Ludwig Kakumei

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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...

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.

Fairytales are, or should be, an important part of everyne's childhood, and some of the most famous and beloved are the ones by the brothers Grimm. Who doesn't know Snow White? Little Riding Red Hood? Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty? Since a few years ago, it became a trend make the fairy tales more grimdark, saying that's the way they were before Disney made the movies. Don't get me wrong, some original versions can be really creepy or sinister sometimes, with some gory scenes, but the main difference this new versions and the original is that the original versions got only some dark scenes, with a ... pretty more sinister subtext underneath, while this new versions were most of them dark for the being dark's sake. There were some amazing works, of course, but this is not, unfortunetly.
I usually like dark works, but this manga cross the line to be just painful to read. The main character is a vain, selfish and arrogant prince with a misogynistic love for dead women because quiet are more beautiful, and thinks one of most important hings in a woman is...her bust size. To add more insult, this character and his opinions were written by a woman. He acts abusive toward his servent, who's only in the story for being a comic bystander, except in the Riding Red Hood arc, whn we discover the prince manipulated a little girl when he was a kid to make her murder her parents, just because she was his servsant's friend. If you don't feel disgusted by this character after reading what i wrote...
The rest of cast are most of them really dislikeable, or better said, despicable. We got a masochyst witch dressed like a stereotiaped otaku's s&m dream who loves how mean the prince is with her, a creepy stepbrother who has to be worse tha n the main character in a poor attemp to make him look like a nice guy, and a lot of princess that are just beautiful, but bitchy/only care for looks/manipulative. And that's the worst part.
If they were just princesses the mangaka created from her on imagination, i wouldn't mind at all, but the problem is they are based on the beloved characters from the classic fairy tales. Snow White is turned into a disgusting manipulative creepy looking gothic-lolita, losing all the charm from the original tale. I don't mind reimaginating fairytales and give the audience a different piont of view, but this work doesn't show any respect from the original, until the point of becoming an insult. The only character that gets a new refershing point of view was the sleeping beauty's version.
This title is a shojo, so you're gonna find some of the typical gangs that would be funny if there wasn't for the disturbing context. It looks like it want to be a dark outtake of typical fairytales, but still want so desperatly to appeal teenage girls.
But there's not only fairy tales the victims: the women's portrayal is just offensive. Most of the female cast is annoyng, shallow and obnoxious. And like i said before, it was writting by a woman.