The Grim Variations

The Grim Variations is a anime original series created by CLAMP and Wit Studio that focuses around the fairy tales written by the Brothers Grimm but with an anime style to it. 

The art as expected by CLAMP is as amazing as ever and its honestly really good seeing them do art outside of Cardcaptor Sakura which they’ve been way too heavily focused on admitely lately and its good to see them go back to do doing stuff outside of it since its been a while. 

Lot of the original stories still retain its faithfulness while also adding onto too the story motifs clamp is notable for. 

You can watch the episodes in any order given how its all self contained procedual with its storytelling. 

They were all directed by different directors to give its own unique feel. 

Each episode had its own unique setting to it for example the little red riding hood episode, focuses on the popular ongoing topic of virtual reality and it defiently did had some cyberpunk motifs to it almost as if its a callback to one of their earlier works Clover. 

Cinderella’s case almost reminds me of Jigoku Shoujo in some aspects given the Geisha nature and vengeful young lead. 

The witch in Hansel and Gretel i guess you can call an evil version of Yuko from XXXholic but even older. (Can’t really say the same that super further in the manga if you know then you know what happens to her sadly. :/) Storywise its kind of like The Matrix with real world not being so real and something darker lurking within it.  

So to get this out of the way while admittedly since im more so familiar with the Disney variations that are more lighthearted takes, the CLAMP interpretation just like the originals the fairy tales were based on is pretty dark and can get bloody at times too. 

Its fairly short too about 6 parts when in reality theres alot of material to cover from the well documented collection the brothers grimm is famous for. 

The characters themselves are generally fine as is and yes Charllote Grimm actually did existed in the real world as the actual sister to the Grimm brothers. There isn’t really much storytelling to them on how they got into creating stories and collecting them probably saving that for a future season. 

After a while things start to be harder to follow a typical complaint of many clamp works like xxxholic for example. 

The music is pretty good too. 

Overall it was a decent anime. 

It gets 3 out of 5 stars. 

CLAMP has alot of potential in their hands so hopefully they can build more off this soon once they finally finish off XXXholic and X/1999 and Legal Drug one day.