A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Inevitable Doom: Fakir/Ahiru (Princess Tutu)

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

Okay, sorry this is late. The first draft was actually finished before the due date, but then editing it down to under five thousand words proved to be more difficult than I thought. Sorry!


Title: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Inevitable Doom
Author: elektra3
Fandom: Princess Tutu
Pairing: Fakir/Ahiru
Spoilers: The entire anime.
Notes: This essay is anime-only, as a) the manga is, in my opinion, considerably inferior to the anime and b) much of Fakir's backstory and character development gets thrown out the window for the manga, making the relationship between him and Ahiru neither as important or as interesting as it is in the anime. Screen caps were either taken from Once Upon A Time or The Waterside, with the exception of one, which is actually an icon made by sleepdebtfairy.
A note on names: In the official release, names that are actually Japanese words (Ahiru, for example) are translated instead of being kept as they are, as was done in the fansubs. Though I own all the DVDs that have been released, I was first exposed to this show via fansubs, and the untranslated names are the ones I'm most familiar with. Thus, in this essay Duck is Ahiru, Mr. Cat is Neko-Sensei, and Gold Crown Town is Kinkan Town.

This essay will make a lot more sense if you're familiar with the series, but if you're not, here is an overview.



The Princess Who Wasn't: Ahiru



"But I'm a duck. In voice and appearance, just a duck."
- Ahiru, Episode 1

Ahiru (literally "duck" in Japanese) is the main character. Friendly, upbeat, and determined, she uses all her abilities - as a duck, as a girl, and as Princess Tutu - to her best advantage, dwelling not so much on what she doesn't have as what she can do about it.

This is not to say, however, that she doesn't suffer from self-doubt or insecurity. There are times when she wonders if what she’s doing is truly good for Mytho, and though she loves being Princess Tutu, her knowledge that she’s “just a duck” also causes her to feel like a bit of a fraud. Despite her insecurities, however, Ahiru manages to overcome her doubts, and save Kinkan Town. Though she's returned to being a duck, she now knows that she doesn't need to be Princess Tutu, or even human, to free people's hearts.


The Failed Knight: Fakir



"I just want the power to protect people."
- Fakir, Episode 24

When we first meet Fakir, early in the first episode, he's wearing a distinctly unpleasant expression, as if something has crawled onto his shoe and died and you, the viewer, are personally responsible. His personality soon proves to be about as nice as his expression: He treats Mytho like a possession or a not-too-bright pet, and Ahiru with utter disdain.

As the series goes on, however, and we gradually learn his back-story while he gradually learns to be human again, he becomes considerably more sympathetic. Fakir was once a sweet, dorky kid who loved to read and write stories. One day, he found a white-haired boy lying unconscious on the street. Rushing the boy home, he was delighted to learn that here was the prince from The Prince and the Raven, and he appointed himself the prince’s “knight” and protector. He soon found, however, that caring for a heartless prince wasn’t nearly as much fun as it sounded: Of his former self, Mytho had retained only his desire to protect the weak, and, therefore, had no sense of self-preservation. Finally, after Mytho was nearly killed trying to save a bird, Fakir laid down the law: “Don’t go around trying to save people,” he said. “Just listen to what I tell you. I’ll protect you.”

By the time the series begins, Fakir’s efforts to keep Mytho away from any dangerous influences have made Fakir isolated as well. Though he’s not exactly happy with the situation as it stands, he’s also unwilling to let it change. That, of course, leads to conflict with Ahiru, which brings us to the main topic of this essay. So let’s get to it, shall we?


Slammed Doors, Water Fights, and Sort-Of Telepathy: Fakir and Ahiru in Canon

"Hmph. What a persistent girl."
- Fakir, Episode 8

"Oooh, he pisses me off!"
- Ahiru, Episode 1

To say that Fakir and Ahiru get off to a bad start would be an understatement. The first time they meet, he first ignores and then insults her; the second time they meet, he slams a door on her. To be fair, neither the ignoring or the door-slamming were meant as deliberate insults, but he does nothing to mitigate any possible offense he might have caused and everything he can to drive her away, and as a result, each comes away from the encounters with a less-than-flattering impression of the other: She thinks he's an arrogant jerk, and he thinks that she's an interfering little girl.

Though they dislike each other almost immediately, it's not until Episode 5 that they really start butting heads. When Fakir locks Mytho in a room in the library for dancing with Ahiru, Ahiru, who followed them into the library, is furious. Shoving Fakir out of the way, she pounds on the door and yells to Mytho, “You’ve finally regained some shards of your heart! There’s no reason for you to listen to someone like him!”

