Princess Tutu-verse Strategy Guide

How to be OP in the Princess Tutu-verse.

Note: Spoilers. You've been warned.

Local Scale Threat:

At this tier are the heart shards, the fragmented emotions of the Prince in the Story possessing various people and objects, imbuing them with a consciousness dominated by that emotion. These beings possess reality-warping abilities often associated the nature of what they possess.

This tier starts at city block level with Anteaterina warping a large amount of land and manipulating the ground on that scale and goes up to multi-city block level scaling to River, a River possessed by a Heart Shard which is deep enough a light can not be seen at the bottom. Princess Kraehe also summoned a number anthromorphic crow swordsmen that are also likely at this tier for being able to at least harm town level characters with swords. So power is generally in the city block to multi-city block range.

In terms of speed, this tier is likely in the subsonic range scaling from the Crows moving fast enough to be a blur and generally being comparable to the higher tiers in terms of speed who have several different subsonic speed feats including Princess Kraehe crossing the town at the same speed as Ravens, Princess Tutu being able to catch someone falling from a third story window before they fell a single story from across a courtyard, and Princess Tutu herself moving fast enough to blur in Akt 4.

Combat in Princess Tutu is highly stylized and often involves the characters dancing their emotions, with their emotions warping their environment. At this tier, this mostly involves manipulating the battlefield as it already exists or creating matter.

In terms of other abilities, this tier has logia intangibility (River, being water) as well as Intangibility including the Lamp Spirit and Wili Maiden. Outside the possibilities provided by reality-warping there isn't much offensive hax, though the Lamp Spirit and the Wili Maiden also have the ability to put people to sleep. It should be noted this tier also potentially has the ability to seal as 5 of the Heart Shards together were able to seal the Raven.

It should also be noted that Kraehe's crow swordsmen are highly skilled flying swordsmen.

What makes this verse tricky to fight even at this tier is the weird stats. By City Block to Multi-City Block Level, most characters have developed higher speeds then subsonic. Trying to find characters slow enough to be counters is really tricky.

In terms of weaknesses, the big thing that immediately sticks out to me is immobilization. The characters generally use their abilities by dancing, and binding them with rope or vines or something would likely be very strong.

This however does have the problem that it seems like it wouldn't affect River very well. This leads to what I think would be a generally strong power in general; freezing. Strong enough freezing is a form of immobilization which could put out Lamp, freeze River, and immobilize all of Kraehe's Swordsmen and the more humanoid fighters. The only one this would not be effective against is Wili Maiden.

Beyond that, a general weakness of the verse is a lack of enhanced perception. Outside of Princess Tutu's empathy ability, able to sense the emotions of others, the verse generally lacks ability to perceive better then any human.

This tier also has another weakness peculiar to it. All the Shards are dependent on the singular emotion of the Heart Shard to use their powers. Someone who can understand their emotion and can manipulate or convince them in an emotional state outside their emotion will have their powers lessen.

My first counter is particularly strong at this point, this being

Arya from the Inheritance Cycle.

Arya's magical power was so great as to stop the massive pieces of the Isidar Mithrim calced at the city block range. She can move as fast as a horse and matched Eragon's speed who can move faster then the eye. As such she is on the lower end of power for the verse, and comparable to slightly greater in speed. 

Arya is a very powerful Elf, with a telepathic sense that can extend across an entire city, giving her immediate access to the minds of any of the characters at this tier. Arya's psionic abilities would be absolutely absurd in the verse as she can read thoughts and memories, drive someone mad, create illusions so real as to affect their physical body, or directly take them over. This would allow her to gg one-shot every single character at this tier in the verse most likely one at a time and potentially at one time. 

She is also massively more versatile then the verse, with one-shot haxes for most of the physical entities. With her clairvoyance and precognition she would be able to foresee any potential threats, and she can teleport out of the way if needed using her slightly superior speed. Not that she would likely need too as she is over 100 years as an elf, and has spent much of that time training her skill in both swordplay and magic to a superhuman level.

The only real disadvantage with her is her magic is tied to stamina. Inheritance Cycle magic is tied directly to lifeforce of the user, and without it not only would she lost a lot of her abilities, but she would weaken significantly to about wall level which is weak enough to be one-shot. I don't think the verse has enough fighters to really drain Arya's stamina enough for it to be a concern, as Elves can fight or run for days straight, but it is a thing to note at least.

For an even more dangerous counter you could use

Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter.

The strongest Dark Wizard, Voldemort was powerful enough to destroy a forcefield protecting all of Hogwards, requiring City Block to Multi City Block Level energy, making him comparable to the verse. He also possess subsonic reactions and flight speed scaling to other Wizards moving at well over 100 mph (~44.7 meters per second).

