LemiusK

Well, I don't know how they actually see it, but I get why at least on this side of the planet people would think of it as nothing more than masturbation fodder  I mean, I know I do.
And the reason is that sex scenes are usually so over the top that they often feel like a parody. I know I'd love myself some more intimate and romantic h-scenes, but heh, good luck with that. It's like in anime related media everything has to be exaggerated, including sex. Well, when you think about it and compare it fairly with every other aspect, like comedy, it actually makes a whole lot of sense.

What Maggie said. They usually go by aliases, so it's not like they absolutely don't care about being recognized as eroge voice actresses.
However I think it's true that there's a big conceptual difference in the way Japanese people see their porn in VNs. Because yeah, most of the times, h-scenes are just porn, the cases when it actually adds something to the story in any form being pretty rare. Let's call it what it is, and it is porn. 
The thing is, in the west in general (and EEUU in particular, I dunno, I'm not 'murican) we kind of have a really hard time wrapping our heads around how porn could be anything more than porn. Either it's a porn movie, or a 'normal' movie. No in-betweens. That doesn't seem to be the case in Japan. You can have an amazingly written story with some porn on top of it to spice things up a little, and nobody bats an eye. And honestly, being so used to it nowadays, neither do I anymore.

Yeah, I did have a hunch it was along the lines of something like that, considering that the more popular Steins;Gate and Fate/Stay Night either didn't have any sex scenes or, in the latter case, voiced sex scenes. Grisaia was relatively obscure compared to those two.
Well, it makes more sense now. Still, it's kinda funny, people being asked to voice porn games with serious plot. It's just hard to imagine, considering most American porn stars aren't really talented actresses in the first place. Sure, it's just voicing but... it's just an amusing image, voice actresses asked to act and moan. Obscure eroge actresses or not, they do still offer a decent amount of acting skill in eroge games. It's not something half-assed like in a nukige, where you could tell that the actress barely put in any amount of effort at all. You get stuff like G-Senjou no Maou or even School Days, where a certain amount of convincing emotional voice-acting is required.
I guess it's because I've associated "porn" and "sex" with the more westernized kind of ideas and images that went with those keywords, so it's rather difficult for me to take "porn with serious plot" seriously. Whenever I see a "serious" VN like Kara no Shoujo suddenly pull up a h-scene on me with all the moaning that accompanies it, it's just hard to take it seriously and throws me off the story. It feels like unnecessary filler and could have easily been trimmed down to tighten the plot. So it only makes me wonder what eroge actresses must be thinking. Are they comfortable with it? Or do they simply not care? With many "eroges" having serious acting, you could hardly sum it down to companies hiring half-talented actresses for sex scenes that could easily be acted out by porn stars.
Then again, on the other hand, I guess you could also say that Japanese people take their sex scenes seriously, and they put in that much effort to ensure the love-making scenes contain that much passion and believability. It's something that I could picture Japanese people thinking.

Thank you, I feel like Coco’s route came out of nowhere. 16 year old me was whiplashed because it got meta for some reason. I don’t mind metanarratives like DDLC, but using that as a true end came across as an asspull to me. Like when You said that she wanted to unlock Blick Winkel  I was...just...eh... Personally, I felt like it gotten way too out of hand for a simple story of several teenagers trapped inside a underwater amusement park. (Wow, that sentence is so fucking surreal after reading it lolz).
Another problem, is that once BW is unlocked they are basically God. BW can do anything. So, the last moments of saving Coco’s life is basically going back into a literal previous point in space time to save her from her “inevitable” demise. Sigh....
Despite that, this is one of the reasons I cannot recommend Ever17 to newbies, because unlocking the true route without a walkthrough is hard as hell. I spent days just trying to do that. Plus, you cannot tell which choices lead into certain routes or not. They don’t really seem that consequential like Saya No Uta. 
Finally, metanarratives are really dangerous to rely on because you are literally shattering the immersion by breaking the fourth wall.
Honestly, what’s worse is that I am not even sure how else they could’ve ended it. It’s not a good introductory visual novel because of the length and the ending. 
 
