Sail Away with Me

(song by Sunrise Avenue)

OMG, I hate this kind of people so much. They are so quick to judge a movie they probably didn’t rewatch since childhood without thinking.

Before explaining why all this nonsense is completely wrong, I’d like to draw attention to the concert scene at the beginning of the 1989 movie, because it’s very important (and also because that scene is connected to something I’ll write about later): first of all, it was in honor of Triton, the king, secondly, it was the crowning of Sebastian’s illustrious career (as he himself says), and moreover, it also represented Ariel’s official debut in the Atlantica’s society, which is why she was the center of attention, hers was the best part of the song, in fact it came last: the sisters sang their names quickly precisely to leave more space for Ariel, because they had already been officially introduced to society, while Ariel hadn’t, since she was the youngest sister. In that scene, the fact that all of Ariel’s sisters emerge from shells is not a coincidence. In fact, if you pay close enough, it’s intentionally reminiscent of Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus,” as that moment in the concert represented their future life: the act of emerging from the shells represented their “rebirth,” their choice to conform to what the entire Atlantica society, and especially Triton, expected of them: to be perfect princesses of an underwater civilization of merpeople and to blindly respect the prohibitions imposed by their father about humans. By not attending that concert, Ariel rejects all of this, even if only involuntarily, because she had forgotten about it (I don’t mean to blame her for this), because at that moment she was instead hunting for human objects as usual, precisely because for her, her passion for the human world was much more important (in fact, the commitment to the concert had completely slipped her mind), and that was exactly what prevented her from being exactly the daughter her father expected her to be. Ariel had always felt misunderstood because of her obsession for the human world. In fact, in the animated movie, the scene in which Ariel finally resembles the painting I mentioned earlier is only the final scene, where she emerges from the water in her beautiful sparkling dress (another crucial scene for this very reason, yet completely absent in the live action movie), walking slowly toward the shore (the human world) and, above all, toward Eric, her two greatest desires. She had always wanted to be human, and she had grown up surrounded by people who, instead, viewed this obsesion of hers almost as an obstacle (as I wrote shortly after this part), but now she has finally found someone who doesn’t judge her and accepts her exactly as she is. For this reason, that scene represents Ariel’s true “rebirth”, her transition from adolescence to adulthood (that’s one of the main themes of the movie), which occurred slightly later than that of her sisters, precisely because, instead, she had yet to find her place in the world.

Anyway, as I wrote a few lines before this, Ariel had always felt misunderstood because of her obsession for the human world. When she saw Eric on the ship, okay, she had an instant crush on him (which is quite normal, considering she’s 16), but some moments after this she also saw so many other good qualities in him which strengthened her feelings for him and made Eric literally become the personification and the embodiment of all the positive qualities she always knew humans possessed, the proof that not all humans were bad, as he represented her hope and faith in the goodness of humans. After a life spent with a secret obsession for the human world that she couldn't talk about with anyone (not even with anyone of her own species, because her friends were literally a fish and a seagull), not even her sisters (her OWN family), due to a father who refused to properly grieve his wife's death, preferring to base his mind on prejudices and to believe that all humans were pirates, she had finally found proof that she was right, but she couldn't tell anyone, because no one would listen to her (in fact, she would even be punished and scolded by her father).

Anyway, here are Eric’s good qualities I meantioned earlier that Ariel noticed on the ship:

1) he’s very humble and he also challenges his society’s rules from the very beginning, exactly like her (this is why I hate when people say that animated Eric had nothing in common, because it’s completely wrong and superficial): despite being a Prince, he loves spending time with sailors (in fact, I believe that if he could choose, Eric would happily be a sailor rather than a Prince: he enjoys sailing much more than staying in the palace, exactly like Ariel, who doesn’t like attending at Triton’s concerts because she loves too much searching for new human objects), he usually also dresses in a very simple way, like one of them (for much of the movie he just wears a shirt, trousers, and boots, with a red sash as his only decoration, perhaps also because he believes this outfit is more comfortable for sailing), he allowed both the sailors and his servants to be very informal with him or even call him by his name, he had chosen to celebrate his birthday on a ship with sailors, playing music and dancing with them (instead a prince would normally have decided to have a big party in a castle). Moreover, when Grimsby gives him the statue, Eric doesn’t like it, not only because he thinks it is too big, tacky and exaggerated, but also because it makes his anxious about his own future, it literally represents what his people expect of him as a ruler. In fact, Eric’s statue is elegantly dressed, it has a determined expression, a proud pose, he’s portrayed as a ruler who fears nothing and who is ready to draw his sword to defend his kingdom. However, the real Eric is completely different, he is just a 18-year-old-boy who, despite his young age, must already rule an entire kingdom alone, without the guidance of someone more experienced, such as a parent, but he only has Grimsby’s guidance (we never see Eric's parents or other relatives in the movie; maybe they d!ed, perhaps when he was little, so it’s understandable that he might feel stressed with all this pressure and with no one to guide him but Grimsby). Despite this, he still tries to be kind to Grimsby (another one of Eric’s positive qualities), telling him that he likes the statue so as not to disappoint him, putting his anxiety and insecurity aside to make his butler happy (while a normal Prince would not have cared at all about the mood of his servants). Considering what I said before, perhaps Grimsby has become like a parental figure to him.

