fishytale
2008-08-16 8:37 p.m.
i realize what a strange childhood i have.
until i was older i had never watched the disney version of 'the little mermaid' but rather the sad, rather sadistic other version, where the mermaid has her tongue cut off and goes through excruciating pain and still dies in the end without winning the heart of the prince.
and i actually clean FORGOT all about this other version when i finally watched the disney one.
i guess it was just too unpleasant for me.
it wasnt till last year when i was watching a channel 8 drama (yes i do indeed watch chinese shows, you can pick your jaw up off the floor now) and heard a mention of 'ren yu gong zhu' and her sad ending did a very vague, elusive memory stir at the very corners of my large and developed brain.
a really faint memory of a manga-ish mermaid and a harp.
then last week, the name resurfaced again in my chinese class (how exactly i have no idea, i dont exactly make it a point to listen during chinese) and more elusive memories surfaced in my head, this time of a mermaid riding in a whale's mouth and of some small fish wailing 'marina, marina!'.
and so i told this to michelle, who responded with 'ha-ha-ha.'
oh the value of one's childhood memories.
but anyway!
turns out she had the chinese version of the book, which thrilled me to no end.
i have no idea why i was so interested in it but i was determined to find the source of the little snippets of memories.
after i read the story the memories became more corporeal, like the part about the knife, and especially how the mermaid's sisters had to cut off their hair to get it.
naturally THAT would have made the greatest impact on me, considering the fact that i battled for long hair for 6 whole years in primary school.
but yet i was still dissatisfied.
so i went online and searched for it, using words like 'princess mermaid' and 'renyugongzhu', because 'the little mermaid' would naturally just cause the disney sites to pop up.
incidentally, i found nothing.
the elusiveness of the whole thing annoyed me to no end.
and THEN!
another sudden flashback.
i remembered that in that long-ago movie, the story ended with the showing of a real-life statue enacted somewhere in remembrance of the mermaid.
as a last resort i asked my mom if she knew where the statue was, thinking that if i couldnt remember there was no way on earth she could.
in the end she fixed me with a baleful eye and said 'denmark', as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
perhaps my brain isnt as big and developed as i would like to think it is.
so with that in mind i FINALLY made some headway on the search, turning up the name Hans Christian Andersen and the whole story in english.
but i wanted to find the MOVIE!
enter wikipedia, information god.
imagine my excitement when the information god informed me that the story had been adapted into a movie by a japanese company.
i KNEW the mermaid had looked manga-ish.
so i tried 'Anderusen dōwa ningyo hime' on youtube (the name was given by the information god, doofus. do you think i speak jap?) but came up with a bunch of fully manga videos.
the mermaid had been manga-ISH, not fully manga.
then i remembered that the movie had been in ENGLISH!
(duh, or how would i have understood it?)
and the information god had an english name as well.
Andersen's Fairy Tales: Princess Mermaid.
and with that, i finally hit jackpot.
the entire movie is available on youtube.
(im still rather irritated at the fact that my searches on google using 'princess mermaid' turned up nothing though.)
here is the last part of the movie, the climax where she fails to stab the idiot prince's heart and dissolves into sea foam as a result.
i must say, if i were her sister and had given up my hair for the knife she just carelessly drops back into the ocean i would be very, very, very pissed.
but oh well, that's just me.
the rest of the movie is available on youtube.
it is very sad though, be warned!
well i shall leave you to it, taa.
