English Dub Review: ISLAND “As Long as You Are There”

If you ever wanted to know what not to do in writing thematic tone, watch this series.

Overview:

Setsuna and Rinne spend time together.

Our Take:

I had to marathon this series in preparation for this article and boy was I reminded why I don’t usually like to consume media aimed at straight male otaku.

While yes watching teenage girls that look twelve be constantly sexualized is incredibly uncomfortable (although unfortunately, fairly common in anime aimed towards a male audience), there are more important issues at play, mainly: this series has a tone problem. A really, really bad tone problem. It really seems like it can’t decide what genre it is: a slice of life harem with an everyman protagonist or a suspenseful mystery about what’s happening on the island, and this episode is a perfect example of this, especially after the insane roller coaster of nonsense that happened the last episode.

This episode starts out with some bonding time as the main character spends time with Rinne and they grow a little closer together but quick, we have to manufacture some tension so go back to the mystery! So we start out with a slice of life pseudo-romance and then instantly cuts to the revelation that Setsuna’s already dead and a murder happened and oh no and why were we suddenly supposed to care about this again? There’s really no reason for us to care about the mystery of the Island because it seems to only be brought up when the writers remember that they have to shoehorn some intrigue in. If the point of the series is the mystery, then the fear and tension and confusion have to be kept there at all time, and if the point is harem romance, then the slice of life dating aspects deserve more importance. Unfortunately, the anime tries to do both without actually trying to do both which just resulted in me being incredibly bored.

As a plot, it seemed very familiar. An isolated community with strict ideals, long history with the head families and the conflicts that stem from that, a fear of outsiders, a strange disease, time loops, a miko with a vocal tic; it feels a lot like Ryukishi 07’s Higurashi no Naku Koro Ni, except Higurashi was actually well written and had something to say. It’s not to say that similar series can’t exist, but Island feels like a far inferior product in comparison. Inferior by a significant margin.

All in all, it’s halfway through the season and yet I am just completely uninvested in what’s going to happen because the series adamantly refuses to keep any tension. It’s so mind-numbingly mediocre. Maybe in the visual novel, it would have made sense to have the pacing like this but for an anime, every episode just feels to poorly slapped together, to the point where it genuinely frustrates me that this got an anime instead of actually good, well-written series out there.