Warning... the entire point of this series is... well nudity. Giant bugs and nudity. Any images of the nudity within this review are already going to be censored with extreme prejudice (by me, because obviously OVAs are uncensored) but I figured I'd still throw that warning out there.
~~I mean literally, there is nudity within the *first fifteen fucking seconds.*~~
Oh, and while I'm of course censoring all nudity, there is bound to be at least a bit of gore present within this review. So you know if you don't like gore...
...Actually, even if you DO like gore, I'd still not recommend looking at this series. ~~I wish I hadn't.~~
#The Island of Giant Insects#
Well, here we are. The Island of Giant Insects! An... OVA done by the studio Passione that's an adaptation of a particularly terrible and gratuitous horror manga by Yasutaka Fujimi (story) and REDICE (art).
Mind you, at the time of this review, I've only read the first three chapters of the manga. Which coincidentally enough, is just about everything this OVA adapts as it's only like twenty minutes long. That being said, it still cuts out quite a bit and for that I'm grateful.
It probably goes without saying but I don't see the appeal for this thing... at all. As well as getting this OVA in 2019, the original manga also got a sequel manga... and we're getting a full length movie apparently in 2020.
I mean I was personally drawn in by the giant killer bugs of course. I wanted to see giant bugs killing people because I like horror but also I like complete and trashy schlock too. But the gratuitous nudity and fanservice is just... it just gets in the way.
Which like on its own would be one thing. If you read any and all horror manga that comes your way, you're going to end up seeing at least a bit of rape and questionable sexual content... it's an unfortunate fact at this point.
But I got on this ride for the killer murderous insects. What I did not get on the ride for was the killer murderous insects becoming... involved... in the nudity that litters the original manga. Like no yeah, that's exactly what I wanted to see. I wanted to see wasp larvae crawling over nude mutilated bodies.
And like they're exuding a pheromone that causes the captives to not feel any pain so they're okay with being eaten alive or whatever. But then like a wasp captures one of the girls and then gives her an injection and you would assume she would be screaming and in agony right? Of course not, since the wasp only injected anesthesia...
Except... except her face is red. It's... not weird that her face is red or had a reaction to... actually you know what, no. That wasp stinger looked pretty large, even if all it injected was anesthesia. But she didn't really scream or anything, her only reaction was her face becoming red...
~~I'm... being too harsh on this. The larvae do this too, so of course a full-grown one can as well. But like can't they just depicted as listless or lifeless? They don't have to have red faces and be smiling.~~
And actually, I have to correct myself. This OVA actually starts from the end of the first chapter of the manga. So let's very quickly go over what... what's skipped over.
- the plane crash.
- a bunch of survival stuff which is way way preferable to what this series is actually about. Even if... I probably wouldn't trust any of it to be right or accurate.
- background information about the bully female character having sex with the teacher for good grades. Oh yeah, she also tries to talk the males of the group to go find food in exchange for her showing the idol girl's panties. Because you know, if you thought she was already pretty unlikable in the OVA...
- rape swallowtail butterflies that kill at least three "characters."
You might have thought I'm pushing the "rape bug" narrative a bit hard, but it's even clearer in the manga. But hey, while we might have skipped the first bug encounter, we do get a glimpse of the aftermath in the OVA that's... never explained in the OVA itself. But to be fair, the characters don’t really give much of a shit in the manga either.
Three characters died from butterflies extracting all of their blood? Oh well. A couple of characters needed to die anyways to establish the danger of the island. Still in the OVA it’s really… really not clear what happened. It almost looks as if an ordinary rape had happened.
~~And then two other people decided to take naps on the ground for some reason right next to her.~~
Like they could have at least made the bodies look all dried up and withered like they were in the manga.
Because I genuinely couldn’t tell they were corpses and had forgotten what had happened in the first chapter ~~because why would my brain retain anything of this piece of shit series.~~
Oh yeah, I should note that while the OVA thankfully cuts out some of the unneeded sexual stuff with the human characters, it still feels the need to include a bit at the very beginning from before they ended up on the island. After all, they have to establish that the female bully character is an awful person somehow, so we get a scene of her and her gang stripping bug expert girl in an empty classroom.
I’m assuming this is an actual scene from the manga they reappropriated, but it’s right after this scene where we jump to them already on the island. No explanation for why they’re there and while the viewer isn’t aware of it unless they’ve also read the manga, they’ve already been attacked by giant bugs at this point. And of course, it was the bug expert character that saved all of them except for three.
But of course the female bully does nothing but shit on the bug expert girl. Even after it becomes plainly obvious that in their situation, THE BUG EXPERT IS THE MOST USEFUL CHARACTER.
Almost all of the characters are just intensely dislikable, but I think the female bully is so unlikable that if I ever end up fully reading the manga, it will be just to see whether or not she ends up dying. Because she damn well better.
“Ha you’re into bugs what a fucking weirdo loser. There’s no way that sort of knowledge could be a boon for us on this Island of Giant Insects, idiot. What? There’s something on my back? HOLY FUCKING SHIT GET IT OFF GET IT OFF GET IT OFF”
And then the bug expert actually was still kind enough to knock a giant tick off her back. And that’s where the OVA ends. Or rather, it doesn’t end, it just stops. Because that’s probably where the full length movie is just gonna pick right back off from because why wouldn’t it. Or if god doesn’t exist, the full length movie will be a more complete adaptation of the first three chapters and I’ll have to fucking watch everything this OVA covered AGAIN.
...Hey, it's me, "editing TGG." Guess what? There's actually a trailer for... for the movie and um... it's gonna include everything from this OVA and also they're going back to animate the rape butterflies. ~~As well as actually progress further.~~
So yeah, to cut the story short, now I'm an atheist.
#Conclusion#
...I didn’t even comment on how laughable the CG wasps look. With the similarly awful ~~but not as awful as this~~ anime adaptation of Junji Ito's Gyo, I commented on how terrible the CG shark was because the original manga might have been silly and one of Junji Ito's worst, it didn't exactly deserve the sort of adaptation it got. This though... the CG wasps? Look perfectly fine to me!
To be quite honest, I actually seriously expected worse. The source material is just... bottom of the barrel trash. Why would I expect anything different from the adaptation? At the time of writing this review's conclusion, I actually went ahead and read chapter 4 and 5 of the manga and they make it through the Forest of Ticks and spoilers:
Spoiler, click to viewclick to hide
Because they might still have some ticks on them, this gives everybody a perfect excuse to get nude as they go into the water to make sure they don't have any ticks. And immediately, the differing leading heads of the group both immediately get bribed with sex to try and get them to take control of the group. It surely won't hurt our chances of survival if we help splinter the group apart!!!
Like really? Is this the fucking time for this you actual brain dead idiots? You're on an island of insects that can basically kill you within seconds or capture you and keep you alive as they put you through unspeakable torment, but no this is what we should be spending our time on!
...
...I foresee myself giving the original manga a 1 out of 100, so I'll give this OVA adaptation that skips entire scenes from the manga a 10 out of 100.
