LAST TIME ON THE ISLAND OF GIANT INSECTS...!
I felt like I may as well as just immediately break the ice and point out this is not the first time I've reviewed this series. If you've read either of those past two reviews, you may be pondering the futility of this third and final review.
~~Except the manga has an ongoing continuation meaning this will not be the final review.~~
"TGG, you hated the OVA. You hated the movie. Why did you read and finish the manga?"
Well you see, the answer is quite simple. It's because I'm a fucking idiot.
#The Island of Giant Insects (again x2)#
This is a horror manga by Yasutaka Fujimi (story) and... well, the art gets a bit tricky. For most of the manga, the art was done by Seongrak Jang/REDICE. However...
~~I may hate this manga, but for what it's worth, I do hope he's doing better.~~
I'm sure that there's been other manga this has happened for, where the artist for whatever reason is replaced partway through publication but... and this isn't Shuu Hirose's fault or anything, but man the shift in art is crazy. To say it was noticeable would be an understatement. There were a couple of characters who at first I questioned who they were immediately following the art shift.
I just wanted to bring up the art shift right away so you didn't wonder why I was including images from two different series about giant insects and nudity. Oh by the way,
CONTENT WARNING!
If you're not looking for explicit gore and nudity thrown together with giant insects, this isn't the series for you. Oh, and also in case you actually care, I may end up spoiling which characters end up biting the dust but honestly who even gives a
~~Also, since I'm reviewing the manga itself this time, I'll likely be covering some ground already covered in the other two reviews.~~
#”Plot”#
The plot is, as you may or may not have expected, nothing to write home about. An airplane transporting a bunch of students and teachers on a class trip crashes, and those that survive wake up on an island teeming with gigantic and murderous insects. The plot after that point is almost solely the survivors battling and fleeing from the insects and... sometimes they have to deal with members of their group fucking around and jeopardizing the safety of the entire group.
~~Actually, they have to do that a lot, but we'll get to that.~~
There are hints of what transpired to result in giant insects (aka typical humanity goes too far with science plot bullshit and it probably somehow resulted in giant insects) but it honestly really doesn’t matter. I mean, do you care?
Do I care? Do any of us care? Chances are the moment you read the title of the manga or see pretty much any of the volume covers, you have an immediate reaction.
“Oh. This series is one of those.”
A very thin plot to keep the high schoolers moving so they can encounter and fight or run from more giant insects. “We have to survive until help comes! Oh, there’s giant murderous insects on this island? Let’s go deeper into the island!!!!!” Characters are going to act irrationally to the point of pure stupidity because the only thing that matters is steering this train into copious amounts of gratuitous nudity and gore.
But you know, it’s not even like I have a problem with that. For better or for worse, there’s always going to be a spot in the horror genre for series like this.
My problem lies not with the gore and believe it or not even the nudity but with the...
#Uneven Balance#
Okay, so. I think there are three groups of people who read this series.
- Those in search of a good horror series involving giant insects. This is the group that ends up dropping like flies very quickly.
- Those who read it for the nudity and/or sex/rape scenes. ~~I WANT to say that there are probably more rape scenes than sex scenes, but it's not like I actually kept count...~~
- Those who read it for the giant insects and swathes of gore the insects end up producing. To give credit where it’s due, there actually is some good gore and towards the end of the series when the actually cool insects finally start showing up it’s great.
For the record, I was a member of the first group that very quickly ended up joining the third group. The problem though, and I think it’s this series’ biggest problem, is that the balance between these three elements is just completely and utterly fucked.
Insects, gore, and nudity.
The insects and gore go together just fine since the only desire of these insects is to kill and eat these humans. But then you have the problem of where to include the nudity. Well, some insects eat via… withdrawing a person’s fluids through their various… body cavities. When I first read the start of this series and I saw the “rape butterflies” I was just prepared for the entire manga to be that.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to worry about the majority of rape being from the insects. After all,
humans rape too!
