Desert Island Story X 3 Review

Reviewed by astroknight  on  8/27/2004

The Little Details

Running Time: 25 min.

Production Date: 1998

Director: Kanazawa Katuma

Cast: Animated with voices by Dayton Raines and Miko Lee

The Short Story

Initial Expectations: Although this series appears to be improving, I’m not holding any hope here.

Initial Reaction: It’s extremely disturbing.

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. There’s also some that has off-color bars through it.

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 pretty good first impression. It would have been better if it hadn’t gone on for nearly forty five seconds before letting you make a choice. 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 tells the story of five young women. One of them comes from a very wealthy family, and when preparing to have a wild party on their family’s yacht, it’s hijacked and the girls are taken across rough waters to an unknown island. The girls escape, and now try not to be captured as the hijackers pick them off and rape them one by one as they start to mistrust each other.

As usual, the story is full of darkness. Thankfully, this time the constant rape isn’t a part of the story. It’s still there, but Desert Island Story X Part 3 concentrates much more on the psychological aspects of rape. The girls slowly turn on each other trying to find blame amongst themselves, and it’s even taken so far as one of the girls claiming that she wants to be raped so she can fit in with the others. I’m not sure which is worse, putting forward these kind of thoughts or actually showing the rape! Just as bad is the idea that rape can be used to train a woman, one of the hijackers uses Natsuno’s vulnerability to his advantage to get sex from her.

Flora starts off the sex in this episode of Desert Island Story X. The two main hijackers trap her in the cave and after fondling her and fighting over who gets her first, the leader has his way with her. She almost gets away, but after she’s captured the two guys team up on her. Natsuno also gets some attention from Mr. Akio. He manipulates her into having sex with him, and she even shows some pleasure.

Desert Island Story X Part 3 is another depressing installment in this series. There’s nothing at all redeeming or hopeful about the movie, and at times it seems like it even wants to make rape seem like something that’s normal or even something that some good can come out of. I’ll admit that I did respect how the many reactions to being raped by the women were brought out through the movie, but they never seemed to have been brought forward as a good thing. They were something meant to amuse, and that attitude is a big part of why Desert Island Story X Part 3 is one of the most disturbing installments in the series.

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, group, and peeing

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. As usual with the Desert Island Story X series, I wouldn’t even recommend renting it. The story is depressing and dark, the technical aspects are lacking, and there isn’t anything really worth mentioning for extras.

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