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Princess Tutu
Overall it's a bit hard to write about Princess Tutu without spoiling it. So I'll write the spoilers anyway, but they are brilliantly hidden. Paint the text with your mouse to read them. Princess Tutu is about Ahiru, a clumsy student at ballet school. She was once impressed by the noble prince from a story who cut out his heart to seal away the monster raven and turned into a literally emotionless hollow shell of his former self. Now the prince, Mytho, appears to go to Ahiru's school, and Ahiru wishes to help him to regain his smile. Creepy guy Drosselmeryer gives her the power to transform into Princess Tutu, who can regain the pieces of Mytho's heart by... dancing. Mytho's mysterious companion Fakir and the ace ballerina classmate Rue aren't exactly pleased by Ahiru's plans. The episode numbering confused me a lot at first; it looks like it was 38 episodes long, but actually it's only 26 but the episodes in the second season were split into two parts due to timeslot reasons. I prefer to think it as 38 episodes because that's how I watched it online. 
Princess Tutu is often mentioned with Puella Magi Madoka Magica, and they do have a lot in common. I still think I like Tutu a bit more (even if Madoka is an awesome series as well). A lot of Madoka's success comes from subverting the traditions of Magical Girl stories so it owes a lot to older stories, while Tutu is more easily its own thing. The best thing about the show was how it was consistent with its quality and it had a satisfying ending. Maybe I'm overly picky and unpleasable, but usually series I enjoy greatly tend to lose steam towards the end for me, and while the ending may not be horrible or even bad I'm almost always left hoping that it had been somehow more. I'm not a fan of overly happy endings so Tutu pleases me in that department as well. I was pretty suprised when the show actually stuck to its "be yourself" theme; I expected Fakir to turn Ahiru permanently into a girl with his story writing powarz, but I liked it a lot more how Ahiru ended up remaining a duck with Fakir still staying by her side. Princess Tutu also had a pretty interesting take on stories and characters in general. There were stories within stories that were within stories themselves, and sometimes the story moved on quite crazy meta levels. I can't remember what I expected the show to be, but I'm sure it definitely wasn't anything like this. Ahiru was a great main character. Usually I tend to dislike the magical girl heroine, because they're all kind of the same. A bit of an airhead, clumsy, not too smart etc. Ahiru is all of these, but somehow they feel more like a part of the character instead of tacked on attributes the shoujo heroine just must have, because the young readers just can't relate to the heroine if she's not stupid and clumsy~~~ And Ahiru's backstory certainly sets her apart from all the other shoujo heroines I've seen. She has a really weird voice and I can believe it divides opinions, but I ended up loving it. The other main characters were well written too. Usually in Magical girl shows the pink one is the heroine, and she's practically the only important thing. There may be other magical girls, but their role is primarily being the main characters friend or supporter or something like that. They may get their day in the limelight, but in the end the heroine will be the only one whose efforts ~truly~ matter and the other characters could easily be written out without damaging the story too much. In Princess Tutu Ahiru and the three other main characters all have distinct roles and there are no extra magical girls to fill space and use the colours that haven't already been used in the main characters' magical girl outfits. Also, the male characters are just as important as the girls so they're not just love interests or hostages or shining knights that must save the heroine when it turns out that she can't do anything without the help of a man like in many magical girl shows tend to be. 
The rest of the cast had interesting characters as well. I've seen the Nutcracker ballet twice and I loved Drosselmeyer (even if his role wasn't that big) so it was great to see him again. He was just as creepy as he needed to be. His crazy character design and colourscheme may have been a bit too much for me, but they fit the visuals of the rest of the story. I also loved Ahiru's ballet teacher, Neko-sensei, who was... a cat. Nobody but Ahiru seemed to consider animals going around weird in any way. What I liked the least in the series was Ahiru's friend Lilie. She annoyed me to no end starting from her first appearance, but I thought I'd give her the benefit of doubt that she'd get character development or a backstory that'd make her more tolerable. My wait wasn't rewarded and around episode 20 I had to give up on her. TvTropes say that many people don't like her because of her "comedic sociopathy" trait, i.e. her screen time consists of telling Ahiru how Ahiru will always fail at everything and how delicious it will be to her. I didn't have a problem with her comedically enjoying other people's suffering; what bothered me was her patronising and pompous attitude towards Ahiru. 
It very much pleases me how there is no annoying animal mascot that somehow seems to be obligatory for a magical girl series. It's not like it was needed though, with the main character being the animal mascot herself... Princess Tutu used music from stuff like Swan Lake and the Nutcracker. I once had classical music kind of as a hobby, so I even recongised some of the bgm, which was of course cool. The piece that plays with the eyecatch is one of my favourites. A bit of a trivia: The "what I watched / what I expected / what I got" meme originated from Princess Tutu. Someone posted a compilation pic where they expected the show to be a combination of Card Captor Sakura and ballet, but instead they got... guitar ninjas. Sadly the show did not have guitar ninjas, but it was a metaphor that they were very satisfied with what they saw anyway. Dress up-wise the series didn't have much to offer. The characters had very few outfits, it was like... school uniform, casual outfit, ballet outfit and a magical outfit, with some extras for a couple of the characters. Artwork gives a few more tutus. But the character designs were distinct enough that it'd still have material for a character maker, and I loved Ahiru that I'd very much like to make a dress up with her anyway.
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