Disclaimer: While I am aware of the visual novel that the anime is based on, I have not played it, and will review the anime as its own, free-standing product.

Island is a story of mystery and romance, with slice-of-life and drama sprinkled throughout. Awakening on a beach with little memory of his origins, a young man calling himself Setsuna tries to puzzle together how and why he ended up there. He soon gains the friendship of Rinne, Karen and Sara, daughters from the island's three most powerful families. As he helps them with the struggles brought on by the island's traditions, more and more of its mysteries begin to emerge.

The series' presentation is above average, but not to the point where it manages to stand out. The animation, while never really reaching any outstanding moments, stays consistently inoffensive aside from a few wonky angles, and the detail of the individual drawings has a generally higher level of detail than most seasonal anime. The visual style itself is in tune with the actual content, a trait shared by the series' soundtrack. The opening and ending tracks are memorable, and the score serves to uphold a strong sense of mystery.

A mystery stands front and center in Island, and it's definitely an engaging one. Many different threads arise throughout the story, and even though some of them feel like they might be overlooked by the end of the story, it all manages to come together into a very satisfying conclusion. It goes places that I never would have expected it to coming in, yet it stays consistent, and no part of it feels like a sudden contrivance without building upon what's previously been hinted at. After it was all said and done it left me thinking about the finer details and implications of it, and not in a bad way.

But what would the story be without any characters? The series puts most of its focus on the four aforementioned characters, Setsuna, Rinne, Karen and Sara, but also features other recurring inhabitants of the island. The main cast all have distinct personalities, and we get to know them better throughout the episodes with all of them managing to become endearing, albeit some mildly raunchy parts might be off-putting to some viewers. However, while they all have their moments, I was left feeling like more time would have needed to be spent with them. Some characters in particular, while likeable, did not get nearly as much time as they needed for their emotional arcs to become effective. I simply didn't have enough time to form any sufficient attachments to them. This leads us to the unfortunate yet undeniable pacing problem of the series.

Despite being twelve episodes long, Island feels like it has the content to fill twenty-four. The early episodes keep throwing enough threads about prophecies and legends at you that you become unsure as to what the show is even about, and which are left hanging while the show goes off to warm you up to the main characters for a few episodes. While getting to know the characters is of course important, some of their arcs feel rushed, in particular Sara's, which in a way really only gets focus for a single episode. The strongest effect of the pacing is felt from a section towards the end of the series, which was conceptually fantastic yet fell short from how rushed it ended up becoming.

Island does an astounding job of making me wish it was better. It leaves me disappointed with how much the pacing worsened the series, yet it's undeniable that it still managed to keep me excited each week to see how it would progress, and that while the characters could have used more time to grow on me, I was still quite fond of them by the end. As a net experience, I quite like the series. The good parts of it manage to pool together to overcome the one big bad part of it. And, if nothing else, it's given me a very solid VN recommendation.