This review covers both seasons not just the first one Fairy tales have always been a staple in our lives whether because our parents read them to us we learned about them in school or saw the Disney movie versions. Everyones probably heard of at least one fairy tale like Snow White or The Little Mermaid. Even other countries have their own fairy tales or their own original spins on familiar ones. But what many dont know is that often the original sources are a lot darker and less kidfriendly than the interpretations we were exposed to. Such is the case of the fairy tales by the Brothers Grimm who are famous for having much darker and more cynical versions of popular fairy tales. Of course in the eighties Japan had the bright idea to adapt some of Grimms fairy tales into an anime series titled Grimm Masterpiece Theater in Japanese retitled Grimms Fairy Tale Classics in English. If you can believe it this was one of the first anime that Saban Entertainment dubbed and brought to America back in their heyday. It even got aired on Nick Jr of all things. I was born in 1993 so I never saw it growing up but I became friends with many people who did grow up with it. But because of Sabans tendency to never put stuff they license out on home video or in some cases not completely many episodes of this series were considered lost media until fairly recently. Thanks to Discotek Media not only finally rereleasing this series on BluRay in 2021 but even released the Japanese version with English subs. Curious I bought both sets and wanted to see what this was all about. Now Grimms Fairy Tale Classics isnt your typical anime following one set of characters in a singular narrative. Rather each episode is a standalone retelling of different fairy tales though there are some twoparters and only one fourparter. You have common ones like Snow White Cinderella Little Red Riding Hood Rapunzel and Beauty and the Beast but also some very obscure ones like The Coat of Many Colors King Bluebeard Godfather Death The Water Nixie and Brother and Sister. Basically you can watch any episode of this anime and not feel like you skipped an episode save for the twoparters and fourparter. Some things are changed from book to TV such as leaving out certain characters for the sake of streamlining while others are expanded upon such as giving some characters names and welldefined personalities that they didnt have in the original source. One thing I did notice though upon watching both the censored English dub and uncensored Japanese version is that the latter names some characters in some others but most of the others dont have names while the English dub goes out of its way to name every character possible whenever theyre able For example: Cinderellas pigeon friends have no names in Japanese but in English theyre named Algernon and Gwendolyn. In King Bluebeard the main female character is named Josephine in English but has no name in Japanese. Do be warned though: If you plan on showing Grimms Fairy Tale Classics to your kids or plan on watching it yourself dont expect it to be a cutesy rosy affair like the various Disney movies because not only is this series more faithful to their original sources this means that they are dark. Granted Saban censored a lot of the darker parts in the English dub and there are some episodes that are equally sugary or comedic such as Little Red Riding Hood or The Marriage of Mr. Fox but many of them are not only dark in their atmosphere but their themes as well. In the Japanese version at least when characters get cut blood appears without censorship. Many fairy tales depicted show death cruelty questionable ethics moral conflicts and murder as huge themes and several of them have genuinely scary imagery like monsters being melted alive in graphic detail or characters being injured abused or even murdered. One episode The Coat of Many Colors shows the main character Aleia experiencing what is basically PTSD after her mentally insane father tries to force her to marry him before accidentally killing himself. One episode even shows a naked preteen boy complete with an uncensored penis. Yes really. Of course Japan has always had less restrictive standards on whats appropriate for kids shows compared to countries like America and Canada. But again I always respect Japans kids cartoons for going against the grain. Its what made me love anime in the first place but some parts were a little much such as again the brief instance of child nudity. As far as the technical aspects go Grimms Fairy Tale Classics is...okay. The animation tends to fluctuate at times with some episodes being very well animated and others...not so much. In one episode The Frog Prince the titular frog is chased around the dining room by a dog and one frame shows a womans hair flying wildly...and being frozen in place while the animals are chasing each other. Im pretty sure hair when blown upward doesnt just stay in place in midair. It doesnt help that sometimes the character designs change in every episode what with every episode being standalone retellings of different fairy tales. Some characters will look more realistic while others are deliberately more cartoony with dot eyes and overexaggerated expressions. This isnt necessarily a bad thing as this makes each adaptation of each fairy tale stand out. But dont expect everything to look completely the same in every episode. I also find the music to be rather mixed as well. I mean overall the soundtrack is fine but often times it uses a weird variety of modern instruments like electric guitar