This week’s Podcast Stats:
Time: 16:47
Download Size: 11.5 MB

Opening theme:
“Red Fraction” by Mell
Opening theme to Black Lagoon

Ending theme:
“Koisuru Tenkizu” by Yui Horie
Third ending theme to Nagasarete Airantou

You can listen to my podcasts in the following ways:

Flash Player:

Directly: http://www.joshsanimeblog.com/podcast/JABPEpisode77.mp3

You can also download or add my podcast-only RSS feed to your favorite reader or add my podcast using iTunes.

Name: Nagasarete Airantou
Genre: Comedy
Episodes: 26
Released: April 4, 2007 – September 26, 2007
Based On: Nagasarete Airantou manga by Takeshi Fujishiro
Director: Hideki Okamoto
Produced By: Starchild, Feel
US Distribution By: N/A

Major Japanese Cast

Ikuto: Hiro Shimono
Suzu: Yui Horie
Ayane: Saeko Chiba
Machi: Mikako Takahashi
Mei Mei: Hitomi Nabatame
Rin: Ryoko Shiraishi
Yukino: Shizuka Hasegawa
Chikage: Shizuka Itou
Shinobu: Orie Kimoto
Tohno: Rio Natsuki
Obaba: Kujira

Major English Cast

N/A

Scores

Animation: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Story: 6/10 (x 4 = 24 pts)
Music: 8/10 (x 4 = 32 pts)
Coherence/Story Arc: 6/10 (x 2 = 12 pts)
English Dubs: N/A
Gut Score: 7/10 (x 5 = 35 pts)

Total: 135/190 (71.1%)

Review

Nagasarete Airantou is about a boy, Ikuto, who runs away from home to spite his father, whom he had a fight with, but ends up being tossed overboard from a ship during a large storm. Once he comes to, Ikuto finds himself on an island completely inhabited by women. On top of this, there is no way off the island as a series of whirlpools surround the island, preventing any escape by sea, with the only escape being possible when a tidal wave that comes around, on average, every 100 years hits the island. Of course, all the girls on the island, having not seen a man in 12 years or so since all the men were all swept away by such a tidal wave while off on a fishing expedition, are all crazy about Ikuto, and Ikuto’s dream of being on an island inhabited by only women immediately turns into a nightmare as every girl in the place wants him for herself.

Ikuto finally ends up staying with Suzu, the only girl on the island that lives by herself, and the only girl who seems to not turn into a wild animal upon seeing Ikuto. However, Suzu’s main rival Ayane wants Ikuto for herself, but on top of not being able to beat Suzu in anything, she has to deal with her sister, Machi, who is an expert in using the dark arts, mostly with the intent of torturing Ayane. Eventually the situation seems to calm down and Ikuto tries to start making a normal living on the island (which is still technologically in the 19th century), but man-crazed girls as well as talking animals who control wide swaths of the island keep popping up to make life miserable for Ikuto.

Overall, Nagasarete Airantou appears to be your standard harem comedy. Yes, he’s stranded on an island with only girls, which kind of ups the ante on this series, but at it’s base, it’s still a harem show where the lead faces the horrible nightmare of being chased by nearly every female in the show. Nagasarete Airantou certainly has it’s hilarious moments, but the series just seems to drag after a while, with many of the same gags used over and over, and thus losing their effectiveness over time. Also, the series didn’t seem to be very coherent, with the bulk of the series being one-and-done episode plotlines, resulting in no real central story line being established beyond “Ikuto must fend off all the rabid, man-hungry women.”

Also, the ending didn’t seem to resolve several of the major plot points that did exist. For example, we have the situation with Ikuto being told-off by his father that Ikuto would never be able to beat him, and it is the goal of Ikuto to finally be able to do that. Well, Ikuto never did that because he never got off the island. I held Ikuto’s relationship with his father in mind through most of the series, fully expecting that Ikuto would find a way off the island and resolve that plot point by the end of the series, but it never happened. Also, while Suzu and Ikuto’s relationship clearly advances over the course of the series, there is nothing that seems to cap it off. No kiss. No confession. They just end the series as a de facto couple, but nothing to really set it in stone.

