Ranked #363

Ludwig Kakumei (Manga)

A re-imagination of some of the Grimm Brother's classic fairy tales.

First of all, the art is some of the best I've ever had the pleasure of encountering. The character drawings are a real pleasure for the eye, highly detailed and expressive. Her well-defined traces give a strong, attractive image of the characters, and yet still she is able to maintain a full background without it detracting from the foreground. While I am not fully familiarized with Kaori-sensei's work, I believe well enough that this form of character design, clearly one of her strong points, is also one of her weak points, as I shall attempt to explain.

What happens, when a character is detailed to the extreme is that, to some readers (I would not dare to speak for all of us), the art becomes so visually intense, that it begins to distract somewhat from the remainder of the work, and generally becomes tiring to the eyes.Another example of this, although a bit better balanced off when compared to what happens in Ludwig Kakumei, is the works of Masakazu Katsura, in which the art, while maintaining a certain level of detail, is softened by a less 'sharp' character design and shadowing, that blends naturally into the background.

As for the story, short and sweet. It may seem, at first, to be of a rather episodic nature, but the author quickly picks up on the small strings and hints through the story, to quilt them together in a wonderfully open-ended conclusion. How this can be considered 'good', is very easily felt by the reader, upon seeing Prince Ludwig mature as a character. As Kaori-sensei wrote in her final notes on the series, the Lui-sama at the beginning of the story is much different from the one in the beginning, leaving the open "Happy Ever After" a satisfying one. His companions also receive a good amount of background and personality development, and one of them participates strongly towards the final plot-twist, something remarkable, in particular for a short story, a style that tends to ignore the backing characters.

The darker view on the Grimm brother's tales, proposed by the author, ends up sitting with a good degree of comfort and stability on the border between parody and drama: The introspection into the dark motifs and motivations behind each of the fairy tale princesses is finely peppered with the occasional pun or light-hearted event, without ever detracting from a firm continuity.

All in all, Ludwig Kakumei's rich artwork and interesting, alternative story make for a very enjoying read, and the darker overtones to the classic fairy tales are well balanced, as to please to, what I would tend to expect, a wider audience. A definite must for those who enjoy gothic imagery and selfish, narcissistic male leads. read more

Story: Seeing as how it's based off of classic Grim fairytales, it's not the most original concept in the world. A lot of people do the whole "tale with a twist" thing, but taking it for what it is I think it does a pretty good job of changing the twist in unexpected ways. It's definitely not for you if you're looking for something terribly deep and insightful. It's a nice, light-hearted, slightly gothic (putting those "light-hearted" and "gothic" together almost sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it?) story to be read purely for recreational purposes. Btw, the first story with Snow White shows a very different main character than the rest of the story, so don't be decieved by it. It's a bit darker in the first story.

Art: I am definitely a fan of Kaori's artwork. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to everyone, but I think it's deviously original. You can always recognize her work. Plenty of eye-candy to go around.

Character: Personally, I didn't get a real emotional connection with many of the characters. It's not that you could expect much, though, from such a short story where characters only last for one chapter. There really isn't time for amazing character development. Still, I think for this type of lighter story, there's enough to keep it entertaining, which is the ultimate goal, right?

Enjoyment: As I said before, it's not something to make you contemplate life and all its wonders, but it's definitely fun. At the very least, it should make you chuckle a couple of times :) Also, if you're into lots of cleavagey "fan service," then you'll find plenty of it here.

One other thing I found funny while reading was when one female character reveals her shoe size to be 27.5 cm which is about a size 9 US. They go on about how huge her feet were and even said that if they were any bigger "she'd be a gorilla." I wear around a size ten T.T stupid me and my clunky American feet... read more