Princess Tutu (anime)/Headscratchers

Mytho wasnt that good....Couldn't he sacrfice just a piece of his heart just for Ahiru... After he supposedly was going to sacrice all of it anyways... Besides he supposedly had an impulse to help everyone yet he ignored the fact that Ahiru was trapped in duck form...
- Mytho isn't a bad person for not sacrificing a heart shard for Ahiru to be a girl. For one thing, Ahiru isn't "trapped" in her duck form--she is a duck. It's unnatural for her to be a girl, not the other way around. For another thing, Ahiru wouldn't want him to give up some of his heart for her--she fought REALLY hard for him to be a complete person again, and if he gave up part of his heart, he'd give up part of himself. It's particularly bad since the heartshard she transforms with is the feeling of Hope...can you imagine being incapable of feeling any hope? He'd be miserable without it.
- That's a pretty good point.I love how the theme of this series is accepting yourself as you really are.
What is Princess Tutu anyways? Ahiru made it clear that she wasnt being herself while transformed ... Makes you wonder...?
- From all of her responses you can tell Princess Tutu is Ahiru, but maybe a wiser, stronger version--not to mention a version with killer ballet moves.
Was the town actually a real town trapped in a story? Seems to me it was due to the fake barriers, and the fact that the teacher-cat appeared as a real cat at the end.
- Yes, it was a real town, where nobody noticed the weird stuff going on because they were trapped in a kind of alternate reality.
Why did her friends forget her existence at the end? Did everyone forget what happened?
- Well, it's to add to the drama, of course! Aside from that, everyone seemed to have forgotten all weird things, such as the ballet-dancing animals. Ahiru's existence wasn't really normal to start with.
- It's also probably due to Drosselmeyer's story machine being broken. Right after that happened, anything that was magical in the town either vanished or turned into something normal.
- Ahiru's friends were human to begin with as well, and she was a duck her whole life.
Does Mytho change height? He looks Ahiru's height in scenes with her, yet he's almost a head taller than Rue in his scenes with her.
- Mytho doesn't, but Ahiru does--Princess Tutu is taller than Ahiru. Are those the scenes you're thinking of, or something else?
  - Also to consider, when Ahiru is Tutu she's almost constantly en pointe (on her very tippy toes), this adds quite a bit of height. Regular Ahiru is shown as shorter than Mytho.
Just who or what is Tutu? Is she Ahiru, only with powers? Is she Ahiru channeling the character from the Story? Is she an entirely different character all together?
- The impression I received from the series is that everyone is effectively their respective character, or at least acts in such a way as to be indistinguishable. Either way, though, Tutu is Ahiru the human is Ahiru the duck, her wish to protect the Prince granting her the ability that she displays in the story, in the same way the Prince is Mytho. The trick is that they are not just the character as written, but also the person who chooses the path they wish, which is what made the acts of the second chapter possible.
There's another one: free will versus the dictates of the Story is a major conflict in the story. How much free will did the characters have entering the tale, before they began to realize their respective intended endings? Did Rue and Ahiru love Mytho out of innate feelings, or did they love him because they were written that way in the Story? Likewise with Fakir, are his protective feelings towards Mytho simply due to Drosselmeyer, or would he have become the knight even without Drosselmeyer's influence? For that matter, would this make their feelings any less true if it were so?
- To me, it seems the story took any feelings held by the characters and altered them to fit the roles they were given. I think their feelings are all genuine, though warped somewhat by Drosselmeyer's desire for a "Grand Tragedy".
Personally, it bothers me that Rue's love for Mytho is never called into question. There is nothing left to him but his body and his desire to protect others: how can she love him truly? I would think that she is deluded into loving an empty shell, projecting her feelings onto an empty canvas, and be horrified by his reactions and grow to hate him for becoming a person. Evidently, though, she has truly been in love with him since she was a little girl. Being supportive of him changing in a positive way seems to be Duck's domain, and that strikes me as true love. So why does Rue get the prince in the end?
- Rue was shown of being disturbed by his changes at first, but in the second season I think it shows her beginning to accept him for who he truly is, not just as a prince that will love her because that's his nature. Plus, the second season seems to make a case that Rue is prepared to love Mytho even for his darker qualities--brought out by the Raven's blood--whereas Ahiru is scared of it and pushed away by it, even though she still tries her best to help him. Plus, although Ahiru definitely cares for and supports Mytho, she never has gotten to know Mytho as well as Rue or Fakir.
  - Thank you. It is nice to know that my lack of emotional dissonance is not due to a flaw within myself.
We see that Rue first met Mytho when she was a little kid. The same goes for Fakir. And they each develop feelings for him because they grow up together. But...wouldn't that make Mytho at least 13 or so years OLDER than Rue, probably even more if he's technically ageless by rule of magic? Watching that kissing scene and thinking that they could be decades apart...just...Ugh.
- In general, I don't like the fandom interpretation that Mytho is "ageless"--I think he ages, just that the spell he used to shatter his heart stopped him from developing as a person completely, not just emotionally but physically. Although he's been wandering around for years as the same physical age, he was practically in a coma considering he literally couldn't feel any emotion or even make choices for himself. So the fact that they're technically so far apart in age doesn't squick me that much, because both emotionally and physically they're probably on the same level.
  - Ah, thanks for shooting down that interpretation. It always had me bothered in terms of relationships (although it does make excellent Fanfic bait).
