Having played a fair bit of -LE FRUIT DE LA GRISAIA- (Grisaia no Kajitsu, literally "The Fruit of Grisaia"), I have to admit that the title has confused me more than anything else. It seems to have very little to do with the plot of the VN, at least so far.
What is the meaning of the title? Is it titled after an actual fruit, and if so what is the fruit? Also, what significance does it have to the plot?
According to this interview with Front Wing Producer, President, and CEO, Ryuuichirou Yamakawa:
山川 絵画の画法でモノトーンで書く手法を「グリザイユ」というのですが、これを少し、いじって『グリザイアの果実』つまり「灰色の果実」という意味が込められています
The word "grisaia" is a corruption of the French term used in art, "grisaille," a method of painting in monochrome or near-monochrome, typically to resemble the appearance of marble sculptures. So literally it's meant to be "the gray-colored fruit" or something like that.
The fruits refer "guilt" the heroines bear, as described by the story synopsis of the game:
──その学園は、少女達の果樹園だった。
外敵から隔離された学園にやってきたのは、生きる目的をなくした一人の少年。
守るべき物を見失い、後悔と贖罪のみに費やされる人生の中で、その少年に残されたのは首に繋がれた太い鎖と、野良犬にも劣る安い命。
そして少年は、その学園で少女達と出会い、新たな希望を見つけ出す。──その少女は、生まれてきたことが既に間違いだった
逆らった罪──
──生きながらの死
誰も守ってなんかくれない──
──そして生き残った罰。そこは、少女達の果樹園。
彼女達は、後悔の樹に実った懺悔の果実。そんな少女達に、俺はいったい何が出来る…？
それは、一人の少年が夢見た永遠の希望──That academy – used to be the orchard of young girls.
A lonely boy, who lost his purpose to live, came to that isolated-from-the-foreign-enemies academy. Lose sight of things that should be protected, he spends his life in living day by day with regret and atonement. His life is cheaper than a stray dog when that heavy cangue still around his neck.
And then at that academy, the boy finds out his new hope in encountering with these girls.──That girl, who being born was already a mistake.
Who defied the sin──
──Who died though she’s living.
Who no one will protect── [Note: translation corrected]
──and who being punished for surviving.That place is the girls’ orchard.
The trees of regret bear the fruit of repentance of those girls. What on earth can I do for these girls...?
That is the eternal hope which the lonely boy dreamt...
Each heroine is represented by a fruit:
Considering that the subtitle for it is in French, I'm making a logic jump by guessing "grisaia" is just a conjugation/grammatical form of the word "grisait" or something close (I don't know french at all, but then again it could be a classic case of the Japanese tripping up with a foreign language).
According to google, grisait means something between "intoxicate" and "fascinate" in french, so I guess the VN's title was going for "The Fruit of Intoxication"? Sounds fairly plausible at least...
Grisaia is a bastardization of the French term Grisaille which refers a method of painting in monochrome. Grisaille in Japanese is グリザイユ or gurizaiyu and the only difference in Japanese between Grisaia (グリザイア) and Grisaille is the last sound (yu in grisaille and a in grisaia). The reason for the name and why the end is changed won't really come up until the third and last game in the series though.