The animation is probably the best thing about this series, as it is overall pretty good, though not excellent. The music was also pretty good I thought. However, the story, or lack-thereof just drags this series down too much for me. If you’re a fan of harem anime, then you’ll probably enjoy this series. However, if you’re looking for a series with any sort of depth, you just as well skip this.

First Watched: April – September 2007
Do I Own: No
Do I Recommend: No

The episode starts with Suzu and Ikuto arriving at the Temple of the Dragon God of the Sea, trailed by Ayane. Suzu and Ikuto walk down a stairway into an underground lake. Ayane meanwhile slips and slides down the walkway, finally crashing, yet somehow getting to the lake before Suzu and Ikuto without them noticing (maybe there were two pathways?).

As Ikuto and Suzu start to pray for the Dragon God to safely guide Ikuto, Ayane swims into the lake to make her own wish, but a strong water current drags her even deeper into the lake. She finally saves herself by grabbing onto something, which she soon realizes is a whisker of the Dragon God – which ends up being the giant dinosaur looking thing we’ve seen before. The section of the whisker she is hanging on to snaps off, causing the Dragon God to get angry. The temple starts shaking and Ayane is finally able to surface, much to Ikuto’s and Suzu’s surprise. The three are then able to escape out of the Temple, just before the entrance is blocked off by a landslide.

Back at the village, Ayane is triumphantly telling Rin, Chikage, and Yukino that she is the one who has prevented Ikuto from leaving, when Obaba arrives and tells the group that if they really wanted to be with Ikuto, then they should consider what he wants and not just what they want. Machi then shows up and uses a talisman to see what one of her shikigami is looking at and sees that Ikuto is trying to leave the island, even without the blessing of the Dragon God.

Out on the beach, Ikuto is pushing a boat into the ocean now that the thunderstorm has started, getting ready to leave. Suzu says that she’ll go with him to guide him for a while, but Ikuto tells her to stay, saying it’s too dangerous for her to come with. Obaba shows up with the other girls telling him not to go, but Suzu stops them. Obaba asks Suzu if it’s ok for Ikuto to go, even if he dies trying to leave the island. Suzu then sees Ikuto struggling to row over the increasingly larger waves and runs out and asks Sashimi to take her out to Ikuto.

Ikuto is about to get to the largest whirlpool which is the final obstacle to leaving the island when Suzu arrives on Sashimi begging Ikuto to come back. Ikuto’s boat starts circling the whirlpool and Suzu tries to reach out and save him, but Ikuto gets pulled under. Suzu jumps into the ocean to try to have him, and Sashimi goes after Suzu. In the end, Sashimi pulls Suzu back to the island without Ikuto.

Once Suzu awakes, Obaba tells her that things don’t look good since the Dragon God is angry. Suzu then jumps back on Sashimi and asks to take her back to the Island of the Dragon God so she can try to find it by swimming into the lake from the sea. Ayane suddenly runs off, and Rin, Chikane, and Yukino chase after her. Suzu swims into the underground lake and finds the Dragon God and starts to pray. However, the strong currents start dragging her under even more until someone grabs a hold of her hand. She looks up and sees that it’s Rin tied to a rope.

Rin brings Suzu up to the surface, and Chikane tells her that they blasted through the blocked entrance using a makeshift bomb. Ayane then ties a rope around herself and swims into the lake. She then apologizes to the Dragon God and reattaches the whisher that she pulled off before. This appeases the Dragon God and it swims off. Once back on the surface, Ayane makes a wish that Suzu and Ikuto’s wish be granted.

Sunlight then shows down in an opening in the clouds beyond the final whirlpool, showing that the Dragon God has granted Suzu’s and Ikuto’s wish. However, Ikuto is still unconcious under the water until Machi stabs him using one of her voodoo dolls, causing him to wake up. Realizing he’s still underwater, Ikuto swimgs to the surface and sees that he’s in a break in the clouds with no wind.

