sucker-punches you.

I was rooting for her to hook up with Fakir once he gained a personality. XD It was 100% more personality than Mytho had, for sure.

As for discussion,

coffeeandink links to a bit here (http://coffeeandink.livejournal.com/600942.html) and here (http://coffeeandink.livejournal.com/603851.html). And if you want lots of it,

helen_keeble meet

octopedingenue,

octopedingenue meet

helen_keeble. She talked about it quite a lot on her LJ a few months ago and even wrote a paper on it. :) Which I've got on my HD now and plan to go read shortly. Her two sets of tags on it are here (http://octopedingenue.livejournal.com/tag/princess+tutu) and here (http://octopedingenue.livejournal.com/tag/princess+tutu+notes).

(And write it up! :D)

Lemme belatedly react with you: ;LKSND;LKNASVKBASDVMASDFVBSA;KVJOIUERGLKERVHSEVL;KJEVKD;LFKVMERBJVBJAOEBKVBHAELKJB;AEKJBOBUJOAEIRJBHBAEL;RKJwhoah

Now you can get to see why Rue's one of my favorite characters. :O And she's one who wasn't my favorite until OMGtheend, because at the end of the first season, she's just 'omg villainess'. Instead of it being 'well she's the villain and she doesn't *deserve Mythos because she's teh_evil' it's Rue discovering what Mythos really means to her and her sacrificing everything.

To say Rue's my favorite in Princess Tutu is misleading, however, as it's like saying out of tiramisu, truffle cake, nutty bars, creme brule, and chocolate cake that I prefer chocolate cheese cake. All the characters win. I mean, Fakir. :D

And it's one of the few series where the ending they thought of was even better than the ending I was expecting. OMG FAKIR/AHIRU RUE/MYTHOS OTP.

OH GOD YES!

I love it when characters are set up to be one way, and then the underpinnings are knocked out from under them and they become sympathetic. And there were two people who sacrificed everything, and only one of them got the prince. The other one had to settlle for not dying.

I totally say I don't ship characters, but OMG FAKIR/AHIRU RUE/MYTHOS OTP, yes!

I'd say the other one POWNed by getting Fakir. I mean, it's Fakir. He's chocolate to Mythos's vanilla.

Damn livejournal logged me off. That comment was mine. >_>

I figured it was probably you. XD

And bittersweet chocolate at that, not bland milk chocolate.

I love that the guy who was always in the library screaming for quiet turned out to be important to the story - and I didn't clue in that it was him until near the very end. XD

And the cat! With the kittens! At the end! XD

I keep thinking that it's significant that (as we discover from the very end credits of the last episode), Neko-sensei is the only one of the animal-people to be revealed as an animal-turned-human, not vice versa. (we see the crocodile, armadillo, I think the anteater and chihuahua, and we know from other comments that the electric eel, cat ballet-dancer, and others from "outside" are really people)

The only other animal-turned-human is, of course, Ahiru.

HMMMMMM

(must rewatch, paying attention to Neko-sensei's dialogue when he's talking to Ahiru - how much does he actually know? On first pass through, he seems like he's just there for comic relief, but now I'm convinced something else is going on)

It may or may not be relevant that E.T.A. Hoffmann, who created Drosselmeyer in The Nutcracker and the King of Mice, also wrote The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, the unfinished memoirs of a cat interspersed with random snippets of the life of a composer. Or Neko-sensei could be the toeshoed descendant of Puss in Boots, who's always one step ahead of the humans in the story. And of course there's the ballet step pas du chat!

Princess Tutu, you make my little postmodernist heart go pitter-pat

Have you read Robertson Davies' The Lyre of Orpheus? It's about modern Canadians who produce an unfinished opera by E.T.A. Hoffman about King Arthur, while the ghost of Hoffman watches from Limbo. It is very very funny (especially if you've ever done any theatre) and very meta, though not half as meta as Tutu.

I will be a most happy kitty when that is out on DVD. I watched it over a weekend, and like you, found my self rooting for Ahiru and her hopes, and yet not being disappointed by the ending. :)