fruandfro - Tumblr blog

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Fruits Basket and Frozen franchises are my favorite anime and Disney movies of all time. Both of these series show how fear can harm people and hold them back from moving forward. Both also present how unconditional love can bring out a person’s best traits and become the best version they can be. It’s no wonder I keep coming back to them whenever life gets tough for me. Tohru Honda and Princess/Queen Anna have been my role models and will continue to be. 

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Promo art sketches by Steven Thompson

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Art by Agnese Innocente used in Disney Topps

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I owe you a sled!

For @arendellequeen29

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“I’m sorry Kristoff…”

Is it just me or does Kristoff look way more devastated about Anna’s death then she is? I mean look at those puppy dog eyes. Look at the worry, the pain, he fear in his eyes. Just look at that.

Look at what the thought of losing her does to him.

And the trolls aren’t even saying “Sorry Anna.” They say “Sorry Kristoff.” KRISTOFF. Because they know.They KNOW that he cares so much.

It basically looks like his life is being taken away instead of Anna’s.

But I guess that’s what true love does to a guy.

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One thing I wish people would discuss more is how a 15-year-old Anna had to put on a brave face and lead Arendelle in mourning her parents’ deaths. Loss is already painful and traumatic as it is, but experiencing it in the public sphere as a kid takes things to an entirely different level. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that, even if she had help with taking care of official matters (i.e., issuing any announcements and planning the funeral) as the princess and/or even Elsa took on some or all of these responsibilities, Anna seemingly had to go it alone on a personal level, since, after all, they’d been living pretty isolated lives. (The lyrics of “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?” also seem to imply this.) And yet, despite all this, she still reached out to Elsa to check in on her. My poor baby has been shouldering some pretty heavy burdens since a young age, and she deserves so much credit for that.

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I hate that people still use the argument that Frozen was inconsistent with its messaging because Anna was constantly criticized for getting engaged to a man she just met, and ended up dating Kristoff.

I mean, you realize that dating and a LIFELONG COMMITMENT are two completely different things, right?

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I have watched Barbie today, and what can I say: no, Kristoff and Lost In The Woods are not like Ken and I'm Just Ken. Kristoff didn't have an inferiority complex and jealousy, he was genuinely sad that Anna left, and Kristoff didn't harm Anna out of revenge like Ken. Lost In The Woods is honest, I'm Just Ken is "blonde fragility" 🌝👽

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Great points you brought up in your analysis. I was one of the people who believed the castle should have been destroyed after watching the movie the first time. However, that slowly changed the more I thought about it. Having the castle destroyed by the huge wave would have made it looked like the spirits just wanted revenge and didn't care about the wellbeing of Arendelle and its citizens. With Elsa stopping the wave, she is demonstrating that the spirits are merciful and are giving Arendelle a second chance to right the wrongs of the past. Destroying/removing a symbol of oppression without discussion between different groups does not bring about reconciliation. In fact, it brews more hate. I live in a country where a few years ago, statues honoring people who oppressed other people were taken down and destroyed. Long story short, it only made the situation worst and divided people further.

PS- Thank you for doing Frozen Analyses. I always enjoy reading them.

Deconstructing the "No Consequences" Criticism for Frozen 2

A criticism of F2 I often see is that there are no consequences - in other words, nothing terrible or life-changing happens in the ending based on the choices our protagonists make. This is mainly in reference to Arendelle Castle not being destroyed when Anna takes down the Dam - many thought that the writers were ‘cowards’ for not daring to go with this ending.

I however have a different opinion on this. I believe there were a lot of issues with this idea, and these issues were most likely involved with the decision to change this ending. I also want to point out that the idea of consequences in Frozen 2 is a much more complex topic - those complexities need to be considered when bringing up this argument.

Warning - you're going to get sick of the word consequence when we're done here lol.

Part 1: Frozen 2 is 2 Different Stories

What is Consequence

A consequence is defined as - a result of a particular action or situation, often one that is bad or not convenient.

So in terms of writing, a consequence something happens that forces the characters to change their situation in a way that was not their original intention or desire. As said in the definition, this is not always a bad thing - just something that sort of shakes up the character's or world's status quo.

People often complain that nothing happens in F2 that warrants being called a consequence. No character is lost, Arendelle castle is saved, and it seems as though nothing was sacrificed in order to achieve the character's happy ending. But this, I feel, is a very simplistic reading of the film and many nuances are missed when we look at the film at face value.

As said above Frozen 2 is actually two different stories being told at once that intertwine with each other. Elsa's story, and Anna's story. If we look at the two separately, we can see there is quite a bit of consequence in each in varying degrees.

