Fairy Tale Media Fix: 1001 Arabian Nights (featuring Mr. Magoo)

 

Fairy Tale Media Fix title card

United Productions of America, also known as UPA, was a cartoon studio formed in the wake of the 1941 Disney Animators' Strike. UPA rejected Disney's adherence to trying to strictly imitate cinematic reality and was devoted to more experimentation in animation style. After forming a partnership with Columbia Pictures and a string of successful animated shorts, in 1959 UPA released its first feature-length animated film. It would be an adaptation of the story “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” and be titled 1001 Arabian Nights.

Also, it would feature UPA's signature character, Mr. Magoo.

No, I'm not kidding.

DVD cover for 1001 Arabian Nights.

This movie is in some ways a bit of a head-scratcher. In so many ways, it's exactly what it says on the tin. A UPA film based on the story of “Aladdin”. It has the decidedly more abstract, experimental style you'd expect from a UPA cartoon. Not quite as experimental as they would get, but definitely more experimental than Disney. It depicts the story of Aladdin with all the changes you'd expect to be made in the name of being family-friendly or just streamlining the story. They take out the part where Aladdin lies next to the princess in bed and places a sword between them. It removes the Genie of the Ring, so that there's only the Genie of the Lamp. It condenses down the stories two antagonists, the wicked magician who poses as Aladdin's uncle and the ambitious Vizier into one character: the Wicked Wazir (if anyone can't remember all this stuff from the story, I don't blame you. I will leave a link to the original story of “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp”). There are also songs, though they're not very memorable.

Those are all changes we'd see Disney make decades later and which we probably saw in numerous adaptations.

Movie poster for 1001 Arabian Nights

But then there's the Magoo of it all.

For those who don't know, Mr. Magoo is UPA's signature character. He's a stubborn, proud, self-important and extremely near-sighted old man who stumbles through crazy situations because he can't see very well and refuses to wear glasses. He's unaware of this though, because he will never accept that there's anything wrong, so he just assumes he's seeing what he wants to see.

In 1001 Arabian Nights, Magoo plays Aladdin's uncle, a lamp-seller. He basically takes the role that Aladdin's mother takes in the original tale. He also plays a little of the princess's role in trading away the lamp. That is, until the climax. Instead of Aladdin setting off to find the missing princess and evil magician after they've disappeared, Aladdin gets accused of causing their disappearance and gets imprisoned and gets sentenced to beheading. At that point, Uncle Magoo stumbles onto a flying carpet (which didn't come out of nowhere. It was foreshadowed from the beginning of the movie) and gets carried to where the Wicked Wazir and the Princess Yazminda are. He then, bumbles and stumbles his way to saving the day. (Sorry for all the spoilers).

Uncle Magoo with the Wicked Wazir

Look, I actually like Mr. Magoo myself. I wrote a whole blog post elsewhere about it. But it's so strange how this movie turned into a Mr. Magoo vehicle. It wouldn't be so bad if Aladdin got to be the hero of his own picture and Magoo just stayed in a comic relief role. But no, Magoo had to save the day.

The movie has other good points. It comes very close to being a decent Hollywood adaptation of the Aladdin story. UPA's simplified art style is fun to look at. There are some fun characters. The Wicked Wazir is fun in an over-the-top, cartoonishly evil kind of way. There's a funny, dim-witted executioner who runs around yelling “Chop! Chop! Chop!”. It just didn't have to turn so Magoo-centric.

The Wicked Wazir, Princess Yasminda and the Sultan.

Oh, well. I wrote more about Mr. Magoo just as a cartoon character, over on my other blog Universes Beckon. Go over there and check it out if you're interested.

Fairy Tale Media Fix: Red Hot Riding Hood.

 

So, this one has been on the list to cover for a long time. I was just never sure when I'd get another chance to view it. But I got the blu-ray Tex Avery Screwball Classics Vol. 1 and there it was in all its glory.  (Update: Turns out a good chunk of it is right there on YouTube to watch from the official source.  And the whole cartoon is there cut into three parts by an independent user.  Who knew?)

Red Hot Riding Hood is a famous (infamous?) cartoon short produced by MGM and directed by Tex Avery. It was released in 1943 with the movie Dr. Gillespie's Criminal Case.

