Stepmother- Grimms Fairy Tale Classics- Ane to Otouto

The stepmother (Who's a witch too, but her character name is Stepmother) from the episode Brother and Sister, known as Ane to Otouto in Grimm's Fairy Tale Classics, aka Grimm Masterpiece Theater, or グリム名作劇場 Gurimu Meisaku Gekijō in Japan. I'll give you a brief character/episode breakdown for this one, then talk about the character/lora and prompts. If you were around in '89, '90, you maybe remember this one, you can still find most of the episodes out there on Youtube and occasionally it comes around again on Amazon Prime.

So that headware is really, really overpowering, you may want to neg out headware, snakes, snake head dress if you don't want it, or lower lora strength. Cape too. I can gen Rosa, but she keeps coming out with stepmoms coloring. Can probably gen her by herself, but not with stepmom.

So's, I wasn't expecting much of this lora, I'm running through most of my top Grimms Fairy Tale Classics picks quickly, but turns out she's actually fairly active in the story and has ALOT of facial expressions. This is something I've come to appreciate doing these, just because you like the character and just because they're the plot driver doesn't mean there's alot of animation out there (I'm still amazed I got the witch from Briar Rose off the ground). I left a few of the Sister/Queen in the samples as there wasn't a good way to cut her, you MIGHT be able to gen her with effort but this is a stepmother lora, I had more than enough samples of her. She has a human form, but it only shows up for like 3 frames, so I didn't include it, more on that after the breakdown.

Ok, SO! Brother and Sister is, get this, about a brother and a sister! Rosa and Rudolph, and you'll understand why thats funny later. We start out with your typical setup, their stepmother is whipping our very ghibli looking siblings with a whip, why, cuz it builds character and helps even her out! This kinda character always has a dead nice guy husband, and you gotta wonder if she drove him to drink himself to death, married him for the money, or is just bitter these things always happen to her. Maybe all 3? Oh, and I should mention this, her human form is really super basic, she looks like a Go Nagai background character, I love characters that have alternate forms but if I thought it was worth including I would.

Our siblings run into the woods, but our stepmother is also a witch (this happens ALOT), and she is steamed kids ran away from their whupping, and frankly, is a pretty miserable villain even as Grimm Fairy Tale Classics villains go (more on that later). She curses her forest to where whoever drinks from one of the pools will change into an animal. Rosa's little brother isn't really mature enough to handle this gig, so after resisting drinking from pools that'll turn him into a lion and a wolf, he's gonna drink no matter what so sister finally lets him drink from a pool that turns him into a deer (Rudolph, get it?) We get some awww siblings moment, and jump to a few years later. A young king is looking to catch Rudolph, he's got a gold collar and is pretty unusual, goes into the woods, doesn't catch him, but tracks him to the siblings' cozy forest cottage where sister takes him in.

This being Grimms Fairy Tale Classics (and this also happens ALOT, I mean, under these exact circumstances), the king falls instantly in love with this Minmay looking girl living out in the boonies and proposes marriage. Hey, cottage to queen, skip the jump to princess, young good looking lovey guy, I could get on board with that. They marry, Rosa gets a Queenly glowup, and Rudolph is just as happy as a deer can be, as he's permanently off limits to hunters and lives in the castle too (well the grounds anyway).

Rosa (we'll call her queen from here on) has a kid, and this steams stepmother, who as these things go, has her remote viewing crystal ball and is really bitter after all these years and hates cute babies and hates Minmay looking queens, but I think her real problem is they're fine without her and couldn't care less if she grows a second head. Don't blame Grimm's for the paper thin motivation, that IS the original fairy tale, for serious! They'll tie it up in true 80's fashion though, just wait.

The stepmother teleports to the queen's chamber (she gets some cool teleportation effects), kidnaps the queen, and then supermans out of there (no really), and flies to this desolate mountain. In the original, she KILLS the queen and replaces her with her disfigured biological daughter which is all kinds of too complex for a kids show, so we'll go with the kidnapping, which will work just as well. The pacing is pretty good on this! The stepmother further tells her the kings gotta proclaim an unselfish love to her to break all these curses and what not, she teleports peace out, man does she need a hobby!

The queen loves her kid so much she kind of force projects (remember those Star Wars ghosts, kinda like that) to take care of her baby, the nanny and king see this, and get the details from star wars ghost queen. King heads to the mountain, proclaims his love, what a guy, breaks all the curses and the stepmom's crystal ball with the power of love (this also happens alot). We get a funny scene of stepmom with the classic well that blew up in my face look, and little bro turns back into a human and dances around and I'm kind of surprised they slipped that past the censors even in the US version!

Stepmom wanders through the woods, looking mighty singed and beat up and takes a tumble into a tree cursing love, she hates love man, (this kind of thing happened all the time in the 80s), takes a tumble, cuz we're not going to burn her at the stake like they did in the original fairy tale (they REALLY hated witches and stepmoms, that much is clear to me).

So's, why this lora? I toldja, I like Grimms Fairy Tale Classics and I love the design on alot of these characters. You can see from stepmoms witch design they probably had Maleficent in mind but I kinda feel like there's some Venger from Dungeons and Dragons. Although who knows, she also really reminds me of Dragon Quest enemies, which I gotta weakness for too.

Ok, so, again, you MIGHT be able to gen the princess with "1girl, long brown hair, white skin, pink dress, blue eyes", but don't get your hopes is all I'm saying, I just threw that in as a hey, you never know, keyword for those Aneto0tout0Sist3r might help. I MIGHT do a separate lora of her, you wanna help that along, tips are appreciated.

For stepmom: 1girl, tall, colored skin, purple skin, thin arched eyebrows, beady black eyes, blush stickers, mature face, black fingernails, red cape with dark green lining, red robe, red cloak, snake head dress, staff (you MAY want to use fine lines under eyes)

Her snake head dress is a dark blue with snakes that have tongues and eyes (and they actually move and have expressions if you watch the animation close), they've got green pipping/bellies. If that doesn't work for you, get less detailed or just use "horns".

Ok, so, here's what I like about stepmom, aside from the fact that she's a magic stepmom who's into whip play which already puts her in my running. She's really expressive for a Grimms character. Lot of scenery chewing up and frankly, funny faces, its kind of surprising how rubber faced she is for being such a scumbag villain. So you might really try some different expressions, I've always been terrible at tagging but I'll trust the models and samples to do their work.