Of course, saying all this in front of Fakir was probably a mistake, as he's now very curious about what this girl knows about Mytho getting his heart back. Grabbing her by the wrists and looming over her, he demands that she tell him what she knows, and tells her that Mytho has no need of a heart. Ahiru evades the question, but fires back, "No need of a heart? What are you saying? There’s no way he doesn’t!"

Fakir immediately snarls back, “What do you know?! I know everything about Mytho. I’m asking you, what do you know?” When Ahiru protests that even if she doesn’t know anything about Mytho, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t need a heart, Fakir is unimpressed: “Don’t get carried away when you know nothing,” he says, and stalks away, leaving a hurt, shaken-looking Ahiru still standing against the wall.

Things don't get much better between them in Episodes 6 or 7, but in Episode 8, we see them taking the first steps toward understanding each other. About halfway through the episode, Ahiru, who by this point has decided to try to enlist Mytho’s aid, uses her duck form to sneak into the boys’ locker room to slip a note into his locker. The message is successfully delivered, but while she was delivering the note, the locker room door closed, and she finds herself unable to get out. Panicking, she dives into the nearest locker, which turns out to be Fakir’s. She’s understandably a bit startled when he opens the locker and discovers her there, but he smuggles her out of the building by hiding her under his shirt, and sets her down on the grass outside.

Ignoring, for a moment, the fact that she’s being carried around under his shirt, here’s the part when I first started thinking, “Hey, they couldn’t be setting up Fakir to be Ahiru’s eventual love interest, could they? Nah, couldn’t be.” Once outside, Fakir smiles at her – the first time we’ve ever seen him do that – and tosses her some bread. (It’s never explained why he was carrying bread around. Probably for the same reason why he always seems to have a horse handy.) Ahiru looks up from her half-hearted pecking – and blushes. For the first time, she’s seeing something likeable in him, and it surprises her. “Somehow,” she thinks, “it was like he wasn’t the usual Fakir.” But the moment quickly passes as she thinks back to the times he’s been cruel to her or Mytho. “I’m not going to be fooled just because the bread was tasty!”

In Episode 10, things change even more. At the beginning of the episode, Ahiru loses her pendant, which she needs to become human; without it, she’s trapped in duck form. She frantically searches for it, but it’s too late: Before she even realized that it was gone, Fakir found it and picked it up, recognizing it as the pendant that Princess Tutu always wears. The next day, she discovers that he has the pendant and, in an effort to get it back, ends up following him home. While there, Fakir meets with Charon, Fakir’s foster father, and it’s at this point that we take a journey into the Land of Backstory and learn the first part of Fakir’s history. Reminiscing about the past isn’t the main reason why Fakir is visiting Charon, however; he’s there to get the sword which belonged to the knight from the story who was the prince’s protector and constant companion. Charon refuses, saying that the sword is only meant to be wielded by a true knight. They argue, Charon slaps Fakir, and Fakir leaves the house.

Ahiru, still startled from learning that Fakir had vowed to protect Mytho, follows him, and sees him crying against a tree by the edge of a small pond. “I don’t know,” she says, looking sad. “What is right and what is wrong? But I do know that Fakir isn’t lying. I couldn’t see anything… Fakir is just as concerned… No. Maybe he’s even more concerned about Mytho than I am!”

She swims over to him, and he looks down, smiling wryly. “You… you’re seeing me in a pretty disgraceful state here…” Ahiru answers with a forlorn little quack, and he smiles again. “Are you crying for me?” he asks, and, bending down, picks her up and hugs her.

When he sets her down again, he throws the pendant down onto the grass in front of her. “You can have that,” he says. “You wanted it, right?” (Earlier, when Ahiru saw that he had the pendant, she tried to take it from him.) Then he walks away, and she stares after him, still thoughtful. “Fakir…” she says, and then shakes herself out of her daze. What began in Episode 8 is now finished: Ahiru no longer sees Fakir as a monster, but as someone who’s also trying to help Mytho.

Later in the episode, after she has transformed into Princess Tutu, they meet again. He is startled to see that she has her pendant back, but quickly moves on to the more important business of threatening her. “What are you doing?!” he yells. “Hurry up and get out of here! Or do you want to settle this here?”

But for once, Ahiru is completely unphased by him. Smiling, she says, “I have no wish to fight with you,” and, with a final bow, turns and runs out the door.