The cartoon starts with what seems like a standard approach to a “Little Red Riding Hood” adaptation, complete with a treacley-voiced narrator introducing the story. However, this doesn't last long because before the story can even get started, the Wolf objects to telling the same old version of the story and insists they change it up. His protests are joined by protests by Red and Grandma, with Red even claiming “Every cartoon studio in Hollywood has told it this way”.

The characters of "Little Red Riding Hood" airing their grievances.

So, the omniscient narrator changes it up.

Now, the story is set in Hollywood. The wolf is now a well-dressed “Hollywood wolf” (sort of like a pick-up artist). Red is a fully grown and red hot nightclub entertainer. And Grandma is an oversexed man-chaser who lives in a penthouse apartment.

Wolfie making his move on Red.

The wolf takes in one of Red's performances, in which she sings the 1941 song “Daddy". He then hits on her at which she demurs and says she has to go to Grandma's house. The wolf then tries to beat her to Grandma's. But then the tables are turned on him as Grandma starts chasing him. After barely escaping, the wolf swears he's swearing off women only to be driven wild by one of Red's performances again.

And . . . that's it.

Look, it's really hard to give the gist of a Tex Avery cartoon without describing the visual gags. And you really need to see the gags for them to be funny. And they are funny gags. Watch the cartoon for that if not for anything else.

Our title girl Red

If you don't know this cartoon, then you probably at least know things this cartoon influenced. Animators have cribbed gags and elements from this and other Tex Avery shorts for ages. A scene in a nightclub in the 1994 movie The Mask is done in imitation of the scene of the Wolf in the nightclub (he even turns into the Wolf). A chase scene in 1988's Who Framed Roger Rabbit was taken directly from this short. Not to mention how adult Red is the main inspiration for both the literary and movie versions of Jessica Rabbit in all forms of Roger Rabbit media.

It was really popular in its day, too. It was particularly popular with the Army while they were fighting overseas. It also spawned a whole bunch of sequel shorts, the ones most releveant to this blog being Swing Shift Cinderella and Little Rural Riding Hood.

I mean, I can see why maybe this cartoon wouldn't be to someone's taste today. Considering how much sexual politics have changed since 1943. And it wasn't without controversy back then either. Avery claims a number of cuts were made at the behest of Hollywood censors. Supposedly there was a completely different ending that involved the Wolf marrying Grandma in a shotgun wedding. But it was supposedly changed because the Hayes Code was harsh on stuff that made light of marriage or implied bestiality or both.

A shot from the deleted scene.

It is interesting to look at, though, in terms of what has or hasn't changed about attitudes toward the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” in the last 80 years. While 80 years sounds like a long time on a human time scale, it's a fairly small period of time compared to how long the story has existed. So, starting with the characters complaining that everyone has already told this story the “traditional” way and that it's time to change it up feels like a modern complaint but was just as valid a complaint back then. The narrator then reframes the story in a modern setting (a very common method of reimagining fairy tales now in the 21^st Century). And most notable of all, manages to create a sexed up version that comes very close to making the commonly agreed-upon subtext of the tale into text but managing to stop short of the full nastiness of it because . . . y'know . . . Hayes Code.

Honestly, I rather like the cartoon and at this point I'll easily take a “grown-up” version of fairy tales that makes them sexier rather than more violent. Playing up the violence and horror is as tired now as playing the story straight was in 1943. Even if there is still some 80-year-old baggage to unpack from it all.

Usually around this point in the post, I'd be talking about other media that the characters appeared in. But Red Hot Riding Hood doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would find itself parlayed into other media. Except it was. Apparently there was a miniseries of Wolf & Red comic books put out by Dark Horse Comics in 1995. I'm as surprised as you are.

Issue 2 of Wolf & Red

But anyway, that's it for Red Hot Riding Hood! Let's hear it for the little lady! [applause]

Fairy Tale Media Fix: Snow White (2025)

 All that trouble for this movie?

Okay, let's just get straight to the review.  I'll cover "what trouble" further in.

The poster for Snow White (2025)

Disney's 2025 Snow White is a live action remake or reimagining of their 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The story concerns a young princess named Snow White (adult version played by Rachel Zegler), so named because she was born during a blizzard, who was raised to be a kind and just ruler until her mother died and her father remarries a beautiful but wicked queen with magic powers. Her father then supposedly leaves to confront some potential invaders at the southern border and disappears. The Evil Queen (played by Gal Godot), who is never given a name other than “The Evil Queen”, then takes over and makes some unsavory changes. After receiving some negative news from her Magic Mirror, the Queen conspires to have Snow White killed but she runs away into the forest where she meets seven centuries-old dwarfs with magic powers as well as a band of bandits who've been fighting against the Queen.