Voldemort has most of the abilities of Arya, being a powerful psychic threat; able to use Legilimency and the Imperius Curse to drive the tier mad or wipe away certain emotions from their minds. He can also read thoughts and memories.

Voldemort can escape any threat the verse poses to him via teleportation and flight. He also should likely posssess freezing magic, which is a standard spell taught to Hogwarts students. He can also use Fiendfyre, which creates a sentient malicious fire that spreads rapidly. Fiendfyre is infamous for it's ability to resist being put out, even by magical water (like, say, River) and has enough power to destroy even a Horcrux, suggesting it could even search out and destroy Heart Shards granting the tier's fighters their powers. Voldemort can cast Fiendfyre and guide it via his dark magic towards any Heart Shard user, and allow it to consume their heart shard before they can figure out some way to stop it (if they can). This is assuming he doesn't immediately one-shot via Imperious Curse or Avada Kedavra (Which ironically would probably be less effective then Imperious or Fiendfyre as it possibly would not work on the Ghost Wili Maiden).

He also has the ability to turn invisible, which the verse would struggle with. 

That said Voldemort is famously arrogant and prone to pointless theatrics in-verse, hence why he created 7 Horcruxes of objects important to him rather then random grains of sand in Egypt. For a character not bound to this, and possibly even a threat to the higher tier I would suggest

The Dunwich Horror from the Lovecraft Mythos.

The Dunwich Horror is a monstrositiy whose footsteps were the size of tree trucks and described to be the size of a large building. It was also fast enough to travel deep within the countryside fairly quickly, suggesting a superhuman level of speed. 

That said stats are not why it would be so strong here. The Dunwich Horror is naturally invisible though it's strange sounds cause physiological and psychological damage to all who hear it, potentially being able to turn them mad, which may interfere with the ability to use emotions  of the Heart Shards. Beyond that, if the Dunwich Horror is rendered visible it drives those who see it insane, again attacking their psychology.

The Child of Yog-Sothoth, The Dunwhich Horror possess Old One physiology, making it impossible to harm with physical capacities like physical energy or even physical reality-warping meaning that nothing except MAYBE sleep inducement and sealing could even work on the Dunwhich Horror here. 

However, it's greatest capacities is it's infamous nature as the gateway for the Great Old Ones. The Dunwich Horror has the ability to open portals for far stronger beings, dependent on the amount of supernatural present, as it showed when it fled through the countryside going to a concentration of supernatural to open a portal. So how much supernatural is there in Princess Tutu?

hahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHA

A lot. Princess Tutu exists in a world where the natural and supernatural intermingle freely like how Ahiru's teacher is a talking antromorphic cat. Before Drosseleyer died he warped the reality of the town with his writing so that it was infused with the supernatural so he could continue to write the story from beyond the grave. The entire town is filled with supernatural energy. The Dunwich Horror would pretty much immediately have the capacity to summon Super-Cosmic entities. 

City Scale Threat:

In terms of power, this tier scales from the Dark Prince creating a dimension the size of a forest, The Raven being the size of the town, and having a dimension with a whole desert in his stomach. The tier is also subsonic for the reasons mentioned above.

I'm gonna be honest, this is the hardest tier I have ever done. I could talk about some of the abilities from most of the characters here like town scale transmutation or hypnosis or dimensional bfr but it's all almost insignificant a challenge compared to the God Tier of the verse Drosselmeyer. Drosselmeyer is a Ghost existing outside spacetime, that can influence spacetime on a town+ level scale from outside it, can freeze time, can alter the plot however he wishes, can transmute (on a town level scale by scaling), can bfr, can turn people into his puppets....he's incredibly hax. Drosselmeyer technically relies on sight, looking into spacetime via the mirrors in his dimension the gap in time, but that's a pretty small weakness especially since he can view the entire town at once. 

And it's only subsonic town level, that's the trick. You somehow need to hit a town level ghost outside of spacetime before he plothaxes the character, one of the most difficult haxes to resist. Without going over town level stats and subsonic speeds.

There is in fact a number of hax town level characters that are...supersonic level. Just fast enough that I can't use them. It doesn't help that Drosselmeyer being outside spacetime means that speed level is basically irreverent.

But I managed to think of some counters, and really it has to do with Drosselmeyer's character. Drosselemeyer wants to make the story as tragic as possible, viewing that as the apex of story. Drosselmeyer can not resist his desire to make the story "better" by making it more tragic and he certainly doesn't want the story to end, and is constantly trying to delay it. 

Also as shown in Ahiru's last dance, Drosselmeyer can not understand the character being able to transcend the role he's given them, he doesn't understand the power of hope, of a character defying the author. 

A character that would be good is a character that he would try to incorporate into the story instead of viewing them as a threat to the story, and can manipulate or otherwise beat him before he realizes it.

