I gave Grisaia no Rakuen a 5 because of how improved upon its style of narrative delivery, how it better characterized a small number of its characters, and because of some of its interesting subject matter. The show still suffers from a variety of character-related problems and poor story execution which lowers its score to this point. While not entirely forgettable because of the few areas where it did succeed, a majority of the characters and content did approach feeling this way.
Rakuen [serial number]
If that sounds familiar, it's because Rakuen Revolution is a Continuity Reboot of Utopia Academy. It's a game based on the manga series Shitsurakuen, only this time, characters are pulled into the city Rakuen from their own worlds, and forced to attend school and fight one another if they want any hope of regaining the ten memories that were arbitrarily removed from them, or of returning home.
There isn't much character development in this series. I don't know why you would expect that from a 3-episode OVA. Having said that, there is ample information provided about the protagonist and arguably the 'main' girl in the series, their relationship, past and so forth. A number of the side characters also have their own notable personalities and backgrounds (the protagonist on several occasions references how their future professions reflect their behaviour in their youth). So overall the characters aren't particularly strong or developed, but there have been worse attempts at character development.
I'll get right to it: although nowhere is there anything in Mujaki No Rakuen that would legally cause it to be categorized as an adult title, it is indeed porn. And in spite of the fact that the voice actors for this production are all adults, there is no way to deny that it is porn centered around fifth graders. Yes, I am not joking...fifth graders.Please, take a moment and let that sink in.I'll admit it, Mujaki No Rakuen...you've got me. I've watched a fair number of heinous things, most of them for the purpose of reviewing them, but you've managed to outdo each and every one of them. So Eiken had a yogurt waterslide that amounted to a bukkake deathrace? Well, you said, "I can do better than that!" Yes, you had fifth grade boys attack fifth grade girls with squirt guns full of spoiled milk, all at once. Yes, you've done the impossible...you've managed to make a scene from Eiken look tasteful in comparison. And did I say that Recorder and Randsell's having a kid in the body of an adult man was creepy? Well, apparently you said "we can outcreep even Recorder and Randsell!" and set off to do so. And so you conceived a perverted 25-year-old man in a fifth grader's body, still having the memories of said perverted 25-year-old man and having the same sexual fantasies about his classmates who, unlike him, are actual fifth graders. It wasn't enough that Atsushi in Recorder and Randsell was mistaken for a sexual predator: you invented the very best possible disguise for a sexual predator and let him get away with it.And yes, Shouta is a predator. We are meant to think he is a "nice guy" but he is as shameless a pedophile as he is stupid, sexist, and pathetic. I'm not convinced in the slightest that he's "hapless" and that such things as being "coerced" into massaging a girl's bug bite, which, I might add, looks mysteriously like a nipple, are not his fault. Admittedly, the show does frame him, in one case, for being part of a plot to lift up his classmates' skirts concocted by his male classmates, but this is just as odious: it's the dynamic of "we boys" having to take revenge on the "scary and dangerous girls" by sexually humiliating them, and it lets our resident predator victimize himself. Heck, I hardly believe that he didn't "want" to be blamed and (later) captured: this show's masochistic fantasy of being bound and gagged while your fifth-grade classmates undress themselves makes the kind of peeping-tom humor in your average onsen episode look like something from My Neighbor Totoro.No, if you haven't realized already, I'm not buying this show's crap. Shouta, in the brief reunion scene at the beginning, acts as if his various former female classmates, who now all have successful careers, are looking down on him simply because he's a hikkomori. Sexism much? Oh no, there's nothing sexist about our poor, helpless little loser being upset that these big and scary women are so successful! It's just his male pride is being wounded. Or something. It's also not super sexist and demeaning that it's obvious to everybody but our resident idiot that each and every want of these women wants to throw everything away just so that she can have sex with him! No, that's not a messed up male fantasy in the slightest! The point is this: I would rewatch Eiken, Photo Kano, or Recorder and Randsell an infinite number of times if it was the only thing that made it so that I didn't ever have to go near this again. While I could complain more about the crappy art and animation or the stupidity of the concept, that would ultimately give it too much credit. It is twenty-six minutes of watching fifth graders get aroused while being around a pedophile, and that is all you need to know.
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