Snow White with the seven magical Dwarfs

That's basically it. It's a “Snow White as a revolutionary heroine” take, which we've seen a few times before. And overall . . . it's fine. Not a particularly good movie, but not a terrible one either. I didn't feel bored watching it. It's a musical with a couple of songs taken from the original animated film. Notably “Heigh Ho” and “Whistle While You Work”. The famous “Someday My Prince Will Come” is notably absent because there's no Prince in the movie. His role has been shifted to a character with a different fairy tale archetype. There are a whole bunch of new songs added. “Good Things Grow” is the new set-up song from when they're showing Snow White's past. “Waiting on a Wish” is the new 'I Want' song. “Princess Problems” is the song she sings with the new love interest when she meets him. Not to be confused with “A Hand Meets a Hand”, which is the new love duet. The Evil Queen even gets a villain song in the form of “All is Fair”. And they're fun songs in the moment, but if you think the mark of a Disney song is that you still remember it when you leave the theater, then you might be a bit disappointed (I think that's kind of a high bar, personally). Rachel Zegler does a good job and has a wonderful voice. Gal Godot chews the scenery like a champ among Disney villains but her chops as an actual actress are still questionable. They don't pull anything new from the original fairy tale, but I understand why they didn't. Things like repeating storytelling motifs are hard to pull off in movies. The biggest issue in the actual movie is the two sets of supporting characters. It feels like there might have been two different versions of the script at one point, one with Seven Dwarfs and one with Seven Bandits (note: I've read variants of the Snow White story that have gone either direction. And I've seen one movie where the dwarfs were bandits). But in the end, we ended up with a movie with both. Also, the Dwarfs might be “uncanny valley” territory for some, so be warned.

Snow White with the new male lead.

In anything, the biggest problem with Snow White wasn't anything in the actual Snow White movie. It's that for about a year the internet and even sources outside the internet lost their collective minds over this movie. Especially more Conservative sources. They were upset that a Latina actress was cast as Snow White. They were upset because they thought the Dwarfs might be cut from the movie. They got really upset when Rachel Zegler give a poorly worded interview in which she talked about how much more modernized this take on Snow White would be. It was such that The Daily Wire, a right-wing media outlet, even made a competing, traditionalist Snow White movie. And the trouble hasn't even really ended. In more Left-leaning spaces like Bluesky, it feels like Snow White has become an avatar for Hollywood's more callous attitude toward animation, especially as it's opening opposite the 2-D animated Looney Tunes movie The Day the Earth Blew Up. On the internet, this movie not only can't win, it can't even exist and then be forgotten like most “fair-to-middling” movies should.

Look, I've seen my fair share of Snow White adaptations. I've seen ones that are surprisingly faithful but have other regrettable aspects, like the Cannon Films version from 1987. I've seen and read versions that have changed up big things like the setting. Heck, this isn't even the strangest thing that Disney's done with characters from Snow White (anyone remember The 7D?). Like I said, it's another “Snow White as revolutionary heroine” take. One that actually eschews violence, which is nice. It's more fun and less dreary and aggro than Snow White and the Huntsman. It makes more narrative and character sense than the Snow White storyline in Once Upon a Time (the clip doesn't capture how strange that story got). It's about on par with Mirror, Mirror, but it does have some things that movie doesn't, like songs. But overall it's an “okay” movie that deserves to be treated as an “okay” movie. Go see it if you're interested. But I wouldn't fault you for waiting until it's on streaming or just getting it from the library once it's out on physical media.

Four-Color Fairy Tales: Seven Sleeping Beauties.

 

This may be a question you've never asked yourself before but: What if there were too many Sleeping Beauties?

Yes, I'm back to talk about some fairy tale related comics. I thought since I managed to get out a post a while back, I'd try for another one. Today we're looking at the manga 7-nin no Nemuri Hime or Seven Sleeping Beauties by Fiok Lee. Now, keep in mind, this manga doesn't currently have an official U.S. Release, so I can't really let you know where to find it.