Haha! But no really, rape… really shouldn’t be as high of a priority as these characters place it while they’re literally scrambling to survive giant insect attacks.
When our original group of characters ends up meeting a new group of survivors farther in the island, one of the new male characters… like I think he got one single line of dialogue and then the next time we see him it's him pulling bug girl into the darkness to try and rape her. Specifically bug girl, our protagonist, and also the most useful character in this entire manga. THE EXPERT ON INSECTS, GIANT OR OTHERWISE.
Thankfully, he was brutally killed not that long after. However, if that makes you think this manga brings down the hammer of awful horror death upon characters deserving of it, then I have bad news for you...
#The Cast of Unlikable Horror Characters#
Of the three groups that would read this manga, I believe there is one unifying trait that brings us all together. All of us want to see at the very minimum, at least one of these characters dying a horrible and hopefully painful death at the hands of giant insects. Some of us may even want to see the whole group to go because even while there’s a few that aren’t horrific assholes, the fact that this group has survived as long as it has is infuriating.
But you know, there can be a charm to horror fiction where you’re pushed to genuinely root for the demise of characters. However, you need to have a sense of which characters your readers are going to want dead. And under no circumstances should you let your most hated character live through almost the entire manga. This manga actually includes a moment where all the other characters take a moment to remember all the ones that died and I want to say at least a third of them were horrible assholes who were awful to the rest of the group or at the very least deserved to die.
Like the dude that insisted that he was the leader of the group the whole manga and didn’t do jack shit.
It was always the bug girl’s knowledge that saved the day. At one point he was going to straight up get abandoned along with the bully girl by the rest of the group but the bug girl convinced the others to untie them and let them come with them again.
And then he just went right back to acting like an asshole and immediately sold out his original group to try and curry favor from the terrible teacher’s group.
He only finally died as a result of rather than paying attention to the status of the mugwort the bug girl left to fend off incoming insects, he decided to instead rape the girl they left behind to take care of him because he was wounded.
My interpretation was at this point maybe he was just going completely insane and that was what motivated the rape because the only other possible interpretation was he decided “oh hey everybody else is gone, this has given me a perfect opportunity to rape.”
On the other hand, bully girl who was incredibly awful in the early part of the manga for some reason got to do a heroic sacrifice at the end. Said heroic sacrifice was honestly completely undeserved. It's not that she turned over a new leaf. After a while, she just kind of mercifully cooled it on the being an asshole thing while the delinquent who wanted to be leader's still just stumbling around
"HEY UH MISS TEACHER UH HERE'S ALL OUR GROUP'S SUPPLIES HAHA"
like sure bully girl actually fucking started contributing as a character when she got handed a shotgun but my immediate reaction when they gave her the shotgun was complete disbelief. Like are you really fine with her having a shotgun??? REMEMBER THAT TIME WHEN SHE BETRAYED YOU FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON?
But oh no, she exploded while fighting a centipede... I should feel... bad? I guess I should give credit where is due, I at least didn't internally cheer like when the delinquent idiot died.
But you know what pisses me off the most? The way this series ends is of course they manage to escape the island... to go to another island. Where they meet new characters. And I'm just like oh fucking god damn it we have to go through all this shit AGAIN.
Like obviously to keep the manga going they have to shuffle new characters in so there's more potential victims to die to the insects and then they'll escape this island and then go to another island where's there even more insects and then they'll escape that island where guess what there's more insects and then they'll
#Conclusion#
What more can I say about this series than what I have over the course of three reviews? Like I think you already know whether or not you're going to read this series the moment you see the covers and title. It's bottom of the barrel trash but... I read all of it. And I'm probably going to keep reading the sequel.
...I really don't even have any sort of joke to follow that up with. I'm just voluntarily stuffing trash down my gullet because hey at least there's gore and insects.
The Island of Giant Insects manga is a 5 out of 100.
