Princess Tutu

From beloved shonen anime such as Full Metal Alchemist to the recent success of Attack on Titan, from still-popular series Death Note to dark deconstruction projects like Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica, Japanese anime has benefitted greatly through the utilization of melodrama tropes and themes. However, it can be argued that few anime feel so at home in the melodrama genre as the 2002 sleeper hit, Princess Tutu. First aired as a magical girl series, the popular story also produced spin-off manga series while continuing to receive praise-saturated reviews throughout the decade following its release. Much of Princess Tutu's success may be accredited to the heavy influence of a vast array of classical ballets on the plot, such as The Nutcracker, La Sylphide, Coppelia, and most notably, Swan Lake, making the anime a visual treasure trove for ballet dancers and scholars alike, accompanied by a soundtrack that serves as a love letter to Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Like the ballets that inspired it, this anime explores a nearly exhaustive amount of melodrama tropes in its 26 episodes, including the pitting of good versus evil, constant display of heightened emotion, and tragic plot non-resolution

.

To begin, we can look at the melodramatic use of good versus evil. The forces of "good" in this show, the Prince Mythos and Princess Tutu, can be seen in the upper image. Each of the characters in the story represent characters from the fairytale The Prince and The Raven, in which a prince (Mythos) seals away an evil and powerful Raven through shattering his own heart into shards. Princess Tutu, a mere duckling, is transformed into a human girl, and later into her magical alter-ego, in order to continue the story by searching for the lost shards of the Prince's heart. Both Mythos and Tutu are stereotypically kindhearted, with Tutu being especially self-sacrificing. These qualities are reflected in both the clothes they wear and the scenes they appear in; Princess Tutu and Mythos' outfits are always all or mostly white, both have light hair and eyes, and are shown in scenes that use light backgrounds with a soft glow and harmonic music. On the other side of the spectrum are Princess Kraehe and Drosselmeyer, the antagonists of our story. Princess Kraehe was kidnapped by the same Raven as in the Prince's story, and now chases after him, desparate to win his affection by any means. Therefore, she interferes when Tutu tries to heal Mythos' heart, fearing he will not love her if his heart is restored. While Kraehe begins to interfere less with Tutu's mission by the finale, Drosselmeyer stays an antagonist until the end. As he possesses the power to make stories come to life, he brought his characters from The Prince and The Raven into reality so that the tragic story would continue, with the intention that the conclusion would be heartbreaking for all. Mythos and Tutu's positive qualities can be seen in how they are portrayed, which is the same way Kraehe and Drosselmeyer's insidious tendencies are represented. As can be seen above, Kraehe's tutu could not be more starkly different from Tutu's, and the scenes she appears in are stereotypically dark and use tumultuous scores of music. The same is true on an even larger scale for the most evil villain, Drosselmeyer, who is made to look deformed and wretched.

Next, we can analyze the use of heightened emotion in Princess Tutu. The image above comes from one of the scenes from the episode in which Princess Tutu obtains her first heart shard to give to the Prince. During this episode, one of the ballet students in Tutu's class, Anteaterina, becomes obsessed with getting Mythos' affection after being slighted by his rumored girlfriend, Rue. She challenges Rue to a competition of Pas de Deux, but loses even with Mythos as a partner. She becomes consumed by the heart shard of Bitterness, running from the studio in tears, later slapping Mythos across the face, sobbing as the becomes more and more despairing, and  lastly battling with Princess Tutu until her heart is cleansed. These scenes depict heightened emotion common in melodrama, including waves of tears, outbursts involving physical violence, and crying out in despairing wails, that is utilized in almost all episodes by the characters who are consumed by the heart shards.

Lastly, the finale to Princess Tutu's story contains the most melodrama of all. First, Princess Kraehe has finally resolved to fight against her father, the Raven, and is thus kidnapped by him, kept helplessly in her original human form, a girl named Rue, and forced to continue dancing until she will die. Princess Tutu learns that the last heart shard is in fact the pendant allowing her to be human, but when she tries to remove it in order to give to Mythos, the pendant is stuck. She is given until dawn to restore Mythos' heart, and in the time remaining, Fakir, Mythos' best friend, will be forced by Drosselmeyer to write a tragic ending to the story in which Mythos will once again shatter his own heart to seal away the Raven. As he is forced to keep writing, Fakir commits sensationalized acts of violence against himself, repeatedly trying to cut off his own hands. He breaks free from Drosselmeyer's curse and rushes to Princess Tutu, explaining to her that the pendant is stuck because she herself does not want the story to end so she may not be separated from her beloved Prince. After a tear-filled Pas de Deux, Fakir and Tutu promise to return to their "true selves", and Tutu resigns herself to transforming permanently into a duck in order to save Mythos.
With Mythos' heart restored, he enters the final battle against the Raven. However, as the battle rages on, Mythos loses his will to fight, deciding once again to seal the Raven by shattering his own heart. Seeing this, the heartbroken Tutu begins to dance while crying for her Prince, continuing even while the Raven's minions attack her. Her dancing lifts his spirits, and Mythos manages to save Rue from the Raven, resulting in the two defeating the Raven while Tutu finally collapses, exhausted. At the conclusion, Drosselmeyer loses his power thanks to the positive resolution of the story, and Mythos confesses his love for Rue and takes her back to his kingdom. Princess Tutu remains a mere duck, the most tragic character of the story, with her love to be forever unrequited.

In accordance with countless great ballets, our heroine is fated to play the role of the most tragic character in the story. Having fallen in love with a man who is star-crossed to be with another, she sacrifices her own happiness completely in ways that harken back to tragic love stories such as Giselle. To paint her as such a tragic character, the story uses melodramatic tropes common in many famus ballets, including being forced to live in the body of an animal, being doomed to a cruel fate if she is to reveal her feelings for her beloved, and continuing to dance until death (or in this case, exhaustion). At the end of the story, the anguished Tutu uses the last of her power as a Princess to ensure that her Prince may live happily ever after, even if it means she will be miserable. Coupled with the other themes used in this anime, Princess Tutu secures a spot as one of the most melodramatic anime of all time.