Princess Tutu SYNOPSIS

Princess Tutu is a magical girl anime created by Ikuko Itoh in 2002 for animation studio Hal Film Maker. It was adapted as a 2-volume manga illustrated by Mizuo Shinonome. Both series are licensed in North America by ADV Films. Princess Tutu includes elements of fairy tales and famous ballets, particularly Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. The series follows Duck, a duck who has transformed into a young girl who attends school and takes ballet, and her efforts to restore the heart of her mysterious schoolmate Mytho by transforming into Princess Tutu. The series explores the consequences of her actions and how they affect her and those around her, particularly Duck's classmate Rue, who is in love with Mytho, and Fakir, Mytho's childhood friend. It becomes apparent that Duck, Rue, Mytho, and Fakir are meant to play out the roles of characters in a story written by a writer named Drosselmeyer, but the characters begin to resist the constraints of their assigned fates and they fight to keep the story from becoming a tragedy.

Plot

A writer named Drosselmeyer, whose stories became reality, had his hands cut off and was killed by those fearing his power. As a result, the prince and raven from one of his stories were trapped in an eternal battle. The raven broke free from the story into the real world, and the prince pursued to seal him away again. To do so, the prince shattered his own heart with his sword.

Drosselmeyer had written about himself before he died, and managed to continue to control events despite his death. When he sees a duck watching the sad, heartless prince Mytho dancing on the water, he decides to let the story take its own course and transforms the duck into a girl named Duck so she can help the prince. If she quacks, she becomes a duck again, but if she comes into contact with water, she returns to her girl form.

Duck becomes a student at the school that Mytho attends, attending ballet classes with him. She learns of his shattered heart, and transforms into Princess Tutu with the aid of an egg-shaped necklace that glows red when a heart shard is near. The heart shards have found homes in people who feel a strong emotion, which then becomes enhanced and exaggerated with the presence of the heart shard.

Unlike most magical girl heroines, Princess Tutu does not physically fight the people affected by heart shards. Instead, she chooses to dance with them, communicating without words in an attempt to help them better understand their feelings and show them how to overcome it. Since these heightened emotions are a result of the heart shard that resides within them, they are freed of this artificial intensity when Princess Tutu removes the heart shard and returns them to Mytho.
When Mytho's girlfriend Rue realizes that Tutu is returning Mytho's heart shards to him, Rue transforms into Princess Kraehe and attempts to block Tutu's efforts so she can give the heart shards to her father, the raven. Mytho's childhood friend Fakir also attempts to stop Tutu with the hope of protecting Mytho from the tragedy he suffered when his heart was shattered, and to protect the world from the raven.

It becomes clear that Mytho wants his heart to be restored, and Duck persists despite Kraehe and Fakir's interference. When Fakir learns that he is a descendant of Drosselmeyer and also has the power to control reality by writing stories, he tries to use his power to aid Duck in her efforts to restore Mytho's heart. When Kraehe learns that the raven is not her real father and that she was kidnapped by ravens as a child, she attempts to help, only to be captured by the raven.

With Tutu's help, Mytho's heart is restored, but he is unable to fight the raven because it would shatter his heart again, and Rue is unable to escape the raven because of her despair. In the end it is Duck's perseverance that gives Mytho and Rue to have the strength to defeat the raven together.

After the raven is destroyed, Mytho, Rue, Fakir, and Duck dismantle the machine in the clock tower of Gold Crown Town that enabled Drosselmeyer to continue to control events by mechanically writing stories. Duck returns to her duck form, living near Fakir who continues his writing. Mytho and Rue marry and return to Mytho's original kingdom. In the end, Drusselmeyer, ironically, wondered if he was part of someone else's story.