The Island of Giant Insects

I usually have never felt compelled to write up a formal review in my life. Never has something so forced me to tears for better or for worse to want to tell the entire world whether to avoid or seek out something. But Kyochuu Rettou is truly one of the most foul things ever put onto paper that my poor eyes have had to bear witness to in a long time. The story is from decades past of B movies = X scenario BUT giant bugs appear, how wacky! Just to be clear, I do not hate this setting. The giant bug section of fictioncan be extremely fun and enjoyable, even scary when done right or perfectly camp if done in tongue and cheek fashion; please see Terraformars or Earth Defence Force as good examples of what I believe are good uses of the trope. To put it lightly the story was abysmally dull and contrived to the ninth degree. I'm not sure if the manga was cancelled or what but there never is any explanation, never any answers, never any payoff to story beats. There is nothing of substance to follow, you are left with no enjoyment beyong the characters and the art. You go through a short, railroad of events and moments that I had to force myself to keep reading beyond the few first chapters that showed something a little interesting. Unfortunately for the longevity of the manga, that interesting part is the art. Although the rest of the heart, soul and body of the manga is completely barren and bare bones, the artwork and gore of it is actually quite good. I kept reading beyond a certain point for the gore alone, intestines come out in entire clumps, people get sucked into withered husks, cut in half, eaten alive and even more gruesome ends. As a closet fan of gorey slasher films, I found this to be personally appealing and for anyone else who is a fan of it, I'm sure you'll find the barest minimum of human entertainment beyond looking at a still frame of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As for the environments, it is set on an abandoned island. The architecture is rare and barely worth to speak of, the different biomes of the island are just the exact same forest and two beaches. There is no crazy or wild or even eye catching fauna throughout the entire series. As backgrounds, it is entirely passable. I wish I had more to say but it is clear where the mangaka's strengths lie. Certainly not with character design though, most female characters are an exact body type replica of high school girl with giant breasts. And considering the manga's constant use of nudity and sex throughout, I can see why they did that but it doesn't interest me and ended up adding to my disgust beyond the first chapters. Almost every character in this manga: male or female, teacher or student, main or side. Is a one-dimensional husk who has nothing to them, nothing of value or interest to see or find out about them, they are an exaggeration of one random trait (generally negative) blown up to the power of ten. This makes it extremely difficult to form any attachment or care to any single character in the manga, by the end I only cared about one and half cared about another. When there were a cast of upwards of around twentyish characters oveall this was disappointing to say the least. Without spoiling any "surprises" if you could dare call them that, you will be wanting and wishing the entire cast dies horrifically. Maybe that was the point, maybe it isn't the mangaka is just awful at writing any living person and we are meant to hate them to the core of our own soul. I'm sure once you finish it if you still feel inclined to will go through the same coping mechanisms like lying to yourself like this to explain what you just read and wasted part of your life on. Kyochuu Rettou is unenjoyable. To almost the maximum extent. The only bit of pleasure I could derive from this was some sort of petty, primal enjoyment of seeing characters I couldn't stand die horribly for the things they did to others. The other only enjoyable part was seeing the attention to a lot of the bugs when made so large and shows the mangaka did actually have a sort of passion for the theme. Which makes me question how... the entire rest of the manga was created. The artist can obviously draw really well, they have at least a passing interest and knowledge of bugs and can recreate them well in a gigantic setting. Yet, this piece of art is missing almost every single other neccessary component to be called a passable manga to anyone. If it wasn't for this slight hint of passion and good artwork, I would have given this manga an unapologetic one out of ten.

Usually I don't write reviews but I felt compelled after reading this manga just because I found it to be so bad. I only decided to finally read it because I knew there was an anime adaptation and I thought "If it got an anime adaptation it must be good enough" but I was horrible mistaken. At the end of this journey I'm now really puzzled why anyone would have chosen this. ART I'll start of with it's redeeming features. The art is decent so there is that but almost near the end around 90% in the art changes, someone else was brought in and replaced theoriginal artist. After being used to the original art, you can't but help feel the newer style is inferior. STORY & CHARACTERS The story isn't really that compelling it's just a generic 'people crash on island and there are monstrous creatures' is pretty much it. Throughout it you get tid bits of small background flashbacks to some of the characters but it's very minimal, what I found the worse was the main character wasn't really delved into, so she just comes off as someone who knows a lot of information and whenever a situation occurs it's just her giving out full explanations. And worst part of the entire manga is the characters, pretty much everyone is an awful person in which you think to yourself "I don't like anyone of these people, they are so annoying, I hope they hurry up and die so we can move on". Because pretty much everyone is detestable, you don't get attached to the characters, out of all of the survivors there is only one person you notice who seems normal while everyone else is twisted. To me that was a key sign of poor writing in how you were able to immediately discern who is a likeable character and everyone else is someone you should hate. To put it simply, this manga was frustrating to read. A story that didn't feel like it progressed and filled with characters that you 'had to put up with' and finally realising this of all things was chosen to get an anime adaptation leaving you wonder if you are the one who is missing something. This genre of horror-survival-stuck-on-an-island has been done many a times with many mangas that have enticing plots and characters. This manga is not one of them.

This is a review for the whole manga before and after the art style change. I remember reading this series on and off several years ago with sporadic updates? Story wise, just a smart girl with bugs who gets stranded in a random island with mutant bugs. No Isekai or anything with no special abilities, everyone is normal except for the MC who has bug expertise. I originally thought it was going to be good but the potential was wasted. The only excuse for a story you get consists of deaths, not needed sexual stuff, violence without aa purpose, and so on. Sure the idea of introducing mutant bugs iscool, but not even that can make up for such a lack luster story?