General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Grimm Variations (グリム組曲)

The Grimm Variations (グリム組曲, Gurimu Kumikyoku, "Grimm's Suite") is a 2024 Japanese original net animation anthology on Netflix that reinterprets six Brothers Grimm fairy tales with dark twists, exposing what its synopsis calls the shadowy side of human desire.¹ The six episodes were produced by WIT Studio with original character concepts by the manga collective CLAMP, scripts by Michiko Yokote, and music by Akira Miyagawa, and all six premiered worldwide on April 17, 2024.²

Key fact	Detail
Format	Six-episode original net animation anthology, episodes 32–46 minutes, streamed exclusively on Netflix²^•³
Premiere	April 17, 2024, worldwide on Netflix²
Tales adapted	Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Town Musicians of Bremen, Pied Piper of Hamelin⁴
Core staff	Scripts Michiko Yokote; original character design CLAMP; character design Naohiro Osugi; music Akira Miyagawa; animation WIT Studio with production cooperation from Production I.G²
Producers	George Wada (producer), Taiki Sakurai (executive producer), produced by Netflix²
Voice cast	Misato Fukuen (Charlotte), Tatsuhisa Suzuki (Jacob), Kenji Nojima (Wilhelm); English dub features Anairis Quinones, Daman Mills, and A.J. Beckles¹^•⁵
Rating	TV-MA (16+ on Netflix Japan); Common Sense Media recommends age 16+ for intense fantasy violence¹^•⁶

Spoilers

Premise and framing device

The series is built around a fictional framing story. Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm collected fairy tales into a book, and they had a much younger sister, the innocent and curious Charlotte. One day, while the brothers told her a tale as usual, she looked melancholy and asked, "Do you suppose they really lived happily ever after?" The pages of Grimms' Fairy Tales are then presented from Charlotte's perspective, which sees the stories quite differently from her brothers.²

Executive producer Taiki Sakurai said the project began from his long-standing wish to make a work based on Grimm fairy tales, prompted by details in the famous tales that feel unnatural, such as whether Cinderella is really as demure as she appears. When he raised the idea with scriptwriter Michiko Yokote, she said she wanted to write it, and the project began moving; WIT Studio was the first studio approached, before the COVID-19 pandemic.⁷

Episodes and directors

Each of the six tales was helmed by a different director, working from Yokote's scripts, Osugi's character designs, and Miyagawa's music.⁴

"Cinderella" (シンデレラ), directed by Yoko Kanamori. A girl named Kiyoko who loves playing with dolls receives a new stepmother and stepsisters, who come to suspect they may be her new playthings.¹ The episode is set in what appears to be a wealthy Japanese household of roughly a century ago, and reverses the original by making the stepfamily the victims while Kiyoko manipulates them.⁸^•⁹
"Little Red Riding Hood" (赤ずきん), directed by Yasuhiro Akamatsu. In a dystopian future, Grey and his club of "wolves" use augmented reality to hunt and kill women for leisure, until he meets his first real-life prey, Scarlet.¹ Akamatsu described the episode as told from the wolf's viewpoint, following a young man who tastes the pleasure of killing and pays a large price.¹⁰
"Hansel and Gretel" (ヘンゼルとグレーテル), directed by Junichiro Hashiguchi. Deep in the forest, the children face a dilemma when an old woman tempts them with sweets and forbidden knowledge.¹
"The Elves and the Shoemaker" (小人の靴屋), directed by Yumi Kamakura.⁴
"The Town Musicians of Bremen" (ブレーメンの音楽隊), directed by Masato Takeuchi. Yokote put female characters at the forefront here, including personifications of the donkey, dog, cat, and rooster.¹¹
"Pied Piper of Hamelin" (ハーメルンの笛吹き), directed by Shintaro Nakazawa.⁴

Yutaro Kubo and Satomi Maiya directed the prologue and epilogue segments.²

Production

The project was announced in 2021, growing out of Netflix's 2020 partnership with CLAMP and other anime creators for new projects.⁴ WIT Studio president and producer George Wada said he joined because the series is almost entirely original and a new take on Grimm fairy tales with Netflix sounded enjoyable, adding that making original animation remains essential to the studio even as it works on long-running series.⁷ In a talk before the release, Wada also said that because the Grimm tales are known worldwide, the team tried to make the anime as "universal" as possible.¹¹

The anthology structure shaped the production itself: each episode changes era and genre, running from historical drama to science fiction, and each used a different art company, so the six stories differ in style.⁷ A reviewer noted that the art and animation stay consistent while settings and characters vary enormously from story to story.³ The opening animation, title cards, and episode subtitles were created by director Kazuhiro Hotchi of the studio DIRECTIONS, in a classical style that contrasts with the dark stories that follow.¹²

Music. Akira Miyagawa's score draws on classical repertoire in varied arrangements; reviews single out a polka-influenced version of Chopin's Funeral March.³ Akamatsu said the music recording for his episode was made with a live ensemble under Miyagawa's direction, and that the score reuses single pieces in entirely different arrangements, adding depth to the story.¹⁰

Reception and related media

On Rotten Tomatoes the season holds a 100% Tomatometer from 7 critics alongside a 33% Popcornmeter from fewer than 50 audience ratings.¹³ Critics praised the bold reinterpretation of familiar tales while noting uneven quality between episodes. Jonathon Wilson of Ready Steady Cut (4/5) argued the collection's power lies in nuanced changes rather than wholesale departures, and Charles Hartford of But Why Tho? (9/10) wrote that the broad selection of narrative styles means few viewers will love every entry.¹³ Panos Kotzathanasis of Asian Movie Pulse gave 6.5/10, finding the differences in quality and the heaviness of the episodes kept it from being binge-worthy.¹³ Common Sense Media recommends the series only for viewers 16 and older, citing death, dismemberment, and extreme physical abuse alongside its psychological complexity and moral ambiguity.⁶

A manga adaptation illustrated by Kōji Megumi was published by Kodansha, with the first volume released on April 17, 2024, reconstructing the tales through horror, science fiction, and fantasy perspectives.¹⁴ An academic study published in the Hacettepe University Journal of Faculty of Letters in December 2024 classified the series' Cinderella episode as an example of the anti-tale genre, reading its changes as a feminist reworking that asks what happens if Cinderella is not a passive heroine.¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Series and fictional screen worlds › Anime and manga › Anime series, episodes, and franchises › OVAs, ONAs, and streaming-original anime

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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