Some time later, Ahiru, who has transformed back into an ordinary girl, is sneaking back into the school just ahead of Fakir and Mytho. She hides behind a hedge just as they enter the gate, but is seen by Fakir. He asks her what she’s doing there so late, and she evades the question, but not before he sees that she’s wearing Tutu’s pendant.

Fakir might have massive blind spots, but he’s quite capable of putting two and two together, and at the beginning of the next episode, he confronts her about it. “That really surprised me,” he says. “Out of all people, it had to be you…” He then says that he’ll no longer oppose her returning Mytho’s heart; the story is now too far along for anyone to stop it, but no matter what happens, he’ll protect the prince.

“Then,” Ahiru says, “if we combine our power…”

“I decline,” Fakir replies. When Ahiru asks why, he says, “I don’t trust you,” and walks out of the room.

A few scenes later, we see Ahiru sitting in her room, thinking about the exchange. “Strangely enough… I actually feel calmer now,” she thinks. The scene cuts to a flashback of Fakir saying, “I don’t trust you,” and then back to Ahiru. “Fakir is always thinking alone… deciding alone… fighting alone. Alone…” The scene then briefly cuts to a shot of Fakir crying. “Crying alone. He never shows his true face to me.” There’s then a brief montage of shots of the times she’s seen him smiling when she’s encountered him while in duck form. “Being in Fakir’s arms… It was warm. That must be the real Fakir.”

Fakir might not have any intention of working with Ahiru, but he soon doesn’t have a choice: At the end of the episode, Rue (the villain until about midway through Episode 22) kidnaps Mytho, injuring Fakir in the process. Ahiru helps him back to his room, and Episode 12 begins with him waking up to find that she’s helped him get home, and cared for him. “That’s right, I was saved by Princess Tutu. Treating my wounds, doing unnecessary things…!” he begins, but stops when he sees her leaning against the other bed, still asleep.

After a brief exchange, he repeats that he doesn’t want to work with her, but then Ahiru points out that since they’re both going to look for Mytho anyway, “Couldn’t we just cooperate for that?”

And cooperate they do. Episode 12 might only be a transition chapter in terms of the larger plot, but for Fakir and Ahiru’s relationship, it’s a milestone: For the first time in the series, they’re communicating instead of sniping at each other, and working together instead of working at cross purposes.

There are so many wonderful little moments in this episode that I felt tempted to just recap the entire episode, but I’ll skip to about three quarters of the way through.

While en route to the underground lake where Mytho is being held, they’re attacked by a flock of ravens. Pushing Ahiru out of harm’s way, Fakir draws his sword and tells her to run, but then another flock of ravens comes out and attacks Ahiru as well. Overbalancing, she topples off of a nearby ledge, and Fakir, who dives to catch her, falls with her.

They land in what looks like a small pond, and Fakir immediately starts looking for ways to climb out. Ahiru, however, notices that there’s a hole in the wall across from where they’re standing, and realizes that they might be able to get out through there. Thing is, the only way she can investigate that is if she turns into a duck, and being “just a duck” is, as I’ve mentioned, one of her greatest sources of insecurity: Every time she’s ever had to think about Mytho finding out that she’s really a duck, she’s viewed the prospect with great dread. Even though her duck form has been useful on numerous occasions, she views it as something to be kept absolutely secret.

So with that in mind, it comes as a bit of a surprise that she barely hesitates before handing over the pendant to Fakir and turning into a duck.

But then again, perhaps it’s not so surprising after all. Mytho knows her as Princess Tutu: “Blessed with beauty, cleverness, and strength.” The duck form, obviously, is a bit of a comedown from that. Fakir, on the other hand, can’t think any worse of her than he already has. Until recently he was an enemy, and for reasons far more serious than her appearance; a little thing like revealing her weakest form won’t seriously damage his estimation of her, and if it allows them to find Mytho, then it just might help.

For Fakir’s part, he’s understandably a bit startled when, upon handing over the pendant, she promptly turns into a duck. His surprise turns to horror, however, when he realizes that she’s not just any duck, but that duck – as in, the one who saw him crying. He sinks to the ground, face flaming, but his fit of adolescent agony is interrupted when he realizes how long she’s been gone, and, leaping to his feet, he rushes toward the pond to save her from drowning. His concern was unwarranted, however; at that moment, Ahiru pops up out of the water and starts quacking frantically. Crisis now averted, Fakir shifts from Concerned Knight mode to Embarrassed Teenage Boy mode. “Why?!” he demands, face still flushed. “Why didn’t you say anything?! Not saying anything about that…”

“Quack?” Ahiru says, cocking her head quizzically to one side.