Little off-topic paragraph about a parallel between animated Ariel and Eric that I think is important, because I think it gives further depth to the reasons why Ariel falls in love with Eric: one of the first things that Ariel notices when she sees Eric for the first time is that he is not playing the flute for an audience (even though he is a Prince and all the other people on the ship are his subordinates), he is not playing the flute in an important and official event (as instead happened in the case of the concerts organized by Triton and Sebastian, concerts that Ariel and her sisters must attend), but he is simply playing the flute to entertain his dog, because that is actually something he likes to do and he is just enjoying the moment with Max. This is one of the reasons why it is important that one of the first things Ariel notices about Eric is that he has DIFFERENT hobbies from hers, since it is necessary that the world in which Eric lives and his personality are completely different from what Ariel already knew in Atlantica, an environment in which she was clearly dissatisfied with living, as I wrote before.

2) he’s a hopeless romantic: after Eric thanks Grimsby for the statue (even though it’s a gift he doesn’t like at all and only makes him anxious), his butler reproaches him for wanting to give the statue to Eric as a wedding gift, but instead he has failed to find a wife. In fact, while apologizing to Grimsby, Eric himself says he didn’t fall in love with the princess of Glowerhaven (and probably also with many other girls who had been introduced over the years), because probably those Princesses or noblewomen behaved too mechanically, trying at all costs to be perfect high society ladies, without simply being themselves, and because they probably had nothing in common with him, but I will talk about all this better later, because this concerns the reasons why animated Eric did NOT fall in love with Ariel only or largely for her physical appearance, and why this is another terribly superficial thing TLM haters usually say. Anyway, as Grimsby says, the ENTIRE kingdom would like Eric to marry as soon as possible to ensure a lineage to the dinasty, and this is another of the pressures Eric has to endure, but despite he’s probably suffering for this, he doesn’t complain or make a drama out of it, he refuses, playing it down, trying not to worry Grimsby but just explaining his reasons anyway. He remains firm in his beliefs (even though by doing so he is challenging society), saying that he would like to marry for love, and not through an arranged marriage (as the other Princes would do), precisely because he wants to live his life as he wants, he does not want to be limited by social rules and he does not want to have anything imposed on him by anyone. He challenged society exactly like Ariel did when she (involuntarily) missed the concert at the beginning of the movie.

So, animated Ariel and Eric obviously had both similarities and differences, and in this case I’d like to focus on the differences, and I’d like to highlight on one difference in particular that is noticeable in this scene (sorry for another little off-topic paragraph): Ariel was clinging to the side of the ship the whole time, so she witnessed the entire scene of Eric’s birthday party on the ship, and in particular she witnessed this exchange between Eric and Grimsby, during which, while being scolded (just a little bit), Eric managed to downplay the fact that he hadn’t found a wife yet and he was still able to express his opinion about when and how he wanted to get married, and these were two things Ariel absolutely couldn’t do. In fact, comparing this scene with the ones in which Ariel is scolded by her father, we notice that there is a huge difference: Triton didn’t listen to her, he just raised his voice and repeated the same prejudicial things over and over again, because even though he loved her, he made the mistake of believing what was best for her just because he was her father, so Ariel would never have had the chance either to downplay it (in fact, as soon as she tries to apologize for going up to the surface to talk to Scuttle, saying that nothing happened, her father immediately raises his voice, preventing her from continuing), or to express her opinion firmly, unlike Eric. Instead, Grimsby, despite obviously caring for Eric (and probably being almost like a father to him), just reminds him gently of what the kingdom expects of him, but the butler doesn’t repress or limit Eric, not only because he’s not his father but only an advisor (so Eric, being the prince, is still a higher-ranking person), but also because Grimsby actually cares that Eric is happy with his own ideas, while Triton, on the other hand, wanted to impose his own idea of ​​happiness and his idea of ​​conformity to society on Ariel, even though it wasn’t what his daughter wanted. Anyway, for this reason, I believe that in this scene, Ariel is also a little envious, not so much of Eric, and obviously not in a negative way, but more of the kind of life he leads and his freedom. I believe that for Ariel, this scene is the definitive confirmation of the moment when, during “Part of That World,” she sang “Betcha on land, they understand, bet they don’t reprimand their daughters... bright young women, sick of swimming, ready to stand.” I mean, Ariel believed that not only daughters, but also sons and teenagers in general, weren’t repressed in the human world, but actually listened by their parents, and in this scene she believes she’s found her theory confirmed (even though we know that’s obviously not the case, because we are humans). That’s another reason why, as I said before, Eric becomes for her the personification and the embodiement of all the good qualities she’d always known humans had, and that’s why it really pisses me off that so many people reduce the scene where Ariel sees Eric on the ship for the first time to an “instant teenage crush”, because that’s not the case at all. It’s so much more deeper than that.

3) he’s a hard worker with excellent training as a sailor: when the storm breaks, a normal prince would probably have locked himself in his cabin, terrified, or run around the ship vomiting overboard from seasickness or barking orders at the sailors without doing absolutely nothing to help them, but either way it would have been a hindrance to them. On the other hand, Eric has excellent training as a sailor, he loves spending time on ships and he wants to be useful to his crew, he wants to demonstrate he still wants to be one of them despite being royalty, so he wastes no time helping the sailors, adjusting the sails and turning the wheel (although despite all his efforts, unfortunately, the ship still crashes into a rock in the end and still gets struck by lightning).

Summary: "After Ariel saves Eric from the shipwreck on his birthday, the two coincidentally meet again, but Ariel is still a mermaid. Love brings them together, but as time moves ever forward, they realize they need to figure something out sooner rather than later if they want to make their relationship work for the long term. When Ariel suddenly stops visiting him, Eric finds out she has completely disappeared and no one in the seven seas knows where she is. He realizes something must have happened to her. It's Eric's turn to save Ariel and he will stop at nothing to find his little mermaid and make sure she's returned safely to his arms."

First portrait that i forgot to post here : Ariel and Eric Familly :D

I REALLY love this disney family. Ariel, Eric and Melody are so cute in 2nd movies. I need more next generation film lol