Promo image of Seven Sleeping Beauties.

The story goes that young Prince Alec, the middle son of the King and Queen of Ludovechia, hears the story of the Sleeping Princess of the Kingdom of Amarylis. According to legend, there is a faraway kingdom where a castle covered by vines and guarded by a dragon houses a princess who has been cursed to sleep for (so far) the past thirty years. Upon hearing the story, the serious young prince swears that he will one day rescue that princess. Time passes and the now grown Alec finds out that his father the king has planned to invade and annex the kingdom. So, taking a set of curse-lifting instructions, he sets off to seemingly conquer the kingdom for his father but secretly to save it. Things don't go quite as he planned, though. For he finds that there is not one sleeping princess but seven of them (a misunderstanding that makes more sense when you remember this was originally written in Japanese, a language that does not pluralize but instead relies on context clues to communicate amount). And he also finds that waking all seven of them does not succeed in waking the rest of the palace. So, now he has to get into the good graces of the seven princesses (in no particular order: Claire, Charlotte, Chiara, Mia, Elisa, Flora and Euchar) and help them investigate the particulars of the curse and figure out how to wake everyone else.

So, let's be honest about what this is first and foremost: it's a harem comedy. Sometimes also called a harem romance.

A harem comedy in anime and manga is basically a series built on a love triangle on steroids. Anywhere from three to twelve possible love interests. Oftentimes with each character type having a genre-specific name (tsundere, kuudere, yandere, dandere, deredere, etc. I'm not going to explain them. You can look them up if you want to). Supposedly, the first ever harem comedy was Ranma½ by Rumiko Takehashi. She wrote that series to poke fun at love triangles and to communicate that she thought they were stupid. It then backfired spectacularly and harem comedies became one of the most common variations of romance manga for the boys' demographic. Recent examples include TheQuintessential Quintuplets and The Cafe Terrace and its Goddesses, among others going back decades. I imagine it was helped by the fact that being wanted by multiple women is a very common (though, still kind of stupid) heterosexual male fantasy.

It's also a genre that is considered by most American manga and anime fans to be, well, trash. Though, in anime fan parlance, that doesn't mean bad so much as it means a guilty pleasure that you shouldn't take too seriously.

Truth be told, seeing one of the core “princess stories” of the Western fairy tale canon rendered into such a male-oriented genre, especially one generally considered trashy and indulgent, can be a bit odd. With so much about the fairy tale landscape being oriented around girls and women, from who generally told the stories originally to who the mass-market versions are marketed to today, seeing a sleeping beauty harem comedy kind of makes you think “Okay, is this even legal?”.

Though, I have to say, given with the caveat that I am a grown, heterosexual man myself, I'm rather enjoying it. A lot of that is predicated on the fact that they complicated the story in just the right ways that it feels like there's more to invest in than “Which princess will Alec end up with?”. And it's a good thing because Alec could stand to face some more complications. Remember that he's a “Prince Charming” type and those guys don't actually do much. They just show up as a story's ending and everything just resolves itself. It's actually in challenging Alec that the manga shows that it's aware of the issues many have with the original story. One of the very first hurdles that Alec faces is gaining the princesses' trust after they discover that he had to kiss all of them in order to wake them up. I like this, but what I really like is that (at least in the translation I read) they included this modern reading without making it seem too modern. No offense to most modernized retellings, but if it's set in a pre-Industrial fantasy setting, I'd like it to still feel a bit antique. And that can be done with dialogue. There's a very big difference in vibe between “OMG! You didn't have her consent! That's totally sexual assault!” and “You brute! Forcing yourself upon a sleeping princess! Normally, you'd hang from the gallows for that!” And, to Alec's credit, when he reads that the way to wake up the sleeping princess is with a kiss, he finds it strange. And he's right. It is strange. The occurrence of the “curse-cancelling kiss”, despite its cinematic and cultural prominence, occurs very rarely in actual fairy tales that have been written down. Mostly just the Grimm version of Sleeping Beauty (“Little Briar-Rose”) and none of the prominent variants I've read of it. And it certainly doesn't appear in many variants of “Snow White” or “The Frog Prince”, which it's also associated with.