The view shifts to a close-up of the still furiously blushing Fakir, who seems a bit lost for words. “It’s dirty!” he finally bursts out, prompting an irritated “Quack!” from Ahiru, who flies up and takes the pendant back.

Having turned back into a girl, she immediately starts shouting back at him. “You say that, but it’s not like I wanted you to find out!” she yells, but cuts herself off when it occurs to her that she’s stark naked.

Two awkward moments and a shouting match later, they finally start making their way through to the underground lake, where Rue is waiting. She taunts them, and it is here that Episode 12 ends.

Episode 13 begins where Episode 12 ended: With a dilemma. When Rue kidnapped Mytho in Episode 11, she also took his feeling of love, which was the heart shard that Ahiru was in the process of returning when Rue interrupted. The shard doesn’t truly belong to anyone yet, however, so Rue proposes a test: She and Ahiru will both speak of their feelings for Mytho, and whichever of them the heart shard goes to will gain possession of it.

Thing is, Rue’s not being entirely fair here: As Princess Tutu, who is fated to never be with the one she loves, Ahiru can’t confess her love to Mytho or she’ll vanish in a flash of light. Nevertheless, she’s prepared to sacrifice herself in order to save the prince, and is about to do so when Fakir stops her in his usual tactful manner. “Are you an idiot?” he snaps. “Don’t trust what that raven says. If you disappear, who would return Mytho’s heart to him? Didn’t you want to see Mytho’s smile after you had returned all his feelings to him? There is no one else who can accept Princess Tutu’s fate with a smile. So… you can’t disappear!”

Quite a turnaround, isn’t it? Whereas before he wanted nothing to do with her, now he’s actively trying to help her. No, more than that: He doesn’t want her to disappear. At some point, she went from being someone he’d be just as happy to get rid of to being someone he wants to protect. She’s also become someone he trusts to protect Mytho: Later in the episode, after he’s been badly wounded, his last words before falling unconscious are, “Princess Tutu… You… Mytho’s future is…”

Not the most coherent rallying speech in the world, perhaps, but it’s enough to shake Ahiru out of her funk. Before, she was willing to accept her fate and disappear; now, with a “Fakir… I won’t give up! I’ll definitely… definitely… I’ll protect Mytho!” she stands up, and begins to dance a solitary pas de deux, thus managing to express her feelings without having to actually speak. Later, when it seems as though she has lost, it’s the memory of Fakir’s last words to her that helps to spur her on to keep fighting no matter what. The fact that his support was crucial to her eventual victory is not lost on Ahiru; at the end of the episode, when they’ve escaped from the lake, and Fakir (who’s come to by this point, but is still fairly out of it) says, “I see, Tutu… you saved Mytho,” Ahiru replies, “I was able to be strong because of you, Fakir.”

Now, before you get the wrong idea, it’s probably worth noting that at this point, Ahiru is still very much in love with Mytho, any Fakir/Ahiru hints notwithstanding. The episode ends, after all, with a long pas de deux between Princess Tutu and her prince, and if Episode 13 was the last episode in the series, I – and, I imagine, most of the series’ viewers – would still be Mytho/Ahiru shippers.

But Episode 13 is not the end, and in the episodes that follow, everything you think you know about the characters gets neatly turned on its head. Remember what I said earlier about Rue taking Mytho’s feeling of love? Well, she wasn’t just keeping it around to look at. She bathed it in raven’s blood, which means that when Ahiru returned it to Mytho at the end of Episode 13, he also received the raven’s blood, which, as we soon discover, begins to transform him into a very different kind of prince. And suddenly, the lonely-eyed prince whom Ahiru vowed to save must be rescued not from any outside danger, but from himself.

As Mytho gradually becomes an antagonist, however, Fakir gradually becomes more and more of an ally – an ally, and something more. Though neither Fakir nor Ahiru ever state outright that there’s Something Going On, throughout the second half of the series there are numerous indications to that effect. In Episode 17, for example, Fakir’s immediate reaction to hearing that Ahiru might be in love with someone at school is a horrified look followed by a frantic, “Ahiru? With whom?” Then there’s that scene in Episode 19 when, disgusted with himself for being unable to protect her in the previous episode, he mutters to himself, “A knight who can’t protect his princess, huh?” (This comment is particularly telling when one considers the traditions of courtly love – traditions which, given how much attention this series gives to stories, the writers could hardly have been ignorant of.)

