This Fairy Tale Oozes A Lack of Imagination

Grimms Notes Episode 1 Review

Fractured fairy tales are hardly a new thing and retellings of these old tales have occurred forever as they first got passed down orally before being committed to paper and spreading even further. We’ve seen modern franchises use an array of fairy tale characters in new and interesting ways to produce shows and movies that are fun and kind of inspired. And we’ve also seen the hack jobs where people think just throwing a standard character at us with a minor twist counts as a stroke of genius.

Unfortunately, Grimms Notes in episode 1 seems like it is going to fall into the latter category as we have a Cinderella who apparently casts magic spells by some poor jiggling on glass slippers, an Alice that is a front line sword fighter, a Robin Hood who so far has only exhibited one definable personality trait and that is an obsessions with guns, and lastly a Goliath for whatever reason. They aren’t all Grimms characters and even if they were they are more or less re-imagined by someone who only had the vaguest of notions of what the character was like in the first place so outside of the name you may as well just chuck the rest of the reference off a cliff.

However, a lack of authenticity, creativity, or decent innovation (as opposed to just changing the heck out of something) on an old property probably wouldn’t be enough for me to have walked away from this episode with such a sour taste in my mouth. No, that taste was reserved strictly for the banal dialogue and illogical plot. When about two thirds of the way through the episode you realise who the villain is, all I could think was, I hope she wins. Honestly, her motivation makes perfect sense and the idea that somehow all these characters should adhere to their books of fate strictly and without variation is just kind of problematic as a theme. While the reason for it has yet to be explained, it just makes the team we’re supposed to think are the heroes seem like a bunch of pedantic jerks.

On top of all of that, it is just dull. As I said, we’ve seen fractured fairy tales many a time so without bringing anything particularly new or interesting to the table, this one needed some really solid execution and while it is ‘fine’, it isn’t exactly noteworthy. While I will watch another episode and hope that perhaps the actual main characters find a way to make me believe that they are actually doing something worth doing, this one isn’t getting off to a great start.

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GRIMMSNOTES ORIGINAL GAME SOUNDTRACK

• Grimms Notes Series Review
• Episode 1: This Fairy Tale Oozes a Lack of Imagination
• Episode 2: The Fine Art of Not Explaining Things
• Episode 3: In The Absence Of Direction, Make Your Fate
• Episode 4: Are Destiny and Fate Really All Just Written?
• Episode 5: The Death of the Dream, the Birth of a Despairing Villain
• Episode 6: Every Episode Makes Me Question Their Motives More
• Episodes 7 and 8: The Outlook is Grimm
• Episode 9: This Story is Getting a Little Grimm
• Episode 10: In The Absence of a Reasonable Argument, Rely on Sophistry
• Episode 11: Alice The Disciplinarian in Wonderless Land
• Episode 12: I’m Left Not Disappointed As I Expected Nothing
• Images from: Grimms Notes. Dir. S Shizutaka. Brain’s Base. 2019.