Princess Tutu, is an anime TV-series based on and around ballet which ran from August 16th, 2002 to June 28th, 2003 on Kids Station in Japan. The series was created by Ito Ikuko , and a manga version illustrated by Shinonome Mizuo ran in Champion RED Comics . Every episode features a different (real-world) ballet interwowen into the storyline, complete with the original music. For example, the first episode uses Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker". This series has quite exquisite animation and graphics, and a very carefully designed soudtrack. The opening and ending themes, "Morning grace" and "Even though my love is so small", were both composed by Okazaki Ritsuko.

Voice acting is also very good. The actor (Katou Nanae ) playing the main character Ahiru (Japanese for duck) has, appropriately, a very duck-like voice, as she really is a duck. Her devoid-of-all-emotions counterpart, Mytho (played by Yanagi Naoki ), is well portrayed as a cool and unintentionally indifferent character. Unusually, there is a storyteller character, and he plays a part in the storyline in a quite intriguing way.

The subtitled names in early fansubbed versions of Princess Tutu were transcriptions of the phonetic pronunciation the Japanese seiyuu spoke. It was only once the names could be obtained from DVD inserts, or when they appeared in the series, that the correct names begun to be used:

(False - Correct)

• Mute - Mytho
• Fakia - Fakir
• Ruu - Rue
• Pike - Pique
• Ririe - Lilie

External links

Fansites:

• Ugly duckling lake

Cast, staff, and soundtrack listings:

• Studio Neko-han-ten

Official homepage:

• Imagica.com