For Ahiru’s part, although she won’t admit that there’s anything romantic between her and Fakir, the people around her certainly think there is – first her friends, and later Rachel, Fakir’s older sister figure. Her friends, though not aware of everything that’s going on, are usually fairly accurate when it comes to detecting when Ahiru has a crush, so that’s a fair indication in of itself, and this exchange with Rachel is also quite telling:

Rachel: It’s all right. I’m just like a big sister to Fakir.
Ahiru: [Smiling slightly] Big sister… [Panicking] I mean, it’s not really like that, I…

It’s probably worth noting that before, Ahiru was looking slightly ill-at-ease; upon hearing that Rachel and Fakir’s relationship is strictly platonic, she immediately relaxes.

In addition to making Ahiru issue frantic denials, Rachel also reveals something very interesting: Before he came to live with Charon, Fakir used to write stories that sometimes came true. Upon hearing this, Ahiru runs to find him, thinking that he can use this power to stop Mytho from being taken over by the raven. What she doesn’t know, however, is that Fakir’s parents died because of a story he wrote, and, understandably traumatized by the experience of seeing his parents die horribly because of something he did, he vowed to never write again.

Consequently, when Ahiru first comes to him with her idea, he refuses. But at the end of the episode, when he’s struggling with whether or not he’s willing to write again, it’s her words that finally decide him: “If I could do something to save Mytho, I wouldn’t ask this of you, Fakir! But right now I can’t do anything…”

His inability to protect the people he cares about has been something that he’s been wrestling with for the past few episodes, and Ahiru’s words bring home to him the fact that through writing, he’ll finally be able to protect the people he loves. Muttering, “Something I can do…” he picks up a quill and begins to write.

It soon becomes apparent, however, that even this new power of Fakir’s will not be enough to save the prince, as he finds himself unable to write Mytho’s story. But, as we discover in Episode 23, there is one person whose story he can write: Ahiru’s.

At the end of Episode 22, Ahiru was trapped inside the story (don’t ask), and in Episode 23, Fakir struggles to write a story that will bring her back. While he’s doing this, the story begins to turn backwards, and he sees himself as he once was, isolated and desperate to keep Mytho to himself. “I can’t go back anymore!” he says fiercely. “Back when I clung to my sword, only speaking words to bind Mytho to me… I won’t return to that time! I won’t sit by myself, in fear of my fate!” Suddenly his flashbacks turn to memories of Ahiru, and he looks up in shock. “That’s it!” he gasps. “She’s the one who changed me!” And suddenly the story that was so difficult to write only moments before becomes easy. “I can write. I can write her story. No, but these aren’t my words… These are her feelings!” Having written her desire to return, he then writes an action of his own: Himself, calling her name “to lead her from the darkness.” He does so, and she flies back into the real world, landing in his arms in a swirl of paper. Though Fakir can’t bring her back by himself, he can lend her the power she needs to do so.

Fast forward to Episode 25. Mytho has been freed from the raven’s influence, and has regained all his heart shards but one: Ahiru’s pendant, which is actually Mytho’s will to have his heart restored. Returning it to him means that his heart will be fully returned to him, which is what she wanted – but it also means that she’ll be turned back into a duck, as the pendant was what transformed her into Princess Tutu. Running away, she tries to remove the pendant, but is unsuccessful – and Drosselmeyer, seeing a chance to give the story a nicely tragic ending, uses Fakir to write a story of Ahiru drowning in the lake of her despair. (Yes, despair is an actual place here. Isn’t fairytale logic grand?) Fakir stabs his hand with a letter opener to stop himself from writing, but not before Ahiru has sunk all the way to the bottom, willing to die to expiate what she sees as her selfishness in being unwilling to let go of being Princess Tutu.

Fakir runs to the lake and dives down to where Ahiru is. Hearing him call her name, she sits up and begins tugging ineffectually at her pendant. “Fakir, my pendant won’t come off! Even though it’s the last piece of Mytho’s heart… it won’t come off! Because of me… Because I would rather not have the story end… Pique and Lilie and Neko-sensei and everyone became ravens. And still…!”