Suddenly, a boat being rowed by big manly men shows up and Ikuto realizes that he must be outside of Airantou’s barriers. Suddenly Ikuto’s sister Misaki calls out to him from the ship. They tell each other that they’re glad that the other is alright. Misaki then goes off on a rant about how she fell off a ship when it had a mishap and floated to and island inhabited only by men and with giant vegitables named Airantou.

Misaki tells Ikuto that she’s been causing trouble for everyone on the island, but is having fun so she would like to stay there a little longer, but wants to bring Ikuto with her. Ikuto then tells Misaki that he wants to go back to “his Ariantou” and tells the men on the boat to take care of Misaki for a while longer. They then row the boat away as Misaki tries to ask him why he’s staying. Ikuto then climbs into a life raft that the men left and tries to row back into the island, but once again gets caught in the giant whirlpool.

Back on the island, Suzu is patrolling the beach now that the thunderstorm is over when she runs into Obaba, who tells Suzu that they should probably start forgetting about Ikuto now that he’s left. Suddenly Tonkatsu hops away and finds Ikuto lying on the beach. Suzu runs over to him and asks him what he’s doing there. Obaba then announces the start of the 2nd Hide-and-Seek Competition to find the Groom, causing Ikuto to madly run away, once again being chased by a mass of man-hungry women…

I thought that this was a pretty decent final episode. I would have liked more screentime for Misaki, but at least we still got to see her. This was also a major Ayane episode given that Ayane caused a whole bunch of problems (as usual) but then redeemed herself in the end. We don’t see any kiss between Ikuto and Suzu, though…oh well. I was hoping for some confirmation of their relationship other than them saying that they liked being together, but I guess we’ll take what we can get.

I’ve seen some people say they liked Misaki’s voice and some people (including the fansubbers) say they didn’t like her voice. I’ll have to stay it was more “adult” (meaning lower pitched) than I was expecting, but I actually think it felt fine. It made it feel like his sister was actually a real sister. I’m just not sure I’d leave my little sister alone on and island with only big manly men on it lol.

While I think this was an overall pretty good final episode, a few things kind of just seemed arbitrary, from Ayane somehow beating Suzu and Ikuto down into the temple of the Dragon God of the Sea to Misaki arriving with the men of the “other” Airantou (though I guess they never said that the other island had barriers to leave like Ikuto’s does). I also wondered that, if Sashimi is apparently strong enough to fight off the giant whirlpool (since she swims into the middle of it to save Suzu), why doesn’t Ikuto just hop on Sashimi to get outside the whirlpool barrier?

Everything about this ending seems to cry “second season” to me, from Ikuto coming back and having the 2nd hide-and-seek competition to find the groom, to the new character introduced in the final credits, to some of the still unresolved plot line of Ikuto getting back to his father. Maybe there will be, maybe there won’t be. We’ll see I guess.

As for the series as a whole, like other series I’m watching, I’ll watch the whole thing again when doing my full review, but my impression was that this is a series which is only about average. The gags used in the show seemed to get repetitious after a while, but at least the larger than average cast was able to create some diversity. I just think the series had two many single episode plotlines and didn’t really have much of an overall plot that connected the episodes together. This was an OK series that I might buy if I say it for a relatively inexpensive price if/when it gets licensed, but it’s not one I’d rush out to buy.

Obaba tells Suzu and Ikuto that they must travel to the island of the Dragon God, just off of Airantou to see the Dragon God of the Sea. However, they need the key to open the shrine, and she gives the pair a map to find the key – showing that the key is located on the top of Mt. Fuji on Airantou. She also tells them that whomever wishes to find the key must face a serious of dangerous trials along the way. Ikuto thinks he’ll pass, but Obaba says that he won’t allow Ikuto to leave the island without first receiving the Dragon God’s blessing.

