Tag: the eden of grisaia

#oneaday Day 171: The End of Grisaia

I’ve finally finished The Eden of Grisaia, and, aside from the prologue/after stories and gratuitous H-scenes, which I will probably save for tomorrow given it’s getting late, that means I’ve finally brought this amazing trilogy to a close. Back when I first backed it on Kickstarter, I had been led to believe that it was one (well, three) of the best visual novels ever produced, and having now read the whole thing through from start to finish, I have to concur.

It’s a long read, to be sure — the first game alone is somewhere in the region of 50+ hours, though the subsequent two are closer to the 25-30 hour mark — but it’s one of those instances where the sheer length is kind of important to your sense of involvement with the whole thing; by the time you’ve reached Eden’s dramatic finale, a big part of it all feeling so satisfying is because you’ve previously spent so much time with these characters.

And it’s really interesting how the whole thing is handled. I won’t go into specific details in this post as I’ll probably do a more substantial writeup on MoeGamer in the very near future, but I will talk in general terms.

The Fruit of Grisaia, the first entry in the series, is set up in a typical “bishoujo game” format, where you make a few choices in a common route, then end up on a specific girl’s route to see their story and endings.

The Labyrinth of Grisaia, the second entry, follows this up with a series of non-canonical “After Stories” which assume you’re continuing from the good endings of each girl’s individual route from The Fruit of Grisaia. But then it presents you with what it calls its “Grand Route”, which, very unusually for what has up until this point seemed mostly like a fairly conventional romance visual novel, focuses very much on the protagonist.

Then The Eden of Grisaia picks up where the cliffhanger of Labyrinth left off, only unlocking its “After Story” and a short “Prologue” to the entire shebang after you’ve read the conclusion of the protagonist’s tale.

Grisaia’s protagonist is no ordinary man, you see. He’s not a self-insert for the player, and you are not supposed to “inhabit his role” as you are in some other games. Yuuji, as he is known, is a complex, thoroughly fascinating character, and the way the trilogy gradually drip-feeds you the truth of Yuuji’s full identity and background makes it consistently compelling. At the start of The Fruit of Grisaia, you think he’s a bit of a weirdo who is starting a new life at a school that is also inhabited by a bunch of other weirdoes. Throughout The Labyrinth of Grisaia, you learn a lot about his past life that made him the way he was. And in The Eden of Grisaia, things build to a dramatic conclusion that sees Yuuji confronting his oldest and most feared foe in scenes that would make a Metal Gear game proud.

Yes, y’see, Grisaia’s big secret, if it even is one at this point, is that it’s not a standard school romance series at all, despite what The Fruit of Grisaia might initially lead you to believe. Mind you, with the high drama that occurs in each and every character route in The Fruit of Grisaia — which ranges from violent yakuza shenanigans to the post-traumatic consequences of having survived through a situation that involved, among other things, cannibalism — you’ll barely be halfway through a route before you realise that there is definitely more going on here than might have initially appeared.

The series moves from being a tale about coping and moving on from trauma to some rather thought-provoking ruminations on war and terrorism in the information age. And it does so gradually and naturally; The Eden of Grisaia ends up in a very different place to where The Fruit of Grisaia started, but that just makes the journey feel thoroughly worthwhile. I can highly recommend the experience of reading through the trilogy, and I’ll have more to say on the subject when I’m a little more awake.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

#oneaday Day 166: Only seven years late… and then some

Longtime readers of my blog and MoeGamer will know that the visual novel series Grisaia has been something of a defining influence on my media tastes for quite some time. Indeed, over on MoeGamer there’s probably a book’s worth of words on the first two games that I invite you to read at your leisure.

And yet. And yet. For some reason, despite coming to the end of second entry The Labyrinth of Grisaia in 2017 and being incredibly excited about the cliffhanger it ended on, and curious on how it might end up… I have only just got around to making a start on the final part of the original trilogy The Eden of Grisaia. I say “the original trilogy”, because since The Eden of Grisaia’s release in English, there have been numerous non-canonical spinoff titles released in the series, plus an entire second series of games known as Grisaia Phantom Trigger which, I believe, is eight volumes long. (Granted, I believe one “volume” of Phantom Trigger is a tad shorter than one of the original three Grisaia games, but still.)

