Princess Tutu was written in August 2002 by Michiko Yokoto and Ikuko Itoh. The series stars numerous characters that have come out of an in-universe story come to life and struggling with acceptance or fighting their roles in the story and the fates that those roles decide for them. Princess Tutu is probably the least bad magical girl series. That is to say while it's not my favorite it has the fewest flaws I can name and if there is an "objective good" this is probably it. This series is a real masterpiece that unlike a lot of MG series I would recommend even if you don't watch MG series.
3 Reasons I love it:
1: I'll get the obvious point out of the way first; this series is probably the most classically beautiful, elegant and cultured series is the magical girl genre. With inspirations like classical ballet and fairy tales, it was pretty much guarenteered that even when the series is dark, it would nontheless be timeless and aesthetically beautiful. This is a series that every action just bleeds finesse and grace, helped by the ballet themes. Everything from the art, music, plot elements etc. are just beautiful.
2: The series is probably my favorite use of metafiction in particular because it blends the lines between metafiction and fiction. In particular the series is metafictional defined from a fictional point of view. It's characters in conflict with their roles as character with the perspective of the metafictoinal being completely inside the narrative. The characters are battling against the story of the Prince and the Raven, a story inside Princess Tutu, not fighting against the story of Princess Tutu. That means a lot of the metafictional flairs I often find just distracting because they seem more style over substance aren't applied and the metafiction feels more deliberate here.
3: This series has a sophistication that comes from subtle complexities. Many of the episodes centered around one of the Heart Shards are explorations of an emotion and even though the characters are fairly archetypal, the emotions they confront have complexity unrivaled in almost anything I've seen yet they do this every episode. The world is similarly archetypal yet deeply complex, like a fairly simple but beautiful painting that has more subtleties to it the more you look. Very often I'm forced to speak about archetypal-ness and complexity as though they are opposed sides of a binary while in Princess Tutu they are seamlessly fused, the archetypes deep roots being explored showing the complexity in what we percieve as simple.
3 Flaws:
Princess Tutu probably has, as mentioned, the least amount of flaws in any magical girl work I've ever seen. That said if I were to try and critique this beautiful artwork far greater then anything I will ever make
1: Some of the episodes can feel a bit repetitive. Particularly mid-season episodes can feel like a bit of a game "what emotion are we tackling today and how does Tutu return them to the Prince". There's more subtetly then that as usually some plot elements are being revealed in each ep, but they definitely become a bit more predictable
2: The series humor is mixed. The series has some moments that are really funny however the key thing about these moments is that these tend to be one-off moments of characters reacting to some plot event in a funny way or Uzura being a loveable scamp or of course the greatness that is Femio. However there's a few recurring jokes that were maybe funny at first, but I really don't think are that funny that show up like every episode. Things like Neko-Sensei threatening to have his students marry him if they fail or Lille delighting in Duck's torment. I get from an artistic standpoint that Lille represents the fans of a series who take delight in the emotional suffering of the character that makes them cuter but while I can support it as symbolism, I don't think it's really funny as a joke. I'm not annoyed by these or anything but this is not the series I would go to for laughs.
3: Duck as a character is really simple. Drosslemeyer even points this out in-universe that she's not even trying to do something that would be selfish because she's just a simply good person. Duck is a magical girl protagonist cut from the Usagi Tsukino cloth of having many character flaws but lacking any moral defects outside force of will. While she's really cute, she lacks the more real feeling sometimes selfish nature tha someone like Usagi sometimes had. Many of the other characters are also really simple. Mytho is really simple, he's a perfectly nice prince until he's forced not to be. Most of the side characters are really simple. Even Drosselmeyer, entertaining as he is, is a pretty simple character. The only characters that show a signifigant complexity are Rue and Fakir (and maybe Edel). In a way it IS fitting. These characters are all characters from a story book with very prescripted roles, so their personalities being so surprisingly easy to define.
My Favorite Part:
My Favorite part alternates between the climax of season 1 and the climax of season 2 but right now I'd have to say it's the climax of season 2. Duck is the ugly duckling, the character whose story was to end in tragedy, but she is the character whole role is to transcend her role, born to become greater then what she is and in doing she becomes the light of hope, the concept of transcending one's concept. Even though she is turned back into a little duck without any powers she dances with so much passion, love and skill that she invokes the very spirit of Princess Tutu, the spirit of becoming more then what you were made to be, and restores the whole of the town from the Raven.
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