Fakir kneels down beside her, and takes her hand. “Moron! It’s not just you. I, too… No, everyone would rather not see the story end. Everyone besides Mytho… I still can’t write Mytho’s story. Don’t just blame yourself.” He stands up, pulling her up with him. “Everyone’s scared. Returning to their true selves… They’ve become accustomed to their roles in the story.” They begin to dance a pas de deux, and he continues to speak. “The real you is a duck. The real me… The real me has actually been protected by others since I was a kid. I can’t protect anyone. But even if that’s my true form, I want to make the story end! Not in a role that has been imposed on me… I want to protect you and Mytho with my own power!”

“I’ll turn back into a regular old duck, then, won’t I?” Ahiru says.

“Isn’t that all right?” Fakir counters. “That’s the real you. Even if that does happen, I’ll always stay by your side.”

They continue to dance and Ahiru muses, “How strange… Even though I was just thinking that it wouldn’t matter if I disappeared… Fakir makes the weak me stronger. Always.”

The dance concludes, and Ahiru’s pendant falls off.

I’m running out of space, so I’ll make this brief. Once out of the lake, she returns the last heart shard to Mytho, transforming her back into a duck forever. When all seems lost, however, and Mytho is ready to shatter his heart again to seal the raven away, Ahiru begins to dance, and, with Fakir’s help, transforms the townspeople who have turned into ravens back into humans. The raven is defeated, the story ends, Mytho flies off to do whatever it is ex-fairytale princes do in their spare time, and the series ends with a shot of Fakir and Ahiru together.


“Together!”: Why I Ship Them

So now that you know who these people are and how their relationship developed, we come to the million-dollar question: Why Fakir/Ahiru? To start with what first made me love this pairing, they’re just plain funny together. Seeing the ordinarily stoic Fakir become all flustered, or Ahiru’s hilariously accurate Fakir impression, is incredibly entertaining. Besides, I’m a sucker for fictional couples who challenge each other, and Fakir/Ahiru is no exception: The way they go from disliking each other to being an incredible team, forcing each other to reexamine their closest held beliefs along the way, is not only good character development, it’s a pleasure to watch.

And that’s the point, isn’t it? They make each other stronger. Individually, they’re strong, but confined to roles in the story that ultimately lead nowhere; together, they help each other see the faults, fears, and blind spots that have limited them, and then surpass even their greatest expectations. It is only through their combined effort – Ahiru’s dance and ability to hope, Fakir’s ability to make stories true – that they are able to give the story a happy ending, or even end the story at all. And it is only through a combined effort that they find their own personal happiness, albeit one that neither of them ever expected. They’re truly better off for having known each other.


The Fandom

The Princess Tutu fandom is quite tiny, with a correspondingly tiny number of fanfics, but here are some Fakir/Ahiru fics that I’ve enjoyed:

Mirage Variation by Syrinx
For the Love of a Duck by TailFluffGirl
Advent of Glory by Zapenstap
The Leaves Are Fading by aishuu
Epilogue and Still Life With Duck, both by canis_m
A currently untitled WIP by hecatehatesthat
Pas de Deux and Wake us and we drown, both by Fushigi Kismet
Untitled by methodicmadness
And, finally, two fics by me: According to Method and various fics for 30_kisses

Comments

[cocacat15.livejournal.com]

Great ship manifesto. I was so happy to see one for this pairing. I've always loved this series ever since I first started watching it, but once the Fakir/Ahiru pairing started clicking for me... I think that was when I knew I had found a new obsession. I've watched this series...around 5 times? Something like that - already, and I still love it. These two are just so perfect together.

One thing that you might want to keep in mind the next time you make a manifesto is maybe do a little less recap and more talking about how the pairing itself works...or something. Either way, I loved this, and it was a ton of fun reading about all of my favorite scenes from the anime again (I couldn't wait until you got up to the embarrased!Fakir scene in episode 12 XD That scene is brilliant).

Thanks for doing this! It's good for the fandom, too - give a way underappreciated anime some more spotlight. ^_^

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I struggled with how much recapping to do, because I wanted to show how the process of they got from disliking each other to being OTP material, but didn't want to clog it up with unnnecessary detail, and finally decided to err on the side of being overly detailed. Anyway, glad you liked it! That scene from Episode 12 is one of my favorites, too - the look of utter horror on Fakir's face when he realizes that she saw him being other than stoic and dignified never fails to crack me up.

[aishuu.livejournal.com]

I always border on shipping Ahiru/Mytho and Fakir/Ahiru simply because I love both couples... but the anime definitely makes Fakir the most sympathetic character for me.

Really nice summary of the series - it definitely is one close to my heart of obsessions.

