We open Princess Tutu’s fifteenth episode with an entirely new tale, as our narrator tells us the story of a man who fell in love with a doll. “Perhaps the man’s love made itself felt, for one day, the doll came to life and began to dance.” This transformation thrilled the man, who believed a doll could never betray his love, and that he would now possess the world’s most pure and innocent love all for himself. “But the doll, who had been given life, rejected the man’s love and fell in love with a different man.”
This new story is worth addressing from a few angles, starting off with its structural significance. For the last several episodes, we haven’t been getting entirely self-contained little vignettes in these cold opens – we’ve listened to retellings or reimaginings of Princess Tutu’s actual narrative, which carried their own significance, but ultimately echoed Ahiru’s story fairly directly. This new self-contained vignette represents a shift from Princess Tutu’s mid-season climax back into the show’s neutral mode. While Tutu’s fourteenth episode was largely consumed with setting up the immediate conditions of the show’s second half, this fifteenth episode serves as a true return to the show’s original formula, only with a few new twists.
In light of that, it makes sense that we’re once again structuring individual episodes around famous individual ballets. This episode’s title is “Coppelia,” and the key beats of that performance are reflected in both this opening monologue and the episode’s overarching narrative. In Coppelia, a young man named Franz abandons his love Swanhilda for the beauty of a mysterious girl named Coppelia – however, it turns out Coppelia is no more than a doll, created by the sinister Dr. Coppelius. Coppelius ultimately attempts to sacrifice Franz, and use his heart to bring Coppelia to life. He is saved at the last moment by Swanhilda, and ultimately the two live happily ever after, Coppelius is reimbursed for his troubles, and Coppelia remains idle on her balcony, forever staring blankly at the world beyond.
Coppelia’s narrative certainly echoes the opening narration in some ways, but there are clear and critical revisions that frame it as more reflective of Tutu’s tale. Accompanied by images of a red jewel fading in a crow’s claws, it seems likely that this is the story of Kraehe and her “father,” the man who fell in love with a doll. But that reading is complicated by the last line, “the doll rejected the man’s love and fell in love with a different man.” This could apply to Rue and Mytho, but Rue’s love for Mytho has frankly never felt truly passionate – it’s felt obligated and desperate, her only route for escaping her narrative end.
Of course, since this is Princess Tutu, this opening monologue doesn’t only reflect Kraehe’s parentage. Just as Kraehe is apparently coveted by her father, so does Kraehe in turn covet Mytho, attempting to seal him in a doll-like stasis and hoard his love forever. And the ravens aren’t the only ones here who see love as something to be controlled or contained. Even the noble Fakir embodied this instinct through much of Tutu’s first half, as he worked to preserve Mytho in a safe, oblivious neutrality. And as the greedy, obsessively controlling author, Drosselmeyer embodies this view of love most of all, claiming surprise at his characters’ actions while manipulating them absolutely all the while. Drosselmeyer maps to this story so well that it actually seems suspicious – given how well the raven king and Drosselmeyer’s own goals seem to align, it seems quite likely that there’s only one Dr. Coppelius, and that the story’s author and antagonist are one and the same.
As we open the episode proper, Kraehe’s machinations are successfully framing Fakir as the villain of a new story. Though our leads know Mytho leapt out that window of his own accord, the story around town is that Fakir actually pushed Mytho. Scowls and rumors surround the two as they’re ushered into Cat-sensei’s office, where Mytho claims the fall was an accident in a tone that clearly implies Fakir actually pushed him. As tension builds, the two are told they can no longer share a room, and Mytho’s star rises as Fakir falls into shadow.
This episode’s extreme focus on rumors and the public nature of all of Tutu’s drama stands as a welcome broadening of Tutu’s perspective, and a choice that also directly reflects predecessors like Revolutionary Girl Utena. In a story about stories, emphasizing how our public reputations are essentially narratives of their own is a natural turn, reflecting both how we see reality as a series of fictions and even the opening monologue’s conjuring of a “perfect, controlled love.” You don’t need to capture someone entirely like Kraehe or Fakir in order to define and control them – we all construct pleasing and limited fictions regarding all the people around us, a fact that Kraehe is more than willing to manipulate for her benefit.
