The Fruit of Grisaia: Compete Collection

A narrative-oriented video game inspired this rambling melodrama. Yuji Kazami, a muscular teen with the bearing and fighting moves of an elite assassin, transfers to Mihama Academy to be just an "ordinary student," but the place seems bereft of teachers or classes (actually not all that unusual in anime). The only other students are a group of enticing girls, each of whom seems to have foreknowledge of Kazami. Secretive Yumiko slashes at those who displease her with a box-cutter; she's the unwilling heiress of a railway magnate. Voluptuous, mercurial, mortality-obsessed Michiru may suffer from a split personality, or possibly spirit possession. Sachi is servile to the point of endangering her own life, while childlike Makina—adopting Kazami as a surrogate father—is traumatized over her own parents' brutalization by gangsters. Kazami's troubleshooting interaction with his classmates (as a kind of action-hero therapist) gradually uncovers everyone's back stories. Throughout, the tone shifts from harem-comedy to thriller-drama to fan-service cheesecake with casual nudity and panty flashes. But none of this ever amounts to a very coherent whole, despite some subplots that are lyrical and deeply moving. Compiling all 13 episodes from 2014 in separate DVD and Blu-ray editions, rated TV-MA, and presented in Japanese with English subtitles, this is an optional purchase. (C. Cassady)