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WARNING: This review may contain minor spoilers. Read at your own discretion.

Grisaia no Kajitsu is an adaptation of the Front Wing visual novel, released in 2011 to much praise. I'd personally go as far to say that it's easily one of my favorites. Needless to say, I was really excited to watch this anime adaptation, despite my (justified) skepticism. Even reading at an above average pace, Grisaia no Kajitsu is long, and I mean 60-80 hours long. Throwing that together in 4 hours of animation is impossible without sacrificing many things, but in this case, they sacrificed maybe too much.

I'm sure you already know the ... fundamental premise behind Grisaia no Kajitsu, but if you've forgotten by some stretch of the imagination, let me run through it quickly for you. Kazami Yuuji is a young man with a troubled past and a dangerous "job" that leads to him desiring a normal teenage life. To that extent, he ends up at the gated Mihama Academy, a private school designed for those with extreme circumstances to thrive in a relatively "normal" environment. This is Yuuji's opportunity to lead a normal high school life together with the other five students, who also so happen to be girls.

It's a simple premise, but things turn out to be much different than they look on the surface, and while the girls attempt to live a normal life along with Yuuji, he notices that he must face his own troubles along with those of the girls he interacts with daily. In the visual novel, this leads to you picking one of the girls and Yuuji facing a problem with himself that allows him to improve and help the girl he's in love with. The individual routes are incredibly well written, and Grisaia no Kajitsu crafts an amazing story along with interesting multifaceted characters that you learn to care for.

So how does the anime adaptation live up to all that? Well, it doesn't, which is precisely the problem.

While 8bit's adaptation gets the fundamentals down for the most part, what you get past that is a shoddy thrown together synopsis of sorts. It's a bit harsh, but I'd say that the anime is the equivalent of looking up a Wikipedia article and seeing how the routes play out. But even then, that wouldn't be accurate, considering how drastic the way the anime had to be changed to work not only in its 13 episode boundaries, but to work in a way that Yuuji could help all the girls without really picking one. That leads to many of the episodes past the initial few (which mostly are to set up the characters, though to not much avail) feeling incredibly blunt and hollow. Yuuji seems to resolve the problems with methods that don't seem to have any context to them, or Yuuji containing an item or information that the show doesn't convey clearly to the viewer because the build-up has all been removed.

This leads to the story's biggest flaw, which is pacing, of which the show has none to spare. With the first four episodes essentially for setting up, that leaves 9 episodes to sum up all of the backstories and individual issues for each girl, which isn't nearly enough. Michiru, Sakaki, and Sachi all only get one episode and that leads to the horrendous Sakaki episode with the least amount of coherent sense to it, expecting the viewer to just accept the events with very little explanation. Michiru and Sachi's episodes are essentially abridged versions of the VN routes but in the same vein, there are too many things that happen abruptly without any explanation, and it leaves gaps that the viewers are just supposed to fill in themselves. Makina gets two episodes, but even with that much it rings hollow due to the amount of sudden time shifts that occur, and events that don't even seem remotely connected to each other. The conclusion is never foreshadowed at all and for the most part you don't understand Yuuji's motivation or why what he does fixes everything. There's too much that you're just supposed to accept without any context, and that's just bad writing.

Amane's route is the only one that gets any justice, giving the Angelic Howl exposition a good three episodes. Even though this is obviously still too little, it's nice that for once the show felt a lot less condensed and you were able to really worry for the characters and allow the events to unfold. However, this show's last episode is just a trainwreck, an obvious twist on the final events of Amane's VN route, but with an incredible amount of "suspense of disbelief" needed to really accept what happens. Ultimately, Grisaia no Kajitsu still ends on a sour note in terms of its story, but at least a lot less sour than the middle episodes.

In terms of the art and sound, those are definitely the best aspects of the show. The art looks pretty spot on compared to the VN, and the soundtrack is, as you could guess, the soundtrack from the game! Even the individual character ending songs get played, which I thought was a really nice touch. The soundtrack provides a really comfortable feeling for the show and of course fits perfectly. The art, while good, looks kind of awkward at times, though this is mostly nitpicking. These two aspects of the show were definitely where it shined the most, and at times I found myself admiring these quite a bit to distract myself from all the things that I didn't like. It's impossible to say that the style of the show's aesthetic wasn't pleasing to the eyes, and that definitely made it seem worthwhile at times, though rare.

