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Sleeping Beauty
A fairy tale written by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. A king and queen lament that they have no child, when one day they are told their wish will be granted. To celebrate
the birth of the little princess they order a great feast and decide to invite the wise women of the kingdom, but as they only have twelve gold settings they do not
invite the thirteenth. At the celebration, the first eleven bestow gifts of kindness, beauty, and virtue on the child, but before the twelfth can approach, the invited one
in her anger curses the child to die on her fifteenth birthday from pricking her finger on a spinning wheel. At last the twelfth comes forwards and says for her gift she will
lessen the curse to sleep not death and that after 100 years she shall wake from a prince's kiss. The years pass, and all seems well, until the princess, Rosamond, finds her way
to a little place where an old woman is spinning, and not knowing what she is doing, asks to try herself. At once, Rosamund pricks her finger and falls into a deep sleep, and
through all the kingdom everyone falls asleep where they stand. A great thorn hedge springs before the gates of the castle and though for a 100 years many king's sons try
to pass, they all die upon the thorns. Finally, the time of Rosamond's sleep nears it's end and a prince comes riding to the castle determined to try for the fair princess
reputed to sleep within. As he approaches the thorns turn to flowers and he passes unharmed until he comes to the chamber of the sleeping maiden. He kisses her and all the kingdom
wakes and celebrates their wedding.
Cardcaptor Sakura
The school play of Sleeping Beauty in volume 5 of the manga seems to be inspired by the Disney animated version of the tale. The princess is named Aurora, the good fairies number three, and Yamazaki who plays the evil witch wears a costume very reminiscent of Malificent as well as carries a crow puppet.
Princess Tutu
From Chris: Episode 6: Aurora Dreaming: Sleeping Beauty Proluge "Once upon a time there appeared a young
person who wished to awaken a princess fallen into an eternal sleep caused by a witches curse." Thats how the episode opens. Also in the episode a ballet troupe
called the Eleki Troupe comes to preform Sleeping Beauty.
The Rosebud Princess
Manga written by Tezuka Osamu. It is a faithful retelling of the Grimm version of Sleeping Beauty.
Sailor Moon
In the manga, the baby Princess is born and people come bestowing gifts
for her. But suddenly, an unvited guest appears (Nehelenia) and she announces that she too has a gift. Before she's completely sealed away
by Queen Serenity, she says her gift is the curse that the kingdom will be destroyed and the Princess will die without inheriting
the throne. In the fairy tale, wise women bestow gifts on the baby princess, but an uninvited guest arrives and in anger her present is a curse
on the child that when she is of age she will prick herself on a spindle and die (like Princess Serenity, she will die when she comes of
age and not inherit her kingdom). In the fairy tale, the princess' curse is changed so that she won't die but sleep for a hundred years.
In Sailor Moon, Princess Serenity's fate is changed when her mother uses the last of her strength so that her daughter will be reborn
in the future and inherit her kingdom one day.
The other connections to the fairy tale are found in the Nehelenia arc of Sailor Stars. In the anime, Mamoru is held in a kind of sleep
in the castle of Nehelenia and Usagi must battle through thorns to reach him. In the fairy tale, the princess is asleep in the castle, and
the prince must battle his way through thorns to awaken her.
From the second season of the anime, parallels are drawn to the tale in ep. 69 when Sailor Moon is put into a deep sleep that only the love between her and Tuxedo Kamen
can break. He wakes her with a kiss.
Shoujo Kakumei Utena
In Ikuhara's commentary for the movie he explains that one inspiration for Utena's transformation into the car comes from reversing the Sleeping
Beauty role. In Sleeping Beauty the princess is asleep and the prince must awaken her. In the film Utena has been the prince and Anthy the princess, so in the end the roles
are reversed. Utena goes into a kind of sleep, and Anthy must wake her.
In several fairy tales, the princess literally sleeps, waiting to be woken such as in Sleeping Beauty or The Glass Coffin. The sleeping maiden is again passive, she waits for the prince or someone to wake her from her slumber, her curse. Usually, sleep in these fairy tales is equated with a kind of death, as in the princess sleeping like death in a coffin, like in Snow White or The Glass Coffin.
In Anthy's case, this motif of the sleeping princess in the coffin is used as a figurative instead of a literal symbol. In the series, the coffin is a symbol for the individual being inside the
unconscious, in a regressed state, and not having reached self-hood. In the first part of the series, and at the end, in abstract symbolic scenes, Anthy is shown sleeping in
a coffin. These two scenes represent the mental state of Anthy, and her own journey to self-hood. When the audience is first shown Anthy, she is curled up in a fetal position
inside the coffin, in a deep sleep (it takes Utena several minutes to wake her), and clad in full Rose Bride attire. This symbolizes that Anthy is completely mentally within this state
of seeing herself as but the Rose Bride, and Anthy, the person has not come to consciousness. At the very end of the series, the audience is shown Anthy again, but this time she
is awake when Utena finds her and does not need to be woken, also she is naked, symbolizing that Anthy now sees herself as a person and has fully awoke from her unconscious
state. This shows that Anthy has made a personal change inside herself, and after this scene she will be shown at the end of the episode to leave the Academy to start a life for
herself of her own choosing.
Other
W-Juliet (from Joanna)