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Snow White
Told by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. A kindly queen gives birth to a daughter as white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony, but dies when the child is born. A year later
the King takes a new wife, and this wife brings with her a magic looking glass which speaks only the truth. She asks it: Looking glass against the wall, who is the fairest of us all? The glass
replies that she is, until the day Snow White grows tall and fair, then when the mirror is asked this question, the mirror replies that it is the princess. Angered, the Queen calls for a huntsman who
can not bring himself to slay the child and so sends her into the woods and instead brings back the heart of a doe. When asked the question, the mirror replies the same, and the Queen
knows the huntsman lied. She decides to go herself as a peddler and at the house of the dwarves where Snow White is staying ties her laces so tight, Snow White falls down as if dead, unable to
breath. The dwarves find her and help her, and all is well, but they warn her of strangers. Again the Queen will not be swayed and comes in a new disguise, this time with a poisoned comb to sell.
Snow White falls down as if dead when it is in her hair, but again the dwarves rescue her. Finally, the Queen in disguise brings a poisoned apple. Snow White eats it and the dwarves know
not what to do on finding her. The Queen believes her dead and the dwarves place her in a glass coffin. A King's son rides by and sees her. The dwarves carry her coffin and on stumbling, the
piece of poisoned apple in her throat is dislodged, and the two decide to wed. Furious, the Queen comes to them but the dwarves are ready and place and place red-hot iron shoes on her feet
so she dances herself to death.
Dream Hunter Rem
From Shin OVA 1. The witch or sorceress from this episode bears much in common with the Queen from the Snow White tale. She opens the episode by asking the mirror:
"Mirror, mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all?" to which the mirror shows an image of Rem which sets her off to get Rem out of the way in the dream realm. She appears in Rem's
dream as an old woman and tempts her with an apple as Rem's hungry because she's been starving herself/dieting. The apple puts a spell on her after she bites into it and she doesn't wake.
The apple materializes in the real world and rolls off the bed; it is a bomb.
Kaito Kid Manga
From Chris: In the Kid series, there is a charachter who has a magic mirror and says to it, "Mirror Mirror on the wall
who is the fairest of them all?"
Little Sweet Delusion
By Shunsuke Hasegawa. The poisoned apple and forest of animals make an appearance in this manga short as references to the Snow White fairy tale.
Magical Fairy Persia
Persia has a fantasy/dream where the kappa and Simba are the dwarves, and the tale is given a twist with her friend Gaku as the prince, and he bites the poisoned apple and falls into a deep sleep.
Persia in turn is Snow White and she comes riding up on a horse to wake him with a kiss.
Minky Momo
In the 1980s TV series, Momo's nemesis is the Queen. In some episodes Momo even is reminiscent of Snow White, while the Queen is an obvious take off of the stepmother. By the end of the series, the two
are friends though, and the Queen even opens up an apple orchard at one point as a way of sharing with people around her. In fact, several points in the original series have a fairy tale feel to them and the
80s incarnation seems to be truer to that spirit than the later 90s one which seemed, at times, more concerned with commercialism and having toys to aim at the girls in the audience.
In the Princess Gigi movie, while Momo is transformed into several stars for the show, one of the personas that is flashed during her performance is of herself dressed as Disney's Snow White.
New Legend of the Snow White Princess Pretear
There are several parallels made to the fairy tale. First, the 7 knights correspond to the 7 dwarves. The title is a superficial connection, bearing
more in relation to the nature of Himeno's growth and role than to the actual Snow White tale. The kiss at the end of course comes from the
awakening of the princess by her prince, including Snow White. The other parallel is the Queen and Snow White to Takako/Fenrir and Himeno. While there's the
obvious Queen Fenrir seeking out the pure Princess Himeno (as her knights call her), the two also represent the two sides of the feminine, the balance of
destruction and dark to the renewing and maiden. The Queen is like the crone, the bringing things to their natural end and the maiden the one to
bring the next generation to life (as in the original Snow White) and Himeno fulfills the role literally through her powers as Pretear. Indeed, the knights say
the only difference between the Disaster Queen and Pretear is the power to give or take, and one can choose to be or do one or the other.
Sailor Moon
The senshi participate in a play of Snow White in the
first arc of the Sailor Moon R anime.
Snow in the Dark
By Kanou Yasuhiro. The queen dies, but before she does her child Snow White is born. With the queen's death,
the land is plunged into drought and pestilence. The young boy who's narrating his travels, soon collapses from hunger
and exhaustion, until he's found by a sinless child with ebony hair and eyes, and red roses about her neck.
Because the girl found him on that winter morning and delivered
him from the Reaper, he swears his life to the princess.
Larry and Snow White grow up together over the next ten years; when next we see them he is a knight in the Royal Guard and she
is growing ever more beautiful and kind, happily sitting and waiting for him in her favorite apple tree. [When she's shown talking
friendily to Larry, even though he thinks they shouldn't, lilies are shown about her - implying her continued naiveness and innocence, and
purity of feeling towards him].