And while I've talked at length about Alec, I should also emphasize that all seven princesses have distinct (if not entirely fleshed out) personalities. From oldest to youngest, there is: Flora, who's slow and laid back and likes to fish. Chiara, who likes to tease Alec and who has a passion for plants and herbal medicines. Claire, who is very interested in romance and novels about such. Mia, who's a bit of a childish scaredy-cat who's trying her best to grow up. Charlotte, who's short-tempered and hates shifty people (which is how she regards Alec). Euchar, who is curious and analytical, as well as usually holed-up in the library. And Elisa, who's energetic and loves food.

And I think the whole story is starting to heat up at the part I got to, because they've just started to find information about The Witch of the Ivy who cursed them.

Cover image from Seven Sleeping Beauties

Though, there is also a fly in the ointment that may turn people away from this comic. Continue on for potential SPOILERS:

In recent years, there has been an uptick in fantasy harem romances derived from the world of webnovels. These are online novels created by users of the web novel site. So, basically, written by regular folks. And somewhere along the way, they realized that if those stories take place in a fantasy realm, there's no reason that the protagonist can't marry ALL the potential love interests. Personally, I once again blame heterosexual male fantasy, only this time supplemented by the history of polygamous rulers in feudal Asian countries. Anyway, that trope has spilled over into manga.

And sure enough, it looks like the solution to Alec and the princesses' problem may be some degree of matrimony as a way of further lifting the curse. And we once again run into that pluralization issue. So far, the characters seem to think Alec needs to marry one of the princesses. But I'm still waiting to see if that other shoe drops and Alec ends up with a wife for every day of the week. (Note: this definitely differs from most European fairy tales.  In "The Twelve Dancing Princesses", the soldier just picks the oldest princess.  In Jack tales, if Jack rescues multiple princesses, some go off and marry his brothers.  Though, Alec doesn't have enough brothers to go around).

Some might be okay with this eventuality. Some might very well not be. Heck, some people even engage in multi-partner relationships in the real world (Personally, I do understand it from a fantasy perspective, but am really not sure how they manage that in a practical sense. But it's not my life). I know this may seem like a lot of warning for something that a number of people might just see as an alternative lifestyle. But, some people are more thrown by it than others, and some people see misogyny in it. So, I thought people should be forewarned that it is a possibility.

Anyway, I'm enjoying it. I'm going to read it going forward. But I totally get why a “Sleeping Beauty” harem comedy might not be for everyone. But hey, now you know it's out there.

Fairy Tale Fandom Book Report: Indexing

 

I bet you didn't expect to see me again.

Yeah, I haven't been posting on here much lately. I got to a point where I kind of hit the wall in terms of fairy tale stuff. It had taken up about 99% of my reading and entertainment. I got burnt out and had to take a break.

But, just recently, as I've been trying to use the resources at hand, I decided to dip into my Kindle library in between public library books and just happened to find the absolute nerdiest fairy tale fantasy book ever.

It's titled Indexing by Seanan McGuire, and it was released back in 2014 as part of the Kindle Serials program.

Cover of Indexing

Indexing follows the ATI Management Bureau, an organization whose agents intercede when fairy tales events crop up again in real life and regular people start to be pulled into “the narrative”. The cast includes a number of agents, most of whom are part of some story or have narrowly averted being part of one. There's Henrietta “Henry” Marchen, a woman born from a “Sleeping Beauty” and who's at risk of becoming a “Snow White”. There's also a confrontational goth would-be “Wicked Stepsister” named Sloane Winters. And there's also their archivist Jeffrey (whose last name I've forgotten) who's one of the Shoemaker's elves (he's not actually an elf, just super capable and efficient). And those are just a few of the characters appearing.

Now, you may be wondering what the ATI in ATI Management Bureau is. Well, remember how I said this was one of the nerdiest pieces of fairy tale fiction I've read? Well, the ATI is the Aarne-Thompson Index, sometimes called the Aarne-Thomspon-Uther Index. It's an index that folklorists and scholars use here in the real world in order to identify the type of folk tale they're dealing with. It was originally written in Germany by Finnish folklorist Antti Aarne, then expanded by American folklorist Stith Thompson, then expanded again by German folklorist Hans-Jorg Uther.

And Seanan McGuire wrote a work of fiction based around the concept.

The Aarne-Thompson Index

I'm guessing that McGuire just thought it would be funny to have agents calling out index numbers like cops call out codes for crimes. Like, if they ran across a Pied Piper situation, they'd be like “We have a 280 in progress!”