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

For most of the first half of the series I was a Mytho/Ahiru shipper, with a side of Rue/Fakir (I always thought they had a "divorced parents battling over custody" dynamic), but then around... Episode 12, I think, though I started seeing hints in 8 and 10, I went "Bwee, OTP" and never looked back. Ahiru and Mytho were a cute couple, and I think it might have worked out if he hadn't been taken over by the raven, but the Ahiru/Fakir dynamic appeals to me a lot more. Give me a bickering couple any day.

Anyway, I'm glad you liked the essay!

[rubyd.livejournal.com]

A wonderful summary of the series, especially those Fakir/Ahiru moments. I too love this pairing for the evolution their relationship goes through. At the beginning, when Ahiru and Fakir danced together in the Sleeping Beauty stage, it was tense and something full of dread. But then at the end, it was calming, relaxed... they grew to depend on each other, in a way.

Basically, I love how this pair snuck up on the viewers.

Other bits to be mentioned: The episode where Ahiru did the "Pose of Love" at Fakir, and he gets flustered, confused. Adorable.

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

I never thought about it that way, but that's an interesting point about the contrasting dances. It's particularly interesting when you consider how the pas de deux is frequently used to represent romantic love; looking at it that way, you could say that the dance in 25 is the culmination of the development of their relationship.

Yeah, Fakir/Ahiru is definitely the anime's stealth pairing. It's quite brilliant, actually: The viewer is repeatedly hit over the head with the fact the Ahiru can't confess her love, yadda yadda, to say nothing of the fact that the major conflict for most of the show is the battle over possession of the prince. So of course we all know how it'll turn out: Despite the obstacles in their way, the princess will eventually save the prince with the power of True Love, and they'll ride off into the sunset together. And that's exactly what happens, but the princess in question turns out to be Rue, not Ahiru, because by Ahiru has surpassed the role of a fairytale princess and found love not with a perfect prince but with someone who makes her a better person. Like I said, it's quite brilliant.

The scene where Ahiru did the pose of love was actually in the original draft, but since the original draft was about fifteen thousand words too long, that scene was one of the things that got cut. Though I agree that it's adorable. ^__^

[rubyd.livejournal.com]

Props to your icon, by the way - it's lovely.

[rose-sous-globe.livejournal.com]

I give you ten points for great writing and ten bazillion points for fandom squeeeeeeee-yness.

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

Thank you! And Princess Tutu is always worth squeeing over. (Obsessed? Moi?)

[rose-sous-globe.livejournal.com]

Btw, the combining of abilities and strengths has always been my definition of a healthy relationship.

♥!!!!

[sleepdebtfairy.livejournal.com]

Ooh, darn the word limits. I would have loved to hear more about your thoughts on the pairing too. ^^ But this was so wonderful. *_* Adding to memories~ Definitely must check out all of the fics.. (..and I love the title so much)

Re: ♥!!!!

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

I was actually thinking about posting an expanded version on my LJ - adding in more of the canon moments, more analysis of things that didn't get to be analyzed, comparison to other relationships (romantic and otherwise), showing how it relates to larger themes... well, you get the idea. But even though I couldn't put everything I wanted to into this version, I'm still glad you liked it. (And I'm glad you like the title; I was rather proud of it.)

[enishi-sama.livejournal.com]

Great job with this. Princess Tutu is one of my most favorite anime, in no small part because of the Fakir/Ahiru relationship.

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

The title alone is a winner :D

[lyi.livejournal.com]

You did a wonderful job of describing the evolution of their relationship and capturing the appeal of this pairing. This one's definitely going in my favorites!

Re: The title alone is a winner :D

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[spikyfurredwolf.livejournal.com]

Wait, wait- I've never actually seen the series/read the manga, so from the info I scraped up on the Internet, I thought that Ahiru/Mytho was canon. So you're telling me that RUE/Mytho is canon, and Fakir/Ahiru (almost?) is?
. . . . . . . .
Y'know, after reading your essay, that makes my insides melt into goo and my SQUEEEEEEE! reflex to snap into action. After the essay, the thought of Ahiru being with Mytho lost it's 'aaaaww'-ness, and Fakir and Ahiru is OMGCUTE!
In other words, your essay was really, reeeeeaaally good. Going to go see if there's a good place to buy Princess Tutu around here now...

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

Your sources weren't entirely wrong: Ahiru/Mytho is canon for the first thirteen episodes, and at least some (how much is debatable) of the second half of the show. But after Episode 13, things get... complicated. I meant it when I said that in the second half, everything you think you think you know about the characters gets turned on its head. Part of the reason why I love this show so much, really. (And you really should see the anime - not the manga, which isn't nearly as good - as it's awesome. Cracktastic premise, but wonderful characters and a brilliantly structured, resonant story.)

