Princess Tutu’s second episode begins with an echo of its original prologue, telling the story of the storyteller and his characters, the crafty raven and the tragic prince. But this time, the story continues, as if lines had been secretly appended to its unfinished pages. We learn now that the prince took out his own heart to seal the raven, and that his heart was shattered in the process. Scattering across the town, the shards of his heart turned this town into a place where stories and reality intermix.

This new information gives us a clear explanation for embellishments like Ahiru’s cat teacher, but it also reflects something that feels fundamental to Princess Tutu’s intent – the way stories are living documents, perpetually revised and reinterpreted, often shifting their meaning entirely. In a world where even the tangible details of your story can be shifted, feelings and intent can be even more mercurial. And from Ahiru’s mirrored lives on down, Princess Tutu seems fascinated with the ambiguity of stories, and the ways their implications and assumptions can often steer our real lives. It’s a lesson made painfully literal in Princess Tutu, but it’s a lesson all children must learn: stories are ambiguous things that guide us more powerfully than we think, and they have the ability both to lead and mislead at will.

Perspective shots center us in duck-Ahiru’s headspace as we return to the narrative proper, but the questions remain the same. Wondering “was saving Mytho a dream? Wait, is this a dream?”, Ahiru immediately underlines the fact that in stories even moreso than the real world, we choose our own truths. And the only possible answer comes from our mysterious storyteller, now finally making his formal appearance. “Neither is a dream, Little Duck.” Reality is mutable, stories are real, and the fictions we live dance from joyous adventures to cautionary tales without a thought as to our own feelings.

Drosselmeyer’s introduction here felt a little abrupt, but I appreciated the brevity with which he cut through a great deal of unavoidable exposition. He begins by outright admitting he is the storyteller from the introduction, clearing up the mystery of the “D” on the book’s spine without a second thought. On top of that, we learn that Mytho truly is the heartless prince, and that Princess Tutu is the one who can recover the shards of his heart. Drosselmeyer places heavy emphasis on Ahiru’s own conviction – he repeatedly states that only her “resolve” can turn her into a girl, and further states “if you dream of it, your wish will be granted. That’s what’s so great about stories.” Drosselmeyer emphasizes Ahiru’s power, but there’s a clear shadowy counterpoint to everything he’s saying – that those who lack the resolve cannot tell their own stories, and that only in stories can we achieve our dreams.

He ends his introduction with the classic constraint “if you say or do anything resembling a duck, you’ll return to your original form.” This constraint initially felt a little random for this narrative, but as the episode continues, Ahiru’s shape-changing foibles quickly become their own reward. After one more introduction to the mysterious Edel, who establishes a deeply loaded parallel between “those who accept their fate” being granted happiness and “those who defy their fate” being granted glory, we’re off to the Doremi-style races, as Ahiru does her best to apologize to Mytho and spare Rue’s feelings and generally survive in this duck-turned-ballet-student workaday life.

Princess Tutu’s distinctive design sensibilities once again elevate a lot of material that would likely be tedious in a lesser children’s show. The academy grounds offer a lovely setting for Ahiru’s shenanigans, while the direction’s continued choice to favor lots of distance shots both impress upon us the majesty and solidity of this place while also emphasizing Ahiru’s smallness within it. Ahiru’s own design also continues to reap great comic and dramatic dividends, like in how her pony tail and ahoge simultaneously evoke a duck’s defining features while also acting like expressive appendages in their own right (a credit to character designer and animation director Ikuko Itoh, who incidentally also came up with the original Princess Tutu concept, making her at least as important as Sato to the show’s ultimate success). Scenes like Ahiru tripping over herself asking questions to her crush aren’t exactly the freshest, but they’re given life through Princess Tutu’s punchy timing and great expressions. And one of this episode’s best moments combines the power of its long shots with great gags centered on Ahiru’s transformation, as she struggles to manage clothes, romantic drama, and continuously changing shape all at the same time.

Things get a lot weirder when Mytho is propositioned by a classmate who is also an anteater, the appropriately named Anteaterina. Anteaterina is technically a reasonable character in this fantasy-fringed world, but the absurd visual comedy of a ballet-dancing anteater romantically competing with Rue still seemed to echo the comedy style of something like Ikuhara’s sillier episodes. Working together on Sailor Moon, Sato and Ikuhara both developed a sense of humor that embraces absurdism and anticlimax over mean-spirited gags at any character’s expense. And just as Utena was ultimately sympathetic to Nanami, the beleaguered heroine of its gag episodes, Princess Tutu extends great sympathy to Anteaterina as well.

That sympathy, as well as Ahiru’s own charity, come into focus in this episode’s climax. After we learn a shard of Mytho’s heart has tethered itself to Anteaterina, she and Princess Tutu return to the storybook backgrounds of the first episode’s finale for one climactic battle. But also like in the first episode, Princess Tutu’s power isn’t expressed through traditional force. Ahiru doesn’t outright fight Anteaterina, or even dance battle her – instead, she sympathizes with her opponent’s pain, and pushes through Anteaterina’s defenses to address the heart of her bitterness. The two join together in dance, and Mytho is returned one of his precious feelings – a feeling of bitter disappointment, something that may not seem welcome, but is just as integral to our full emotional bloom as anything else.

This episode was more genre-functional than the first, as expected – this is a twenty-six episode narrative that’s ostensibly a magical girl show, and so we need dramatic conceits as clear and concise as “you must recover the fragments that have poisoned the hearts of others” and “every month there will be a competition to decide your class placement.” But all through that set building, Tutu’s unique obsession with storytelling and disregard for traditional forms of power shine through, along with its clear and welcome expressions of both Sato and Itoh’s dynamic voices. I’m eager to continue this strange and wondrous tale.

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