The Fruit of Grisaia: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

The Fruit of Grisaia: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 13, 2016

It wasn’t exactly a storybook wedding, though the celebration did end up as one of the more memorable tales in the annals of Greek mythology. At the already pretty contentious joining together of Peleus and Thetis, a goddess named Eris, already somewhat infamous due to her inclination toward getting into trouble and now more than a little upset that she wasn’t included on the invite list, tossed a legendary golden apple into the proceedings which had been emblazoned with the epigram “for the most beautiful one”, which in turn set off a huge fracas amongst the veritable bridesmaids, each of whom thought it was obvious that the fruit was meant for them. That then led to the Judgement of Paris which, in true domino fashion, led more or less directly to a little thing called the Trojan War. There’s another “cosmic apple” of sorts on display at the very beginning (and recurrently thereafter) in The Fruit of Grisaia, but this one isn’t golden, and in fact rots into dust rather quickly, a perhaps salient image about transformations and (possibly at least) death and decay. The Fruit of Grisaia is one of those anime that plays its cards fairly close to its vest in the early going, which may lead some viewers to decide that it’s going to be just another shōnen or harem entry. While both of those genres certainly play into The Fruit of Grisaia’s plot dynamics, it becomes clear by the end of the first episode that “something else” is going on, in a series of quick and initially puzzling reveals that play out during a “closing” credits sequence that in fact happens a few minutes before the end of the episode (a gambit that the series continues to exploit as it goes along). On its surface, The Fruit of Grisaia seems—emphasis on seems—to be about a young man named Yūji Kazami who has transferred to an odd and vastly underpopulated private school, one where his only classmates are a gaggle of young women (hence both the shōnen and harem angles). However, the fact that the series begins in a police station with a martinet officer interrogating Yūji and asking if he’s a terrorist, as well as a very quick elision which seems to indicate Yūji has some connections to “higher ups” who can extract him from precarious environments (like a police interrogation) give early clues that there’s a subtext at play which will ultimately be revealed.

The Fruit of Grisaia follows in the path of many other anime by being based on a visual novel series, and evidently (I admittedly have no experience with the source material) that outing was fairly sexually explicit, something that tends to fold into the anime adaptation as well. In fact, I was a bit surprised that unlike many anime which delight in depicting naked girls frolicking in steamy bath waters, The Fruit of Grisaia actually had a brief shot of a (nearly) nude (and pretty buff looking) Yūji in a tub in an early moment, and in fact the series doesn’t shy away from showing him in his birthday suit (albeit from the back). Later, when one of his female classmates shows up in his room, she’s topless and there’s absolutely no question about what’s on her mind, even if the dialogue is routinely commonplace.

Already, though, there’s obviously more going on than “mere” sexual hijinks, though the series’ somewhat disjunctive opening episodes want to delay denouements in favor of character introductions and establishment of various interrelationships. It’s obvious, and in fact overtly mentioned, that Yūji just wants a “normal school life”, but that whatever his “secret identity” is has prevented him from achieving that dream. Similarly, it quickly becomes evident that the females inhabiting the Mihama Academy have their own backstories which have in their own way kept them as isolated as Yūji himself. As a result, The Fruit of Grisaia takes perhaps more than the usual amount of patience to begin unraveling a tale that becomes increasingly dark as it goes along, something that chafes at least occasionally with the series’ penchant toward (admittedly pretty tame) fan service and shtick laden comedy.

And it’s that increasing darkness which will probably either intrigue or frankly maybe repel each individual viewer going forward. It probably doesn’t come as any huge surprise that each of the handful of characters has a wound of one sort or another in their background, some (as in the case of Yūji) which are played for at least supposed poignancy, while others (as in the case of Michiru Matsushima, who lapses in and out of tsundere tropes) played for laughs. If The Fruit of Grisaia had gone the No Exit route with regard to what Mihama Academy “really” means, it might have given the series more of a feeling of gravitas. As it stands, these end up being fairly formulaic characters stuck in a prison of sorts that’s too literal to withstand the show’s increasing tendency to exploit coincidence (the way one character's backstory tragedy is woven into a sad sidebar memory for Yūji seems especially "convenient").

The kind of weird thing about The Fruit of Grisaia is it has kernels of an interesting plot that are sometimes defeated by an oddly disparate tone. Anime culled from visual novels often have a hard time making the transition, and in some ways it seems like The Fruit of Grisaia makes the jump reasonably well in terms of delivering easily accessible (if often almost willfully stereotypical) characters and a decent plot. But the series is an odd combination of ideas and one that might have benefitted from a less literal presentation. It has enough of traditional ecchi, harem, and shōnen conventions to at least offer glimmers of interest to viewers, but since it ping pongs between these conventions at will, individual tastes will react differently depending on how much they want a particular idiom to stick around for a while longer.

The Fruit of Grisaia: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

The Fruit of Grisaia is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Sentai Filmworks with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1. This is a bright and colorful looking anime that may not win any awards for design innovation, but which offers crisp, inviting tones (especially blues, which are often the most prevalent) and good, precise line detail. A tendency to bathe outdoor scenes in what is meant to resemble effulgent lighting sources often tends to give those moments a gauzy appearance, especially when cutaways featuring signs of nature are involved (see screenshot 8). There is some very minor banding on display, usually confined to moments like segues, but overall this is a very pleasing looking transfer that offers nice degrees of sharpness and color saturation.

The Fruit of Grisaia: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The Fruit of Grisaia features the original Japanese track in DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, with forced English subtitles (i.e., there is no English dub and subtitles are nonremovable). The track does just fine in detailing the dialogue but occasionally struggles at times to provide real emphasis when the story tips over into quasi-action elements. Fidelity is fine and there are no problems of any kind to warrant concern.

The Fruit of Grisaia: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Clean Opening Animation (1080p; 1:32)


• Clean Closing Animations (1080p; 4:38)

The Fruit of Grisaia: Complete Collection Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I found the easiest way to accept The Fruit of Grisaia is to, well, just accept it. This is a series which hints at all kind of genre tropes without ever totally "going there" with regard to any of them, and as such fans of any particular niche may wish for a more consistent approach. There's some general clunkiness in the story telling, and the characters are undeniably stereotypical (seemingly by design, and perhaps unavoidable given the visual novel link), but I was generally interested in the outcome of events despite an increasingly depressive aspect to the series. With caveats noted, The Fruit of Grisaia comes Recommended.