and synthesizers making the more medievalfocused fairy tales feel weirdly anachronistic. It also doesnt always match the mood of a scene either. In one episode Bearskin weirdly comedic music plays right after a mans suicide attempt is interrupted. Youre not going to find much in the way of character development here as again every episode focuses on a different fairy tale rather than one singular narrative with one set of characters. Honestly though many of the adaptations go out of their way to expand on the original fairy tales giving characters much more characterization than they did in their original sources. For example in Snow White and Rose Red the hunter who is the bears brother doesnt do much in the original fairy tale other than get married to Rose Red but here hes given an actual personality and time to get to know Rose Red before they marry at the end. This is especially prevalent in Snow White which is the only fairy tale to be given four whole episodes rather than one or two and because of this I think its the best adaptation of Snow White. For one the actual character of Snow White actually has a personality and is much more threedimensional compared to say Disneys Snow White. I also found the dwarves to be pretty likeable as well even if the show couldnt focus on all of them Monday/Chick is my favorite out of them. Hes best dwarf. That being said some decisions the creators made in giving certain characters certain types of personalities are rather suspect. For one Leonora the princess in The Frog Prince is depicted as a whiny spoiled brat who wants nothing to do with helping the princeturnedfrog and when it seems like she almost kills him due to a temper tantrum all she thinks about is whatll happen to her...and she somehow marries the prince and lives happily ever after with him despite having done absolutely nothing to deserve it. Seriously I wanted to punch her every time she opened her mouth. Similarly I have no sympathy for Rapunzels biological parents because the whole thing started due to the mother throwing tantrums about wanting to eat magical cabbage like a petulant child KNOWING those cabbages are cursed and her husband is equally so for refusing to put his foot down and then they both proceed to forget that their child was stolen and dont even bother looking for her ever. I also didnt like The Naughty Spirit not because of its dark content which I liked but because I found its overall tone to be needlessly meanspirited and two of the main characters to be unlikeable asshats who were more concerned about their own safety and constantly blaming the drummer boy for circumstances that they basically brought on themselves. There were also times when I felt like the fairy tales being adapted could have benefited from having an extra episode or two like Snow White and Cinderella did. For example I liked The Six Swans but the amount of content it goes through along with its rather brisk pacing made it feel rather overstuffed and it barely seemed to have time to breathe or flesh out its characters. This is mainly because the second season of the anime called New Grimm Masterpiece Theater in Japanese does away with twoparters and has every episode be a standalone. While this format does work for certain fairy tales like Snow White and Rose Red and The Old Woman in the Woods it does result in a lot of fairy tales that had more content feeling like they were just compressed and not being allowed time to really spread their wings. That being said I dont want to end this review on a negative note. For this one Im going to list my top 10 favorite Grimms Fairy Tale Classics episodes and my top 5 least favorite episodes. Favorite Episodes: 1. The Coat of Many Colors 2. Snow White 3. Snow White and Rose Red 4. Hansel and Gretel 5. King Bluebeard 6. Beauty and the Beast 7. The Old Woman In The Woods 8. King Grizzlebeard 9. Red Riding Hood 10. Jorinde and Joringel Least Favorite Episodes: 1. The Frog Prince 2. The Naughty Spirit 3. Rapunzel 4. Brother and Sister 5. The Golden Goose I dont have as much of an attachment to this anime as others who grew up with it did but after watching the series I can totally see why people fell in love with it back when it first aired on Nick Jr back in the eighties. Grimms Fairy Tale Classics doesnt try to dumb down the visions that the Brothers Grimm had for their stories or interpretations of other fairy tales Sabans English dub did though that was more due to strict broadcast regulations in the US back in the day and often times expands on them when it has the chance. Definitely check it out if youre interested in an old treasure. Now that Discotek Media released the series on BluRay for the first time ever its now widely available after being lost to time If you want to keep this series alive buy the BluRay sets and while youre at it check out the special feature video on the second seasons BR as one of the producers at Discotek Media talks in detail about how they found the English masters for the series which had pretty awful video quality and painstakingly replicated Sabans edits to fit the English dub in order to present said dub in better video quality. One thing I found absolutely hilarious in that special feature is that when said producer talks about The Naughty Spirit he explicitly uses the term isekai to describe the soldiers being whisked into Hell...which really makes me laugh in the best way possible. But yeah Grimms Fairy Tale Classics isnt perfect but after being gone for so long I think this series deserves to be seen and talked about again.