Grisaia no Meikyuu: The Labyrinth of Grisaia

I wonder why things turned out this way?

Impression

Yuuji had a shitty childhood. I know that practically every character in this series has had a shitty childhood, but I was hoping that Yuuji would be exempt from it all, given that he arrived at Mihama Academy as a fairly normal-looking person that didn’t really seem like he had too many issues from the outset. There was, admittedly, a massive neon sign over his head that spelled out ‘heavy past’ just like with all the other girls, but I assumed this was related to his time in the military and his previous job as a successful sniper and assassin. What I didn’t expect was that Yuuji had a childhood worse than most of the girls – it feels weird to try and identify who exactly suffered the most given that they were all different people in different situations, but the death of his parents happened early on before he went through all that other shit, and that’s already the bulk of what Sachi faced. And all the domestic abuse and having to endure having shitty parents can be related to Makina and Yumiko’s troubles, although I remember Makina had a set of truly disgusting parents. I suppose you could argue that Amane went through worse than Yuuji did – but again, they both went through different situations, and Yuuji suffered a kind of long-term emotional and sexual abuse that must have left lasting mental scars, to the point that I’m surprised he managed to become a functional human being. I will say that I was creeped out more by Angelic Howl than I was by this, though.

I won’t say that his time at his first home was perfect, but it was by far the best. And by ‘home’ I mean the period when Kazuki was around. The time after the events of Angelic Howl are better classified under the ‘domestic abuse’ period. I really liked Kazuki, so I was happy to see more of her – and to see a different side to her as well, as we’ve never seen her actually talking to and living with Yuuji before now. My initial thoughts were that she was just a doting onee-chan, but by the time I got to the bath scene and all the kissing it was clear that she was way more than just a brocon or something. And she even explicitly called it out to be incest, as well – I have my suspicions that the visual novel at this point depicted certain scenes that went beyond kissing. I’m not going to deny that this was a sort of abuse in its own way, and that a very intelligent Kazuki took advantage of a Yuuji who wasn’t really in any position to resist her – but it was kind, and it was definitely sweet when compared to all the stuff he would eventually have to face. I don’t think he hated it either. Kazuki was a nice sister, and she did genuinely love Yuuji a lot. And it was cute when she got jealous over all his friends being girls.

In a way, it’s almost a good thing that Yuuji shut down emotionally after facilitating the deaths of his parents – or else he might have responded a lot worse to all the sexual abuse Heath Oslo piled on to him. This guy was a creepy pedophile, and the only reason I’m looking forward to his appearance in Grisaia no Rakuen is so that I can watch Yuuji pay him back many times over for all the suffering he was made to go through. And for all the suffering he made Marlin go through. The terrorist training camp was pretty bad, but I think Yuuji must have preferred that to being dressed up like a doll and getting felt up all the time. As a mini-Kazuki, ironically enough. I’m also not sure what Oslo was after by sticking him in the basement – was that just where Yuuji was put when he decided to run for it?

I will hopefully be around to do Grisaia no Rakuen. As for this, I know Grisaia no Meikyuu was a full, stand-alone visual novel in its own right, and I remember expressing my doubts as to how they would cover so much content in such a short amount of time – even if they did air this as a one-hour special. Although I have no idea how much they skipped out, it seemed fine to me – they covered what seemed to be the important points, and made young Yuuji suffer a whole lot on-screen, which I’m sure were the main objectives anyway. And now all the girls know about his past too! He really should have incinerated those drafts.