WARNING: The following article contains SPOILERS for The Fruit of Grisaia episode 2. If you don’t want to be spoiled, please stop reading. You have been warned.
Our main protagonist, Yuuji Kazami, attempts to learn more about the quieter students in this episode of The Fruit of Grisaia. It opens with Yumiko Sakaki attempting to cut Kazami from behind, but he’s just too fast. I wonder what would happen if she actually succeeded in cutting him. Would that really change her cold mood and make her feel better?
We find out that Sakaki doesn’t warm up to anybody easily and that she’s been there since the school’s founding. Her time at the school plays out in flashbacks as one by one the new students arrive to great her and Chizuru at the school gates. These flashbacks are common throughout the episode and shows Sakaki’s personality as hostile and impulsive. For example, right after hearing the news that Kazami is going to be attending the school, she assumes he is a rapist and ditches school to find information about him. I feel like there is more to her that we will discover later on because her sweet side does come out near the end of the episode as we see a hint of acceptance for Kazami, maybe.
All six students attending Mihama Academy are there for “special circumstances” and up until now we’ve only seen bits and pieces of what those could be. There’s something that Kazami says to Chizuru that makes me feel bad for all the students: when asked how he feels about school life so far, he replies, “It’s like I’m undercover, playing the part of a student…but when I see myself smiling in my reflection in the window glass, I get shivers…it’s like ‘What are you smiling for? Who the hell are you?'” Chizuru tells him that the other girls felt the same way when they arrived. These students seem to have nothing but each other at this point since each has suffered some kind of tragedy that landed them at Mihama Academy.
Enough with the sad news though, let’s talk about Makina Irisu. Kazami spends a good amount of the episode with her and we get a better idea of who she is. I really like the friendship between Kazami and Irisu and it’s fitting that she calls him “Onii-Chan” (big brother) since that’s what it looks like when they are together. I can’t wait to watch their friendship continue in later episodes.
Kazami gets a visit from his boss Julia Bardena, also known as her nickname JB. This visit just added more questions to the list I have going on Kazami, which is already getting pretty long. In the scene, they speak so calmly about his past being a lie and how it was JB who got him into the school. His calm attitude doesn’t change even when he is confronted by someone he doesn’t want to talk to. And he is just as calm when telling the girls that he was a Janitor and he would “take out the trash” for JB, which is clearly a metaphor for something… Or maybe he really was a janitor. I really don’t know at this point.
Definitely excited for episode 3 to air. Hopefully, it’ll provide us with some answers on Kazami because the question list keeps getting longer. What do you think so far? Please leave a comment with your thoughts on the students of Mihama Academy.
The Fruit of Grisaia is available to watch on Crunchyroll. New episodes come out Sundays at 1:00 PM ET/10:00 AM PT for premium users. Non-premium users will be able to watch one week after it first airs.