Anyway, like I say, I have finally got around to starting The Eden of Grisaia. I was concerned it would be tough to get back into after seven years away from the series, but almost immediately I was reminded why I love this series, and why I’ve always considered it so important to me. So I’m definitely going to make reading through this final volume from the first trilogy an absolute priority, because I am thrilled to be back in the company of these characters.

But what is Grisaia? I mean, my simple answer to that is “go read the MoeGamer articles linked above”, but you may not have the time to read a five-figure word count on the subject. So I will attempt to summarise the series thus:

Grisaia is, in part, a coming-of-age story about people finding their place in the world. This might not sound particularly unusual for a visual novel, and indeed Grisaia initially looks like it’s doing its very best to be a fairly conventional high school romance sort of affair. There’s an unvoiced male protagonist, a harem of young women who all come to adore him for one reason or another, nookie (in the 18+ version, anyway, which is absolutely the version you should be playing) and multiple endings.

But there’s one fairly large spanner thrown in the works almost immediately, and that is the protagonist in question: Yuuji Kazami. He is anything but a “self-insert” or cipher for the player, and right from the opening moments of the first installment The Fruit of Grisaia it’s clear that something is up with him. We join him just as he has walked 150km to get to his new school, Mihama Academy, and over the course of his interactions with the five main heroines, we come to learn that he has a mysterious “job”.

Initially, the details of this “job” are kept exceedingly vague, but it becomes apparent very quickly that Yuuji is no ordinary high school boy. He is wise — and cynical — well beyond his years, and he uses this experience to help the heroines in various ways. He by no means acts as a “magic bullet” to solve all their problems for them, but his experience in the ways of the world helps him form an incredibly close bond with all five of them. In the original The Fruit of Grisaia, these bonds are implied to be exclusive, and indeed there are even “After Stories” in second part The Labyrinth of Grisaia that continue on that assumption.

But the main story of Grisaia really gets started in The Labyrinth of Grisaia. It’s there we learn all about Yuuji’s background — which I won’t spoil here for the moment, but it’s fair to say he is cynical, jaded and experienced in some curiously specialised skills with very good reason — and the whole thing concludes on a dramatic moment that effectively seems to take Yuuji completely out of the picture.

Now, it’s a bold series that seemingly removes its protagonist from proceedings two-thirds of the way through, but that’s exactly how final part The Eden of Grisaia starts. We switch to third-person narration and follow, for the most part, the exploits of the five heroines as they leave Mihama Academy behind and take on the seemingly impossible task of getting Yuuji back. We have occasional cuts back to Yuuji’s present situation, but the focus is still very much on the heroines. At least it has been for as far as I’ve read so far.

This is a really interesting narrative technique, because it makes it abundantly clear that while The Fruit of Grisaia very much had a kind of “dating sim”-style setup in which you had to pick the right choices to get onto your favourite girl’s route and then pick the right choices to get her “good” ending, The Labyrinth and The Eden of Grisaia have a very specific story to tell. Indeed, the main narratives of both unfold as a kinetic novel with no player input whatsoever. It’s testament to the quality of the writing (and the translation) that Grisaia remains so thoroughly compelling, even after it takes away both the player’s already limited agency in proceedings and the character they were supposed to be “inhabiting”.

Don’t mistake the switch to third-person narration as being boring, though. The Eden of Grisaia’s narrator may be omniscient and non-participant, but they very much have a personality of their own, and they have some exceedingly entertaining remarks to make at times — usually at the expense of Michiru Matsushima, the group’s resident “idiot”.

Thus far I am very much back in Grisaia mode, and I can’t wait to see what happens next. I also know that Grisaia games are a very long read — honestly, it’s knowing there are probably 30+ hours of reading ahead that caused me to put off Eden for so long — but I am going to take my time and enjoy it.

In the meantime, if you’ve never explored the series for yourself, I still highly recommend it. Yes, it’s a bit of a commitment to read all of it, to say the least, but it’s a journey well worth taking. It’s regarded as an absolute classic of the medium with very good reason, and my “Complete Box” version of it that I have on my shelf is absolutely one of my prized gaming-related possessions.

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.