But anyway, I'm glad you liked the essay, and I'm glad that the reasons why this pairing is one of my few real OTPs came across.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

Excellent! Really. This series and this pairing are so dear to my heart-- I love that you gave it such kind treatment here.

If you're interested in more links, I have my Big (relatively) Princess Tutu Fanfiction Reccomendation List (http://rashaka.livejournal.com/799970.html), which isn't all that big at all, but does have a few fics you don't have listed there.

It would have been interesting to include the analysis Ahiru made of her own feelings in episode 12, where she wonders why she likes Mytho so much, and can't really come up with an answer, even as she's staring at Fakir's back. Still, it's not that important when you have a wordcount limit.


when I first started thinking, “Hey, they couldn’t be setting up Fakir to be Ahiru’s eventual love interest, could they? Nah, couldn’t be.”

When Fakir first clapped for the Rue/Ahiru dance in episode two I laughed, and thought "Wow wouldn't it be weird if they made the rude, surly, unhappy kid became her love interest instead of the popular bishie romantic kid we all know she's going to end up with?"

And then several episodes happened and I thought for sure that Fakir was going to turn out to be the prince of ravendom or something... and then episode 7 happened and I was like, "oh my god, they ARE going to make it be the surly unpopular evil one!" Even that was mostly wishful thinking though, until episodes 10-12.

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And I'll have to look over that list of recs.

That scene in Episode 12 was actually one of the scenes that was in the first draft, and then got cut out. Not that I'm not happy with the essay I posted here, but the first draft was definitely more complete. Unfortunately, it was also about fifteen thousand words over the limit, so a lot of it went into the Great Dustbin of Editing.

When Fakir first clapped for the Rue/Ahiru dance in episode two I laughed, and thought "Wow wouldn't it be weird if they made the rude, surly, unhappy kid became her love interest instead of the popular bishie romantic kid we all know she's going to end up with?"

The great thing about Fakir/Ahiru is that it sort of sneaks up on you: They spend so much time hitting the audience on the head with the Great Love between Mytho and Princess Tutu and how Princess Tutu will come to a tragic end when she confesses her love, isn't that sad, yadda yadda yadda, that any possible Fakir/Ahiru hints get immediately dismissed by the viewer as them reading too much into things.

And then comes the second half of the series, which cheerfully stomps on all your expectations and dances the flamenco on their weakly twitching remains. But that's another story.

[spikyfurredwolf.livejournal.com]

Oi! It's me again- I've just watched the series (all of it). All I have to say is one word: Loooooooooooooove.

[evrdream33.livejournal.com]

That was so good!!! Great job at picking out all the best bits! I'm absolutely IN LOVE with your last paragragh because it's so true and so beautiful. *loves this pairing so much* XD Awesome essay!

[elektra3.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[sir-hellsing.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! Really well put. I so love Fakir/Ahiru. Now I'm inspired to write a manifesto about my other Tutu OTP (Rue/Mytho).

[mutecornett.livejournal.com]

This manifesto is what made me decide to watch all of Princess Tutu, which was an AMAZING experience. Thank you so much!

[fairest1.livejournal.com]

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥!!!!!

Recently mainlined the series and, in a desire to read more, figured I'd check to see if there was a ship_manifesto essay on them . . . and it's made of awesome. Thank you!

[quatregael.livejournal.com]

I know this manifesto was posted more than 3 years ago but having just watched Princess Tutu for the first time I just wanted to say how much I appreciated and enjoyed it. Loved the title! I thought your character introductions at the beginning were great as well.

It’s wonderful how Fakir/Ahiru is built up in subtle moments throughout the series. One scene I remember is in Episode 21/Akt 17 when Fakir is in the library and Uzura runs in and asks, “What does it mean that it’s nice for Ahiru to be love-love(rabu/rabu) in school?” For a second he gets this concerned look on his face and goes, “Ahiru? With whom?” before composing himself again. XD

Nice work! *thumbs up*

[quatregael.livejournal.com]

Oh hey, I just realized you did mention the scene I was thinking of in the manifesto itself.^^;; (reading oversights ftl. I don't know how I missed it the first time). In any case, I'm still glad my OTP (yeah I'm pretty much hooked at this point) has an excellent ship manifesto to go along with it. Mad props once again.