Dragon Blade Qartulad
Magnhild Lachowicz
Fa Mulan is the titular protagonist of Disney's 1998 animated feature film Mulan. She is the strong-willed and tenacious daughter of a war veteran, who strives to uphold her family's honor. When her father is called back into battle to defend China from Shan Yu, Mulan opts to protect him by taking his place under the disguise of a male soldier named Ping.
Mulan is inspired by the legendary Hua Mulan. She is the eighth official Disney Princess, the only one not to be of royal lineage either by birth or marriage. She is the last Disney Princess to be developed during the Disney Renaissance.
Mulan resides in a small Chinese village with her father, her mother, and her wisecracking grandmother (after whom Mulan takes). She also has a dog named Little Brother. As the standard of the period, Mulan is urged to uphold her family honor by adhering to the status quo set for women of the time. However, she is presented as an outcast. She is clumsy and seeks to finish her household chores by inventing contraptions to do the work in her place (much to the chagrin of her father).
As a member of the Fa family, Mulan is under the protection of the Fa Family ancestors and the family guardians (which are represented by animals of the Chinese zodiac). By the end of the original Mulan, Mulan's personal guardian is that of Mushu, a diminutive dragon.
At the start of the film, Mulan is introduced as a free-spirited outcast. She is a clumsy girl who cannot follow rules, regulations, or traditions. Despite this, she has a warm heart and wants nothing more than to uphold her family's honor while keeping true to herself. Because of her society, however, this is difficult to accomplish and often brings chaos and embarrassment into her life.
The driving force of Mulan's journey is the love she has for her father. When her father is drafted to serve in the Emperor's army to defend China, Mulan steals his orders and reports to the camp in his place to protect him as well as to satisfy her desire to prove her own self-worth. She was seen having difficulties with self-confidence due to society's mistreatment towards her and the pressures of the society into which she was born - particularly in the lives of women. Early in the film, whenever she went against sexism and injustice or simply handled a situation in her own, unique way (such as shouting "Present!" when the matchmaker called her name), Mulan was greeted with anger or some form of annoyance from those around her, thus furthering her socially-awkward attitude.
During her time in camp, Mulan's personality shifts. She proves to be fierce, both physically and mentally, as well as self-reliant, impressionable, and persistent. As she learns the ways of strength and agility, she rises to the top of her class, setting an example for the men surrounding her, and soon earns their respect and friendship. Over time, Mulan gains more confidence, symbolizing her growth, as she becomes more of a mature woman by the film's third act. She can perform successful tactics through quick-thinking and mental observation instead of mere brute strength (something idealized in her camp), eventually saving her fellow soldiers and China on notable occasions. Nevertheless, she retained her humble nature, not once becoming overconfident and boastful, even after becoming a beloved heroine and receiving countless amounts of praise and respect from the very society that continuously opposed her. It wasn't until Mulan returned home and received a loving welcome from her father that she truly emoted her satisfaction over her previous successes, proving her goal, overall, was to uphold her family honor while being true to herself; this being visually and thematically represented by her relationship with her father.
The sequel shows that Mulan's personality, seen during the latter half of the first film, has remained. Mulan is a responsible young woman, seen as a fearless warrior, leader, and beloved role model among her people, both men, and women. Nevertheless, she is also fun-loving and optimistic, especially when seen with Shang, with whom she had developed a strong, romantic relationship by the start of the second film. The sequel also shows her to be rather laid-back, open-minded, and philosophical, believing in the practice of following one's heart.
Mulan is a young Chinese woman. She is a natural beauty, with a slender hourglass figure, dark brown eyes, pink lips, rosy cheeks, and straight, black hair that used to be long and waist-length. Later in the film, when she leaves to join the army in disguise, she cuts her hair with her father's sword into shoulder-length and ties it up in a bun. This helps her blend into the army so that the other soldiers don't know that she's really a woman. In the second film, her hair has noticeably grown a few inches. In promotional works, her hair is always shown as its original length, down to the waist.
During the two films, Mulan wore a range of outfits, from a beautiful Hanfus (Chinese dresses) to her soldier's getup, though her most notable outfits come from the original film; in which her promotional dress comes from, which is a simple Hanfu, which consisted of either a creamy green-yellow dress, with blue overshirt, which has green sleeves and a red band around her waist. She also sports a Kung fu-styled soldier's outfit, as well as her pink matchmaker's Hanfu and her father's armor.