(Full disclosure it’s been 6 years since I’ve read Ever17, so I may gotten some things wrong.)
 
But seriously, thanks again for your post. It’s refreshing to see someone who isn’t drinking the “Ever17 is kamige” kool-aid.
 

Yeah, it's more or less the same for me. I don't know, I just don't care about traditional Key that much anymore.
On the other hand, I read Planetarian last year, and it was still amazing. It was by a different author than the most other Key VNs and it actually doesn't have most flaws other Key VNs have. Rewrite is also pretty cool, but it's Key only in name. Summer Pockets, apparently, is also handled by completely new people, though I heard some mixed reactions about how it actually came out.
To be honest, the problem with Maeda's writing is that he got used to one particular way of writing things (which got old years ago), and whenever he tries to even slightly go away from it, he fails. He failed in Moon., he failed the same way in Charlotte more than 15 years later.

You would probably need to replay through the whole VN to reach them, yeah. The new routes spoil the true route, so originally they were supposed to be locked before you finish it. The Japanese version of EX gave you a choice at the very beginning to unlock them (in case you already played the original version), but I don't think you can do it in the official English version.
OR you could just use a 100% save file. Or just skip the additional routes, like I did. I mean, I literally played this game more than five years ago. As if I would care anymore.

If you think that Front Wing (FW) did regressed Michiru at Meikyuu, perhaps this thread at Reddit could give you some reasons lol. Note that it talk about FW's almost broke situation while they already planned the trilogy for Grisaia, and so they decided to make Kajitsu as almost standalone VN (Remove some of Amane's route foreshadowing, and we can have Kajitsu as totally independent VN). Of course seeing that Kajitsu is stand alone VN to some people, any attempt to make the trilogy would be met up with some confusion in regard of the canon. Before you say that Muv Luv did that I would say that Muv Luv here still better as the trilogy because they managed to introduce the major plot hook at Unlimited that was sold together with Extra, while in here both of Kajitsu and Meikyuu did sold as separated VN so it would be fitting if we say that Meikyuu and Kajitsu here is separated to an extend, mostly because FW probably scrambling off to write the original plan that they have with the trilogy in both of Meikyuu and Rakuen.
As for Michiru's AS, well if you feel uncomfortable by that you can treat it as the fanservice for the fan who like idiot Michiru, and I'm sure that it make up most of the fans out there back at Meikyuu development in Japan with the current situation was back then FW probably need to sell Meikyuu as much as possible, possibly to cover the development cost back at Kajitsu. Other than that, we can also say that FW probably thought that Grisaia trilogy need some comedy relief, and poor Michiru was the one that FW chose lol. As for my opinion in regard of the trilogy, I think we can treat Kajitsu as the main entry of Grisaia while at the same time treat both of Meikyuu and Rakuen as the fandiscs, moreso because of the development situation of Kajitsu (Then again, FW did sell Meikyuu as Kajitsu's sequel though, so there's that).
PS - In case you afraid that Rakuen would be unkind to Michiru, feel free to ignore that FD because in there she's pretty much flanderized into the idiot one (And by the way I wouldn't treat Rakuen as the sequel even with FW did mentioned that Michiru got lost in my country Indonesia lol).

Something about your statement tells me Michiru's fate in Rakuen is a lot worse... 
 
Hopefully - and I'm saying this with desperate optimism -
So yeah, hopefully it's something like that... But... even if it is, that still doesn't change how mediocre Michiru's AS is.  If anything, this makes her AS feel even more like filler material now compared to the other AS.

Actually, this reminded me that the biggest problem with Michiru's AS I personally had is that I felt as if it completely disregarded her development from the original route.
Now I'm interested in what your reaction on Rakuen is going to be.