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.