Grimms Notes the Animation

After watching episode 1 and reading through reviews, I think I have a pretty good handle on why this series isn't very good, and most likely won't be continuing on. Yes, there's problems with how its an anime made from a mobile game. The game closed before the anime came out and people are wondering why, but I can answer that. The anime was made in an effort to get people to play the game, but the anime didn't come out fast enough before the game ran out of money. What this means is that the anime has little to no funding now, so I'm suspecting this'll end much like Märchen Meidchen, in an animation horror show. Then there's the problem with the pacing. The anime treats one episode like a its a picnic basket and the tardis' illegimate love child, pushing about 3 episode's worth of plot into one episode. The reason for that is the mobilegame's story format. When you make a mobilegame, the story has to be concice and fast, there's no room to tell a story with pacing and time. But this causes a problem when you don't hire anyone to rewrite the story into an anime format, causing this badly paced mess. Next, the characters. Yes, there's a lot to be hoped from the strange gender hopping, but aside that I think they have a pretty good handle on making the characters seem different to each other. If we completely ignore the fact the research on the stories they have done seems lack-luster at best, the characters are clearly different personalities and they show it, albeit in a very basic way, in the episode. Sure, its more of them pointing at the different personalities with a search-light, rather than letting the differences show in a subtler way, but they're at least trying. The main problem, I think, the series has, is the fact that there's very very very very VERY little exposition. There isn't even a little start-of-the-episode monologue to get us started. Nothing. It feels like we're missing a starter episode 0, that would explain things to us. Yes, its explained, sorta, kinda, hurridly inbetween breaths, but it all comes in a machinegun like style with the actual story, you almost miss it. The viewer has no idea what is going on, unless they listen to every single word given and hope to god they can keep up. What the series needs is time, space, pacing, EXPLANATIONS. Even the characters don't get any explanations on who they are, why are they here, why are they fighting this "chaos teller", what does the chaos teller do, is it a real person or just human emotions being twisted, we know nothing! We don't even get a good explanation as to if the main character being "blank" is just abnormal or rare or if its impossible. Its like playing an RPG game with no lore section to read. Now that the obvious is out of the way, my main pet peeve with the story has time to shine: The main premise is at the same time both good and just plain idiotic! If we take all the info we get, which isn't much, everyone in this canon lives their lives according to the book they're given at birth, which has their whole life written out in it. This could be good! I could be so good! But its not. Because straight off the bat we're told the book is pretty much an actual telling of your life, down to the nitty-gritty of saying you don't meet any travelers during your life. Meaning that EVERYTHING is in this book. If you think about it for more than a minute, you realize this means that by reading this book, you can see into the future. The writer of this story isn't thinking about this for a minute. If they thought about this for more than 25 seconds would be a surprise to me. The writer has not at all realized, that by making the "lifebook" this way means that there is no way the "adventuring group" we see, could exist. The group could just read their books and go "Oh the Red Riding Hood is the Chaos Teller, it says so in my book" and that's the end of it. Whoever wrote this, literally was paid for an idea, wrote down a draft on some tissue paper, probably hoped the person paying for the draft (on tissue paper, written with lipstick borrowed from the café waitress serving the client and writer their coffee) would get someone else to rework and polish the draft and then has to watch in terror as their 15 word idea is used like its the bible, with zero thought put into it. But you know what REALLY grinds my gears?? They hired an excellent character designer. Someone who knows what they're doing, is producing great, personality filled design and clearly has costume design handled expertly. And their talent is being wasted on this napkin plot from a writer's nightmares. Someone, anyone, save this character designer! And on that note, find the person who wrote that first plot draft and give them a drink. A strong one. Tell them its not their fault this is what happened to the plot they came up with. TLDR; Anime made to save a mobilegame comes out after mobilegame runs outta cash, has all its money put into character design, leaving it with no money for writing. Awaiting slow and painful death since there's no cash to back it up anymore. ps. the animation is actually kinda good, they split their budget between character design and animation it seems.

The plot and concept are so promising and the anime looks beautiful, but boi do I feel like I committed a sin watching this anime. It feels like watching the middle of Naruto with 0 contexts and never hearing about it prior. I have 0 clues what's going, how any of these people got there like I have more backstory about the villain than the main protagonist who is a LITERAL TRAP. This anime is literally a goodwill anime version of power rangers x brothers of Grimm. I never write reviews, but I actually felt like this anime spit on my mother, made a PB&J sandwich in my kitchen with MY utensils, and kidnapped my dog, like I feel so disrespected. I rather go back to school and finish that degree.

A lot of the reviews have been posted after only the first episode which isnt completely fair to an anime. Also I did not find the first episode hard to follow at all for coming into the plot with no back story(as mentioned in a few other reviews it is fixed in episode 3). I enjoyed the pace as well most anime’s lately spend multiple episodes to accomplish minimal world building or story movement while this one gets it all out in one episode(I don’t enjoy huge cliff hangers every episode with it getting resolved in the next episode and then ending with another cliff hanger in a never ending cycle). I feel satisfied that it gets wrapped up in each episode as well as adding small bits to the overall anime mystery plot. The artistic style is extremely well done as well as animation and I feel like the characters demonstrate positive growth and life messages. It is definitely an anime to put in your weekly line up to have something to decompress with it has a more light hearted style. I feel like they do a decent job at keeping to the original stories(Snow White, Cinderella, etc.) while taking their own liberties. And overall for a Grimm style show I think it accomplishes what you would expect from that genre! It’s definitely worth the watch if that genre peeks your interest.

In a world where most everyone is assigned a role from a storybook, dictating what their lives will entail, there's very little room for surprise. Each story containing it's own place, filled with it's own players, in a repeating cycle. However there are those who can corrupt the story and send things off the rails. Enter the band of heroes, who work to stop the corruption and put the stories back in place. They accomplish this by channeling/transforming into storybook heroes, and using their special abilities. While the premise is somewhat unique, it's also a bit oddly executed. It's also very simple and not terribly involving. It's possible that this is targeted at a much younger audience, and if that's the case it's probably fine. But for many anime viewers this one is going to be a bit simplistic.