Story (6.89/10): The story of Grisaia follows our main protagonist Yuuji. In an attempt to obtain a normal high school life, Yuuji enters a mysterious school that according to the people that helped him get there, is a normal school, despite its prison-like walls and low student count. It is here where he finds five girls, and begins his journey into their lives.
Grisaia's plotline is similar to the Key Trilogy of Air, Kanon, and Clannad. Throughout the entire run of the series, Yuuji journeys through the lives of the five girls that surround him, learning about each of their stories one by one. A traditional way of telling galge stories in anime form, Grisaia doesn't really get any high marks for using this formula. Normally, the reason why a show of this nature would be significant in any way is due to the stories and development that are told in conjunction to the way the show is told. Grisaia is...well, mediocre when it comes to its storytelling in several senses.
First, the stories. The stories of the five girls are mostly average for the most part. One of my biggest gripes of the show is just how each girl is treated differently. Out of the entire thirteen episode runtime, the show treats every girl differently with some girls getting nearly half of the entire runtime to tell their story while others get only a single episode to tell why they're the way they are. This serves as a double-edged sword for the series. On one hand, with the arcs that get the most runtime, we have some pretty good stories that bring the show up a few notches. However, on the other hand, we have stories that don't really stack up very well. This is largely at fault due to the pacing.
Pacing for this show is also a horrendous issue. At times, mostly during the "good" arcs, the show slows itself down and accurately tells the story so that the audience gets absorbed into the story, which does work and is beneficial. However, as an inverse effect, the stories that don't get enough screentime to accurately tell the story, are rushed, rushed, rushed. It was a very blatant problem for the series because when you're watching a character based show, the last thing that should be done is rushing through the most important thing, the character stories.
In the end though, the show doesn't really have much of a resolution. Like a lot of shows similar to this, the show sort of ends without a real ending, instead, opting for one that doesn't really do much progression romantically. While this is ok for an ending, since a lot of shows of this nature also do this, it doesn't really make that much of an impact because it was so blatantly obvious and expected.
Overall, Grisaia had a interesting thing going for it. On one hand, it had some horrendously rushed character stories that really could only make you care less about them since their stories seem forced and not progressional due to how the show rushed it. But at the same time, it did make stories (particularly one) that was very well told. Sadly though, without the final arc of the series, this show would've gone down the drain fast.
Overview:
+ Some good character stories
+/- Key Trilogy style of storytelling (It works, but it's been done before)
- Awful pacing
- Mostly bad/rushed character stories
Characters (6.66/10): The characters for Grisaia also share similar problems like the story. Personality-wise, all of these characters reflect a different anime troupe that are rather meh when taken at face value. It's really the stories of these characters that make them more three-dimensional than they are, when combined with their perspective stories, are rather lacking.
First we have our main protagonist, Kazami Yuuji. Compared with most harem protagonists, Yuuji is a bit of an odd man out. He is very calm and collected when faced with virtually any situation, and takes everything that the girls ask for him literally which include, but are not limited to, burying them, killing them, or being their father. While he is a decently interesting character, he is a plot device. Virtually no part of the show is strictly focused on Yuuji himself, opting to turn him into the thing the girls long for, as well as the thing that triggers them to tell their story for all of us to see. It's not that this is bad because the girls are the main focus of the story, but comparatively speaking, this guy serves nothing more than a turn on button for the girls' past.
And then we have the females of the series. Michuru, Yumiko, Sachi, Makina, and Amane. The structure of the show is tells the story of these five girls in the order shown above, giving each girl a different number of episodes to tell their story, thus varying the amount of screentime and development that each of them get. From this structure is where Grisaia gets its main problem as far as I can see. Nearly all of the girls here, you don't really get to know. In fact, about three of them get a total of half of the total series runtime, which really begs to differ if they even should've bothered to do so since the poor effort to tell them really made it look like it was more of an obligation rather than a way of serious storytelling. Taking away their stories however, the characteristics of the girls are obvious and troupe-like with traits like: the fake tsundere, the distant cool one, the maid-like character, the imouto/daughter character, and the horny one. The girls in this series in simple terms, both make the show dark to the extent of me wanting to throw up, and make it average to the extent of you not wanting to care.