This episode’s wider perspective is also clear in its visual layouts. Episode fifteen offers us a uniquely ground-floor perspective on Ahiru’s life, and not just because she spends a whole bunch of it as a duck. Beyond the overt narrative rivalries and fleshing out of secondary characters, the actual geometry of Ahiru’s school is made clearer than ever, the unique avenues and alleyways of this fairy tale town gaining texture through this episode’s panicked bustling. Simply following Ahiru through the interim movements of her various tasks adds a sense of specificity to this world that both reinforces our faith in the solidity of this place and bolsters this episode’s focus on very public social drama.
All these layouts and whispers naturally compliment an episode that sees Ahiru spying on or conferring with basically everyone, as she works to figure out just what’s up with Mytho. After consulting with Fakir about the raven’s potential involvement, the two confront Rue out in the town square, where Kraehe reveals the full nature of her plot. The temperamental and straightforward Fakir is terribly ill-suited to this sort of battle; with an eager audience all around them, his demands for answers come off like the ravings of a man on the edge. And when he accidentally strikes Mytho, his fate is sealed. Suspended for a week, he’s knocked out of the picture entirely, his defeat a reflection of how well Kraehe has come to understand and manipulate the public narrative. Kraehe’s plot exemplifies the power of storytelling as a weapon.
Kraehe still ultimately comes off as tragic and sympathetic, though. In more scenes between Rue and her “father,” the raven, it’s abundantly clear that Rue’s master doesn’t actually love her, and that he’s only manipulating her to gain his own freedom. Though he claims to love her, he’s happy to threaten her as well, saying that “if you ever try to get rid of Princess Tutu again, I’ll show you no mercy, daughter or no.” And Rue has no choice but to cling to this love; complimenting his overt threats with emotional abuse, he assures her that “only I and the prince in the story can truly love a pitiful person like you.”
It’s clear in these conversations that Rue’s deep unhappiness and desperate, violent actions are the direct result of the role she’s been assigned. Beyond that, it’s also clear that those who gave her this villainous label knew she’d hate herself for it, and thus be easy to manipulate for their own ends. Rue’s position naturally illustrates the link between direct emotional abuse and entrapment (“no one could ever love you except me”) and how fictions guide our senses of selfhood. When the only stories you see about “people like you” cast you as villains or bystanders, your sense of selfhood and belief in your own potential can be genuinely, meaningfully hobbled by that – thus the critical importance of fictional representation, an acknowledgment that people like you are valid and important and strong. Rue’s overseers know that if she’s told she’s a villain who could never be loved, she’ll eventually believe it; Kraehe’s actions towards Fakir reflect a continuation of the cycle, as she convinces the world he’s a villain and he’s forced to either embrace that or disappear.
For all that focus on Kraehe’s unhappy position and her own continuation of that cycle with Fakir, it turns out that neither of them are the focus on this episode’s ultimate Coppelia reenactment. That honor belongs to Pike, Ahiru’s supportive friend, who finds herself suddenly enraptured by Mytho’s presence. Pike’s sudden significance as a character aligns naturally with this episode’s general focus on fleshing out Ahiru’s world, and ultimately leads us to a finale that echoes the first half’s empathy-focused vignettes, only with Mytho himself as the crow-tainted villain.
As Pike begins Coppelia’s iconic dance and declares that “if I have Mytho-sama, I don’t mind losing my heart and turning into a doll,” Ahiru is there to fight for her, challenging this episode’s persistent denial of its stars’ human value, telling her friend that she is so much more than her love for Mytho. All of Tutu’s stars have struggled with feelings of worthlessness, and many of them can only see themselves as valuable insofar as they are loved by another. Their tormentors encourage this, undercutting their self-image and telling them they are nothing more than puppets, their value no greater than whatever their owners decide for them. While Princess Tutu may be needed to complete such fanciful tasks as “restoring the storybook prince’s heart,” it is Ahiru who is necessary to fight this battle – to tell her friends that they are not just loved, but that they are worth far more than the love others grant them. We are not just noble and worthy insofar as we please others, or impress the crowd. We are valid no matter what, and deserve better than than a puppet master’s false love.
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