Random Review: Grisaia no Kajitsu [First Four Routes]

Note: Spoiler-filled impressions for the first four routes of the anime. Angelic Howl to be covered separately. 

Grisaia no Kajitsu

[SPOILER WARNING]

While I didn’t have the time to do an episodic coverage of Grisaia no Kajitsu’s anime adaptation, I thought it would be nice to do a random review for it, given that I originally expressed interest in covering it back at the start of the season. Generally, it falls foul to the most common problem many visual novel adaptations have, in the sense that it attempts to cover over 50 hours of possible game play time into a single cour – and as such, its biggest issue is that it’s rushed, extremely so at times. This is the perpetual fear faced by anyone who watches an adaptation of their favourite visual novel, and I’m sure a lot of old fans have a lot to say about how they’ve done this. There are policy reasons behind it, of course – they can’t simply pick Chiruchiru and Ama-nee over the rest, for example, or all the Yuumin fans will be after them with box cutters. And more objectively, each route has its own unique story that would be a waste to skip out on, even if it ends up rushed. I did enjoy this, for what it is – but for first-time fans like myself, this feels like an intro into what the proper VN can offer. And for VN fans, this is fanservice. This is one of the reasons why I hope Rewrite will never, ever get an anime adaptation.

I’m not really a fan of doing spoiler-free reviews (which is why I don’t do those individual ‘overall review’ posts some of the other writers do) so I’ll just outline my thoughts on each of the routes below, in the order the anime covered them – Angelic Howl will be covered in a separate post, as it was adapted more comprehensively and I found I had quite a lot to say about it. Trying to keep spoiler-free would end up with me being vague, unclear and mysterious anyway. Also, for the record Amane is best girl.

Michiru Route

‘Dead, yet alive…’

It is no secret that all five girls have issues. This is confirmed purely by the fact that they attend Mihama Academy in the first place – to an extent, it’s a place they’re confined to in order to keep them away from the rest of the world. Or the rest of the world away from them. That, and the blatant emphasis on everything being ‘normal’ suggests the exact opposite, and Michiru is no exception to that.

To be honest, I didn’t think much of her to begin with – I suppose it was nice that she subverted the tsundere trope by pretending and rehearsing to be one, though I suspect there’s a bit of that in her deep down. And her multiple personality issue being caused by a heart transplant was just something I accepted in stride. The fact that everything’s hinted to be much darker than it appears on the surface makes you expect things – neither the cat dying nor her suppression drugs fazed me, and the self-harm and suicide attempts were all things I foresaw as within the scope of the series. As such, while it was very captivating I can’t say it provoked much of a response from me – partly because I’m not much of a Michiru fan, and partly because things were hampered by the rushed pacing and a mood whiplash as events escalated quickly. Nevertheless, it was a generally a very serious route that dealt with serious themes so long as you maintained suspension of disbelief.

What really got me was Yuuji’s decision to bury Michiru alive. He genuinely attempted to kill her. This was when I sat up and thought: ‘holy shit, this is quite something’. I also thought: ‘this guy is a bastard, isn’t he’. I don’t often get surprised or caught off-guard by anime much anymore, so I’m someone who really values shock factor – that’s not really the correct term in this case, but it was different. And most importantly, I didn’t expect it. I thought it was a scare tactic, and that Michiru would quickly learn she in fact wanted to live – yet she ended up hallucinating for three days before she escaped on her own. It would have been even more terrifying if we’d been given the perspective Yuuji had, outside the box – as Michiru said, what would he have done if she just never got out and died there?

Yumiko Route

‘Her birth itself was a mistake…’

In a sentence, this route was Unlimited Rushed Works. I didn’t even think it was possible to cover an entire route in a single episode, and I’m sure a hell of a lot was sacrificed, not least of all proper character development for Yuumin and the people around her – it was nice watching her slowly warm up to Yuuji from initially hating his very guts. It makes it hard to like this route even though the plot basis behind it might be sound – her father was an overgrown cunt for discarding Yumiko and her mother until his son and heir died, then pretending nothing happened and taking her back in. No amount of ‘redemption’ will change the fact that this was a heartless thing to do, and it all happened a bit fast – both her father’s repentance and Yumiyumi’s acceptance of things. Also I did actually think she committed suicide at the end, because this is something Grisaia has the balls to do. And it might have been a bad end adaptation.

If Michiru’s route shed some light on what Yuuji’s capable of, Yuumin’s route told us more about exactly who Yuuji is. A janitor? Well, you could put it that way. If ‘cleaning up’ constituted working for the government and sniping targets. This guy feels so inhuman at times it’s unreal. Like how he keeps resisting Amane. How could anyone resist Amane?

Sachi Route

‘The sin of defiance…’

This is another route that I’m sure would have been far more developed in the visual novel. It was interesting to get a glimpse into exactly why Sachi is the way she is today, though in the end a lot was left up to inference – her subservience towards everyone and her unstable need to ‘be a good girl’ seems to be a way of coping with the PTSD she developed after the events of her childhood. It’s definitely a psychological thing – it felt like she was almost compelled into accepting Michiru’s request, as if she ‘had’ to in order to maintain her sanity. With her having set fire to a school in the past, it was the only way she knew how to ‘get rid of a test’, and so that’s what she attempted this time. Again, I entertained the thought that she might actually have died. I’m a terrible person. Sacchan’s route was very much one centered around the past and her coming to terms with it, instead of the events occurring in the present – all Yuuji really did was remember that he was her childhood friend and give her a push forward, although it wasn’t anything as drastic as drugging her before locking her in a box and trying to kill her. Cutting out swathes of material and adapting routes into single episodes seemed to be a running trend, to be honest – I’d love to play the visual novel sometime to get the full story. For adaptation purposes, this meant that more episodes were allocated to Amane in the end. Clearly, someone is making the right decisions.

Seed of the World Tree

‘No one will protect her…’

Oh Makina, why did you have to end up as an assassination target? It really doesn’t help that Makina is practically a loli, and she’s had to endure all sorts of horrible, traumatic things that no child should ever have to go through – like watching her father get killed in front of her, on her mother’s orders, and then having to stare at his decomposing corpse because the hitmen who killed him never untied her. And here I thought the circumstances behind how Sachi’s parents died were sad. I can tell that this was meant to be a complex route, but with two episodes the complexity itself never really came through – a lot of the corrupt politics in the Irisu Group as well as Yuuji and Makina’s time on the run seemed like it was glossed over, yet again due to time constraints. The one thing I did conclude from this route though was that Makina’s mother was a slutty waste of space. Seriously, what a terrible human being. Ordering her husband’s assassination and cheating on him already made her irredeemable, and after Makina’s failed she had the audacity to ask JB upfront whether any of Makina’s organs were damaged so she could prepare a transplant for Sarina. I’m actually glad Yuuji killed her – and again, to compare it with another route it makes Yuumin’s father look like a decent person in contrast.