The Fruit of Grisaia: Makina's Path

I am not going to pull any punches on the girl known as Makina. She is what most of us people would call a straight-up Loli. Her small girl appearance and cute small girl attitude and mentality are one of her more charming characteristics. She is only a year younger than the protag Yuuji. 

Makina relies heavily on the other girls for her support, mostly Amane who views her as a daughter of sorts and pretty much takes care of her. Sachi is her best friend and they are usually playing around with one another and participating in the same activities together, this is also probably because they are the same age.

Makina has some unique abilities that Yuuji pics up on very quickly and despite her usual butchering of languages, off-the-wall antics and games, and her overall carefree attitude he soon realizes that something is off.

At first, Makina is shy and not very open to Yuuji, but over time she opens up and begins to treat Yuuji as someone she is growing to rely on just as much as Aname. This leads to an interesting turn of events when one day Makina asks Yuuji a very simple and yet very awkward question, "Will you be my Papa?" 

Yuuji was stunned by this sudden question and really didn't know how to respond, before he could though she had started telling him why she wanted him to be her Papa and that she wouldn't ask him to be so without just compensation. When he inquired about what kind of compensation she would be able to give him, she managed to pull out some cash but then she handed him a Black Card. It is a card carried by the ultra-rich, and they do not just hand those things out to anyone. He asks her how much is on it and her response was "It has 70 million on it but if that is not enough I can get more it just might take a bit."  

He eventually agrees to her request and decides that it isn't so bad, she already calls him her brother so a small upgrade couldn't be so bad. Soon after this, he contacts JB his handler to get him information on Makina. The principle gives him access to the information she has and what he finds out isn't something he had fully expected but not far off from it. 

Makina eldest daughter and heir to a matriarch led multi-national conglomerate. The company has its hands in everything from production, distribution, manufacturing, there is nothing that they do not have their hands in and because of that if the company ever hit a snag it could cause a global financial crisis all on its own. The Conglomerate is broken between powerful factions, the Main Family, and the Branch Family. Makina is the daughter of the Main Family and her father was a well-known investigator and corporate man. However, he was very noble, and in a company that does most of its dealings in the dark, he grew to despise the company. 

This led to him obtaining key information that could have destroyed the Conglomerate, his reasoning was simple, he just wanted his daughter to grow up away from such filth and he would do what he could to make that a reality. However, this plan was found out by the Branch Family and so a backup plan was put into motion. Under orders from her own mother, Maknia was kidnapped and taken to a warehouse where she was tied and there they waited for her father to show up, upon his arrival the men hired to kidnap Makina killed him in front of her. They left leaving the girl tied up and her father's corpse in a warehouse where the heat was pretty bad.

After a week she was found along with her father's badly decomposed corpse. The events led her into a mentally induced coma of sorts. When she awoke she wouldn't say a word to anyone, after two years she was finally talking in the sense she would answer yes and no questions, two years after that she would talk to people and finally another two years after that she was able to leave the hospital.

During this time her mother had another daughter with a man from the Branch Family and that daughter was taking over as the next heir of the Conglomerate and filling in for Makina as they looked a lot alike. The Branch Family had led the Main Family into thinking she was dead, but instead, they had hidden her in the school. They decided they would keep her around as insurance should something come up and they didn't see a point in killing her.

Through the course of the VN, Yuuji notices that Makina despite her act of being an airhead and not very bright she actually is a genius of sorts. She is able to absorb information like a sponge and after showing her or telling her how to do something only once or twice she can learn it and remember it. Be starts to teach her how to survive, how to use a gun, how to fight and defend herself. In a way he sees himself becoming the same thing that his master was to him, but this time he was taking someone under his wing as their 'Papa'.

Eventually, however, things take a turn for the worse. The Main Family finds out that she is in fact still alive and they try to get her to come back home. She refuses, and in response, the Branch Family sends people out to scare her into not returning home or so it seems. Between the Branch and Main Families, things take off pretty fast, and soon Yuuji as a Representative of Makina goes and pays her mother a visit. When done he returns to the dorm and discusses the situation with Makina the next day he is called into his "job" and given a kill order. He is to assassinate Makina as soon as arrangements have been made. 

Yuuji has Makina to call her mother and see if they can end this peacefully but at the end of the day, there is no peaceful way to stop what is about to happen. With that, he decides to take immediate action. To ensure that no one at the school gets harmed Yumiko who's father owns the school uses her clearance to make a formal 'Expulsion' notice on both Makina and Yuuji striking them from the records of the school. In doing so any action against the school or the others would be seen as an act of aggression to the East Beach Railway Company.

JB tries to stop Yuuji from running, but in the end, all Yuuji says to her, "I made a promise to protect her no matter what, and my master said once you find something worth giving your life for you should damn well live by that word" with that JB reluctantly lets Yuuji go. As they flee and move around to not get caught, the nightmares and deep-seated scares of Yuuji's past start to come back to him. He used to be a coward but through pushing him harder and harder he soon developed another version of himself...the one that could kill without remorse. This was how he earned his designation as I-9029 a number that had been passed down to operatives with unique skills. 

He knew that he wouldn't be able to keep up the pace and with Makina, with him the chances of them being caught grew, even more, Makina made her way on her own to a former spot they had taken shelter in before multiple teams made an attempt to get them which led to the building being destroyed.  While there she ran into two agents and they got into a scuffle which led to Makina getting shot. When Yuuji finds her he removes the guards and begins to take her to a hospital. JB shows up and offers to take her into the hospital.

Makina survives and is placed under the protection of the company that Yuuji worked for. With this Yuuji decides its time to destroy the head of the snake of the Conglomerate and heads to kill Makina's mother. Upon gaining entry he is able to quickly get in and find her mother. He decides not to pull the trigger however and ends up fighting with some guards. At the end of the fight, he is shot with a shotgun in the arm and manages to escape. He later meets up with Makina who has snuck out of the hospital and as they board a train they make the decision to move to Florida in the US, she is going to open her bakery and they will live there together.

Years after they move to Florida it is told that Yuuji ended up losing his arm after the shotgun blast and was no longer able to work for the company, he had been reinstated as a "Reserve Member" because of the information that Makina supplied, with her information on the shady deals of her mother's company they Ichigara Group made a deal with the Conglomerate, remove the kill orders for Yuuji and Makina and pursue no further action against them or face their secrets being released. 

With this, it is revealed that Makina has become the new I-9029 and has taken Yuuji's spot after his retirement due to the loss of his arm. Not only does she have her day job as a baker and lives with Yuuji, now she is his replacement with a new handler, the handler that was training under JB. 

I have mixed feelings about this ending for a couple of reasons. For the most part, it is expressed that he has trained her in the art of killing, something one would think he would not want to do as it puts her life in danger as well. Also, she still refers to him as "Papa" even though they are obviously in a more romantic relationship which...hey to each their own I mean what man doesn't like to be called "Daddy" sometimes but it is still a weird situation. 

Overall though I can accept this ending and I think it is one of the more subtle endings other than Michiru's which ends with them still in school as well as Sachi's which is the same way. Amane ends with both of them dying of old age, and Yumiko ends with them married and with a child. So it just depends on your take I guess which end you will find more your style.

This is the last "Good Path" and therefore I hope to see you read the next installments from the game The Labyrinth of Grisaia the sequel to this game.

Thanks!