In all honesty, I've never read a book that was quite so aware of the complicated reality of fairy tales all while creating their own story about fairy tales coming to life. It acknowledges variants. It acknowledges how animated movies have impacted the perception of fairy tales. It acknowledges how the broad, poetic language sometimes employed by fairy tale retellers would turn into something very scary when taken literally (apparently having “skin as white as snow, lips as red as blood and hair as black as ebony” just ends up making Snow Whites look spooky). It acknowledges that some stories that get lumped in with fairy tales (Peter Pan, The Little Mermaid, etc) aren't folk tales and thus aren't in the Index. Heck, you would not believe how happy I was to read one character say the phrase “Fairy tales are weird”. So few people acknowledge that! Sure, a million people will talk about how the “original” fairy tales (which aren't the originals at all) are more violent, but very few people acknowledge that they're also weird as hell and seem to follow their own strange rules!

That isn't the only reason I appreciate this book. The plots are well put together and the characters are well-developed. It's also one of the more modern-minded pieces of fairy tale fiction I've encountered. At least in terms of lifestyles and identities. There are gay characters in the book. There's a trans character in the book. One of the main characters even struggles with her mental health. And it brings up those specific issues and then stops short of any that may date the book too much (for example, no mention of whoever was president during the time this was published. I think it would have been Obama).

If there were one thing I could complain about, is that despite drawing from fairy tales, it's got a very negative attitude toward them. But that's kind of understandable given the circumstances. Most stories that you'd want to read would be absolute hell to live through. I mean, I wouldn't want to live through a fairy tale anymore than I'd want to live through a horror story, space opera or western. Heck, even a romantic comedy would be annoying to live through if not fatal.

It is a very unique little book. Though, I haven't read the sequel Indexing: Reflections to know if McGuire kept it up.

The sequel to Indexing.

It was even good enough to rekindle my interest in fairy tales . . . sort of.

Yeah, even though it brought me back on here, I'm still not keen on letting myself get burnt out again. And I'm still figuring out how to keep my interests varied and balanced. So, you might see me again, but no promises as to when that might be.

Until next time (whenever that is).

Fairy Tale Media Fix: Once Upon a Crime.

 

Wait.

What's this? An actual Fairy Tale Fandom post?

Yes, I thought I'd still show up and post every once in a while when some fairy tale thing still managed to catch my interest even though my interest in fairy tales and storytelling proved to be less of an ongoing interest and more of a years long, but still temporary hyperfixation.

Anyway, what caught my interest is a Japanese Netflix movie titled Once Upon a Crime. See trailer video below:

The movie is based on a Japanese book titled Akazukin, Tabi no Tochu de Shitai to Deau, which roughly translates to Little Red Riding Hood Encounters a Corpse Upon Her Journey, by Aito Aoyagi. I won't be commenting on fidelity to the book because, as near as I can tell, it has never been published in English and thus I have never read it.

Japanese book cover from 'Little Red Riding Hood Encounters a Corpse on Her Journey'

The movie follows Little Red Riding Hood, who is apparently on a journey to see the world and improve herself. As she goes along on this journey she runs into Cinderella who is, as is generally the case with Cinderella, abused by her stepfamily. However, with the help of two witches, one who can transform clothes and other things and one who can create glass footwear, Cinderella gets the chance to go to the ball and Red Riding Hood gets to go with her. But along the way things take a turn for the sinister when their coach runs into the corspe of Mister Hans, the King's royal hairdresser who has apparently been murdered. As things unfold, it falls to Red Riding Hood to solve the mystery and bring the killer to justice.

Netflix image for Once Upon a Crime.

Definitely a different take, huh? You don't see a lot of fairy tale murder mysteries out there. It also seems to play awfully fast and loose with the tonal push and pull that fairy tales and their adaptations are frequently subject to. It's a murder mystery and thus is dark enough to have a murder in it. Yet, the plot itself is a tongue-in-cheek thing about the killing of an overzealous and over-the-top hairdresser. Plus, visually, the movie is a big, bright, candy-colored confection. Some of the credit for this might go to the fact that it's a Japanese movie, and they have a very different cultural understanding of tone and what might be appropriate for different types of material. Personally, I rather like the variable tone. After years of seeing the back and forth of whether fairy tale adaptations should be dark like many of their written variations or lighter to appeal to a wider audience, it's nice to see fairy tale projects searching for a middle ground or finding some third path.

