*EDIT* 8/11/17 — Redid coloring job (because original was trash). You can still dig through my FA gallery to find the old version (GAH!). Anyways, continue.

Yup, you read that title right. To help balance the pure masculinity of Dragon Ball, I decided to choose my second fanart poster to be about something much more on the feminine side of things. Princess Tutu, created by Ikuko Itoh. Unlike Dragon Ball, Princess Tutu was an anime first and foremost (although it later had a manga made about it).

Don’t let its name deceive you, Princess Tutu is an impressively complex series. Like Itoh’s other famous work Sailor Moon, Princess Tutu technically falls within the “magical girl” genre (a form of Shojo), but is able to pursue some deeper themes that are not normally associated with the genre. An accurate comparison would be if a “romantic comedy” tackled some serious philosophical topics and expressed these ideas through stunning symbolism. This is actually pretty close since “magical girl” animes are very “romcom-esque.”

I would normally try to provide a decent synopsis of the anime, but I feel the opening monologue from the series does such an amazing job of it on it’s own…

“Once upon a time, there was a man who died. The man’s work was the writing and telling of stories, but he could not defy death. The last story he was working on was about a brave and handsome prince who vanquishes a crafty raven. But now it seems their battle will go on for eternity. ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’ cried the raven. ‘I’m sick and tired of this!’ cried the prince as well. The raven escaped from the pages of the story and the prince pursued the foul creature. In the end, the prince took out his own heart and sealed the raven away by using a forbidden power. Just then, a murmur came from somewhere. ‘This is great!’ said the old man who was supposed to have died.”

Princess Tutu‘s story revolves around a young girl named Duck, who transforms into the fictional ballerina Princess Tutu to help restore the heart of the storybook prince. Duck is also actually a real duck turned into a girl by the long dead author who had the power to make fictional stories into truth. The series tackles themes of free will, the individual emotions that the prince must regain, far reaching references and symbolism between certain ballets, and all the while still retaining a fun sense of humor and surprising plot twists. Easily its defining feature is its use of ballet over the traditional “magical girl” fights to resolve conflicts. Consider this, most famous ballets have conflicts between main characters, and yet it would be absurd for these characters to break out in a fist fight. Their conflict is symbolized an expressed through ballet and their dance. This is exactly how conflicts are handled in Princess Tutu. The result is a visually interesting and surprisingly moving experience that must be seen to believe it.

Like the Dragon Ball poster, I approached this piece like a simple, modern movie poster. A simple color scheme based off of Duck’s character color scheme and her three forms. Honestly I feel my Dragon Ball poster was more successful, but I’m still pleased with this one.

Unlike Dragon Ball, I think I would honestly include Princess Tutu within my top ten favorite animes. It truly is unique and is able to be extremely profound in what it has to say and precise in its impeccable sense of humor. A much shorter series (at only 26 episodes), I would highly suggest it to almost just about anyone. While I feel DBZ might be better suited to a specific demographic that really digs overly buff dudes shooting lasers from their hands in a fast paced martial arts action, Princess Tutu is able to draw a more varied audience (even despite its overly girly title).

Alright. So, anime and manga has had a HUGE impact upon me as an artist and even as a person. It opened the door to a whole other part of the world to me and a wide variety of friends for me to meet and get to know. Like video games and other “geeky topics,” anime is a very easy way for the many introverted people in this world to reach out and make some strong friendships. But Japanese manga and anime are much deeper than just a way to bring “nerds” together to wear spiky colored hair and wield giant great swords. The mediums have firmly established themselves as a distinct art form. There are significant themes, laughable tropes, distinct humor, and a wide range of art styles. To mistakenly refer to anime or manga as a “genre” would be the same as merely labeling every American film as a “Hollywood” film. There is an immense array of genres within anime/manga, and just like Hollywood films, there is something there for everybody.

Now that my boring breakdown of anime and manga is behind us, let’s dive into this particular manga/anime. Dragon Ball, written and illustrated by Akira Toriyama. Toriyama’s previous manga Dr. Slump was also a fairly successful shonen series, but it was Dragon Ball that would define his career. Building off of Dr. Slump‘s quirky humor, Dragon Ball changed gears slightly to focus on a different form of humor and eventually incorporate a sizeable amount of serious action.

Dragon Ball largely follows the adventures of Son Goku and his friends, allies, enemies, and eventually even his children. It’s worth noting there wasn’t really a “Dragon Ball Z” manga just an anime (not counting the animanga “Dragon Ball Z”, but animanga’s are kinda weird and I’d rather not dive off the deep end of that topic). Kinda like Naruto and Naruto Shippuden, the anime broke the Dragon Ball manga into two parts. The manga is just one really long 519 chapter story beginning with Goku as a young kid and ending roughly after he is a grandparent. The anime splits the story after Goku gets married to Chi-Chi and begins the second one when Gohan (Goku’s son) is now a young boy. At this point there is a notable change of pace, themes, and a reliance on action over humor (which was the driving point for the first part). To help sell the anime series, it was decided to split the two into separate series titled “Dragon Ball” (which follows Goku’s misadventures as a kid and growing up) and “Dragon Ball Z” (with Goku grown up defending the Earth against aliens and ever increasing threats).

The anime Dragon Ball Z was the first anime that I truly got into hardcore. Long before I became entranced in the complexity of Neon Genesis Evangelion, or amused by the absurdity of FLCL, or blown away by the polish of Cowboy Bebop, there was just little old DBZ. Of course calling DBZ little is kind of an understatement since it ran for like what…291 episodes (and that’s not even including the Dragon Ball, GT, Kai, or the Super series or the 17 feature-length films!).

My approach to the poster was to make something clean, eye-catching, and very modern, almost to resemble a movie poster. Goku’s Kaio-ken charged Kamehameha beam fight against Vegata is an extremely memorable moment for me, so I chose to depict that. I almost went with Gohan’s Kamehameha against Cell (I even have a rough sketch of this in my sketch book), but ultimately I felt this one was simpler and worked best with the style I was striving for. Also I definitely took some creative liberties with how I depicted the beam blast ^^;

While I would no longer rank Dragon Ball within my favorite all-time animes or mangas, it undoubtedly left an impressive impact upon me. It initially paved the way for me to dive headfirst into the Japanese media and fully immerse myself in their story telling and artistic approaches. It will forever cling to my nostalgia, and impressive tributes and amusing retellings (like DBZ Abridged by Team Fourstar) still bring a smile to my face ^^