Suzu and Ikuto start their journey, but Rin, Chikane, and Yukino have other plans. Soon, Suzu finds a trail of Mame Daifuku, and, ever defenseless against them, follows the trail with Ikuto in tow until they find themselves…lost in the middle of a giant maze that Chikage designed and Rin built. However, things aren’t as bad as they seem as, conveniently, there are signs pointing towards the exit. Upon seeing this, Chikane gets angry at Rin, but Rin says she didn’t want Ikuto to get lost.

Chikane decides to execute her own plan, launching a giant ball into the maze to run down Ikuto and Suzu. Meanwhile, Akane meets Ikuto and Suzu at the maze’s exit, but the two just ignore her as Ayane gets run down by the giant ball. Ikuto and Suzu are about to get caught when Tiger hits the ball away. Ikuto and Suzu thanks him, as they’re on their way to get the key, when Tiger tells them it’s his responsibility as a lord of the island to protect the key and the Dragon God and starts attacking Ikuto and Suzu.

Ikuto and Suzu wants to know why he’s attacking, and he tells them that it is the duty of all four of the island’s lords to protect the Dragon God. Tiger starts another attack, but Mei-Mei, who is out looking for Ikuto and Suzu, runs out and trips, and Tiger trips over her and goes flying. Tiger is about to attack again, but Mei-Mei says that she’ll fight Tiger instead with Tohno. When Tiger takes out his claws, Mei-Mei runs away and climbs a tree in fright, but ends up dropping rather sharp-looking fruit onto Tiger while Tohno uses his Kappa-Emperor Palpatine lighting to zap Tiger, letting Suzu and Ikuto pass.

Next, Ikuto and Suzu run into Pandaro, who has been bribed by Machi to take time out of eating to stop the pair. Suzu throws Ikuto a thick stick and he starts battling the East Lord. Meanwhile, Shinobu is out looking for Ikuto as well. In the battle, Pandaro snaps Ikuto’s stick, but Shinobu shows up and stops Pandaro, and mistakingly accuses Ikuto of having “secret training” with Pandaro and starts battling Pandaro herself. Ikuto and Suzu takes this opportunity to move on.

Next, the pair face Shima-Tora, the South leader and Suzu’s master. Shima tells Suzu that fighting him means rebelling against her own master, but Suzu says she doesn’t care. The two fight, and Suzu captures him, only to find that it was one of Shima’s cat followers only dressed up as him. Suddenly, hordes of Shima-Toras appear and tell Suzu and Ikuto that they must find the real Shima out of the group. The two start randomly grabbing two-tailed cats until Ikuto notices that all the take cats have one wavy tail and one stiff tail. Ikuto then spots a cat with two wavey tailes and grabs it, finding the real Shima-Tora. This gives Ikuto the win and allowing them to advance.

Finally, Ikuto and Suzu finally reach the top of Mt. Fuji, and Ikuto realizes that he doesn’t know who the east leader is. The pair find a small shrine with the key inside, but someone grabs it out of his hands. That someone turns out to be Karaage, who is revealed, much to Ikuto’s surprise, to be the east leader. Karaage throws Ikuto his wooden sword and the two start fighting, but Karaage is just too powerful. Karaage tries firing Ikuto up by telling him that it is “absolutely impossible,” but even this doesn’t get Ikuto fired up enough to be able to defeat Karaage.

Karaage flies in to attack again, but this time Suzu jumps between the two, and Karaage plows into Suzu’s back as a result. She begs Ikuto to stop, saying that it’s hopeless trying to beat Karaage, and he’ll only get hurt, but Ikuto says that he has to keep trying. Karaage then starts his super-spicy chicken attack against Ikuto. Ikuto, however, secretly changes which hand he’s holding his sword in and is able to hit a caught off guard Karaage with his bare hand, then is able to swing around and hit Karaage with his sword, winning the match.

Suzu and Ikuto then start rowing towards the Island of the Dragon God, but not without Ayane, who has grabbed the underside of the boat as a stowaway…

Wow, this was a pretty action-packed episode and possibly one of the best episodes in the series, which I guess is good considering it’s part of the closing arc of the series. The only thing I’m wondering about is whether Ikuto will even have time to get off the island and find Misaki in the next episode, considering he still has to see the Dragon God, and you know Ayane is going to cause some sort of trouble there.