But now the question comes up of how it stacks up as a murder mystery, and the truth is that . . . I don't know. I mean, I'm not completely unfamiliar with the mystery genre. I've read some Sherlock Holmes books as well as a not-insignificant chunk of the manga Case Closed (also known as Detective Conan). And I've become rather fond of the recent Kenneth Branagh Hercule Poirot movies (and before some fans tell me, I have already been told that they're supposedly not as good as the books or the David Suchet series. But I'm more interested in having something interesting to go to the movies for than having the “Optimal Poirot Experience”). However, there are significant gaps in my mystery experience. For example, I've only ever read one Agatha Christie novel (And Then There Were None back in high school). And I've never really sat and thought about what makes for a good mystery. One thing I could call foul on is how Red Riding Hood's deductions are depicted. It seems she's supposed to have some kind of total recall, but it's depicted as images flashing before her like she's got some kind of psychic power. I'm not sure that's what they were intending. On the more positive side, I did not see the solution to this mystery coming. So, there's that.

Red Riding Hood looking at a glass slipper.  Could it be a clue?

Personally, I'm going to say Once Upon a Crime is not necessarily a must-watch, but it is definitely something to check out if you want to see something different done with fairy tale characters and settings.

As for me, I'm thinking maybe I should dip my toe more into the worlds of mystery and crime fiction. After all, if I'm not going to be obsessing over fairy tales, there's no reason I can't expand my horizons a bit.

Fairy Tale Media Fix: Taishou Otome Fairy Tale

 

Okay, so long time no see.

I'm sorry for not updating in a while. I'm afraid I've lost just a little bit of interest in all this fairy tale/folk tale stuff. Well, not so much lost interest as my interest settled down to a reasonable level. This seems to be a thing that happens a lot with me. I'll develop an interest that will be at the forefront of my mind for a while. Sometimes to the point of preoccupation. Then, after indulging in it for a few years, that preoccupation will stop and just become a regular general interest while something else takes its place. (Honestly, this might be an ADD thing. But I haven't really thought about that particular diagnosis since elementary school).

Anyway, I'm trying to not let this blog die completely, so let's take as look at some media property that calls itself a “fairy tale” and see how much of a fairy tale it is. Because sometimes they use the term “fairy tale” just to call attention to the fact that it's a fantasy or to indicate that it's a love story, when those things aren't necessarily the same as being a fairy tale.

Today's media is: Taishou Otome Fairy Tale.

The promo image for the anime.

I might want to clarify that, because that title (which is how it's labeled on Crunchyroll) is kind of a mix of English and Japanese. In Japanese, it would be “Taishou Otome Otogibanashi”. In English, it would be “Taishou Maiden Fairy Tale”. “Taishou” remains the same because it's a proper noun. The Taishou era was a period of Japanese history ranging from July 30, 1912 to December 25, 1926, coinciding with the reign of Emperor Taishou. (Note: I had not realized how short this time period was before writing this. Only 14 years).

Taishou Otome Fairy Tale is a 12 episode anime series based on a five volume manga series by artist Sana Kirioka and originally published in Jump Comics SQ.

The story is set in the early 1920s. Tamahiko Shima, second son of the wealthy Shima family, lives alone and hermit-like in a large house in the countryside of Chiba. Having been in an auto accident that claimed his mother's life and the use of his right hand, the rich and imposing young man (Tamahiko is unusually tall, as are much of his family. Possibly over six feet, which is fairly rare for Japanese men) has resigned himself to a life of pessimism, self-loathing and isolation. Until one day, a young girl of 14 named Yuzuki Tachibana shows up on his doorstep. By way of explanation, she tells Tamahiko that she was essentially purchased by Tamahiko's father to pay off her own father's debt with the intention of her being Tamahiko's companion and future wife. Yuzu, unusually cheerful for someone in her position, sets to work cleaning, cooking, sewing, and doing everything she can to make the gloomy Tamahiko's house into a home. As things continue on, romance blooms between them as Tamahiko is slowly brought out of his shell and starts to interact with the surrounding community as well as deal with his abusive family.

So, it seems that we're dealing with a “fairy tale in name only”. The title probably comes from the fact that it's a romance story. I mean, the 1920s hardly seems like a time period conducive to fairy tales. There's no magical elements in any of the story. Very few particularly overt fairy tale motifs.