The Consequence in Elsa's Story

Elsa is described as a mythic hero. Mythic heroes' stories often start and end in tragedy, as the hero has to hold the entire world and its darker elements on their shoulders. Through these mythic stories, we learn tough lessons about the human condition. Elsa is quite literally the walking consequence in her story. What do I mean?

Elsa is born with magic, and due to the actions and fears of her grandfather and parents, she lived in a state of self-hatred. Their choices are reflected in Elsa's psychology. This is a consequence that continues into F2.

Elsa feels she needs to sacrifice herself in order to save the Forest - leading to her being frozen and pushing Anna away. Thus, the consequence of the choices made by those before her caused this girl to feel she needed to sacrifice her well-being and recent self-actualization, in order to fix those choices.

But GQA, that's not fair to Elsa! Exactly. Elsa growing up in fear, and then feeling she needs to sacrifice herself and her needs, is a consequence of those choices made for her. Elsa is a mythic hero because of this, and her story does end in tragedy - until Anna comes in to help give her a happier ending.

Actions - The fear of magic and choices made by her family in order to hide or destroy magic.

Consequence - Elsa sacrifices her well-being and relationships in order to fix or push those choices when they weren't her fault to begin with.

The Consequence in Anna's Story

Anna is coming in as a fairytale hero. These types of heroes are meant to teach the best qualities of human nature and fight against all odds using those qualities. Anna starts out with the base ingredients - determination and unconditional love. However, she has to work a little bit to further develop these qualities, which leads to her own consequences forming throughout the story.

Anna has just received everything she ever wanted - love from her sister and a romantic partner, a new family, and open gates to allow her freedom. However, this all gets threatened when the siren starts to call to Elsa - because Anna fears losing what she has, she becomes over-protective to the point where she is sacrificing her well-being and her relationship with Kristoff.

Basically, Anna's choice to try and hold onto her life and push away change as much as possible leads to the consequence of her loved ones leaving her (in varying degrees, Kristoff was left behind due to a misunderstanding). The culmination of Anna's consequences is the boat scene when Elsa leaves her and Kristoff is not around to help mediate the argument.

Anna has to learn from this, and because she does, she is able to overcome her flaws and ultimately save the day.

Actions - Anna tries to hold on to her life using force.

Consequences - Being left behind or leaving loved ones behind.

How Does this Affect the Ending Though?

As we said, not every consequence is bad - some just change the status quo for the characters. In F2, big changes do happen because of the choices made. Anna becomes Queen of Arendelle as Elsa discovers a higher calling. Arendelle is left standing because of Anna's sacrifice and recognition of past wrongs. Elsa no longer lives in Arendelle and is not overcome with doubt anymore.

These are huge changes that rewrote the entire Franchise. Just because they are not inconvenient or bad, does not mean they are meaningless and that the film had no consequence. This would not have happened if the characters did not make mistakes along the way. If the film had no consequence, then everything would have been the same as it was at the beginning of the film with nothing really learned.

Part 2: The Original Ending Doesn't Work

Many praise the original ending of F2, with the Castle being destroyed and rebuilt with Northuldran influence. They feel that this is more reflective of consequence. However, I disagree for a few reasons.

As said, whether the castle was destroyed or not, Anna and Elsa still went through serious changes that shook up their world and what they knew. It changed the franchise as a whole.

It is actually a soft form of cultural appropriation in a way, to make the castle Nothurldran influenced.

Wait - that was a big statement there in the second point. Let me explain further. Basically, incorporating Northuldran cultural influences, makes it seem like their culture and identity can be used as an aesthetic.

So basically, Anna and Elsa building the castle back up would not really benefit the Northuldra in any way other than making their culture aesethically pleasing for those who are not Northuldran. It's basically a huge statement on their part saying that they're better than those who came before because they were willing to make the castle Northuldra-ish. Unless the film had planned to explain the meanings behind each design choice, then it's literally just aesthetic.

Yes, while Anna and Elsa are half Northuldran themselves, they had not participated in that culture their entire young lives, and we need to see more of them learning about that culture in order for me to believe that they are respecting their mother's heritage.

The statue of Iduna and Agnarr alone demonstrates the unity of Arendelle and Northuldra while also recognizing that the current Arendelle is influenced by the Northuldra - without making their culture an aesthetic. In other words, building the castle in such a way does not benefit the Norhtuldra or really teach anything about them. It just shows off that Anna and Elsa are half Northuldran and they like that about themselves. That's it.

But GQA, the Northuldra are fictional. Why would it matter?

