Lutz (Anime)

Lutz (ルッツ, Ruttsu) is Myne's neighbor and close childhood friend. He promised to help make all Myne's ideas a reality.

He is currently an apprentice merchant at the Gilberta Company, where he trains under Benno.

Lutz has short blond hair and emerald eyes. Growing up in the lower city, he has a scruffy appearance and wears patched secondhand clothing. However, he begins to dress in nicer clothing after joining the Gilberta Company as an apprentice.

Due partly to growing up as the youngest of four, Lutz has a patient and calm personality. He isn't put off by Myne's outlandish ideas; instead, he takes a practical approach and plans how to make them a reality.

Despite his easygoing nature, Lutz can be exceedingly stubborn and tenacious. He works tirelessly to achieve his dreams of becoming a merchant. Lutz is also a loyal friend to Myne. He pays close attention to her health, gives her advice, fights on her behalf, and comforts her when she's feeling down.

Lutz was born to a very poor family in the south of the city of Ehrenfest. His father Deid was a carpenter, and his mother Karla was a textile worker. His three older brothers, Zasha, Sieg, and Ralph often took away his food and belongings, and Lutz didn’t always get enough to eat.

Before Urano’s memories awoke in Myne, Lutz didn’t see her very often due to her illness. Like most commoner children, he spent the years before his baptism helping around the house and foraging for food in the woods with his brothers.

When Tuuli and Myne go to visit their father at the city gate, they encounter Lutz, his older brother Ralph, and their cousin Fey who are going out to forage in the woods. Seeing how frail Myne is, Lutz offers to carry her. However, Ralph says that Lutz is too small to carry her and offers to do it instead.

On the way to the gate, Ralph comments on how nice Tuuli's hair smells, and Lutz also praises Myne's. He says she looks much nicer with her hair out of her face, a compliment which flusters her greatly.

Lutz and his brother Ralph go to visit Myne's family home to purchase some of their parue pulp to use as birdfeed. He admits that with four boys in his house, there's not always enough food to go around. Myne uses the the parue pulp to make paruecakes for them. After happily eating his fill, Lutz tells her that he'll lend her a hand whenever she needs help in the future.

When Myne begins building up her strength to go to the forest, Tuuli and Gunther ask Lutz to keep an eye on her health and watch out for her. He agrees and keeps her company on her walks to and from the city gate, even when her slow pace causes them to lag behind the rest of the group.

Myne is finally allowed to go to the forest, but Gunther makes her promise to do nothing but rest and return with the other children. Lutz is angry when she instead begins digging for clay. He points out that she never intended to keep her promise, and says he didn't expect her to be so untrustworthy. However, he upholds his own promise to her by helping her dig up clay and make the tablets.

Having grown up in an illiterate family, Lutz is perplexed and interested when Myne explains the concepts of reading and books to him. He asks what she plans to do with her life, and she says her dream is to live surrounded by books. Lutz admits that his own dream is to become a traveling trader and visit different cities. Myne encourages him to follow his dream.

After the first set of tablets are destroyed by Fey, Lutz calms down the enraged Myne and promises to help her make a second set. When the second set is destroyed by rain, he again helps her remake them.

When Lutz sees Myne working on wood tablets, he guesses correctly that they're a replacement for her failed clay tablets. He offers to help her out. In return, he asks that she introduce him to Otto, a former traveling trader, for advice on how he can become one.

Myne agrees and sets up a meeting with Otto, much to Lutz's delight, and he helps her carve the tablets and make crayons using soot and clay. When she develops a fever, he goes to visit her. Myne tells him that their tablets were destroyed, but encourages her not to give up — hurriedly adding that it's because she promised to help him meet Otto.

Lutz later brings over some less flammable wood to use as new tablets; however, Effa mistakes them for firewood and accidentally burns them again. As Myne teeters on the edge of despair and her fever intensifies, it's her memories of Lutz and the promise she made with him that inspire her to keep going.

When Lutz and Myne meet Otto and his brother-in-law Benno, he is dejected to be told to give up on his dream of becoming a traveling trader. However, he accepts the alternative suggestion of becoming an apprentice merchant, and resolves to work alongside Myne and help make her ideas a reality. Together, they agree to make a working prototype of plant paper before their baptism next summer. If they succeed, Benno plans to take them on as apprentices at the Gilberta Company.

However, Lutz tells Myne that he can't help make the equipment for paper production unless she knows where they can find nails, causing her to strike a deal with Otto. He also admits that his family is vehemently opposed to him becoming a merchant. As craftsmen, they distrust merchants, and they want him to follow in his father's footsteps as a carpenter.

When they return from the woods, Otto meets them at the city gate and delivers a meeting invitation from Benno.

Lutz accompanies Myne to a lunch meeting with Benno at the Gilberta Company. He is startled at how comfortable she seems negotiating business deals, writing contracts, and doing math. When they sign the magic contract to secure their terms, he helps prick Myne's finger and sign with blood, since she's too frightened to do it herself.

On the way home, he asks her, "Are you the real Myne?" She deflects his questions, and he apologizes for asking something so strange. When they meet again the next day, he says that he felt unneeded after seeing her handle the business deal so competently, but assures her that he's not mad at her.

Both Gunther and Benno tell Lutz to help look after Myne's health, an order which he accepts. However, Myne realizes only later that he stops referring to her as "Myne" from that point onward.

Lutz and Myne work together to make paper. While in the woods, Myne inadvertently turns a taue fruit into a trombe and calls Lutz for help. He whistles to alert the other children, and they work together to cut down the feyplant. Once it's dead, they use its branches to make paper.

As they make the paper, Lutz's suspicions toward Myne only grow. He notices her skill using chopsticks to stir the plant fibers and her familiarity with the paper-making process. After they finish their first batch of paper, he confronts her again about her real identity.

Myne admits that she isn't the original Myne, and Lutz demands that she "give back" her body. She tells him that she doesn't mind doing so, since she owes him her life already, but explains that she believes the "real" Myne already succumbed to her illness. He lashes out at her, and she angrily replies that if she had a choice, she wouldn't have chosen to steal such a sickly, frail body.

He asks how long she's been Myne, and is surprised to find that his memories and friendship were formed with her, not the original Myne. In the end, he forgives her and accepts her for who she is. Together, they bring their paper prototypes to Benno, who is satisfied with their work.

After passing Benno's test he is registered in the Merchant's Guild alongside with Myne with Benno is their guardian. He will sign a lehange contract after his baptism.

Lutz begins his apprenticeship at the Gilberta Company as a lehange. Under Mark's tutelage, he practices welcoming customers to the store and using formal manners. He is concerned when they discover that people have been gathering information about Myne in the lower city, and assures her that he'll help keep her safe.

Later, he walks Myne to the cathedral for her first day as an apprentice priestess, where she is greeted by Fran. Lutz bursts into laughter at hearing her called "Lady Myne." Then he says goodbye and promises to pick her up at fifth bell.


 * Lutz was the first person to find out the truth about Myne's past life as Urano. (The second was the Head Priest.) He was also the only one to accept her story on faith, with no external proof.