Inspired by ballet and fairy tales, particularly The Ugly Duckling and Swan Lake, its story follows a duck who is transformed into the mythical ballerina Princess Tutu in order to save the shattered heart of a storybook prince come to life.

However, he died before he could finish his final tale, The Prince and the Raven, leaving its titular characters locked in an eternal battle.

Drosselmeyer, having used his power to write himself as part of the tale to preserve his consciousness, laments that the story has come to a standstill and wants it to become a never-ending tragedy.

Her desire to prevent him from regaining his emotions awakens her ability to transform into Princess Kraehe, Tutu's evil counterpart.

As well, Duck learns that part of Princess Tutu's story is that she can never confess her love to Mytho, or else she will turn into a speck of light and vanish.

Princess Tutu was conceptualized by Ikuko Itoh, who also designed the characters, and directed by Junichi Sato and Shogo Koumoto, with Michiko Yokote handling series composition and Kaoru Wada composing the music.

It was produced by Hal Film Maker and TUTU, a production committee consisting of King Records, IMAGICA Imageworks, Dentsu, Marvelous Entertainment and Memory-Tech.

In 2011, AEsir Holdings announced the licensing of the series and the release of a complete DVD collection of all 26 episodes distributed by Section23 Films.

[4] In 2018, as AEsir Holdings and Sentai Filmworks are parts of Section23 Films, the latter released a complete Blu-ray collection of all 26 episodes on December 11, 2018.

[6] Anime Network formerly offered all 26 episodes of the series, English dubbed only, from their internet streaming site for North America.