Simple. The Northuldra are based on the Sami of Scandanavian and Northern Russian areas. If we show that the Northuldra can be used as an aesthetic, then we are telling people that Sami culture in real life can also be used as an aesthetic. Sharing culture is a beautiful thing, and participating in a culture that is not your own actually keeps it alive. However, you still need to respect the meaning and history behind every tradition and design and not use it as an aesthetic or accessory.

Thus, I think the writers recognized all of this, because of their choice to change the costume of the Northuldra for the same reason, and changed to ending to reflect a better choice that was more respectful.

There is nothing daring or brave about using culture as an aesthetic.

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Happy birthday Anna !

🌻💕🌻💕🌻💕🌻💕🌻💕🌻💕🌻💕🌻💕🌻💕

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You do bring up good critiques. To answer your question, no, Anna did not truly love or care about Hans. Having been isolated from the outside world and shut out by Elsa for a long time, Anna had come to see fairy tale romances with Prince Charming as true love. In reality, this was an escape from her lonely life which she did not recognize. Hans fits the image of Prince Charming to a tee. With people coming into the castle for only one day, her choice to accept Hans’s marriage proposal was more out of desperation than love for him as a person. If you notice, she never asked Hans if he was okay, but she does with Kristoff. 

Anna does start a romantic relationship with Kristoff because she does trust him and she still wants one. This ties back to her childhood trauma of not wanting to be alone, which gets addressed in Frozen 2. Even with everything that happened with Hans, she wants to take a chance with Kristoff since he is different. Kristoff does come to her aid when she most needs it (ex. running to check on her in a full blown blizzard or helping her get away from Marshmallow), and he started acting nicer the more time they were together. One thing she did learn was to take things slower with Kristoff and get to know him better before taking it to the next level. Also, what makes this time different is she has a support system that she didn’t have when she was with Hans. The gates are open, Elsa and her have re-connected, and Olaf and Sven have also become part of the group. Hans’s words about no one loving Anna were proven wrong with what she got at the end of the film.  What Anna needed to learn was that she was loved, to not make life-changing decisions based on desperation, learning true love comes in many different forms, and to take time to know a person before getting married. 

Side note:  If Kristoff tries to hurt her (which he doesn’t), he will have hell to pay from her friends and citizens.

Did Anna not truly love Hans? Anna was able to move from Hans to Kristoff pretty quickly...yes, the betrayal, but it's unlikely that anyone would start a relationship immediately after being betrayed like that with someone they love, even if they trusted that the new person loved them and wouldn't betray them. Breakups really mess with people. So does betrayal that bad. The two together: DOUBLE WHAMMY! The only reason I can see for her moving immediately to a new guy is if she didn't actually care.

And if Anna did throw herself immediately in a relationship with Kristoff because she trusted him not to hurt her like that, that's actually pretty concerning, because that's not normal. Being so willing to trust again after being betrayed a few days ago is not normal. At all. Especially since she barely knew Kristoff, and most of their interaction on screen was not that great, consisting of them arguing and Kristoff belittling her and looking down on her. There's something very very very wrong if Anna's able to move on just like that.

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Anna + scarf

2021.10.13

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Happy belated birthday! Elsa really wants that sexy walk to be in the past. (Truth be told, I always thought that walk was OOC for Elsa)

Finally, a new pun gif set for Frozen/Frozen II! 😁😄👍🏻

When Elsa was in Ahtohallan, she saw the memory of her singing her signature song.

But she cringed upon seeing it. I guess by now, for Elsa, the past is in the past, and it’s time for her to let it go. 😆🤣😂

A present to myself because today is my BIRTHDAY!!! 🥳🎉🎊🎂

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Man, you were right on the money! I didn’t really paid attention to the trailers when they came out, so I really had no idea what to expect. 

Identity Unknown

When the Frozen II teaser trailer premiered on February 13, 2019, we saw it briefly feature a young girl and boy together in a forest. There is barely a glimpse of the girl’s face before she notices leaves mysteriously parting to reveal the boy (whose face is not shown), who is then lifted into the air by some apparent form of magical wind along with some of the leaves.

The girl has long brown hair and wears simple clothing much like those worn by Sami people, giving the impression that she is a peasant. But the golden-haired boy wears a darker, more formal type of coat, shirt, pants, and boots, suggesting that he is of a higher social class than the girl.

Despite their short appearances, including not seeing much of their faces to make an identification, many fans have come to believe that this young boy and girl (primarily due to what we saw in their physical appearances and the magic element shown in the footage) are Agnarr and Iduna, respectively, when they were (approximately teenaged) children. I have thought about it myself, but I also wanted to be surprised and not make so much speculation before the film’s release date.