She wears a light blue tank top, short blue shorts, and is barefoot when she sleeps. She wears a dress consisting of a green long-sleeved shirt with olive brims and both a yellow skirt and inside shirt with a low-cut neckline, blue wrap, red waistband, and black ballet flats with gray soles, but also has been seen barefoot as well. She briefly wore her hair in a ponytail tied with a red hair tie. When she arrived in the town, she had bits of hay stuck in her hair. To impress the matchmaker, she had her face painted in white, red lipstick, pink cheeks, purple eyeliner, thin black eyebrows, hair tied in a loose bun with a red hair ribbon, a narrow crimson and pale pink Chinese skirt, a pink jacket with long, flowing sleeves, an aqua and plum collar, a blue wrap with a red ribbon to fasten it, a light purple scarf, same color shoes, a jade bead necklace, gold dangling earrings, and a special lotus flower hair pick. When she returns home from her failed meeting with the Matchmaker, she wears the same crimson and pink skirt, blue wrap and red ribbon and same color shoes with a pink long-sleeved shirt with light purple cuffs with the same aqua and plum collar. During Reflection, she removes her earrings and necklace, wipes away her make-up and lets her hair down when she removed her hair ribbon and lotus hair pick. When she was disguised as "Ping," she has her hair tied in a bun with a teal ribbon to look like a man (when she cuts her long, beautiful hair with her father's sword into a shoulder-length), and dark green soldier armor. In the Martial Arts sequence, she had a cream suit. In the Shan Yu battle, she wore a teal dress consisting of a poet-sleeved blouse, a long olive vest with a crimson collar, a crimson belt, light pink sash, and black shoes.
At the start of the film, Mulan is seen rehearsing her answers for the Matchmaker's examination (she has noted the answers on her arm). Despite running late, Mulan makes it to the Matchmaker, but her time there ends in humiliating failure. Shortly after, the Emperor's counselor, Chi-Fu, arrives in her village to announce that the deadly Huns, led by Shan Yu, have invaded China after breaching the Great Wall, and that one man in every family must serve in the war, being conscripted into the Imperial Army to reinforce the Emperor's troops and defend the Imperial City and other communities from the Huns. Despite her protests, her father agrees to go despite his old age and disabilities. When she tries to argue with him that night for putting his life on the line for honor, Fa Zhou reprimands her and hurts her feelings, causing her to run out and weep on the Stone Dragon statue in the middle of a storm. Knowing her father would die, and knowing what she must do now to prevent it, Mulan secretly goes in his place by posing as a man, cutting her long hair with her father's sword, stealing her father's armor and riding away on her horse, Khan. That night, her journey to honor has begun. On her way to the army camp, Mulan meets Mushu, a small dragon who claims to be a guardian sent to her by her ancestors. He agrees to help her pass as a soldier.
Though Mulan fails the army training at first, no thanks to having been on the bad side of the other recruits, including Yao, Ling, and Chien Po, and Mushu trying to help through trickery, which only serves to anger her superior officer in Captain Li Shang, she uses her intelligence and determination and becomes the first soldier to solve a puzzle set by Shang. This happens just after Shang decides that she has failed the training regiment and is not fit to serve in the Imperial Army since her lack of strength and discipline would be putting her own life and that of her fellow troops in great danger, handing her the reins of her horse and telling her to go home, especially after she has been on Chi-Fu's bad side when a misfired rocket launched by her destroyed his tent, only reinforcing his belief Shang's troops would be unfit in his eyes to head to the war front. While Mulan could have done that, seeing as she has already ensured her father would not be killed in battle due to his body and old war wounds catching up to him, she attempts the first test with recovering the arrow at the top of a tall pillar again. Upon figuring out how to solve it, she is nearly to the top when the other recruits begin to wake up as dawn breaks. Seeing her efforts, they cheer her on, putting aside their earlier teasing of her, and when Shang comes out to see what is going on, he is shocked and surprised when his arrow lands at his feet, and sees that Mulan has been the one who solved his puzzle.
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