This isn’t looking good. Let me explain, Grisaia has a somewhat nakige visual novel approach. Meaning that it has a comedic relatively plotless first half, followed by a tragic heroine backstory related story arc. Notable examples of this is any Key visual novel anime adaption you can think of. So for the first half we will have to be amused by hijinks and comedy skits. And I am not amused. From the looks of things they just want to get this part over with and while this section did drag on far past it’s welcome in the visual novel, it was still important for setting up the characters personalities. If we were to delve into the plot now it would suffer because we have simply not spent enough time with the characters to develop an emotional attachment. But truth be told I with how this is being handled I doubt they could manage to accomplish that much.
Besides a fairly funny military chant in the beginning, comedy hit no notes, little in the way of character development happened and the animation may have possibly gotten worse. The only notable event was Amane confessing to Yuuji but even this was brushed off pretty fast with a “Oh well, I will be your big sister instead.” Truth be told I am grasping at straws here. There was jokes here that could have worked. The “Sachi making Yuuji a Bush dog strap” had comedic potential. However it was put off by bad comic timing and some questionable editing. Again the editing seems to have no sense of time, jumping around even to past events without informing the viewer. There is no connection between scenes, at the beginning it showed Yuuji getting up early and being fairly active. Yet later on apparently he didn’t get enough sleep last night despite not showing any signs of sleep deprivation at all in any of the previous scenes. I have not even seen it become night but from what I can tell from my source knowledge the events here are from several different days.
I know that the plot is coming. From the next episodes title there is a possibility of them jumping into one of the girls stories. But In truth I am starting to recall just how tedious and overlong the common route of this really was. So while better material is coming, I am not sure if getting through this poorly put frankensteined together skits will justify it in the end.
God i hope they get to Amanes Angelic Howl backstory or Makinas Léon: The Professional esque route soon those where by far the high points of the VN. Everything else pales in comparison anyway.