After starting it in 2022 but getting sidetracked along the way, I finally finished the first two mainline VNs of the Grisaia series.

First things first: I absolutely love it—10/10, easily my new favourite visual novel. But there’s one grave injustice that I need to address in this rant.

When I was playing the common route of The Fruit of Grisaia, I quickly grew fond of all the characters, but one in particular stood out: Matsushima Michiru. I was super excited for her route and decided to save it for last.

While every other route in the game was a perfect mix of emotionally devastating tearjerker moments and fun-packed romance, for some reason, Michiru’s route was... not. While I still enjoyed it a lot because Michiru is just such a great character (and has an amazing voice actress), I couldn’t help but feel confused—almost angry—at how horribly Yuuji treated her in her route. Why was he so incredibly mean to her? All those "fake dates" and the scene where he gave her the pebbles... my heart could barely take it. Why couldn’t he just be kind to her? Why was Yuuji a perfect gentleman in all the other routes, but not in this one?

In the other girls' routes, the drama would eventually turn into romance relatively early on, but in Michiru’s route, it just kept dragging on, never getting better. It was just Yuuji being absolutely awful to her, and her becoming suicidal because of it! And just when it seemed like, at the very end, Yuuji finally decided to save her from her misery and show her some affection, the ending credits rolled before the story could take any pleasant turn.

Okay, so after starting The Labyrinth of Grisaia, I noticed it mainly consists of afterstories for each girl's route. Full of hope, I dove into all of them, once again saving Michiru’s for last, hoping for a more positive experience this time.

You can’t imagine my pain when I played her afterstory and, once again, Yuuji was a complete idiot and jerk. And once again, this only happened in her route. I remember reaching the end of her afterstory at around 4am, my heart and soul in agony, as finally—in the last 10 minutes—it took a turn for the better. But despite that nice ending, I went to bed feeling sad, because all those hours of Michiru’s suffering really left their mark on me.

Naturally, I did some research to see what others thought about her route and if there was any explanation. Apparently, Michiru’s route was written by someone who wasn’t even a full-time writer, which explains why it doesn’t follow the typical VN structure like the other routes do.

And here I am, wondering why Michiru had to endure such injustice. Why does every other girl get an amazing romance story, while Michiru is stuck with hours of horrible treatment? How could anyone think this was a good idea, and how did this pass quality control?

Despite all this, Michiru’s appearance in the common route of the first game, and in the other routes, still portrays her as a fantastic and enjoyable character. And all the other routes are so incredibly good that I still gave the game a 10/10 on VNDB—it’s easily my new favourite VN. But I’ll never forgive Frontwing for what they did to my Michiru. Someone truly wicked must have been in charge of her route.

One last thought: I was fairly sure the third game doesn’t feature character routes like this anymore, so I decided it was safe to look up art of the characters on the boorus. And I did see a spoiler CG from The Eden of Grisaia that looks like it’s from a much more positive Michiru story. So, maybe there’s some redemption for her yet? I certainly hope so, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up too high.