Netflix Already Has The Perfect Brothers Grimm Replacement With This 6-Episode Dark Fantasy Series
An experienced Editor representing Canada via ScreenRant's Team Anime, J.R. has been reading manga since the first printing of Shonen Jump in North America. This passion drove him to write about anime, manga, and manhwa since 2022, having recently served as Lead Anime Editor for ComicBook.com.
His favorite moments in media coverage include reviewing the series premieres of Zom 100 and Bleach: TYBW Part 2 back-to-back and briefly meeting Junji Ito at a VIZ gallery event in 2023.
Despite years of sanitized retelling courtesy of high-profile Disney films, the fairy tales of Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm have persistently held onto their macabre roots across the past two centuries. It's led to a cult fascination with their darkest stories and general depictions of German folklore, including a multitude of more unfiltered film adaptations. One of its more fun outings mixes this darkness with an eccentric humor characteristic of director Terry Gilliam with his 2005 film, The Brothers Grimm. Featuring the star duo of Matt Damon and the late Heath Ledger, the film was certainly far from a box office win, it's retained status as a memorable cult gem of the era.
But unfortunately, not everybody is easily able to stream The Brothers Grimm internationally without access to a VPN. The story of two con artists in a Napoleonic-era occupied Germany posing as exorcists, the Brothers Grimm soon find themselves in over their heads in the face of a curse that can only be undone by true courage. Featuring a reasonably original plot but with noteworthy ties to classics like Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, and more, the film brings the pair up against a fascinating spin on Snow White's Evil Queen. But even for those who have seen The Brothers Grimm and seek yet another inventive retelling, Netflix quietly released an intriguing alternative one might not expect.
Netflix Quietly Released A Gorgeous Grimm Fairy Tales Retelling In 2024
Rather than opting for a strictly loyal adaptation of the Brothers Grimm's stories or trying another original story route, WIT Studio's The Grimm Variations released in 2024 with a small six-episode anime miniseries, each depicting a classic fairy tale with different genre spins. They will often even subvert expectations of who is the actual hero in given stories, such as a darkly manipulative Cinderella with Kiyoko in the first episode, or sci-fi infusions such as in the augmented reality hunting grounds of Little Red Riding Hood or the Trigun-like execution of The Town Musicians of Bremen. It can be a bit of a shock to the system to see occasional radical retellings, but they each represent interesting, even risky, swings at taking old archetypes to create something new and exciting.
The Brothers Grimm was not much different from this, either, in that it too told an original story set in the backdrop of a world strongly bearing traces of the original fairy tales. Hints of Rapunzel exist within the depiction of the Mirror Queen, teases of Little Red Riding Hood and a cursed woodsman transformed into a werewolf huntsman make an appearance, and various other glimpses and motifs exist to enhance the movie's world. What The Grimm Variations does, instead, takes those same themes and concepts to even greater extremes, creating a fascinating Netflix-exclusive ride that's worth at least one binge for those craving a novel spin on old classics.
The Grimm Variations Features The Work Of A Familiar Anime Supergroup
While it's certainly already a heady ride diving into an alternate take on The Pied Piper of Hamelin dealing with systemic oppression, or the human hunting grounds of Little Red Riding Hood, The Grimm Variations ties together its stories with a distinctive, even familiar, visual style. Handling the original character designs for this anime anthology are none other than CLAMP, the group whose shifting roster had previously worked on hits like Cardcaptor Sakura, Magic Knight Rayearth, Tokyo Babylon, and far too many more to name here.
For those who grew up in the era in which The Brothers Grimm released, CLAMP's work was particularly popular at the time, so to see such a fun overlap presents an interesting opportunity.
The Grimm Variations' six episodes in order are as follows:
- Cinderella
- Little Red Riding Hood
- Hansel and Gretel
- The Elves and the Shoemaker
- The Town Musicians of Bremen
- Pied Piper of Hamelin
Nothing here is to say The Grimm Variations is meant to replace one's experiences of The Brothers Grimm, and the same is especially true for Ledger fans who look back fondly upon his filmography. But it's also not even the first time a Netflix anime, by WIT Studio, has handled the subject of European folklore in six episodes or fewer. At roughly three hours of collective runtime, The Grimm Variations may prove a uniquely engaging spin on classic stories, and something both entirely new and with low necessary commitment to enjoy for Netflix viewers on a given weekend.
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The Brothers Grimm
- Release Date
- August 26, 2005
- Runtime
- 118 minutes
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Petr Ratimec
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Barbora Lukesová
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Anna Rust
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Jeremy Robson
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.