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Fairy Tales in Anime and Manga


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Parsifal24





PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 11:45 am Reply with quote
Two that immediately come to mind for me are The Ancient Magus' Bride by Kore Yamazaki which has some parallels to Beauty and The Beast. and Red Riding Hood and the Big Sad Wolf, by Hachijou Shin which is pretty obvious.

Although the twist is the wolf is sensitive cry baby who gets bullied by Red Riding Hood although with only one volume and it not being released until June 13, 2017 in English it's kind of an unknown quantity in the States still. A case could also be made for Chobits being a kind of Pinocchio story as well but that is debatable at best.
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Vaisaga



Joined: 07 Oct 2011
Posts: 13224
PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 12:03 pm Reply with quote
I recommend an adult manga series called Erotic Fairy Tales. It's exactly what it sounds likes: alternate takes on fairy tales with plenty of sex in it. It's all tasteful and sweet, though, and most stories are a few chapters long (the Little Mermaid one was quite lengthy).
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Alan45
Village Elder



Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9829
Location: Virginia
PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 1:28 pm Reply with quote
Faeries Landing a Manhwa by You Hyun is another series based on the same celestial maiden story as Ceres, Celestial Legend. Tokyo Pop brought out the first 18 volumes. I'm not sure if it ever was completed in South Korea.

The series moves right into the maiden and the hero trying to cope with her in a modern high school. She is actually doing her best to stay on earth while an increasing number of other celestial folk come here to interfere.
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JDude042



Joined: 29 Dec 2011
Posts: 261
PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 3:41 pm Reply with quote
Fairy Tales in Anime and Manga and not a single mention of Fairy Tail? You disappoint me lol.
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louis6578



Joined: 31 Jul 2013
Posts: 1860
PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 4:04 pm Reply with quote
JDude042 wrote:
Fairy Tales in Anime and Manga and not a single mention of Fairy Tail? You disappoint me lol.


I'm actually more surprised by the lack of a mention of Princess Tutu.
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lebrel



Joined: 16 Oct 2009
Posts: 374
PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 5:33 pm Reply with quote
louis6578 wrote:
I'm actually more surprised by the lack of a mention of Princess Tutu.


Princess Tutu mainly riffs off of ballet, which is mostly not based on fairy tales... although I'm sure its parent story, Swan Lake, fits under some type-number somewhere.

My vote would be the BL manhwa One Thousand and One Nights, which uses all kinds of stuff for its various episodes, including a variety of fairy tails from different cultures, and the non-BL manhwa Bride of the Water God.
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jymmy



Joined: 11 Nov 2011
Posts: 1244
PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 9:02 pm Reply with quote
Fantastic and informative article, thanks! It's definitely one I'll bookmark and keep coming back to.

My favourite work not mentioned so far is Utena. You could write an equally-long article just about how it plays with fairy tale tropes across its various characters and their individual stories.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11330
PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 9:35 pm Reply with quote
I dunno, I think seeing Cinderella/Donkeyskin in Bunny Drop is really reaching, even as a reversal. Rin never runs away, she didn't suffer a loss in economic class when she came to live with Daikichi, she was never abused nor did she suffer unduly due to her circumstances...I can't see any parallels at all. I admit I only read the ending chapters of the second half so maybe something awful went on leading up to that, but I haven't heard any rumors of such, so I'm assuming things pretty much continued as they had been during her earlier childhood, i.e., just normal growing up stuff.

Interesting article though! I'm still kinda baffled by the iron shoes thing in Jin-Roh, but at least I found a few other instances of that, though I don't know what they're supposed to symbolize or what message they're conveying.
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belvadeer





PostPosted: Fri Nov 04, 2016 11:50 pm Reply with quote
Parsifal24 wrote:
The Ancient Magus' Bride by Kore Yamazaki which has some parallels to Beauty and The Beast.


