Spinning Classics With The Grimm Variations

There are two approaches to making a remake: recreating the same story or retelling it with a twist. Sometimes, writers borrow the name of a previous work to attract an audience and then create something entirely different. The Brothers Grimm fairy tales have been famously adapted by Disney, which smooths out the dark, gritty edges of the original stories while retaining recognizable features to create a new, family-friendly narrative. Other notable retellings include the 2011 TV show Once Upon a Time, the 2005 film The Brothers Grimm, and the latest addition to the legacy, the 2024 anime The Grimm Variations.

The Grimm Variations is an anthology series written by Clamp, an all-female Japanese manga group. It consists of six stories inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, each running between 30 and 40 minutes. The stories, penned by Michiko Yokote, use the famous titles more as prompts than direct adaptations. Each story features recognizable elements of the fairy tales, such as a girl in a red hood facing off against a male foe, but they are essentially stand-alone narratives. You can watch them without any prior knowledge of or interest in the Grimm stories. The series includes segments between each story that frame the episodes, featuring the Grimm brothers telling their sister Charlotte the story to start each episode. For me, these segments didn’t add much, other than attempting to loosely connect the episodes. They could have been omitted without significant impact on the overall experience. The Grimm Variations left me with mixed feelings; it was an okay anime.

Variations is the perfect title for these stories that mix up the plot. Some of the stories maintain the folkloric magic, while others replace it with futuristic science fiction and laser guns, which I wasn’t prepared for. I assumed all the stories would follow the period piece feeling established by the Grimm brothers’ segments in between episodes. It felt somewhat out of place to have these segments in a quaint, old-fashioned house while telling stories of virtual reality and space travel. It seems a bit jarring when I think about it. The anthology format means the episodes are intended to be completely different from one another, but since all the stories were written by the same person and directed by different people, I wondered how much creative freedom the directors had. I tried to find more information about the production but could only find that Clamp's involvement was a significant selling point, given their prominence in the anime world, including their creation of Cardcaptor Sakura.

Looking through the episodes, none of them were terrible, and I enjoyed the first four. Four out of six is a solid score. I particularly liked the evil Cinderella who psychologically tormented her stepsisters, the serial killer bounty hunter Red Riding Hood, and the Elves and the Shoemaker episode about a struggling writer losing touch with his passion. The Hansel and Gretel mystery was okay but felt a bit long for my taste. The last two episodes were, in my opinion, the weakest. The Town Musicians of Bremen felt like an all-female version of Trigun in its space western style, and The Pied Piper of Hamelin was lengthy with a main character who wasn’t very engaging, which was somewhat intentional. This character, who had always followed others' expectations, was bland for too long, and while the story's slow pace was a shame, the ending was beautiful.

While some of the storytelling can be lackluster, the animation is beautiful. I particularly liked the painted storybook feel of the scenes featuring the Grimm Brothers and their sister. I also loved the ending of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, which was directed by someone who worked with Studio Ghibli, and it shows! The visuals were stunningly gorgeous, and I understand why they saved it for last in terms of visual impact. Who can dislike a beautifully drawn galaxy? The fight scenes in The Town Musicians of Bremen were the best parts of that story. The bar fight, in particular, was fun and had many moving parts. The movements were fluid, and the angles were dynamic. The lighting direction for each episode added a lot of depth to the scenes. I also really enjoyed the music composed by Akira Miyagawa. The stories featured strong female protagonists, which is exactly what I’d expect from Clamp.

I wish I had more to say about The Grimm Variations, but there’s not a lot to report other than that it was okay. I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend it, but if you’re interested, it’s worth a try. As with any anthology series, some episodes were stronger than others, and some didn’t engage me as much. The stories were fascinating in how they strayed from the original content to create new worlds. I almost felt that the in-between segments were trying to portray Charlotte as an important character with a darker mystery behind her, but this seemed off and was never substantiated. There were no significant story reveals during the Brothers Grimm segments.

I don’t know if there’s a second season planned, but if there is, I’d like to see more development for the brothers and Charlotte, perhaps with a glimpse into the writers' creative process. Side note: something that’s been bugging me since the first episode—Charlotte’s hair looks like dog ears, and I need others to see it too. The Grimm Variations is an anime I’d put on as background noise or watch if you’re between shows and need something to fill the gap.