Grisaia Phantom Trigger is BAD

Article at a glance:

• The anime rushes through plot points without letting them breathe, making the story confusing and disjointed.
• The anime requires prior knowledge of the Phantom Trigger movies, but its recap is inadequate and poorly executed.
• Despite good animation and action scenes, the anime fails to deliver compelling character development or a coherent narrative.

Look, I won’t pretend that the original series, Grisaia no Kajitsu, Grisaia no Meikyuu, and Grisaia no Rakuen were literary masterpieces or anything. But those seasons were cool, edgy, and fun. They had a certain level of self-awareness and never tried to be something they were not. The plot was also interesting with Yuuji being a great protagonist. But the Grisaia Phantom Trigger came along and despite being a sequel to the original trilogy, this is somehow so much of a mess I don’t even know where to start.

So yeah, welcome back to another article and today we are talking about Grisaia Phantom Trigger. I usually don’t like to talk negatively on this website but I checked out the Phantom Trigger anime and boy it was a mess. Let’s talk about it.

Why is Grisaia Phantom Trigger such a Mess?

Well, let’s talk about the confusing marketing behind the current anime. You can’t watch the currently airing anime without watching the previous two Phantom Trigger movies. From everything I saw about this anime, it felt like this would be a fresh adaptation of the VN but nope, it is a sequel to the movies. The confusing naming convention does not help either. Shouldn’t be an issue for me since I have watched the movies and played the VNs? Well, nope. I didn’t like how the movies presented the plot, but the anime series is somehow worse.

Events happen way too fast. You get a recap for both of the movies at the beginning of episode 1 but the recap is flimsy at best. Like they just throw all the major plot points of the movies at you and then expect you to remember it. Well even if you do, the anime won’t make sense. Because they introduce one plot element and then quickly move on to the next without letting it breathe. Only 3 episodes of the Phantom Trigger anime are out right now but all 3 of those episodes were a confusing mess. Despite rewatches, I could not follow the plot.

Everything this anime does feels so weirdly disjointed and the plot moves way too fast for its own good. However, I have to say that the animations are pretty good. Bibury clearly put a lot of effort into this. The action scenes we have seen so far have been pretty good as well. And I liked what they were trying to do with Kujirase and Taiga. I would’ve liked to see their relationship deepen more before the events of episode 2. But well, that didn’t happen.

That is all for now

So yeah, Phantom Trigger is a mess,, I don’t know how we got here from the simple yet cool OG Grisaia trilogy. The OG trilogy wasn’t perfect by any means but damn did it know how to keep things interesting with a simple plot. But yeah, those were my thoughts on Phantom Trigger. Let me know what you guys think in the comments and I will take my leave here. See ya!

Also, check out Alice in Wonderland is getting an anime, check out the details here!