Hakucho no Mizuumi

From Toei Animation's 1981 version of Swan Lake. Does anybody else remember this?

Because for about 15 years, I thought I'd imagined this movie or something: until I found it on YouTube again several days ago.

All in all, it's a pretty good movie. Its soundtrack is the score from Tchaikovsky's ballet Swan Lake and follows the storyline more closely than The Swan Princess, though it does still award its viewers with a happy ending.

Clockwise from the left: Princess Odette, Prince Siegfried, the sorcerer Rothbart, and his daughter Odile.

Looking at the designs of the latter two, I have a crack theory that Rothbart is the product of a union between an ogre and a witch: which would explain the unusual coloring, bad temper, and superhuman strength along with the powers, at least... My other theory is that Odile's mother was the wicked fairy Carabosse from Tchaikovsky's other famous ballet, The Sleeping Beauty. Yes, THAT fairy. Because it would be amusing.

Also, on a total, random, not-to-be-taken-seriously side-note, if I were in Odette's position of choosing between Siegfried and Rothbart....I dunno, Siegfried struck me as rather dull even back then. On the other hand, being married to someone who can turn people into a hundred pigeons and put them in a pie (or turn toothpicks into swords, or shapeshift into an owl, etc.) would probably be amusing.