The Fruit of Grisaia

Episode 7

And so having finished with MICHIRU and Yumiko, we move on to another girl. This time our featured player is Sachi, the pink-haired maid who has a pathological need to please others. (Remember, in the first episode she told Yuuji that she dressed in a maid's uniform because someone told her she looked good in it, not because she liked it.) Sachi's story frankly feels a little lame in comparison to the others we have seen so far: her parents, who spent most of their time working, took the day off on her tenth birthday. Being ten, she failed to appreciate this and ran off. When they came looking for her, she ran to meet them...and they were promptly hit by a truck, causing her father to suffer Anime Death #2. (#1, by my reckoning, is Mysterious Wasting Illness.) This made Sachi fear being a “bad girl” to the point where she will do anything for anybody. So when MICHIRU asks her to stop their upcoming test, Sachi feels utterly compelled to do it. Yuuji's role in all of this is to make her realize that she doesn't need to be all things to all people and to come to terms with her childhood hurt.

As you can see, this is less compelling than either of the backstories we've had in full before. While it is undeniably traumatic to see your parents run down in front of you, it just doesn't have the same heft as either MICHIRU's or Yumiko's tragic pasts, and that it is all gone over in a single episode in no way helps. This doesn't feel rushed, per se, but it also doesn't feel complete, as if some major emotional moment has been skipped over. Learning that Sachi and Yuuji knew each other as children should have been a much bigger deal than it is made out to be, and probably should have had an effect on their relationship previous to now as well beyond Sachi asking to call him “Yuu-kun,” her old nickname for him. Why he forgot her isn't satisfactorily explained, nor is how (or if) remembering has any impact on the rather cold person he is now. Nor does it seem to effect Sachi that he has recalled their earlier relationship; her asking for hugs doesn't quite cut it given that MICHIRU asked for a kiss during her brief arc. This episode just feels as though it neutered Sachi's story somehow, and that makes it both drag and give the impression of being incomplete.

Not that it doesn't still have it's moments. MICHIRU has a spectacular display of clumsiness in the classroom that is both nicely animated and amusingly ridiculous (apart from the nails-on-a-chalkboard moment), and Sachi's attempt to stay in the bath until the count of 10,000 gives us not only a perfect example of her people-pleasing before the meat of the episode, but is also imperfectly censored via sparkly mist. You can't see her breasts, but at the end of the scene the mist is too thin to hid her behind, so if you're looking for a little fanservice, you'll actually get it. There's also a scene when Amane is pushed breasts-first towards the camera; she's fully clothed, but if you enjoy that, it's a decent shot. Seeing Yumiko's new kinder attitude is nice in a different sense; it shows us that this isn't entirely episodic and that the events of previous episodes do have a bearing on the newer ones, even if it isn't always clear. In fact, Sachi begins the episode by noticing that her classmates have changed and wondering if that is something that she, too, can do. That's part of the let down, really: after the other girls' stories, we could immediately see the changes in them. Sachi? Not so much, although there are hints; it's just that her behavior doesn't appear to have undergone the same transformation that MICHIRU's and Yumiko's did.

There are still only nine episodes listed, and the next two are a two-parter about the Seed of the World Tree, which I must say sounds rather final in the context of the title. That really would be a shame – this episode seems symptomatic of the overall problem with this particular game adaptation: rushed, feeling like it leaves out the most important parts.

Rating: C

The Fruit of Grisaia is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rebecca Silverman teaches writing and literature and writes ANN's manga review column RTO.