Meanwhile, we are introduced to the step-queen who is very dark indeed with a long black gown. She asks the mirror who is
most beautiful and of course Snow White is turning out to be so. This does not bode well and the queen calls for the child. She tells her,
both Snow White's mother and herself were witches and compatriots. She followed the other to
this kingdom upon her marriage, but she soon grew to hate the queen and so killed her
when she was defenseless giving birth to her child.
Snow White would have awakened on her 14th birthday into the craft; would have also grown up to be
equal in beauty to her mother, but the queen is determined to kill her before either happens.
Snow White and Larry flee and as they do so, her powers are beginning to wake (perhaps because of timing, but also
her love for Larry it is implied, wanting to protect him). At twilight she's supposed to awaken,
the first queen knew the plot of the other and so grafted her soul's into the child's by sending her life force/soul
throught the umbilical cord tied to her child, so at her death part of her would reawake later.
Accrding to the step-queen, to feed herself, the first witch Theresa (Snow
White's mother), fed upon the souls of men (all the lawless brought to the gallows
served perfectly for this) and thus the pestilence of the land arose - it was to keep herself alive and make
herself more powerful. But Larry, unbelieving, slays the step-queen who says she leaves the rest to him, and the final weave/spell a poisoned apple, the Dolorosa.
The step-queen truly loved the child as her own mother, and her love stayed her hand from harming her, but because
she did so now
Snow White will be no more and the queen Theresa will awaken.
When Larry returns to Snow White in the forest, she's covered in blood, having reveled in the deaths of the soldiers.
Queen Theresa had awakened. Mother and child's souls are one, and Snow White sleeps or resides at the core of the other.
Larry does the only thing he can to save the one he loves and protect her, he uses poison of the apple to soak the blade
and then take the possessed girl's life. He dies with her, having saved her from the possession of the dark
witch-queen-mother and vowing to love her forever.
At the story's end, an apple tree grows bearing fruit sweeter than any other, with apples red as blood.
The fruits come to harvest at the time of first snow, and bear the memories of the two lovers of long ago.
Snow White 94
From Chris: By Aihara Miki. You have Snow White having escaped the evil queen and is living in the forest wiht the
7 dwarves. She isn't good at cooking.
Snow White and the Prince
Written by Miyawaki Norio and illustrated by Tezuka Osamu. A manga retelling of the original Grimm's tale.
Uta-Kata
At the end of ep. 12, a little girl is reading Blanche Neige. It's implied she will be the next child to be tested. Saya
was the final djinn of the mirror. It's possible she represented the mirror itself of the fairy tale, and Ichika took both the role of princess and queen.
The seven powers or stones represented seven virtues but also seven sins, Ichika's actions and perceptions had the capacity to become either virtue or sin; this
relates back to the fairy tale in that other stories we've seen using the tale in anime such as Pretear, make the queen the dark side of the princess. The heroine has
the capacity to stay innocent or pure or be swallowed by her own shadows of the heart, and thus destructive to herself or those around her. The other possible use of this fairy tale,
is that the mirror is simply itself, and Saya is a sort of queen to Ichika's princess. It's hinted at the story's end that Saya has her own problems as a distorted mirror and perhaps has
some bitterness of her own in her heart and this is the reason she is so cold in her quest to strip the innocence from the chosen children.
Vampire Fantasy: From Grimm's Fairy Tale, "Snow White"
By Rie Hanamura.
A young college student notices the picture of a beautiful woman hanging in the college. A beautiful woman with long black hair
and skin as white as snow; the painting titled, "Evil Spirit." One of his professors
tells him he can look at it any time he wants. But that must wait as he has a trip planned.
He arrives at a village to meet someone only to learn they have gone missing in the Thousand Year Forest.
A forest he is told is haunted by a vampire who has lived there for hundreds of years. The woman running the inn tells him if
he must go to take the powder of the thousand year lily (a red lily bulb that grows in the area to protect against evil spirits).
In the woods, he encounters a beautiful woman lying cold on the forest floor. A woman not unlike the one of the painting. She wants his help
to leave the forest. But the girl is not alone, her mother keeps her, and explains her daughter, Chiyo, is allergic to thousand year lily and the sunlight.
That night he follows the two women to their house and accepts their hospitality. His discovers his friend has been under their
care for a fever. The longer he stays, the more he discovers of the women tending them. They are the vampires of the thousand year forest, and the daughter more
cruel and seductive than the mother, even plotting her death by the hand of the stranger and once free taking his life in a bloody fashion.
This isn't too much like the Snow White we're used to but as it is meant by the author to be very loosely inspired by the fairy tale, I am including it.
Others
Princess Tutu (from Chris)
Shiro Yuki Hime-no Densetsu from Tatsunoko Productions
Shoujo Kakumei Utena