Now the characters are where I can't forgive 8bit's adaptation at all. To be brief and analytical, I'd call it a "lack of context for the character's actions". To be long-winded and personal, I'd say that they completely botched the character development for every character in an unforgivable fashion. Pretending I didn't play the VN, I can't understand why any of the characters do any of the things they do, and Yuuji is the worst example of this. Yuuji in the anime adaptation is this all-knowing problem solver who never has trouble doing these incredibly strenuous and risky things for people. The initial problem is the fact that it seems like he has no weaknesses, which is not true at all. Yuuji is supposed to be, above all else, a vulnerable person under his thick skin. That's what made his character so interesting in the VN. In this, he's too one note to be interesting. However, the point is moot when the real problem is not his actions, but the lack of reason for them. Why is he doing these incredible things for girls he barely knows? You could assume he knows them better than the anime allows the viewer to see, but it's hard to swallow that because there's nothing to give that point any footing.

In the end, I'm supposed to accept Yuuji just risks his life for girls he basically just met, and I can't do that. I love the characters in Grisaia no Kajitsu, but they did an incredibly poor job developing them. They'll throw out that Michiru is a tsundere, and Makina acts like a kid, and Sachi's the maid, and Amane is the big sister, and Sakaki is the kuudere loner, but then gets flaky with how they handle the characters after their fundamental personalities are established. They never go any deeper than that, even when they dive into their individual pasts. At that point, I need to care enough about the characters to really stake my emotions in their plight, and I'm unable to do that with any of them except maybe Amane at the LEAST. Their pasts don't carry half the weight they need to, and their characters aren't established enough to support any of that either. It's a complete mess, and these are characters I basically spent 80 hours caring about playing the VN.

The characters don't get enough individual time to flourish, and they barely get enough time together to establish the group dynamic. It's just established and then you're supposed to refer to that standard for the entire show. That isn't just bad character writing, it's the result of a completely botched job. They had no room to put any of the character development in amongst all the exposition and events they had to address. It's a simple "cart before the horse" writing scenario. If the characters aren't important enough to me, then their suffering isn't going to be either. I'm just going to know it's suffering, but that's just objectivity and holds no effect over my emotional response to the show, which is an unfortunate outcome.

I'll admit, there's a lot of magic coming out of the VN to see all these characters fully animated in a full scale view of the school environment and the places they visit along the way. For that reason alone, I pushed through it all, because it was a really nice feeling in its own way. It's just a shame that amongst that, there was too much that impeded my personal enjoyment of the show. I spent too much time clutching my head in confusion or in disappointment, not understanding why they made some ridiculously unwise choices.

I understand with 13 episodes, there was no way this was going to be a clean adaptation. As I stated earlier, this is 4 hours versus 60-80, and much had to be removed before there was any way they could make it work, but even then, they could have made it work better than this. They left too many remnants of scrapped information that contradicted or lacked the context to productively inform the viewer of their significance. In the end, it's kind of like tearing something off a page and leaving fractions of it behind with nothing to substantiate it.

If you're looking to see whether you should play the VN or watch the anime first, play the VN, I'm begging you. It's an incredible and worthwhile experience and by watching this first you'll just spoil all the climactic events without any of the emotional build-up to make them great. After you play the VN, would I personally give this anime a recommendation? Not really, but if you want more Grisaia no Kajitsu and wish to see those same girls fully animated and are willing to trudge through all the garbage to accomplish that like I have, then sure.

In the end, though, it'll never live up even as a simple adaptation, so I can't justify giving it any higher a score than I have.

THE FINAL VERDICT: 5/10
Too much of a synopsis, not enough of a story. Too much inconsistency, too little character development. Looks and sounds nice though.

This are my personal feelings and I in no way promulgate them as fact. I hope you enjoyed the review!