The Winter 2025 Anime Preview Guide

Grisaia: Phantom Trigger the Animation

After the Heath Oslo incident exposed the U.S.-Japanese anti-terror organization CIRS, a new agency emerges to train elite operatives: SORD. Mihama Academy, once abandoned, is now part of a series of SORD training grounds for misfit girls to hone their deadly skills. Armed with live ammunition, they face perilous missions, sacrificing their safety for the country's future.

Grisaia: Phantom Trigger the Animation is based on Frontwing's video game by the same name. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Wednesdays.

First things first: I don't doubt that a number of you reading this might be doing so because you're interested in this series, but you've never played any of the Grisaia visual novels nor seen any of the previous Grisaia anime, and you're curious about whether or not you can jump into this anime. To which I tell you: while there's a chance I could be wrong in the long run, this first episode, at least, seems like this series is Grisaia-beginner-friendly. And I say this for two reasons:

1. Phantom Trigger isn't directly connected to The Fruit of Grisaia (and, for that matter, The Labyrinth of Grisaia and The Eden of Grisaia). I mean, they take place in the same universe, and you'll get your fair share of familiar names and faces, but they're stories about totally different groups of protagonists. While I'd say at least being familiar with Fruit of Grisaia will enhance your Phantom Trigger experience, I'd also warn that you will spoil a few elements of Fruit and Eden if you jump into Phantom Trigger without having seen them, it's not totally necessary. The Phantom Trigger OVAs, however, are different—those are about the same characters and take place before this TV series. That being said:

2. The first two minutes of this episode are spent recapping the Phantom Trigger OVAs and movie. The OVAs throw you into the middle of the action, spending the bare minimum of time doing anything else. But on the other hand, if you're just in the market for an action series and little else, that's probably a feature, not a bug. If this first episode represents what the rest of the series will be like, then it will be unlike the other Phantom Trigger anime we've had up until now.

Personally, though, I like that Phantom Trigger is taking a much-needed beat to show us more about life at Mihama. It's one of my bigger gripes with the OVAs—I just can't find it in myself to care much about these characters, and I think a lot of that has to do with how little I know about them outside of their weapon proficiency. Maybe this isn't an issue in the source material, but I haven't read it.

In any case, in sharp contrast to the non-stop action of the OVAs, this first episode is more of a slice-of-life than anything else. The story introduces a new student, Taiga, and most of the episode is spent watching her find her way around Mihama and try new things. This is also great news for new viewers because it simultaneously introduces the audience to the school and what goes on there. This much-needed change of pace for the series feels like a breath of fresh air, and I hope we have at least a few more relaxed episodes like this as the series continues. And it does all this whilst sporting some gorgeous animation (which is still being done by Bibury) that is worthy of following up on the visual spectacle of the OVAs. The backgrounds and lighting, in particular, look nothing short of spectacular for a TV series. But still, as I already talked about, I just haven't really been able to click with this series so far. And while I'd love to have my mind changed, for the time being, this episode isn't exactly so great and refreshing that it totally 180'd my thoughts on it. There's potential here, though.

I've had the Grisaia visual novels in my Steam Wishlist for a good long while now—it's one of those situations where I can't even remember where I heard of them or when I added them to the list, but that's the Steam backlog, for you—so I was interested in checking out Grisaia: Phantom Trigger the Animation to see if it could be a good entry point for newbies to the franchise. It's ostensibly a new story with new characters that follows up on the original Fruit of Grisaia story, after all. In my head, it wouldn't be all that different than when I started watching Scrubs with that final season everyone hated about the new doctors that replaced the beloved cast of the first eight years of the show.

If I have learned anything after watching the premiere of Grisaia Phantom Trigger, it's that an anime about an academy of mysterious teenage female assassins makes for a slightly more convoluted setup than a sitcom about goofy doctors. To the show's credit, it spends pretty much the entirety of its first episode introducing its large cast and getting the basics of its worldbuilding out of the way, but it is all very much being presented under the assumption that its audience is already familiar with the franchise and on board with all of its peculiarities. This leads to a script where we're definitely being told a lot of information about a lot of people, but none of it sticks with any clarity for a newcomer like me, because I'm still trying to process just what in the hell the show is even about.

Really, more than the overbearing exposition, the real problem with jumping fresh into Grisaia Phantom Trigger is one of tone. In the very opening scene, our timid teacher character casually reveals that she's just a normal high school teacher…except all of her students are hardened assassins in training, prepared to kill for…whatever reason. I've seen plenty of anime about Cute Girls Doing Murderous Things, but the thing that baffled me the most about Grisaia Phantom Trigger is that it spends so much time just setting up the new cast that it barely even registers why these girls are all being molded into moe Jason Bourne-chans. The episode summary references international incidents and terrorist attacks that I'm assuming got explained in some other media, and a couple of dialogue exchanges are there to assure us that there is definitely some kind of serious espionage business afoot, but it never feels prescient to what is happening on screen. This episode is much more concerned with exploiting the sapphic vibes of characters like Chris and Taiga, which, you know, by all means, but still.

It's a very weird foot to start off on, is what I'm getting at, especially if you're coming at the franchise without all of the prerequisite background. The production values are solid, and the characters seem alright, but I still think I might need to stick Grisaia Phantom Trigger on the backburner until I get around to catching up on those original games.