Apart from these six character, side characters are something that don't really show up too often, with the exception of being JB. (God. Why did they have to give her that nickname?) The side characters aren't really too prominent in the series and for the most part, serve to move the plot along more than anything else.
Overview:
+/- Interesting, but also somewhat bland MC
+/- The girls in the series are good and bad
+/- Supporting characters are little more than plot devices
- Major problem with balancing character importance
Art and Sound (8.23/10 and 7.01/10): The animation for this show was produced by 8-bit, the same studio that created Infinite Stratos and Tokyo ravens. Grisaia does have an animation style that I would consider to be rather pleasing to look at.
The show has a certain style to it that almost makes the character's eyes and hair shimmer like crystals. It's a sort of bright style that sort of gives off the dark and psychological undertones that the show has. What makes this style of art so significant, is the fact that the same style works very well for when the show does go dark. It's almost malicious to see something turn so drastic so suddenly, and I love this show's animation strictly for that. As a psychological show, I at least expected a scene or two to make me cringe in terror, give me sleepless nights, and hopefully, give me regret for even bothering to watch this in the first place. Thankfully, (or rather, unthankfully) the show did deliver on a couple scenes that give off that sort of strange and twisted feeling that I came to expect. (That episode 12...*shudders*)
What I did find odd about the artwork were a duo of minor things. One of which being the chibi oriented art style that the show did. It's a rare style that the show uses maybe three or four times, but it was memorable enough for me to remember it due to how odd it was. In addition, all of the female characters in this show share a rather peculiar trait that I found both off and somewhat irritating. That trait is, the eyelashes. Every female character possesses this red mark on the corner of their eyes, and personally, I just found it a bit weird as it looked like they all had a strange rash or something around their eyes. (This is really just a personal complaint.)
The soundtrack for the show is rather average. The show utilizes soft tracks for its ending songs, and an opening that I guess is decent to listen to. I wouldn't call it a song that I would listen to time and time again, but it does serve its job decently well. But what the opening also does, which is interesting, is it gives a bit of foreshadowing to each of the different girls and what their stories are. It's a nice detail that was added in and gives the audience a glimpse as to what one can expect when watching this show.
Overview:
+ Good art style that fit with the show well-roundedly
+/- Average soundtrack
Personal Enjoyment (6.90/10): Grisaia was a show that I personally found to be less than extraordinary. Watching episode after episode didn't really give me much feeling, and I didn't really feel sorry for the girls due to so many of them being handled so poorly. In addition, the sometimes tasteless attempts to add in ecchi were well, tasteless. However, it wasn't until I watched the final arc of the series, which really put this show into a different light for me. The way it was written made me reconsider what I thought of the show beforehand. That being said, the flaws in the previous episodes still weren't enough to forgive it.
Did I like this show?
The art, character designs, and the final storytelling of the arc were really the only positive points that I can even make with this show. To explain why I like the final arc so much, well, let's just say I needed a lot of moe show therapy in order to recover.
What didn't I like about this show?
The pacing, the bland character troupes, the fact that we don't get to know Yuuji all that well, the fact that they have a character nicknamed JB, imbalance with character importance (one girl literally only gets one episode to tell whole her story whole others get 4-5), and the overall keep the audience in the dark thing with a lot of the main character's backstory.
Would I recommend this show?
Honestly, I'm not really quite sure. Slogging through a bunch of crap in order to get to what I consider to be the best part isn't really worth it from what I see. It's not that the show fails to give us some interesting stories, it just fails to make the audience care enough to shed tears or feel sorry for the girls and their problems. Overall, I would say that this show succeeds in some aspects, but taking the time to get to those positive and shining moments in the series is something that I feel just isn't worth the time to watch.
Overall Score: 6.91/10