I wanted to chime in with this one too, and I have to say it's the most original parallel I've ever read in years. Imagine a Beauty and the Beast where spoiler[the Beast was never human to begin with and rarely understands emotion at all while Beauty does not have the confidence and strong will she's so famous for, instead thinking she's worth less than spit under someone's shoes]. It really is a fantastic story and I'm always excited for the next volume. I even caved in and bought the Elias and Chise figures they released some time ago: http://hlj.com/product/GNE84104

Yeah, I couldn't resist. XD
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Triltaison



Joined: 03 Jul 2011
Posts: 720
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 2:43 am Reply with quote
I remember liking the twist on Snow White that Prétear did to make it a magical girl series. It took the ingredients of the story and cooked it into a different sort of tale without it feeling too alien. It's not the best series out there, but a few parts are memorable enough to give it a chance.

Otherwise, the old Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics still holds a special place in my heart for doing decent versions of so many tales. I rather like the princesses in their version of "The Twelve Dancing Princesses" dancing with oni.
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taichi256



Joined: 13 Apr 2016
Posts: 6
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 3:32 am Reply with quote
Does anyone remember the Manga-based-graphic novel movie "KING OF THORNS?" In the animated movie, the fairy tale it's based on was for Sleeping Beauty. It may not be all similar, but it feels like the story was strong, terrifying and suspending.
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Snomaster1
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Joined: 31 Aug 2011
Posts: 2795
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 4:00 am Reply with quote
Although both anime and manga have their own weird versions of fairy tales,it shouldn't be forgotten that in both American comics and Hollywood have their own oddball versions of fairy tales. On the old "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoon series had a segment called "Fractured Fairy Tales" where they did goofy versions of classic fairy tales like "The Three Little Pigs" and "Red Riding Hood." If you've ever seen any of the classic animated shorts of the 1930's and 40's from Disney and Warner Brothers,they had no trouble using those same fairy tales mentioned and even updating them to modern day circumstances.
Hollywood still does this now with movies like Hoodwinked" and "Shrek." So,whether you're in Japan or America,don't be surprised if one day,you see stuff like this showing up often. And,don't be surprised if either side of the Pacific decided to do this again.
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Showsni



Joined: 13 May 2008
Posts: 641
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 8:21 am Reply with quote
lebrel wrote:
louis6578 wrote:
I'm actually more surprised by the lack of a mention of Princess Tutu.


Princess Tutu mainly riffs off of ballet, which is mostly not based on fairy tales... although I'm sure its parent story, Swan Lake, fits under some type-number somewhere.


Quite a lot of ballets are based on fairy tales, though; Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty, Prokofiev's Cinderella, Swan Lake, etc.
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Princess_Irene
ANN Reviewer


Joined: 16 Dec 2008
Posts: 2606
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PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 8:36 am Reply with quote
Gina Szanboti wrote:
I'm still kinda baffled by the iron shoes thing in Jin-Roh, but at least I found a few other instances of that, though I don't know what they're supposed to symbolize or what message they're conveying.


Iron shoes are best known from the Brothers Grimm version of "Snow White," "Little Snow White" (because she's seven years old) - that's the queen's punishment for trying to kill her daughter: to dance to her death in white-hot iron shoes. So basically they're typically used to represent a partial loss of freedom, often ending in, or leading to, death.

On the topic of Princess Tutu, there's some question about the folkloric origins of "Swan Lake" the ballet (some scholars point to Russian Tale 0090, "The White Duck"), and since that and E.T.A. Hoffman's "The Nutcracker" were the primary influences on the show and I was focusing on oral fairy tales rather than literary, I decided to leave Tutu out. For clarification, an oral folktale was passed down in spoken word format for centuries before being written down and a literary fairy tale is a fantasy story written to mimic an oral folktale. (Legends like "The Pied Piper" are a whole different thing, with some probably historical event behind them.)
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11330
PostPosted: Sat Nov 05, 2016 10:00 am Reply with quote
In Jin-Roh and other stories*, the girl has to wear iron shoes (or clothes) until she wears them out. The time this takes is usually 7 years, after which she can go see granny or whatever her goal is. So they function as a sort of hobble or obstacle that must be overcome. I just don't really get why. Smile

*My main source for this is here, which I found back when The List did anime fairy tales. Now that I've looked into it a little more, none of the versions of East of the Sun, West of the Moon mention this, though I believe their source probably did find some. Someone mentions Hans-My-Hedgehog, but I think they got confused with something else, since neither of the Princess go walkabout in the story, and the only iron shoes I can see are on the rooster's feet. Smile
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