Funky Fables: The Nutcracker

Funky Fables was a series by Saban Entertainment that presented some very comically designed anime adaptations of classic fairy tales, from Cinderella and Snow White to The Wizard of Oz and, of course, The Nutcracker. The designs were complemented by whimsical music and comical narration and dialogue.

 In this Nutcracker, Clara and Fritz are anxiously awaiting their Christmas presents, Fritz constantly getting the holiday wrong, and saying he wants a "chicken." (He means a hobby horse.) Well, when all is ready, Fritz gets his "chicken" and Clara gets the Nutcracker, presented to her by Drosselmeyer, who has his eyepatch, a beard and a big hat. She's unimpressed at first until Fritz asks how he's a soldier with no sword. She suggests that maybe he's a nonviolent pacifist.

That night, Clara has been staying up late with the Nutcracker, becoming very fond of him. When she finally goes to bed, she has the Nutcracker tucked in next to her. At midnight, it comes to life as the King of the Mice and a couple of his mice soldiers jump out of her clock, then spotting the Nutcracker next to Clara, they hop into her bed, waking her up. Suddenly she's pulled up into the air and a mysterious door appears behind her and she's pulled through.

Clara spots the Nutcracker fighting a couple mice, then the Mouse King appears behind her. As he grabs her, the Nutcracker leaps to fight him directly. The Mouse King tosses him off, breaking his arm, but Clara manages to escape by biting the King. She then helps the Nutcracker to a cannon and soldier, which they fire at the charging Mouse King, but it doesn't stop him. A magic nut appears in Clara's hand, and on the Nutcracker's suggestion, she throws it at the king, seemingly making him shatter like glass and transporting her back to her bedroom.

The next morning, Clara hears Drosselmeyer calling her upstairs, so she follows and he tells her that the Nutcracker is a prince of "the dream world," transformed by the King of Mice. He suddenly is downstairs leaving and as he leaves, he suggests Clara look at the grandfather clock in the attic, where she finds a sword on the back of the pendulum. She falls asleep shining it up, and her mother finds her and takes her back to bed.

Clara is almost pulled through the mysterious door once again, but fights back and manages to get to the attic, but can't find the sword as the Mouse King has it and grabs her. He uses energy emanating from the sword to torture the Nutcracker, but Clara manages to divert it back to him, making him drop her and the sword, and restoring him to his true form with seven heads. ("He's so full of evil schemes that one head isn't enough to keep track of all of them," the Nutcracker explains.)

The attic fills with mice, but Clara and the Nutcracker manage to get to a beam above them and use the magic of the sword to turn the Mouse King's minions into flowers. Clara swings down and hurls herself at the King, knocking him back, letting the Nutcracker get in the finishing blow with the sword. Giving the Nutcracker the King's crown, he resumes his true form as Prince Bongo of Dream World, which they visit, described as a "flight of fancy to the furthest reaches of the imagination." They go to the castle and join a ball, where they meet Clara's favorite storybook characters.

Waking up the next day, Clara looks out the window and spots Drosselmeyer outside and goes outside to meet his grandson Bongo, who takes her to his kingdom. In a bit of humor, the narrator explains that this happened a long time ago, the kingdom is now an amusement park, the castle is a hotel, but you can visit the penthouse where Clara and Bongo lived happily ever after, "just go to the front desk and ask for... the Nutcracker Suite."

This one's really loose and doesn't really get a lot of the themes of the original story across, but it does maintain Clara's status as a heroine. Funky Fables isn't a series you'd expect a serious adaptation from, so I'll give it a pass. It's not a great adaptation, but it's not an offensive one, either.