Princess Tutu’s sixth episode opens with a new fable, a story about a princess trapped in an eternal sleep. The story is a familiar one; Sleeping Beauty, the tale of the princess Aurora and her noble savior. But in this version, when a young man arrives to wake Aurora, a voice whispers “awaken the princess from her sleep? What a cruel thing to do. Is the princess not wishing for the kiss of awakening, but rather to continue to sleep forever?”

This opening makes explicit a conflict that’s been alluded to consistently over the past several episodes: the bliss of Mytho’s ignorance, and the ambiguous nobility of Tutu’s quest to restore his emotions. Fakir seems to believe that remaining ignorant of all feelings is what’s best for Mytho, something that was framed as “remaining in darkness” in the previous episode, and here is illustrated through the idea of remaining in a dream. On top of that, this introduction also overtly underlines the way Mytho has been framed as the “princess” of this story, a passive character who people like Ahiru or Fakir use as a vessel for their own desires.

But as usual, simply taking Princess Tutu’s opening narration at face value seems like a mistake. The very fact that the story of Princess Aurora maps so neatly to what Ahiru is doing to Mytho makes me feel even more hesitant to trust this framing; it’s as if Tutu’s narrator has realized Ahiru is getting closer to something she shouldn’t, and so the fables surrounding her are contorting themselves into life lessons about how she really shouldn’t do that. We often see stories as passive objects lacking any inherent intent, but that’s a dangerous misconception. Stories are weapons, and the lessons we take from them are never value-neutral.

We see stories as valuable because they can teach us about the world, but the things stories teach us can be terrible as well as great. And framed in the context of a confident narrative, terrible lessons or assumptions about the world around us can come across as utterly natural, a sort of literary social conditioning. These things we learn don’t need to be outright harmful values – they can simply be limitations of perspective. Ahiru and the other characters of Tutu are continuously constrained by these limitations, forcing Ahiru to think in the strict terms of “I can support Mytho specifically by gathering his emotions as Princess Tutu.” What stories present as laudable, condemnable, and even simply possible are all active choices, and should never be assumed as natural things.

All that sumptuous ambiguity directly informs this episode’s story, where a traveling ballet troupe has arrived in town for a performance of (surprise) Sleeping Beauty. As usual, the episode opens on lighter material, following Ahiru and her class as they march through town to see the troupe rehearse. This segment offered plenty of lovely shots of Ahiru’s town, as well as lots of the expression work that give this show such an effortless comedic voice. Ahiru’s two friends haven’t developed into convincing people, but they don’t really have to; they are essentially lighthearted versions of Utena’s shadow puppets, jibing her for her various romantic foibles and generally occupying a “goofy school life” genre space that makes sense for their own lives, but in the context of Princess Tutu mostly acts as a tonal counterbalance to its heavier aspirations.

While we’re with the class, it’s worth mentioning that this episode also marked the first time I really enjoyed Ahiru’s cat teacher. The teacher is generally a one-note character with a single mediocre joke (“improve at dancing or I’ll force you to marry me!”), but seeing him attempt to act smooth for troupe leader Paulamoni while wearing a silly novelty button-down shirt was just absurd enough to feel endearing for me. Between that and the later scenes of both him and Ahiru ragging on Ahiru’s dancing abilities, this turned out to be a terrific episode for Cat-sensei in all respects.

The introduction of Paulamoni twists this episode’s focus on sleeping and dreams in an entirely new direction. After Paulamoni suffers a moment of hesitance on stage, and we learn that she too has been possessed by a Mytho heart shard, we follow Paulamoni through her private routines, as she reflects on her own relationship with Sleeping Beauty. “I fell in love with that Princess Aurora I saw as a child. She seemed to still be dreaming even when awake.” Stories can move beyond didactic lessons and immediate emotional release – stories can guide us, dictating our own dreams long after the curtain falls.

Beyond its various reflections on this specific episode and overall show’s themes, I was happy to follow Paulamoni purely for what her voice implied about Tutu’s overall focus. After five episodes of following a strict “Ahiru discovers a heart shard, dances with its bearer, and returns the shard” formula, focusing instead on the interiority of a heart-shard bearer added a welcome dash of perspective and solidity to Tutu’s world. Now that its initial platform has been established, Tutu is able to expand its scope to quieter personal stories like this. For someone like Paulamoni, Princess Tutu is a distant fantasy; heart shard or not, she must grapple with her anxieties and misgivings the best she can.

Paulamoni’s story comes to an unexpected climax without Tutu’s interference at all. Lamenting her own lack of talent and inability to measure up to her childhood idol, she reflects with her husband on the natural vitality of Ahiru, who states that “I’m sure she’s pursuing a beautiful dream.” Tutu thus illustrates two different but related concepts of dreams – the dreams we have while sleeping, and the dreams we pursue as life goals. For Mytho, the question is “is it better to live in dreamlike non-feeling, or to embrace the pain and joy of an emotion-filled life?” For Paulamoni, it is “is it better to strive after an impossible dream, or to wake up and acknowledge your own limitations?” Do any of us have the right to wake the sleeping beauty?

Fortunately, Paulamoni has far more reliable confidants than Ahiru. Upon voicing this question, her husband responds with the comforting “the Aurora you aspire to be is the kind of girl who keeps dreaming even when awakened, correct?” Embracing the harshness of reality need not imply abandoning the beauty of a beloved dream; and after all, as he continues, “there’s some dreams that won’t come true, but there’s no rule that says you can only have one dream.” In a story where victory is often achieved through fanciful dance sequences, I deeply appreciated seeing Paulamoni overcome the influence of her heart shard through her loving marriage and own personal strength.

While Paulamoni’s story concludes through mature discussion and personal growth, the ambiguity of Ahiru’s presumptuous actions only grows. Asked to dance by Paulamoni and paired up with Fakir, the two of them essentially conduct one more battle, this time through their spiraling dance. In spite of Tutu’s limited animation, this sequence comes across as a clear and forceful argument by Fakir; confidently tossing Ahiru from pose to pose, he moves as if to say “I can overpower you utterly. Leave Mytho to me.” It’s an angry and almost desperate dance, but the more Fakir imposes his power, the more vulnerable and sympathetic he seems to become.

The reckoning comes at last when Ahiru confronts Mytho’s latest shard, the fragment representing fear. For the first time, Mytho’s shard actually questions why it must return – and in response, Ahiru can only offer the empty “you just have to.” Ahiru believes the story she is playing out can only result in Mytho’s happiness, but when his shard returns, he screams in agony and collapses. It is Fakir who rushes to Mytho’s side, and Fakir who consoles him when he reveals that along with fear in a general sense, he has gained an object for his fear – Princess Tutu, the girl who can’t stop shaking him from his painless sleep. Is it so terrible to live forever in a peaceful dream? And if Ahiru is simply following Drosselmeyer’s script, are her actions truly any more noble than Fakir believes?

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