English Dub Series Review: Island

Boy, oh boy, this show.

Our Take:

If anything, this show is indicative of the problems of the anime industry, that studios have to put out something, regardless of whether or not the end product is actually good or not. That being said, I don’t think this is going to top the blu-ray charts, or come even close, because it’s so clunky. Something bad is at least funny, but something so completely mediocre like this is just disappointing. There isn’t any fun in it.

The plot is convoluted to an extreme degree. I read a lot of mysteries in my free time, so I’m used to plotting twists and surprises. However, Island makes a deliberate effort to throw things in there that are completely left field. Thing is, this doesn’t come as a clever surprise, but rather something that’s put in out of nowhere. For example, the time stasis device that ends up being integral to the continuation of the series has absolutely no setup whatsoever. There was no indication that this series was going to have sci-fi elements at all, so to have time-travel devices introduced to the story past the midway point just makes it hard to follow. Before the sci-fi elements were introduced, things were already hard to follow, and everything past that didn’t help.

The fact that the comments section every single episode was filled with people confused, wondering what was happening, is more of an indication of this than anything else. Usually, comments tend to be a combination of jokes, praise, some criticism, and some questions wanting clarification, but rarely do questions dominate the section. That is unless something is so hard to follow that even the most invested watcher ends up confused.

Extremely convoluted plot aside, most glaring of all is that this series has a massive tone problem. The majority of the series before things get weirdly sci-fi is mostly slice of life with some drama thrown in. This isn’t to say that series can’t juggle different tones; contrary, most successful series are able to pull off different tonal shifts without overhauling the story. However, even then there never seems to be any sort of transitional period between the two, and some transition is required. For example, if a character just died, it’s not the time to jump into a comedy sequence. Island is full of problems like these. The characters can be having a fun moment spending time together and then the next minute suddenly a conspiracy theory is afoot. It makes the entire viewing experience a surreal one because people who are in it for a slice of life romance are suddenly derailed with heavy drama, and people here for heavy drama can never tell when that drama is coming.

The ending leaves nothing satisfactory at all, mainly because it violates a keystone of writing: you shouldn’t be introducing major story building points at the very end of the story. Apparently, there’s a time loop, and for all the happy endings we get at the end, with everyone and their problems solved, we don’t know if the time loop has been stopped. For all we know, despite everything working out, the loop could start all over again. We have no idea, and there are so many plotholes that need to be filled. What is former-Rinne’s name? Who knows! Happy ending!

That being said, the series isn’t all bad, mainly because of the segment that took place in the future. This part wasn’t perfect, but it was still leagues better than what came before it. Conspiracy theories, a corrupt government, deliberate class discrimination, the apocalypse– it all had a good setup for something truly interesting. Unfortunately, this only lasted two episodes and was used more as a plot device than anything truly important. It’s a shame because I would have rather seen more of this, as opposed to what we got.

Overall, Island is just a mess. Maybe it’s a story that would have functioned better as a visual novel, where there is actually time devoted to exploring the characters and the mysteries, but here it’s a convoluted mess. If anything, it gave me a lot more confidence in my own writing, because if something this awkward can make it onto a live television broadcast, then anything is possible. The voice acting isn’t bad, but unfortunately, they’re working with heavily flawed source material.