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Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 10 – Quick Summary
In Grisaia: Phantom Trigger episode 10, “Heaven’s Door,” our heroes continued their assault. But we see the story from the other side’s perspective. Bruno and Patrick are looting dead soldiers on the battlefield when a siren makes them take shelter. They find an army corporeal protecting a group of sisters like Natalie who are fleeing for their lives. Can Bruno and Patrick afford to slow themselves down to help? Will they even get the chance?
Note: This post may include spoilers, so be cautious.
Favorite Quote from Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 10
At least they got to see the sky – before the end. Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.
If you want viewers to feel for your characters, you have to form an emotional connection. Making those characters pretty anime girls is a good start – it drops the viewer’s guard (well, generally speaking). But it’s not enough.
You have to do something else. Either you have to take the time to show the character in situations where the viewer thinks, “Oh, coo! These are people I can get along with!” Or you have to show the characters in a situation that instantly creates such an impression.
My favorite quote takes the second approach.
Patrick, Bruno, the AWOL corporeal, and the sisters emerged from a maintenance hatch. The three men tried to plan their next move when they noticed the women just looking around in astonishment. They weren’t amazed at the extent of the bombing damage. It was more basic.
Sally, one of the older sisters, said (08:33), “Well, um… This is our first time seeing the sky.”
In light of what happened in the rest of the episode, this was both endearing and devastating.
Favorite Moment from Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 10
An emotionally heavy moment, for an emotionally heavy episode. Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.
Setup: Almost Too Much
I came within a half inch of walking away from this episode half way through. I’ve been thinking a lot about my reaction, and I’ve come to two conclusions:
- This was the wrong series for me to review this season
- The episode make its narrative point with efficiency and brutal efficiency
In my reviews of CubexCursedxCurious, I talked about how the show used Fear in Cube, a cute anime girl, to humanize something that was decidedly not human. That idea carried into this episode. If we saw Patrick and Bruno gunned down, we’d be bummed on their behalf. But we’re so immune to seeing combatants die that we’re immune.
Apparently, I’m not immune to seeing sisters gunned down.
The randomness of some of the deaths made them all the more painful to watch. Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.
By the midpoint of the episode, I’d had my fill. Well, actually, the first death was too much. By the end, when Bruno and Patrick were gunned down, I even felt their deaths. The horror of seeing the innocent young women murdered had worn down my defenses.
It was senseless. Their deaths served no purpose.
And that was the point.
Have you ever read The Forever War? It made the same point. All those stories about the glory of heroism under fire, about overcoming the odds, about an emotional assault on an enemy’s position – all lies told to make someone, and not us, rich.
There is such heroism. But it’s shared among those on the battlefield not as something glorious, but as something raw and necessary for survival — if only the conditions are right. My point is not to demean the soldiers, but those who send them to their deaths.
Grisaia wasn’t content merely making the point that war is pointless. It threw in some reasons why war’s pointless. Look at how Renard Kohl, Enishi Urushihara, and the others callously made decisions that would cost lives – lives they would have cared nothing about, if they had considered them at all.
Delivery: War Is Pointless and…
That’s what war is about.
Remember George Orwill’s Animal Farm? Remember Boxer, the horse? All those stories about heroism and patriotism and self-sacrifice are designed to turn us into Boxer. Even Bruno and Patrick succumb in the end. When they lost their senses, they reverted the stereotypes propaganda had beat into them.
Which leads me, via a very indirect route, to my favorite quote.
Even victims of propaganda can have a flash of actual conscience. This moment happened just after friendly fire shot Sharlene through the neck. That was the moment I was ready to walk away. I’d actually made the decision. Some moron on her own side had opened fire on an enemy he couldn’t see – by firing through Sharlene, who was right freaking in front of him.
She was just standing there, overcome by fright. Capture from the Crunchyroll stream.
The other corporeal calmly put a bullet through the man’s head – just before the peace-loving Patrick could.
“I don’t need me who are incapable of telling who’s the enemy and who’s on our side,” he said (16:58), lowering his pistol.
Look, I understand what the show was saying. I endorse its message even as I loathed how it made me feel. But after a day’s consideration, I think that’s actually a good thing. The deaths were necessary from the perspective of this story’s theme. And I’m still not so cynical that I can’t react viscerally to such deaths.
Was your reaction similar to mine? What did you think of the episode? I’d love to hear your opinions in the comments!
Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 10: Other Posts
Other Anime Sites
This Site (Crow’s World of Anime!)
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 1: Mother’s Cradle I
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 2: Mother’s Cradle II
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 3: Mother’s Cradle III
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 4: Phantom Blade I
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 5: Phantom Blade II
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 6: Bluest Blue #1
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 7: Bluest Blue #2
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 8: Arisaka’s Journal
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 9: Rite of Passage
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 10: Heaven’s Door
- Grisaia: Phantom Trigger Episode 11: The Right Choice