For a good example of that, despite lower stats, I would suggest

Lily Weatherwax from Discworld. 

Lily Weatherwax is the Fairy Godmother in the Discworld universe. She scales to the Twins in speed, who were able to blitz normal humans at faster then the eye speeds, and scales to mid tier wizards who could create building level explosions.

Because Princess Tutu is a Fairy Tale World, Lily Weatherwax would fit in very well, to the point Drosselmeyer would probably not notice her nature as a threat. She is a highly intelligent being, comparable to her sister who could mentally compete with wizards capable of probing the sources of causality of the universe with just their mathematics.

Lily Weatherwax has the ability to see through all mirrors and travel through them, and allow a form of pseudo-duplication extending into infinity. This would allow her to see and affect Drosselmeyer as he views everything through mirrors and is constantly in front of them. She could mentally manipulate and trick him, viewing him while he would have no idea of her threat.

Lily also has the power of stories, the power to manipulate plot to make it so that which is supposed to happen in a story will happen. Her plot hax could very well take Drosselmeyer off-guard since, while he does possess plot manipulation, he has never showed resistance to it himself. Lily Weatherwax could rewrite the plot so that the hero defeats the villain, the hero being Princess Tutu and the villain being Drosselmeyer. 

That said this is all conditional on Drosselmeyer not realizing the true threat she presents. If he does then it would be very difficult for her to win. But I actually found a character that could compete with a Drosselmeyer that actually wants to kill them, that being

Eternal Nocturne from League of Legends.

Nocturne scales physically to Garen whose Demancian Justice can produce kilotons of energy, and could speedblitz a mage from across a room, showing that he would have similar stats to The Tier.

Nocturne is the amalgamation of all nightmares, giving him a vast array of nightmare related powers such as inducing fear, sending people to sleep of nightmares, turning into peoples worst fears, creating illusions etc.

Nocturne negates magic with his presence which would also be very helpful and has shown the ability to hit intangible entities as well as drains souls with his very presence. 

He can hypothetically disguise his presence with his illusions. As Drosselmeyer relies on sight, he probably would not notice Nocturne, and if Nocturne can just get close before Drosselmeyer can hax him in some form, he would one-shot via hax.

You might be thinking "but how would Nocturne reach Drosselmeyer?" Nocturne actually has a form known as Eternal Nocturne who transcends spacetime. He can casually travel between dimensions and outside spacetime, suggesting it would be child's play for Eternal Nocturne to travel to Drosselmeyer's location and absorb his soul.

But Nocturne could still get haxed. Could there be someone even greater?

I think there may be. I know of a character that I think may be the perfect counter. That counter is

Literature Club President Sayori from Doki Doki Literature Club (Good Ending)

Note: Depending on how big you think the Doki Doki Literature Club world is, Sayori may be a lot stronger, but the exact same logic actually applies to Drosselmeyer whose views the Princess Tutu world as his story.

While Sayori is not as skilled a plot manipulator as Monika, she should probably scale to most of Monika's feats, and her feats of affecting at least the town the characters live in with her plot hax, which would give her at least town level. 

But what about abilities? 

Sayori has the same plot manipulation as Drosselmeyer. And while she is not as skilled as Drosselmeyer at it, she also has something else....RESISTANCE to plothax. She is capable of breaking out of the script of her own game, while Drosselmeyer and should scale to Monika who was able to persist (though painfully) after having her character file deleted. 

This means that Drosselmeyer could get manipulated by Sayori, but Sayori could resist Drosselmeyer's hax. 

Beyond that, they have similar haxes. Both have matter hax, mind hax, time hax, and plot hax. Both can resist all of those save for mind hax and Drosselmeyer being unable to resist plot hax.

So why is Sayori the perfect counter? It actually is based on their characters.

Sayori, while she seems initially happy-go-lucky and cheerful, is secretly clinically and suicidally depressed. She presents a happy face when seeing the player but secretly suffers drastically. That is the kind of poetic tragedy that Drosselmeyer eats up. However in the good ending, after seeing the Player go back in time many times to make all the members of the Literature Club happy, she is inspired to keep going and maintaining hope. 

This possibility, of a character breaking the bounds of their role, transcending tragedy via hope is exactly what beat Drosselmeyer originally and the thing he would not be able to account for. Drosselmeyer would likely try to incorporate Sayori into his story, incorporating her tragedy, and play out her original story of killing himself after confessing to her love. But Sayori would be able to resist that via the hope the player gives to her in the good ending, allowing her to surprise and defeat Drosselmeyer.

Sayori is the perfect counter for Drosselmeyer because she essentially has his powerset, appears to be the exact type of character knows how to and would want to manipulate, but actually can one-shot him and has resistance to abilities via her own abilities and by gaining the power of "hope" in her own character arc.

And that's how to be OP in the Princess Tutu-verse.