The Apprentice Clock-Maker
Source: TV
Layers: 1
Sketches: 1
Cel Number: A1
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Added 3/16/2022
Updated 6/20/2022
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Episode 30: とても 信じられないこと [Totemo shinjirarenai koto ”Totally Unbelievable”], cut 313 (according to notes on the cel and the douga). In the closing moments of this episode, the young boy who has helped create the clockwork puppets turns his back on the royal prize and happily runs off with the feisty young girl who is the model for one of his animated dolls.
SENSEI CHECK!
This episode is a very free adaptation of Andersen’s “The Most Incredible Thing” [Det Utroligste (1870)]. It retains the framework of the original, a royal contest in which the person displaying “the most incredible thing” is to gain half the kingdom and the hand of a princess in marriage. Andersen’s hero is a clock-maker who produces a life-sized music box filled with animated figures representing the twelve hours. Mushi Pro split the marvelous clock-maker into two roles, a clever cat who designs the contraption and his over-worked human apprentice, who sculpts a dancing marionette in the image of the young girl whom he adores.
As in Andersen’s tale, the marvelous clockwork machine initially wins the prize, but then it is smashed by an envious strong man, whose feats of strength had previously made him the front-runner. The pieces of the mechanism then magically reassemble and turn on the bully, punishing him. But while the original story ends with the clock-maker marrying the princess, Mushi Pro’s conclusion focuses on the apprentice, who is not interested in the bored and effete royal prize. Horrified by seeing the wrecked pieces of his marionette, he dashes from the palace in search of its real-life model, the human girl whom he truly loves. (We don’t find out what actually happens back at the palace: the princess, presumably, has to marry the gizmo-designing cat with the spectators standing around muttering “Totally unbelievable!”)
The original story, written by Andersen in the midst of the Franco-Prussian War, is widely seen as an allegory of how art, though seemingly fragile, is able to outlast the destructive forces of militarism. Mushi Pro’s adaptation adds another level to the tale, suggesting that human love (and, presumably, procreation) is far more complex than either acts of artistic creation or violent destruction, and is itself the most incredible thing in this world.
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