I mean, what else could we take from a story about a young girl who's traded away because of the actions of her father and made to live in a secluded home with a depressed, disfigured and imposing man . . .

And . . . this is just “Beauty and the Beast” isn't it?

Japanese cover for the first manga digest

[SIGH] It was right there in front of my face.

This one's kind of a new one on me, actually. In some ways, Tamahiko and Yuzu actually resemble their more literary counterparts more than some of the popular versions of Belle and the Beast do. The early French literary versions of the Beast often seem gloomy and depressed like Tamahiko does, as opposed to the angry Beast we see in the Disney film. Literary versions of Belle are also much more willing to make do with the situation they're in than the Disney Belle is, much like Yuzu. (I know I'm only comparing to the Disney version, but is there any other version that's reached the same heights of popularity?). You could even say that Yuzu's trip to see her friend in Tokyo could be the equivalent of when Belle goes home to see her ailing father. Though, that ends up playing out very differently (it involves an actual historical event: The Great Kanto Earthquake).

However, it kind of stops there. Even the most complex early version written by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve doesn't account for some of the places Taishou Otome Fairy Tale goes. Like, I'm pretty sure the Beast never ended up becoming a tutor for the village's children. I'm also pretty sure Belle never inspire the Beast's younger sister to study medicine. I doubt that Belle and the Beast ever befriended a popular musician of the time either.

It's like the fairy tale was a writing prompt. Like someone gave Sana Kirioka the prompt “Beauty and the Beast in 1920s Japan, no magic” and this is what spun out from it.

I guess at this point, the question becomes whether or not Taishou Otome Fairy Tale is a worthwhile watch on its own merits.

Well, I will say that I like it. It's a charming romantic comedy set in a historic era. The settings are interesting (if you have a sense of Japanese culture and Japan's post-Meiji Era development, you'll probably have more fun with it). The characters are likable enough. There is a little bit of, pardon the term, “anime bullshit”. But not too much. Most of the stakes are lower, and more daily life related. But when the really heavy stakes hit, they hit hard.

I am going to say though that it's probably not for everyone. Especially the series' heroine if you're used to the more feisty, bookish Belles or just feistier heroines in general. Yuzu might not be up your alley.

This anime is, obviously, a product of Japan. And I sometimes have trouble explaining to people here in the Western world just how old-fashioned Japan can be. In many cases this is because they grew up hearing about Japan during the 1980s when they were killing it in the economic spheres of electronics and cars, or have seen YouTube videos about bullet trains or something. They don't know that it's still a country where businesses continue to rely heavily on outdated tech like fax machines and paper business cards. Or where homes don't have central heating or air conditioning no matter how cold or hot it gets. Or where media still depicts “housewife” as one of the most common and acceptable careers for grown women. Now, imagine how true this might be for an anime actually set in the past.

Yuzu hard at work.

The thing with Yuzuki Tachibana is not only that she seems way too accepting of a potentially bad situation she's been placed in by a number of different men with very little say over what's happening to her. It's also that she's SUPER domestic. She's always cooking, cleaning, sewing, buying groceries and doing other housekeeping tasks with no annoyance or frustration. Yuzu throws herself into the job of taking care of a house and other people as if it's what she's wanted to do all her life. And at one point, when questioned about whether she wants children someday by a close friend, she responds that she wants “lots and lots of them”. The one saving grace here is that it seems that it's not being communicated as a trait of girls in general but just Yuzu in particular. In a flashback scene to her time at a girls' school, we find out that even her school friends acknowledge how domestic she is by comparison, even going to her when they need tears in their clothes patched or things like that. And there are other girls in the cast who have devoted themselves to studying medicine or performing music. So, it's what Yuzu likes and what she wants to do. But if it's not something you get, this character might not connect with you.

So, fairy tale or not, if this show sounds interesting to you then give it a shot. I don't know about other countries, but here in the United States it's currently on the anime streaming service Crunchyroll. There's also the manga. In addition to the original manga, there's also a sequel titled Showa Otome Fairy Tale that takes place a few years later with new characters and seems to borrow some of its set-up from Cinderella. However, neither of those have gotten any kind of official release in the United States, so you'd have to resort to other means to read them.

It may be a little while, but until next time.