The Fruit of Grisaia

Mendacious Dec 1, 2014

3

I came to The Fruit of Grisaia with no prior knowledge of it. Having not played the visual novel it is based upon. This review is written after having watched the first five episodes. Unless I find myself with a remarkable presence of free time in the future I will not be returning to The Fruit of Grisaia. The animation is the standard fare these days. Music, opening and closing tracks are unexceptional. The Fruit of Grisaia's biggest problem is the same one that plagues most visual novel adaptations. Visual novels are mostly non-linear, their narrative follows a branching progression to create multiple possible outcomes in accordance with player's choices in the world. Anime like most artistic fiction is a linear story. The series creators thus must select one ending of visual novel and then lobotomize the other story routes to fit into the middle like unnecessary filler. No matter how well done, the result is always unsatisfactory. The stories flow is at best uneven and at worst fragmented and choppy. Story routes are covered that add nothing to the main narrative and can even lead the viewer to assuming that there is no main plot. It all just seems to idle along pointlessly. The Clannad series while very good was also let down by this. Clannad however had characters that elicit emotion from the viewer. The Fruit of Grisaia does not. This series ticks most of the generic anime tropes. The plot revolves about a bunch of special teenagers at a special school with no parents in sight. Why the school and students are special is not explained. Their abnormality is just assumed. If there is a main plot device then I can say that it has not been revealed by episode five. This far into the series next to nothing has happened. The exclusive focus seems to be on the interpersonal relations of the six main characters. By that I mean the five girls courting the protagonist Yuuji Kazami. Yuuji Kazami is stoic, very knowledgeable and athletic. It is just unfortunate that all he has is a cool personality. We learn very little else about him and never see any of his less desirable traits. He is the one good point of this series and reason why it gets two stars. The other characters are all instantly forgettable. Unless you have plenty of time to kill or just really want to watch the anime adaptation because you played the visual novel give this a pass.

deltaangelfire Nov 16, 2014

4

This is a review based on 7 of ?? episodes. This anime started off very promising - Characters had their own twists without being too hackneyed. The animation was above average, and the story seemed to be well paced.Then episode 6 came along.You can immediately tell when the producers just stopped caring. The animation quality was still good, but suddenly the story was rushed and heaped with mountains of exposition. There was no build-up or well thought out resolutions. Episode 7 was slightly better but both of these single episodes should easily have been a story arc at least 2 or 3 episodes in themselves. I'm highly disappointed, and if episode 8 does nothing to curb these trends, I will be dropping this.It started off so well too.UPDATED:Finished this season and started on S2This season is more and more obviously becoming a throw away prequel in my eyes. The pacing issues continued through the end of the series with an unprecedented and unnecessary 4 part finale for girl E which is almost more than girls A B C and D got combined. It also was the slowest and action lacking arc of the season and is the only damn arc that should've been cut down to two episodes. All in all the production team really dropped the ball on this one. Thankfully season 2 seems to be turning out alright but basically this one is a wash. I'd say to skip this one, but you need SOME setup for S2. How annoying. You can at least skip eps 11 and 12, you're not missing anything at all there.

GeniusPotato Aug 15, 2015

10

Imagine if you were to be in this series. Imagine if you were Yuuji Kazami himself. I know, touching isn't it? The Fruit Of Grisaia (Grisaia no Kajitsu) does exactly that. I wouldn't resemble this series to trigger any kind of feels at all, but it did. Instead, you would portray it as something to be sympathetic about, especially in The Eden of Grisaia (Grisaia no Rakuen), but i'll get to that later. This series has a unique way of combining multiple Genre's, or tags, and compile them into 1 tremendous plot. Goes like this: Yuuji Kazami (Main Protagonist) has transfered, or Enrolled, into Mihama Academy, in which only 4 Individuals (Excluding our Protagonist) are enrolled into this Academy. However, He is the first male student to be in this Academy. The thing is though, out of the combined 5 students, none of them have lived average or normal lives. Every single one of them has experienced a tragic event in their lives, one differing from the other. From Death of Parents, to loosing the one single most important person to you in your life, they are all unique in their own ways. If it Help's, you actually get to see what happened to them which resorted to their current state. I can't pick a favorite, due to the fact that they are all touching and sympathetic stories.    Not to Mention, this series has a Harem in it as well. Everyone of them has passionate feelings towards Yuuji. Look, i won't say anymore. Just, see for yourself, You won't regret it. Amazing Series it is in my opinion.