School is In Session in The Fruit of Grisaia

Joseph Luster February 7, 2016

Yuuji Kazami would prefer to be an ordinary student attending an ordinary school, but that’s just not in the cards. Instead he finds himself at the gates of Mihama Academy, a school he at first assumes is deserted before learning he’s actually one of only a handful of students. It seems hard to believe, but this massive estate of a school only has six students, one of which is Yuuji himself, and there’s something lurking in the past of each that serves as the reason behind their attendance.

As it turns out, though, there’s something lurking in Yuuji’s past too, and it might just be big enough to make the rest of the minuscule student body’s issues look insignificant at best. Before we find out what that is we’ve got to deal with the fact that Yuuji is Mihama Academy’s first male student, providing a nice jumping point for one of many complicating factors in Le Fruit de la Grisaia, AKA The Fruit of Grisaia.
If you think this sounds like a recipe for disaster, or perhaps something more on the erotic end of the spectrum, you’d be right in both instances. Either way, it’s clear this isn’t going to be your ordinary case of a transfer student charting new territory.

Prison of the Heart

Mihama Academy is almost as prison-like as the initial description makes it out to be. Its students never really leave the premises, and you can tell if they’re in and out of their lodging thanks to a handy wall-mounted check-in system. As the story gets underway, all the mysteries and intrigue of the cast still fresh and tightly bound, Yuuji meets and interacts with the girls who reside on campus with him.

The characters come really close to wearing their archetypes on their sleeves, such as when Michiru Matsushima—voiced by Kaori Mizuhashi, who played Miyako in Hidamari Sketch and Mami in Puella Magi Madoka Magica—is almost immediately outed as being a tsundere. She quickly denies it, then admits it, then denies it again before complaining about the plight of the tsundere, saying pigtails are practically required by law, and flashing a bit of her underwear.

It’s obvious Michiru is faking the tsundere funk; her flustered reaction speaks volumes. Look, no one ever said school life had to be subtle. The girls of Grisaia don’t hesitate to fire off panty shots and even full-on, albeit censored, nudity whenever given a chance, but there’s also a bit of male fan-service to even things out for the audience.

Okay, so a few butt shots from Yuuji can’t possibly compare to the gyrations of the school’s ladies, and that’s just one of many aspects of the series that gives away its origin as an adult visual novel.

The rest of the students include big sister type Amane Suou (voiced by Hiroko Taguchi), the carefree Makina Irisu (voiced by Tomoe Tamiyasu), and the maid uniform-clad Sachi Komine (voiced by Ai Shimizu). Oh, and who could possibly forget Yumiko Sakaki?

When Yuuji first meets Yumiko, sitting alone in a sunset-drenched classroom, she returns his greeting with an attempt to exit followed by a swift stab at slicing him right in the jugular. It’s a contentious, heated introduction that carries on throughout the series. Yumiko refuses to trust Yuuji or even accept him as a student roaming the same halls as her and the other girls—after all, what if he makes unwanted advances… or worse—and this plays into the general murkiness of everyone’s personal history.

In case it’s not already apparent, it only takes a single episode for the veneer of ordinary life to vanish from The Fruit of Grisaia, making it even more difficult for Yuuji to assume that quaint, commonplace school life he so desperately desires.

Far from the Tree

The original visual novel on which The Fruit of Grisaia is based hit PC in Japan in February of 2011, eventually finding its way to Sony’s PSP and PS Vita portables in 2013. Sporting character designs by Akio Watanabe (The World God Only Knows) and Fumio (Hoshiuta), Grisaia arrived as the first in a series of visual novels from developer Front Wing (see sidebar), delivering multiple story possibilities in a setting perfect for its eroge (erotic game) leanings.

The anime version maintains the general atmosphere of a visual novel. In the game the player takes on the role of Yuuji, who talks to sprite representations of the Mihama Academy girls, encounters CG event scenes, and makes decisions that alter the course of the plot.

We may just be barreling toward one conclusion in the anime—while exploring the various routes along the way, of course—but Front Wing’s The Fruit of Grisaia boasted a unique storyline for each of the heroines that can be explored more fully. It’s a keen incentive for replay, especially when rewards occasionally pop up in the form of event scenes that find Yuuji successfully sealing the deal with one of the other students.

Motoki Tanaka directs the series as Tensho, a name also used while directing the anime adaptation of Yui Hara’s Kin-iro Mosaic manga. Series composition duties fall to Hideyuki Kurata, who previously worked on Oreimo, Tokyo ESP, and Brigadoon, among others. The animation production by 8 Bit (Infinite Stratos, Rail Wars!!) takes what could otherwise have been a mostly static play starring talking heads—a less erotic spin on the visual novel, sprites and all—and injects some life into it.

With its extra-wide aspect ratio, Grisaia aims for a certain level of style and grace. Characters break into cartoonier, super-deformed versions of themselves to convey the peppering of humor, but it’s the subtler motions of a character losing their balance and crashing into desks as part of a nervous reaction, or a simple swaying gait, that make Grisaia a bit more interesting to watch.

Ultimately, the power of The Fruit of Grisaia will lie not in its ability to let players choose who they want to have sex with—best to stick to adult visual novels for that kind of action—but in uncovering what makes its characters who they are. Come for the occasional cheeky camera angle, stay for the dark skeletons in the closets of a group of students, each locked away in a cell of their own design.