REVIEW: The Leisure of Grisaia


Title	The Leisure of Grisaia
Developer	Frontwing
Publisher	Frontwing
Release Date	May 18, 2016
Genre	Visual Novel, Comedy
Platform	Windows
Age Rating	All-ages
Official Website

One of the biggest draws of The Fruit of Grisaia is the sense of fun and humour about the common route. Very little serious stuff happens outside of the individual routes, and the time is mostly taken up by learning the characters’ personalities by way of all kinds of hijinks. So, it makes sense for there to be a spin-off focusing on this period. That is what The Leisure of Grisaia is. Nothing more, nothing less. It knows what it wants to be, and doesn’t try to be anything else.

The Leisure of Grisaia was originally released as a bonus with the initial production run of The Fruit of Grisaia anime series volume 3 on DVD and Blu-ray. This is both the first standalone release of the game, as well as the first time it’s been translated into English.

The Leisure of Grisaia | Locker yuri — They’re playing locker kendo.

The Leisure of Grisaia has the same characters and setting as The Fruit of Grisaia, excluding Yuuji Kazami. You can find my assessment of the characters in my review of that game. It mostly follows Michiru, Makina and Sachi as they try to form a new club, without success. While they try to figure out what kind of club to form, they run into various antics around the school.

The entire game is under an hour long, and seems like it’s roughly equivalent to a single anime episode worth of content. There’s not a particularly large amount of depth, but it makes a fun diversion if nothing else.

The Leisure of Grisaia | SD CG design — There’s a slightly new style to the chibi CGs.

There’s not much to be said about it. As one might expect, it’s very similar to The Fruit of Grisaia in terms of writing style, which is a good thing. It has locker kendo, bike jousting, and some yuri undertones, and not very much else. All wrapped up in a nice little slapstick comedy, featuring everyone’s favourite dim-witted, pseudo-tsundere butt monkey, Michiru Matsushima. It’s aimed squarely at fans of The Fruit of Grisaia, and there’s really nothing here for people who don’t already know the characters. It assumes you know what’s going on and therefore doesn’t waste its time with introductions or establishing the setting.

One thing that it has going for it is the new CGs, both and chibi ones. The art is a particularly strong point for The Fruit of Grisaia, and the CGs are absolutely beautiful, and that is absolutely the case here as well. There’s also a new song in the soundtrack for The Leisure of Grisaia that wasn’t in Fruit, but the game has no music player so I have no idea what it’s called. Otherwise, the soundtrack is all the same as its parent game, and over the credits, it plays “Skip”, the ending theme from Michiru’s route.

The Leisure of Grisaia | Jokes — This is a decent indication of what most of Leisure’s humour is like.

The Leisure of Grisaia is an entertaining little side story, and that’s all it is. It’s priced at a very reasonable $2.99 USD, and you can get a lot worse for the price. It’s not much, but it’ll keep you entertained for a bit if you’re a fan of The Fruit of Grisaia. It’s not anything more than that, and it’s definitely not for anyone who hasn’t read The Fruit of Grisaia, but for what it is The Leisure of Grisaia is an enjoyable, if short, experience.