WARNING: The following article contains SPOILERS for The Fruit of Grisaia episodes 4 & 5. If you don’t want to be spoiled, please stop reading. You have been warned.
These two episodes of The Fruit of Grisaia are centered around Yugi Kazami trying to understand Michiru Matsushima. When he asks the other students about her, they end up telling him they think she’s an alien or she’s a ghost. I don’t think I was ready for the truth about Michiru when it was revealed to you, Kazami, and I’m not talking about the fact that she bleaches her hair.
Avoiding the sadness that is inevitably coming, I want to bring up a question that Amane Suou asked the girls, “Can men and women be best friends?” This question has come up in plenty of conversations in my various friend groups, but everyone seems to avoid it. This scene played out like those same conversations where no one really answered, but we’ll get back to this at the end of this article.
Kazami noticed Michiru was upset and followed her to the light house where, technically, it wasn’t Michiru that he found there. We are told that Michiru had a heart transplant and the girl that the heart belonged to still inhabited the organ, and sometimes the personality from the girl could take control of Michiru’s body. The girl tells Kazami that she’s never been kissed and asks Kazami if she can kiss him. Being the cool attitude boy that he is, he said yes and my jaw dropped. I really wasn’t expecting this to happen since I am totally on team Amane. But oh well, it happened. The real Michiru doesn’t know what happened until Kazami tries to show her what she did. Kazami really changes the way he looks at Michiru at this time, like he develops real feelings for her. Those thoughts get buried as he must soon deal with tragedy.
The real Michiru gets shaken up from the stunt that Kazami tried to pull on her as he attempted to reenact their kiss. And she ends up hurting her cat’s, Meowmel’s, feelings. I think Meowmel is her best friend since she spends all of her free time with him. And I don’t think for a second she meant to yell at him since she immediately felt bad and began searching for him with the help of Kazami. When the day is about to end, Kazami notices something and heads up the road to find Meowmel had been hit by a car.
Going into episode 5 wasn’t easy as the cat passes away on the way to the vet. Michiru blames herself and allows the girl inside her to completely take over her body. Kazami makes it his personal mission to save Michiru. This is getting pretty heavy now so stick with me. Kazami tricks the real Michiru into coming back out where she tells him that she wants to die. Kazami ends up granting her that wish…well, sort of.
He keeps a promise he made to her by burying her by the light house, but she’s not actually dead yet, so he is burying her alive. The scenes that Michiru goes through while in this coffin are very hard to watch as we see a flashback of a black haired depressed Michiru who attempts to kill herself, but is stopped by a girl that is about to beat her to it. They end up becoming friends, but the depression is too much for her friend to handle and she ends up killing herself, which causes Michiru to have a heart attack.
Present day Michiru has had enough and lets go of her past and the friends that she has lost as she pushes herself out of the grave and back to the real world. We find out that she was down there for three days, which is a little hard to believe because…bathroom? But I won’t let that get in the way of this being incredibly sad and gives me a different perspective on Michiru’s character. I really hope it shows in later episodes.
So back to the question “can men and women be best friends?” I think Kazami and Michiru have shown that they definitely can because a best friend is someone who would do anything to help you in your time of need and be there for you whenever you need them and I think Kazami has far surpassed those terms. He cares about Michiru and doesn’t ask for anything in return save only for accepting his friendship. In the end, I think she does. What do you think, can men and women be best friends? Comment below.
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.
