Ceo of Rarepairs

Fakir gets a whopping ZERO likeable traits. It takes Duck eight episodes to catch him with the mask off and in those episodes he spends his time abusing mytho and terrorizing her. It’s easier to spot the little moments of compassion when you’ve seen the show already but going in blind? He’s awful. I don’t know that I can say I’ve talked to anyone who liked early show fakir before his softer side is revealed.

All of that and yet the transition from cold, cruel bully to dorky teenage boy is IMMACULATE. I’m always struck by how young he is—something you don’t really think about when he’s in asshole supreme mode—but the second the mask comes off and we’re left with this traumatized, scared kid it all makes perfect sense. You’re so lost in the fairytale of it that you forget there’s a person in there until the show slaps you in the face with it.

Princess Tutu is not and never was a show about defying fate; it's a show about the roles we are assigned and who we really are, and it uses the fantasy concept of 'fate' to examine this. It does so in a unique fashion, because the characters' fate is explicitly man-made, rather than divine or otherwise untouchable in origin.

In the first half, we are introduced to the roles Drosselmeyer has fashioned for our main characters: Mytho as the loving prince, Fakir as the knight, Rue as the crow's daughter and Ahiru as Princess Tutu. We are also introduced to all the ways in which our characters have friction with these roles: Mytho who has lost the ability to love and is no longer a prince, Fakir who abuses Mytho and fears his own death, Rue who is a kind and loving person when allowed to be, Ahiru who is clumsy and ungraceful, who does not want to vanish into light, who wants to make a difference even though she's only a minor character.

The first half of the show gradually increases the pressure on the characters as their roles begin to weigh heavier and heavier. Ahiru is repeatedly confronted with the fact that she will never get the guy and will be an eternal outsider, Fakir is forced to decide how far he's willing to go to protect himself and whether he's truly willing to sacrifice Mytho's happiness for his life, Rue falls apart as she fears ending up alone and commits the role of the crow's daughter in desperation, Mytho starts to regain pieces of the prince he once was and has to recon with the way it changes him and the world. It builds to a climax where everyone faces off in their assigned roles, while the framing and narrative makes it clear that this is wrong; this has to be rejected.

The second half does exactly that. Rue's life crumbles as it grows increasingly obvious how unsuited she is for the role of Princess Kraehe, and Fakir forgoes the role of the knight and reaches for his family's history as writers instead. Mytho spends the whole second half as a hateful, jealous, posessive crow, a far cry from the loving prince he's supposed to be. Ahiru stands up against Drosselmeyer and seizes the narrative, becoming instrumental in the story told, a character impossible to write out or off.

What the second half also does, however, is take a look at the roles assigned by Drosselmeyer and ask: who are they beneath that?

Ahiru is a duck. Rue is just a girl. Fakir is a writer. And Mytho? Mytho is the loving fairytale prince, the only one truly created for the role Drosselmeyer assigned them, now changed by his experiences in the real world.

Fate, in Princess Tutu, is a charade, a story written by some guy, forcibly overlayed onto reality. In reality, the duck is a duck, the girl is a girl, the writer is a writer. Accepting this reality, accepting who you truly are and refusing to be bent out of shape by another's will is the core of Princess Tutu's story.

This is in no way contradictory to the themes set up in the first half of the show. But it is a deconstruction. The first half says 'you must defy fate', and the second half asks 'what is your fate, anyway? Is it truly what this guy says it is?'

The answer is no, it is not. There is no fate, not really, no grand narrative. There's just a prince, a girl, a writer and a duck, making the best of what they are, and finding happiness in it.

Thinking about how Duck spends the majority of the show passively (if not actively) suicidal. She's just a duck so her life is worth so little to her—in the first episode she says she'd trade her life for a single dance with Mytho. She isn't even especially upset about vanishing as Princess Tutu if it means Mytho will get a chance to be happy.

But then in her pas de deux with fakir she says this:

It’s his influence—the influence of someone who truly, wholly loves her as opposed to mytho and rue who only know facets of her—that inspires her to want things for herself. He’s the one who insists she should be around to see Mytho smile.

And for those people who have access to mobility devices but might benefit from a second chair they can abuse without risking expensive damage…

Erik Kondo has made a website, Open Source Innovations, that details plans for DIY wheelchairs. These wheelchairs can be made from common materials like wood, plastic, and pvc. They are lightweight and can be custom fit to the user allowing from the same degree of movement you would get from a custom chair. And they are durable and easily repairable. (he has been stress testing his latest design by dropping it down stairs, dropping it out of a car, launching it across a driveway, and throwing it off a deck). Its 12lbs and I think he said its was in the $200 ish range for parts.