There is an inherent problem with adapting a visual novel for any non-choice based medium in that you either commit to one character’s route and abandon the other characters as comical sidekicks, or you make the wrong choice and stuff every route into one show, which both feels claustrophobic and denies the characters any feeling of being special, taking from the routes any sense of accomplishment. The inherent message being conveyed is that there is a single personality that one can adopt as a sort of master key to the hearts of traumatized and unique people that will open their hearts, solve their deep-seated psychological issues, and eventually drive them into your arms. According to what Kazama Yuuji, the sole male character of Le Fruit de la Grisaia believes, that master key is the ability to run, punch, and study. According to the show itself, the master key is being non-descript enough to fit any other person, traumatized enough to dwarf other people’s problems, and powerful enough to punch other people’s problems in the face.
At a scarce 13 episodes, Grisaia covers a whole five character routes, allotting each two episodes and zero time for empathy, which is a shame because even without having played the original game there was a real feeling of mystery, tragedy, and discovery waiting to happen right from the outset. Five girls all isolated in a special school for those who can’t go about daily life is a good formula for a good spread of personalities, backstories, and truly heartwarming resolution, and the five girls of Grisaia fit the bill quite well. One day, Yuuji arrives at the gate as a lone transfer student, and soon he changes everything, first via his maleness, second via his magnetic lack of a personality, and third via his godly ability to solve everything but himself. He too has a tragic backstory, filled with death and the loss of innocence, but thankfully it is veiled with all the mystery of pig latin, so soon we learn he has been an assassin for the years since his family’s death, and finally decided to go back and recapture the mundane school life he has been denied his whole life.
Why he would expect mundanity at such a school is beyond me. How Yuuji maintains both empathy and a disconnect from the value of human life is beyond me. How anyone could fail to recognize his profession and find solace in his vapid blank personality is beyond me. I have never seen a protagonist more blatantly taken from a visual novel, where the goal is to let the players insert themselves into a nondescript protagonist and guide him to a level of complexity via choosing not all completely different emotionally charged character routes, but just one, where both the protagonist and the player can have the dignity of not pretending to be five completely separate people at once.
The backstories themselves are acceptable, and they intersect with the protagonist in slightly farfetched but only slightly contrived ways. A nice game to play is to completely remove Yuuji from the show, and imagine the girls all talking to themselves as they attempt to face reality and come to terms with their past. Do so and Grisaia is a serious yet sometimes comedic parable about being left alone by the world to struggle against trauma and old foes in complex, life-threatening ways, surrounded by friends struggling through the same bitter trauma to eventually come out as a person able to love themselves, even if no one else in the world will. Of course with him gone you just have to assume that some higher being is pulling the trigger on a whole lot of guns and explosives. Maybe the girls could find their salvation in religion?