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Bluebeard [Ao hige (Japanese: 青ひげ)] is the 16th episode of the 1987-1989 series Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics. The titular character, a nobleman with blue hair and beard, seeks out a new wife and thinks he has found her in Josephine, a super sheltered but very beautiful peasant girl. However, there's the little matter of how his wives "disappeared", and the naive Josephine may be herself over her head...!
Tropes used in this episode are:
- Acquired Situational Narcissism: When the super naive Josephine suddenly sees herself surrounded by near all the riches she could ever want, she becomes snobbish and cold and refuses to see her brothers. When they come to rescue her from Bluebeard, she apologizes to them.
- An Axe to Grind: The brothers are lumberjacks, so they always have their trusty axes handy. It's quite helpful when they need to strike their cruel brother-in-law down.
- Barefoot Poverty: While Josephine's brothers use boots, Josie herself doesn't even wear sandals.
- Dead Guy on Display: When Josephine enters the Forbidden Room, she finds the corpses of the wives befor her mounted on the walls like trophies or mannequins...
- Downer Beginning: It actually starts with Bluebeard killing his second-to-last wife on-screen.
- Girl Next Door: Josephine, the last wife, is an extremely naive village girl who lives with her three brothers in a secluded cottage.
- Gold Digger: In a way. Josephine is so much into her child-like fantasies of Princes and Noblemen that she doesn't seem to care about anything else, and when Bluebeard sends his courtier to look for her she jumps at the chance to marry him no matter what.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: While extremely naive and immature, Josephine is a good-hearted girl. She doesn't hold any resentment against the man who almost murdered her, even praying for his tormented soul and those of the wives he killed.
- May December Romance: Josephine is a teenager while Bluebeard seems to be at least in his late 30's / early 40's. The picture above shows it pretty clearly.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Bluebeard's design is strongly inspired by King Henry VIII of England.
- Promotion to Parent: Strongly implied to be the case here. The siblings' parents are nowhere to be seen, and both Josephine and the youngest of her brothers (Frederick) look notoriously younger than the two eldest...
- Naive Everygirl: Poor, poor Josephine...
- Named by the Adaptation: The Wife is named Josephine, one of her brothers is called Frederick and another is named Donald.
- She Cleans Up Nicely: After marrying Bluebeard, Josephine goes from a village girl in simple dark pink clothes and with her long hair loose, to a very well-dressed beauty in cute gowns and with Princess Curls.
- Sympathy for the Devil: Maybe: as Bluebeard's manse burns down, Josephine kneels and quietly prays - most likely for both him and his wives.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Bluebeard gives Josephine a pretty brutal one as he's about to kill her.
- Tempting Fate: Josephine firmly and naively believes that someday she'll find a handsome and lovely prince to marry. Then a nobleman wants to marry her, but... uh...