Princess Tutu

There are very few anime that I would actually blog about - I found many of them enjoyable, now and then one makes me wanna go into bath and keep myself in the fetal position. Finally, surprisingly many made me wanna find the writer and ask for the time that I wasted on their trash of a story back. 

The target market for this anime was aimed more at teenage girls and I only wanted to watch this particular anime because of an AMAZING music video made using its scenes and a song by Nanne Grönvall called Hold Me Now (Håll Om Mig).  In essence the entire Princess Tutu plotline was explained in 3 minutes 15 seconds AMV (Anime Music Video).  I was pretty impressed with myself for guessing about 90% of the plot line from it, but browsing online I found that I was by no means in the minority in that regard.  This is without a doubt one of the most under-rated animes I've seen, I have not heard anything about it at all till the AMV by Roman and even then it took a while before I saw it available on bakabt. 


The ending was what made this excellently executed anime into more than just your run-of-the-mill "good" anime.  Despite the "fairy tale ending" that was achieved through blood, sweat and tears and the cheerful presentation of the "happily ever after" I felt a profound sadness.  Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I kept trying to scream - "This is a happy ending?"  

I can't help wanting to classify it as a tragedy and in many ways it was.  The last time I felt so conflicted by an ending was watching Tom Hanks in "Castaway" after he lost "Wilson" after the storm.  A part of me wanted to laugh at the absurdity of crying over a lost volley ball but at the same time my heart felt his pain.

Finally even though I thought it was one of the strongest anime storylines in recent years the story could easily have done with half the number of episodes.  It dragged on in the middle and they could have done away with at least 7 episode of the 26.  I almost lost interest halfway around episode 13 when each episode ran by the same formula but I'm glad that I persevered till the end.  The story promised many things right at the start and then came back right at the end to deliver on their promise.