Thoughts on Island

Theme wise Island, much like Himawari, can easily be summed up in the single sentence ‘People move on’. Now that in itself would only count against it had the message been built upon a faulty understanding of human nature, which it isn’t. Stating anything without providing further elaboration is most definitely a bad look but this is one of those messages where I believe it isn’t at all necessary, so I’ll just leave that bit out for the sake of brevity. What it ultimately comes down to is how the theme’s presented and explored. There’s no magic in simply overhearing another stating said sentence, nor will it magically cause a significant shift in one’s worldview, supported by years, decades even, of life experience. Eroge (and by extension any form of media for that matter) imbues it with a certain kind of spark, it’s no longer just a bunch of words lined up in a specific order – it becomes something much more personal… If done right, that is.

Unfocused is a word that comes to mind when I think of Island, especially in comparison to Himawari, which I’d consider to have covered said theme masterfully well and a large part of that success can be attributed to its willingness to take the emotional element and run with it. Island, on the other hand, takes a bunch of elements (quality sol, relationship drama, sci-fi) and does them all really, really well, it’s just that it doesn’t commit to any one of those and this is where my problems both begin and end with the work. It’s really solid all-around and a great experience overall, although, at least as far as I’m concerned, it wasn’t THE experience when put up against some of the other stuff I’ve read through, namely Himawari.

As for that last ending, the one thing I’ll say is that it cracks me up inside thinking about how there probably were a fair few people who got all emotional during that wedding bit, only to realize moments later that it was actually a dad marrying his daughter (the thought itself is funny to me, not trying to implicitly make any moral judgments here, esp considering that it doesn’t really fall in line with regular incestuous relationships by nature)