I know a LOT of people hate the manga (and I admit it had a fair share of shortcomings), but I am a little mad that the manga had a chapter looking at Pique's affection for Fakir, while the anime didn't. Wouldn't that have been a perfect thing to make part of Pique's almost-sacrifice in episode 15? Her faith in Fakir is already broken because everyone thinks he pushed Mytho out of the window, and Tutu reminding her that Fakir is really a good person could've snapped her out of it instead of just telling her that sacrificing herself to Mytho was wrong. Unless she really is just a fangirl and had no real feelings for him...but that also irritates me, because in the show every show of affection is at least slightly explained...
- Pique, like quite a few 13-year-old schoolgirls, picked a very distant guy she barely knew and started crushing on him for his "mysterious aura". It's never once shown in the anime that she truly knows what he's like.
- And if Pique was a candidate for heart-snatching, why not Lilie? Come on, you know we're ALL dying to know why she's so crazy.
  - I believe Lilie was not picked because...um...she doesn't exactly have a pure heart, being a sadist and all.
  - The Raven probably didn't want to deal with her.
  - For that matter, why wasn't Duck ever a candidate? She's gotta have the purest heart out of everybody in the entire show.
    - Drosselmeyer Did It.
      - I agree. While it would be tragic, it doesn't seem like the tragedy Drosselmeyer would favor. Or maybe he was just too short-sighted to think of it.
    - Not to mention, Mytho was friends with Duck, so Raven!Mytho might have subconsciously avoided her.
    - Also, let's not forget that Duck is Tutu. The Raven needs her to restore Mytho's heart so he can eat it for eternal life.
Why does Drosselmeyer like tragedies so much? At the end of the show he wonders if he's in someone else's story, shouldn't that make him reconsider some of his logic?
- He seems to not be all there--possibly because of the abuse he suffered at the hands of the townspeople, although he might've been just as crazy and sadistic before. He also seems to be doing the story as revenge toward the town, so trapping them all in an endless cycle of tragedy probably seems to fit, for him. As for his own story...right after he thinks that, he says [paraphrased] "Oh well, if I am the I'll just keep doing what I want to do!", essentially mimicking Duck and Fakir's decision to end the story by being themselves. He probably thinks he's clever/powerful enough to mess with whoever wants to write him into a tragedy.
- I prefer a slightly different interpretation myself. Yeah, he's a little crazy, but you have to remember that a really important part of being a fiction writer is making your characters suffer for a more interesting story. He's not the first person to take glee in writing a hopeless tragedy. The nutzo part is that it's an actual town. And his statement at the end of the story, to me, is him saying that if he's a pawn, that's okay, just make it a good story. I think he isn't upset at the notion at all. It makes him more interesting that way.
Who is that woman narrating at the beginning of every episode?
- The Narrator. Possibly the narrator of the fairytale everyone's trapped in, since she finishes off the story, too.
Why did Rue choose Ahiru for the pas de deux during lessons? Sure, it makes for a very sweet scene, but I am still in the dark about her motives, especially since she had to the play the role of the guy.
- Ahiru and Rue had a friendly moment earlier in that episode, so that probably influenced her choice. Plus making the worst student look good shows just how great of a dancer Rue is.
What I want to know is this: how is it that after minor exposure to Raven's blood, all the townspeople,and in a more severe case Mytho, turn into crows, whereas Kraehe, who's been fed Raven's blood since she was a baby, retains her human form?
- I assumed that because she had been exposed from a young age she had developed a sort of immunity, whereas the town people had a sudden exposure to it, which caused them to change.
- I don't think the blood has specific effects, so much as it puts you under the Raven's power. He wanted Kraehe as a human agent, so she didn't physically change.
- Plus, there's a major difference between Rue's exposure and the town's people exposure. Rue was fed Raven Blood, while the Town's People were drenched with Raven Blood.
This is admittedly really minor, but what is up with Ahiru's eyelashes? The really long one, specifically. Nobody else has it.
- I guess it's stylistic?
- Nobody else has those eyelashes, but then again nobody else is a duck in the form of a human girl either.
Did anyone else find it strange how at the end Mytho reveals that he had a different name as the prince in the story? The only thing that makes any sense seems to be that Fakir gave him that as more of a nickname for some reason that I can't quite pin down. Just because he was young and it sounded better at the time? Fakir had been shown reading the story as a child, and it's a bit hard to believe that the book would never mention the name of the main character. Maybe it was supposed to be dramatic, the idea being that he can now remember his own name, but it bugs me to no end.
- If the opening narrations are any indication, Drosselmeyer is rather averse to actually naming characters. I doubt Mytho had the lucidity to remember his name when he first appeared to Fakir; it's easily possible that Fakir simply named him.
- He did. At one point, little Fakir says that the name of the Prince in the story sounded silly. So he says that 'Mythos' (what Charon had said upon realizing that Mytho was indeed a storybook character come to life...) sounded cooler. Mytho himself, newly heartless, had nothing to say other than something along the lines of "sure".
  - Fakir naming him based on what Charon said probably happened. However, in both English and Japanese, what Fakir said was that he thinks "Prince" is a weird name or that he thinks it's weird for Mytho's name to be "Prince." He never mentions Mytho having any other name at all. Even if Mytho hadn't been able to remember it himself, since he is entirely a character made by Drosselmeyer, wouldn't the name have to have been written for him to remember it at all? Though, if not, it opens up the possible for the story's world to have "inner workings" a lot more complex than what Drosselmeyer wrote- It's not like he could have named all the characters, and yet individual people would probably have names within the story. But that's really more of a Wild Mass Guessing subject.
- It's explained in one of the prologues that the prince lost his memories along with his feelings when he shattered his heart, so naturally he'd forget what his real name was. Also notice that, throughout the series, as he regains pieces of his heart, he regains some of his memories as well as his feelings.