It's the sequel to The Fruit of Grisaia, which I liked a lot. I'd been going to watch this no matter what, but the good news is that it's looking strong in its own right.

It's picking up from the Labyrinth of Grisaia special, continuing the material from the game that wouldn't fit in 47 minutes. In other words, at last we're meeting Asako. We're still working through Yuuji's childhood and here we're meeting the most important person in his life. She's a hard-drinking mercenary and hitman who takes in this damaged boy and raises him as a combination of mother, big sister and sergeant-major. She's funny, e.g. her idea of home cooking. However she also understands him. She turns him into a functional human being, at least in certain basic respects.

If you've been watching Grisaia from the start, this is huge. It doesn't have the horror of Yuuji's life before this, but it's still transformational for both characters. I also don't think it feels like an ordinary first episode. It hits the ground running, getting straight into the meat of the story... although admittedly we're talking about emotional development rather than supervillains, assassins or other superficial action. Well, I suppose that's not so surprising for a season two.

I like it. I like Grisaia and more specifically I like this episode. I'm definitely continuing.

I was sooooooo close to continuing. I trawled the internet. I read other people's reviews. In the end, I ditched the show, but it was a close thing until I started listing all the reasons not to watch it.

All the signs of the Chinese zodiac are girls. They go around in a gang and do a lame comedy thing that involves asking a passer-by to recite all the Chinese zodiac. If this passer-by doesn't name you, you lose.

Nya-tan is a cat-girl, which means she's not one of the main twelve. However she'd like to be. What she does is show up in the house of Generic Male Protagonist (real name: Takeru Tendo) and pester him in sexually suggestive ways, despite being underage. He tells her to get lost. This fails so badly that it seems he's going to end up living with all thirteen girls. Not sure how that works, but apparently this isn't one of those "lots of girls in love with one boy" harem shows. That's what the internet says, anyway. They'll just be living with him.

I have my reservations about that, though, given Nya-tan's dubious antics this week. Even if no one's in love with anyone else, I bet there's going to be more ecchi. A further problem is the fourth-wall-breaking. Generic Protagonist calls someone an exposition character and people mention the fact that the advert break's coming up. Nya-tan's trying to choose a character type for herself.

Looking at someone else's review of the whole show, he says "Good comedy (if you're a fan of fourth wall breaking)". I hate fourth-wall-breaking.

A baddie appears, blows up Generic Protagonist's house and has a battle scene with Nya-tan simply because the episode wants to have a battle scene. Nya-tan asks Baddie why they're fighting even while they're fighting. Baddie says "you wouldn't understand", then afterwards reveals that it was just a play-acted battle anyway.

Why was I in any doubt? It looks harmless, but... no, run away.