The second theatrical trailer for Frozen II, which came out on September 23, begins with Agnarr telling little Anna and Elsa about an enchanted forest, a place filled with magic. As he narrates, we are shown brief glimpses of the past with people who live in this forest while others from the outside world are presumably visiting it. The first flashback from Agnarr’s story shows a young girl, and as she runs, leaves mysteriously lift off the ground and follow her.

As Agnarr continues his story, we are then shown a young boy who wears a dark green coat and has golden blond hair. Just as quickly as we see him, the mysterious wind carrying the leaves passes in front of him, and he turns to his right as he sees them go in that direction.

And then the girl is shown once more being carried up by the wind along with the leaves. The trailer gives the impression that when the boy turns, he sees the girl immediately afterwards, but this may not be what happens in the actual film.

This boy and girl appear to be the same ones that appeared in the teaser, based on their strikingly similar appearances, and now this new trailer further suggests they are indeed the former king and queen of Arendelle. This is because there is more focus on these two unknown characters when Agnarr tells his story (as if they will become more important later), and also because Iduna is present with her husband and the girls while he tells the story.

When lining up these pictures of Iduna and Agnarr with these two other characters (the shot of this girl is the last one in the trailer), the physical resemblances between them seem strong enough to support the theory that it is them. As you can see, the boy has green eyes like Agnarr and the girl has blue eyes like Iduna. But while both females have brown hair, the unknown boy’s hair is more golden in color while Agnarr’s hair is strawberry blond (which Anna inherited from him). However, hair can sometimes can change color when kids grow up, so perhaps it happened to him.

If these two kids are Agnarr and Iduna, I’m starting to develop a headcanon that Iduna lived in the forest while Agnarr was the born into royalty. This seems evident based on their attire, especially because the boy’s clothes look more regal and royal-like. But this article mentions King Runeard, who is Agnarr’s father, proving that he was the one who was born in the royal court of Arendelle. Perhaps in his youth, Agnarr and his family made one or more visits to the forest and the people who lived there were visitors to Arendelle. This might explain how the two met each other, and eventually they fell in love and married when they were grown up. Regardless of when they married, once Agnarr was crowned king (hinted by the portrait of his coronation from the first film), then Iduna became his queen.

So until Frozen II comes out, we won’t know just who this mystery girl and boy are, but the more I watch the trailer and see images from it here on Tumblr, the more I believe that they are Queen Iduna and King Agnarr. 😉

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Interesting symbolism behind the color purple. Yes, purple does fit Elsa, which is why her fifth spirit outfit has purple on it too. I also interpreted that Elsa is at a crossroads when she’s wearing purple. In Frozen, she takes off her purple cape after deciding to let it go and be herself while leaving Arendelle behind her. In Frozen 2, she wrestles with her desire to follow the voice until it becomes too much to ignore. The Frozen movies have so much symbolism, and it’s always fun to analyze them. 

The Color Purple

I admit, I was a bit disappointed when I realized that the “dress” Elsa wears in part of the Frozen II trailer was actually a nightgown. But that’s only because I think that she would look awesome in this color since purple is known to be the traditional color worn by royalty, and we’ve only seen Elsa primarily wear blue and green. But seeing her in this nightgown, combined with the cape she wears during her coronation in the first film, finally gives me the excuse to write this analysis that I have wanted to do for ages!

According to Wikipedia, surveys in Europe and North America say that purple is the color most often associated with royalty, magic, mystery, rarity, and piety. Here’s how I break these down in how they best fit Elsa so that purple is another appropriate color for her:

Royalty: As I said before, purple is the color traditionally associated with royalty, and Elsa in the Queen of Arendelle. A queen is a royal figure; do I need to say more? 😄

Magic: Um, do I really need to explain this one? Elsa has magical ice powers. Simple as that. 😉

Mystery: The origin of Elsa’s powers are a mystery, so this fits color fits her for this reason, even though we will presumably find out more about them in Frozen II.

Rarity: Because Elsa’s powers are extremely unique and rare, this adjective description fits her, too.

Piety: In religion, piety refers to reverence and devotion to God. Now it’s a little hard to describe how this fits color Elsa since religion doesn’t have a major role in the first film. But since Arendelle has a chapel where Elsa was crowned by the bishop, I think it’s possible that Elsa is religious to a degree, so I think piety can fit her, too.

So while blue may be her signature color, these qualities and traits show that purple is another color that best fits Elsa, and while she may only wear a purple nightgown in Frozen II, I think it’s just awesome to see Elsa wearing another color!