Desert Island Story X 1 Review

Reviewed by astroknight  on  8/27/2004

The Little Details

Running Time: 24 min.

Production Date: 1998

Director: Kanazawa Katuma

Cast: Animated with voices by Dayton Raines and Miko Lee

The Short Story

Initial Expectations: I’ve been very hit or miss with anime, and I have a feeling this could be another miss.

Initial Reaction: It’s not sexy and has almost no redeeming factors about it.

Who Should Watch It : Anybody wanting to be depressed sexually

Who Should Avoid It: Anybody wanting something with an emotion other than hate and fear

The Technical Stuff

Audio /Video Quality: The audio is okay. It’s nicely balanced, but some of the dubbed lines feel like they’re just being read off a sheet of paper rather than feeling like they’re the “actual voices” of the characters. The video leaves a bit to be desired. The animation isn’t that developed, think Pokemon, but much of it looks a little fuzzy, almost as if it’s a soft focus problem.

Music: The music varies a bit to fit what’s happening in the movie. It’s normally well balanced with the rest of the audio.

Menus: The main menu is nicely animated, and gives a very good first impression. The chapter menu lets you choose a scene based on a small clip of each scene and a title for that scene.

The Feature

Desert Island Story X Part 1 tells the story of five young women. One of them comes from a very wealthy family, and the girls plan a wild party on their yacht. Before the party can start, however, the yacht is hijacked and the girls are taken across rough waters to an unknown island. After four of them escape, they only want to rescue their last friend and get off the island.

The story to Desert Island Story X Part 1 is full of darkness. It starts out a bit upbeat with the party preparations, but even in those moments there’s something a bit sinister going on. The girls seem split between wanting to have fun and hiding a dark secret, and none of them appeared completely likeable. Once the yacht is hijacked things focus on rape and the fear of rape.

Since all of the sex is related to rape, it’s not a bad thing that not much of the sex is shown in Desert Island Story X Part 1. Ayaka start it out flashing back to getting gang raped. Later Hitomi is raped by one of the hijackers. In both cases, the fear is drawn out better than most mainstream horror or even suspense movies, which completely killed any sexual appetite I had while watching it. You’re never shown the rape, but you’re shown the girls crying and afraid of being touched afterwards. With Ayaka, you’re shown that she’s afraid of the slightest harsh word, criticism, or touch. Nothing about that I find sexual in the least.

Desert Island Story X Part 1 was a complete loss to me. There was nothing I found likeable about the entire movie as even the fun and light portions of it seemed to have a bit of darkness to them. There isn’t a full minute of sex shown throughout the entire feature, and what there is of that is all related to rape. Desert Island Story X Part 1 is as close to a complete waste of time as I’ve seen in all the time I’ve reviewed adult movies.

The Extra Stuff

The A-side of the DVD contains a few photo galleries and website information. The feature gallery lasts almost one minute with about six seconds per full screen photo. Dayton Raines and Miko Lee each get their own photo galleries also, with each of them running about two minutes with six seconds per nice looking full screen photo. There’s The B-side of the DVD contains trailers for most of NuTech’s animated releases. Sadly, these are the same extras on every DVD in this series.

The Down -n- Dirty Sex Stuff

Themes: Anime, rape, abuse, and group sex

Raincoat Factor: Very low

Condom Usage: None, since social diseases haven’t become a problem among animated characters yet

The Bottom Line:

Currently, most anime DVDs from NuTech can be found online for between $11 and $25 with most stores offering them for around $15. I have a hard time recommending this one even as a rental. The story did nothing for me, there’s nothing special for extras, and the technical aspects are the worst I’ve seen from NuTech’s anime DVDs.

Note to NuTech: I really wish you’d pay a little attention to how badly your competition, such as Central Park and Kitty, are making your DVDs look and try to improve them. They would have released this entire series on one DVD at roughly half the cost you charge. This makes for much happier customers who seek out your product much better.

If you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me .

Other reviews by Astroknight