That’s it. I give up. I concede. I throw in the towel. I surrender. This is just a travesty, an unsalvageable mess. I have given this more patience than it deserves and it has rewarded me with tedium. The editing is schizophrenic and distracting. The dialogue and events passing by too fast for emotional impact. The animation and art barely passable. The presentation of the source material utterly baffling and without context. I can safely say that if you had not read the visual novel you would be completely lost on the story of this episode. And when an anime requires you to read it in another medium to understand it, then you have failed as an adaption. The music has been ripped straight from the visual novel and quite frankly you can tell. For a reading experience these tunes are fine but in this they are very out of place. Being more intrusive than anything. If I had to guess I say the producers of the anime struggled to search the game OST for suitable tracks, only to just try and force in whatever tune they landed on.
This episode has introduced us into one of the routes of the visual novel. Unfortunately the route of my least liked heroine, the blond fake tsundere Michiru. I previously stated in my last Grisaia review that to jump into the plot of one of the heroines without establishing an emotional attachment first is a mistake. The remedy the producers seemed to think would fix this was to just chuck a bunch of random skits to do with the heroine for the first half of the episode and hope for the best. It didn’t work. The skits passed by too fast and were too lazily done to be funny. The jump into her arc was vexing at best. Switching from a cheap philosophical conversation about life after death to low brow slapstick humor. I am rather confused at what the intent is here. Am I supposed to consider how “deep” that talk was and then after laugh because the girl put her hand on dog poo? Which target audience are we trying to hit here? And the end of the episode was a poor attempt at tragedy. Again this is something that needs an attachment to the characters to work, an attachment we cannot possibly have from some tiny little skits. We barely know anything about these characters. How can we feel for characters troubles when we do not even know the character herself?
So with high confidence I can declare that this can join the ranks of the many failed visual novel adaptions to be thrown into the animated medium. Unless there is some major development like a complete studio change I can safely say this is a lost cause. With my previous review, I stated that Fate/stay night UBW was how to adapt correctly. Well this is how not to adapt. Grisaia no Kajitsu is an adaption in the same way that M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Last Airbender” is an adaption. The characters may have the names and the story events may be present, but presented without soul and crushed down till it retains none of the quality. A shallow imitation with no charm or meaning. It’s only purpose to prevent the story from being handled by more capable hands and dissuade others from picking up the visual novel. I said before that this story was by no means a masterpiece. But to see it get degraded down to this is a sad sight. So with a heavy heart, I will drop this anime and see if I can find something more worth my time.
It’s a shame that this is turning out to be a poor adaptation. I haven’t read the VN but I’ve been watching and a lot of these problems are apparent without even having the source material to compare to. I especially couldn’t understand the need for that scene during the blackout with them being so crunched for time. I’ll keep watching for Sachi, Amane, and the MC, but that’s about it. Looking forward to Sekai Project’s Steam release of the VN, at any rate.
I think Michiru suffering to dye her hair is some kind of major plot point for her. I confess I don’t get it at all yet but somehow this VN series got two sequels. Maybe it’ll somehow make more sense later so I’m keeping an eye on it. I think the trouble with this adaptation is the producers having to somehow compile events from 5 separate routes into a single common thread. I don’t think they’ll do mutually exclusive mini routes like Amagami or stick to one route like Fate or Elections & Chocolate.
Aidan, I think what you’re doing is a good idea. Drop episodic reviews for series, even Fate, if you find that you don’t really have much to say that week or that arc. Maybe do a batch summary or something later if things start to pick up. Trying to force yourself will burn you out like psgels eventually. 🙂 This is just a hobby so this has to stay fun for you, especially if you’re juggling stuff IRL at the same time. Just my two cents.
Michiru dying her hair is not a plot point. It has nothing to do with her backstory. It’s just a silly joke. As for how to go about this, they should have worked it like Clannad. Take your time at the begining and try to take the most entertaining skits from the common route. Mainly the ones that let us see more about the characters. Then move on to a story arc when we actually know the characters.
Grisaia is giving me trouble simply because there’s only so many times I can say “It’s crap.” Continuting the episodic reviews would just have me repeating myself or talking more about the visual novel than the anime itself. Fate on the other hand I can write a book on and love doing so. I got plently more to say about that one and it’s no trouble at all.
Yeah. The failure is pretty apparent, whether you have read the VN or not. The story makes me lost completely. All plot points are jumbled and a mess. It seems like the director is throwing darts in order to decide what to show next. They shouldn’t have made this anime if they are going to be this lazy.