On the night of a crimson full moon, high school girl Mei Ayazuki, lured by the magic of mysterious magician Charlie, enters into a box. When she awakens, she’s in Tokyo during the Meiji Period. The lost and confused Mei is aided by Ougai Mori and Shunso Hishida, who take her in their carriage to the Rokumeikan, a lavish ballroom full of powerful high officials. where she meets historic figures such as Kyoka Izumi, Otojiro Kawakami, Yakumo Koizumi, and Goro Fujita. In this world, during the “Misty Hour” between sundown and sunup, “mononoke” appear. Those who can see them are called “Tamayori,” and Mei herself possesses this power. As she navigates an unfamiliar life, romance begins to bloom between Mei and these men — and the power of the tamayori will only strengthen their bonds. She may choose to never return to her original time. – ANN
Episode Summary: Mei Ayazuki is a consummate loner. As a child she had many friends but as it turned out, her ability to converse with ghosts and spirits put a barrier between herself and others. Now she spends most of her time alone listening to music and blocking out the strange voices who sometimes speak to her in the dark. With her headphones on, Mei wanders onto a festival grounds and finds herself the volunteer in a magic show. As she steps in a magic box that will supposedly cause her to disappear, she feels a strange, relaxing sensation flow through her body.
Mei awakens in the middle of a park, and no sooner does she get to her feet than she’s nearly run over by a horse-drawn carriage. A handsome man steps through its doors and offers her safe passage to his destination; though Mei is disoriented, she has trouble refusing, especially since she can’t really remembers where she lives. She finds herself at a grand ball, and as the names of some of the young men at the party begin to make their way around to her, she realizes that they’re all somewhat famous writers. They in turn seem to be fascinated by her ability to speak to ghosts. What could be the mechanism behind this time slip, and can Mei ever find her way home?
Urashima is an island far from the mainland. The people who live there lead carefree lives. But five years ago, the island’s three great families suffered a series of misfortunes, and succumbed to suspicion. The people of the island cut off all contact with the mainland, and began a slow decline. One day, a young man named Setsuna washes ashore claiming to be a time-traveler and suffering from amnesia. He meets three local girls: Sara, Rinne, and Karen. Their meeting will change the course of the island’s fate. – ANN
Episode 1 Summary: One day, a young man washes up on the shore of an island without clothing or a handle on his own memories. He can’t remember who he is or why he’s there, except for the fact that he’s a time traveler who’s traveled to the past for some reason. Urashima island doesn’t take well to interlopers, so the mayor makes a quick show of putting the man on a ship to send him somewhere else. He manages to escape, discovers the mayor’s daughter in her hiding place, and has some broken flashbacks of having met her in some other time or place. Left again to his own devices, he spends a night out on the beach and encounters a girl whose name, Rinne, comes to him without trouble. He then remembers that his name is Setsuna. Both he and Rinne are time travelers (she arrived five years prior), and Rinne invites Setsuna to live with her. Setsuna believes that he’s traveled to Urashima for some purpose, and there are others there who appear to know who he is and want him out of the picture. Is this mystery one that can be solved before Setsuna becomes a victim?
Impressions: Back when I started writing reviews in the mid-to-late 2000’s it felt as though there were a lot of harem romance stories being adapted into anime form. While there were some that I remember just based on how up front they were with their sexism and lewd over-the-top fanservice, there were quite a few more that were mostly-harmless and homogeneous to the untrained eye. The genre hasn’t disappeared, not by a long shot, but it does feel like harem series nowadays almost require some additional defining factor. The monster girl trend has been pretty big recently, as has the male self-insert isekai fantasy harem series. It’s rarer to see something that simply feels like the “typical” anime adaptation of a harem visual novel that I remember being very common in those earlier days.
Setsuna is not shy about his time-travel.
Enter Island, which establishes itself pretty quickly as a back-to-basics harem style series with a sprinkling of sci-fi (or supernatural?) elements to give it a little bit of flavor. The first episode hits all the beats that one would expect, including the introduction of three potential love interests with whom our protagonist might end up . It’s been a while since I’ve seen Amnesia(TM) relied-upon as so blatant a storytelling device, but I have to say that, coupled with Setsuna’s goofy and uncommonly outgoing personality, it made me chuckle a little bit. It feels almost as if the series and its creators are daring us to so much as make a peep complaining about these tropes; considering that the visual novel was released only a few years ago, it seems that its look, feel, and structure were likely very purposeful decisions on the parts of the creative staff.
All of this feels a little quaint and because of that I actually have some generally-positive feelings towards the surface aspects of this episode, but there are a couple of very brief moments that I found somewhat questionable in terms of both taste and implication. In one of the episode’s first scenes, Karen (the mayor’s daughter and one of the assumed love interests), trips on the sandy beach and falls face-first onto Setsuna’s naked groin. It’s played up for comedy, but it’s one of those things that only seems like bawdy slapstick until you really start thinking about the details. I find the thought of getting an accidental face-full of a stranger’s penis to be pretty upsetting, to be honest. As it is with a lot of these types of anime, the humor often seems to be predicated on the characters’ embarrassment, specifically sex-related mortification. Unfortunately, though it’s meant to lighten the mood, it honestly just makes me squirm in my seat. There’s also the hint of a scene that seems to be a flashback (or flash-forward? Time travel is hard!) where a nude Rinne (who’s looking to be especially pre-pubescent) appears to be in a sexual situation with Setsuna. It’s there and gone in a matter of seconds, so it didn’t register with me right away, but the coupling of the young character design with the nudity and atmosphere felt creepy and gross. And of course there are the “small boob” jokes involving the shrine maiden character and the non-consensual near-kiss with Karen. These moments are brief and might be easy to overlook for some, but they’re good reminders of some of the fundamental problems many similar series tend to have in that the women are there for entertainment and primarily at the expense of their dignity.
A fated meeting on the beach.
There was one thing that I absolutely loved about this episode, though: the school uniforms. Goofy school uniform designs tend to be a pet peeve of mine, usually because they’re created for looks rather than practicality or functionality. No one would actually wear something like that unless they were actively cosplaying. The school uniforms in Island, however, are some of the most practical that I’ve ever seen, and that’s because instead of teeny short skirts that seem too short to be worth anything, the bottoms of the uniforms are shorts. This is awesome! It fits the warm island aesthetic very well and avoids the temptation to have constant up-skirt shots peppered throughout the episode. This is one anime trend I that I hope catches on.
This episode is surprisingly watchable, and I’m admittedly just a teensy bit interested in learning about what Setsuna’s deal is, despite the fact that he’s still a little bit of a “nothing” character. I get a weird sense of nostalgia from this opening chapter which is overriding my normal taste-related instincts to drop it and walk away. Perhaps this is just the consequence of being an anime fan for so long; even tropes that you don’t like become familiar echoes of a time when watching anime was a little fresher and writing about it was less restrained.
Pros: Someone put some thought into the uniform designs. The mystery surrounding Setsuna’s situation is mildly intriguing. The show feels nostalgic.
Cons: Each of the three young women is put into a questionable and compromising position, whether in “real life” or in flashback form.
