malymin

It's very hard to talk about the biggest thing that bothers me with Princess Tutu's ending.

Duck becoming just a duck at the end is bittersweet, for sure, but her and Fakir's story is framed as open ended. The final scene, of Fakir writing while Duck swims on the water, and the narration speaking of a "new story, full of hope"... that scene is so obviously begging the audience of little girls at home in 2003 to write fix-it-fics where Fakir turns Duck back into a human girl and they kiss, if they so wish. Considering that Princess Tutu's relationship to tragedy is, essentially, "it's sad that The Little Mermaid and Swan Lake end like that, I wish they didn't", I think it'd be absurd to position it as an anti-fixit piece of media. If you have any doubts that Duck's story is meant to be an open book, consider the interview with Ikuto Itoh in 2006 at Ushicon:

Is it possible for Ahiru to turn back into a girl?

Itoh-san was somewhat vague on this answer. She spoke of how with the current ending the fans themselves imagine possible varying outcomes beyond the end of the series. (I got the sense that she liked this open-endedness for that very reason.) However, she did say that the POSSIBILITY of such a thing occurring was not ruled out.

Will there ever be a sequel?

Itoh-san expressed that she would like for there to be more, but for it to be a new-story, or a spin-off. When asked for what the premise of this would be... she did not want to answer as she does not want to give that away. A follow-up question was asked, "could you at least tell us what character or characters the story would revolve around?", to which she answered quite clearly: Fakir & Ahiru. (Which I think ties in nicely to her answer that the POSSIBILITY has not been ruled out for Ahiru to become a girl again at the end of the series.)

Itoh-san said that in Japan it might be difficult to see more of Tutu made. But perhaps if a U.S. production company became interested in it, that we might see more.

(Personally, my argument for Duck being granted humanity again is less "she should kiss Fakir" and more related to the indication she is no longer able to relate to other birds by the season 2 opening, and how she loves being able to talk to human people in general, but I know I'm in a bit of a minority. In any case, I have nothing intrinsically against Fakiru as a ship. They're cute. When so much 00's shoujo anime involves sexual harassment and abuse that we're meant to find sexy, Fakir being a "bad boy" love interest that doesn't do any of that to Duck is a breath of fresh air.)

Then there's Rue and Mytho. Their ending is framed as a closed book: they dance in front of an illustrated backdrop, rendered flatly and without the shading of the characters still living in the real world. Then, they freeze in place, just images on the page. Certainly, Itoh's statements on how a sequel would revolve around "Fakir and Ahiru" suggest she has (or at least in 2006, had) no plans to further explore Mytho and Rue. Happily ever after, no more to say.

Never mind that the Raven beat into Rue that only he and the Prince could love her, that she was too disgusting and wretched for anyone else, ever since she was a small child. I've written about this before, on other websites. But honestly, Rue's abuse is the side of the equation that's easier for people to swallow. In my experience, it's the part that's easier to get people to talk about and agree with. After all, she's a real girl, and in the Finale the characters agree they all need to return to their "true selves." When Rue does not, and instead retreats deeper into the story, this is an obvious contradiction. When we learn that Rue's obsession with Mytho is founded in a sort of proxy-grooming by her abusive father figure, it seems like the obvious way for Rue to break free from that grooming would be to learn to love and be loved by anyone else.

Mytho's harder to get people to talk about. People don't take Fakir's physical and verbal abuse of Mytho very seriously, after all. The resemblance to abuse of mentally disabled people by their caretakers does not enter people's minds. After all, he "didn't have feelings", so it didn't count, right? Never mind that you can be traumatized by something even if you can't properly comprehend or process it. Never mind that Mytho develops more ability to comprehend and question the world around him as he regains his heart during season 1, like a developing child slowly realizing that the abuse they've taken for granted is not normal. Mytho's fate is to always be treated more as an object than a character. When people talk about any ship involving Mytho - Ruetho, Mythiru, Mykir - the focus is always on how the non-Mytho character thinks and feels about Mytho. How Mytho feels about Rue, about Fakir, about Duck - these are largely ignored.

It's also hard because it's difficult to talk about a character doing a seriously bad thing, without it being taken as a total condemnation of the character and their fans. It's hard because it's cloaked in subtext in a kid's show, and that means people will deny, up and down, that it could ever be there. It's hard because the show itself avoids thinking about the implications of what it's set up - both Fakir and Rue's worst actions against Mytho are glossed over, the more we're asked to sympathize with them as victims of trauma themselves. Raven!Mytho's lashing out at them is never allowed to be treated as sympathetic. The ways he insults them are never founded in their actual actions against Mytho, only their failure to properly perform their story roles, no different from how Drosselmeyer or the Raven would insult them.

Let's look at the ending of Season 1, episode 11: La Sylphide.

This reads as a sexual assault, right? As Kraehe pulls his physical embodiment of Mytho's "love" out of his body, Mytho helplessly cries out with wide and terrified eyes. Kraehe forces Mytho into a french kiss against his will; she continues to pull the piece out. An intense pulse at the point of contact; Tutu, a bystander, screams and begs for Kraehe to stop. She does not. Mytho's eyes go dead; all goes dark.

The next time we see them, in episode 12, Mytho is naked, under a thin cover of feathers. Kraehe is laying with Mytho's naked body. Mytho has "shut away all his other emotions" - implicitly as a result of the physical, mental, and emotional shock of having a piece of his heart forcibly removed. He has psychologically shut down.

Though she shortly afterwards redirects blame to Tutu, she tells Mytho's barely-responsive body (a body in far less conscious state than he was in even before regaining any of his heart, even if Kraehe describes it as being just like "the doll he used to be") that this is his fault. He brought this upon himself.

The second season's premier reveals that Rue/Kraehe contaminated the stolen (and, in episode 13, returned) shard under her Father's direction, with a substance - the Raven's blood - meant to change his behavior. She believed this substance would turn him into someone who would not say no to her, someone who would love her instead of Tutu. (It did not, of course. A violent, angry Mytho, who did not comprehend how to give love, was created from this act, and it hated Kraehe.)

But loving is good, and ceasing to love is bad, so she's the better victim, right? He was the bad, scary victim and she's the good, pitiful one, and so once the curse is broken it's his duty as a prince to take care of her and heal her, no matter what harm she did to him. That's what Mytho, or rather the show as a whole, seems to decide at the end.

Perhaps I shouldn't expect a more complex understanding of cycles of abuse from the show. This very question, asked to Itoh, illustrates a prevailing worldview, at the time and even today, where there are only innocent, pure victims and "not so innocent," bad, already-tainted victims:

[Kraehe] was a very complicated character. Was she truly an innocent caught up in something beyond her control? Or was she not so innocent to begin with and thus tainted from the very beginning?

Itoh-san took some time thinking about this question and eventually answered that [Kraehe] has a wounded heart (and thus the implication can be inferred that she was an innocent victim in surreal circumstances) and that someone needs to help her heal. (Could this be part of what [Mytho's] speech would have revealed? Alas, we may never know! But it does seem to be a reasonable correlation!).

But the thematic implications of Rue and Mytho's story are unsettling - and all the moreso because we are not asked to question. We are not asked to imagine that their story continues beyond a conflict-less "happy ending." We've slain the dragon and saved the princess; the evil wizard is vanquished. Who needs to worry about interpersonal issues, with these kinds of beautiful broad strokes? Look at how beautiful everything is.