Grimms Notes The Animation is Underrated!

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Grimms Notes The Animation first impressions is part of my Ultimate Guide for the 2019 Anime Winter Season. A guide with more than 100 pages with a first impressions to every Anime coming out in the Winter Season. You can get your own here (it’s free!).

Title: Grimms Notes The Animation (MAL Page)

MAL Score: 5.71

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure, Magic

Number of Episodes: Unknown

Broadcast: Fridays (JST)

Studios: Brain’s Base

Source: Game

Duration: 24 min. per ep.

Rating: Unknown

Synopsis

Grimms Notes The Animation takes place in a fantasy World created by “Story Tellers”. Everyone on this world is part of a classic story such as the Red Riding Hood and are presented with a “book of fate” when they are born. In this book, it is written all of their lives and people always know what their future will be.

However, Chaos Tellers have been appearing and changing the course of the story. Their objective is always to destroy the balance of the world in order to finish that specific world. But, our main characters, holders of blank books of fate travel from one world to another to save them from destruction.

Story

I’m a true believer that when you write a fantasy world that the first thing you should do is to present the world and explain how things work in that said world. Grimms Notes fail on this. Only in episode 3, after already saving 2 different worlds, we are awarded with Ex’s, the main character, back-story which is starting to explain some things. However, it’s still not fully explained. At this point, I still don’t understand how all worlds are connected with each other.

Being its source a game, I suppose that the main character will gain more transformations every time he beats a boss. However, that is also not explained… But, it can be like a Persona 3 type of thing where his ability to have more power than the rest will be explained by the end of the story(?)… I don’t know, again, how things work in the world are not well explained so far.

Nevertheless, as a Grimm Brothers’ lover, I just can’t say that I’m not liking the story. I love how they are picking classic stories which made part of my childhood such as Cinderella or The Red Riding Hood and giving it a twist.

Characters

The characters are also not that developed yet. The first two episodes are centered in the story we are watching and their main characters instead of the characters of the Anime itself. The story in the first episode is the Red Riding Hood, the second is Don Quixote.

Only in the third episode we get to meet Ex’s world and are able to get to know more information about him. In this case, he is a character from Cinderella’s story. I like Ex a lot, but I have to say he is not really that complex… I mean, he clearly has passed a bad time because of being bullied by not having his story written when he was born… Even his foster parents are not ok with it and he knows about it. So, it’s sad to see that he really didn’t change much during the years. He continues to be the kind guy who wants to help everyone.

But, do not take me wrong… He is a nice character and I would love to have him as a friend… But, on the other hand, he could have been a little more explored. They had a great back-story for him, so it’s a bummer to see that it was not used to create a more complex character.

On the other hand, the characters’ from the fairy tale stories are way more interesting to follow and watch.

Animation

The animation is pretty good and nice to look at. I mean, it’s what you could expect from a 2019 Anime show. But, I mean, there are so many Anime shows that don’t even get to that level xD

When it comes to movement, it’s one of those Anime shows that only the character who has to move will be moving. Meaning, the background is almost always a fixed frame. Is it that a huge big of a deal? Not, really! But, it’s something that I need to take into account nonetheless! We are in 2019…

When it comes to battles, again it’s nothing that will owo you, but it does the job! In other words, it won’t make you on the edge of your seat rooting for your favorite character, but it isn’t boring either.

Audio

The intro music is a little bit of generic. If I just listen to the music without watching the intro there are at least 4 or 5 Intro songs that come to mind. Nevertheless, it’s nice! I mean, sometimes generic does not really mean bad, right?

The voice acting is pretty well done! The voices go well with the characters and it’s smooth.

The background soundtrack is also very nice! Most of the scenes have a nice piece of music going on the behind that works well with what is happening. Moreover, the music is always changing which is great! I think that they may have used the soundtrack from the game (?) I mean, normally games have a large array of music, so it would make sense to use the ones already in the game 😛

Final Verdict

To be honest, I think this is the first Anime based on a game that actually made me go look for the game itself! Unfortunately, I believe the game is not available in Portugal… At least I couldn’t find it :/

The premise is nice! I love how they picked classical fairy tales and gave them their own twist. It makes me remember Kingdom Hearts a little bit, but with a different approach.

As an Anime by itself, I think this one is a little bit underrated. It’s true that it has some problems, but I strongly believe those problems, especially involving the plot will be fixed along the season. Nevertheless, it seems is going to be a not that deep kind of story.

So, if you like the genres of fantasy, adventure, magic, that kind of stuff I believe this is a good one for you to try out! Moreover, even if you are really not that interested in those genres but love those classical bedtime stories, you should also try thi

Final Score: Average!