It seems that either Ikuto and possibly Suzu are going to get off the island, then quikcly find Misaki – and then Ikuto has to choose whether to stay or go back, or Misaki herself ends up on the island somehow (via the upcoming storm perhaps?) I had hoped that Ikuto would be able to go back and face his father, but I think that’s clearly not going to be happening now. Ikuto would have had to have gotten off the island this episode to have enough time to do that, I think. Of course, unless we have a season 2.

In any case, the next episode is probably the most critical episode in the entire series as, this series really hasn’t had a “make or break” moment yet that determined whether this was a good or bad series – it’s ridden that fence for pretty much the entirety of all 25 episodes, so now we will hopefully finally see whether this series is worth it or not, assuming the final episode can do so much.

This episode starts with Ikuto working around the village by himself, trying to be somewhat self reliant. Meanwhile, Suzu is out picking up seaweed from the beach when she runs into the bottle that Ikuto threw out to see with a message in Episode 13. Suzu runs home and finds Ikuto there doing…something. He shows him the bottle and he, at first concludes, that the bottle just floated back to the island (if nothing can supposedly get on or off the island, how does all this stuff float to it?). However, he soon realizes that the letter in the bottle isn’t the letter he sent out.

He starts reading the letter and finds that it’s from Misaki his sister. After about 3 pages of Misaki babbling about how she likes to babble so much, she gets to the point of the letter: she went out looking for Ikuto, but appears to have gotten lost at sea along the way and had a “mishap.” Upon reading that his sister may be in trouble, Ikuto immediately runs out to the beach and tries to get off the island with no success. Suzu sees Taka-Taka flying and remarks how nice it would be if Ikuto could just fly off the island. This gives Ikuto a brilliant Idea: Just put him on a kite and fly him over!

This seems like an absolutely brilliant plan until Ikuto gets up into the air and realizes that he’s terribly afraid of heights. Ikuto’s wild screaming gets the attention of pretty much all the other girls on the island who come running to see what’s going on. Ikuto is about to get over the whirlpools when a giant waterspout shows up over the whirlpools and once again throws him back towards the island.

The girls who heard Ikuto screaming show up and Suzu tells them whats going on. Rin comes up with the brilliant idea with slingshotting Ikuto off the island. Rin and Kuma-Kuma pull back on the sling that’s holding Ikuto when Chikane notes that slingshotting him over the whirlpools won’t do him any good if there aren’t any boats on the other side. Everyone realizes their stupidity, and in doing so lets go of the sling, which flings Ikuto out over the water, only to be caught by the waterspouts again and flung back towards the island. Everyone starts wondering why Ikuto can’t even fly over the whirlpools when Taka-Taka flies over and Yukino calls him down. He explains that even flying over them is impossible as the wind currents around the edge of the island are so strong, that not even he could fly through them.

At the temple, Machi is preparing a ceremony that will supposedly help Ikuto get off the island. Machi tells him that if they can separate the spirit from the body, he can go save his sister, but that if it succeeds, he must marry Machi. Despite Ikuto’s further objects, Machi goes ahead with the ceremony, and Ikuto’s soul starts lifting out of his body. Not wanting Machi to succeed, Ayane waps Ikuto’s senses (and spirit) back into him. While Machi is torturing Ayane in retribution, Chikane once again notes that the plan was doomed to failure, since Ikuto can’t save his sister without his actual body. Rin them complains that Chikane has been criticizing everyone else’s plan but hasn’t come up with one of her own.

However, Chikane does have a plan: she summons the good genie Makun again. Makun tells him that he’s in a good mood, so he’ll grant Ikuto one wish. Ikuto, however, gets frustrated and tells Makun that he’ll only need one wish. Makun then grants his wish then tries to leave, but Ikuto catches him. Ikuto demands why he’s leaving when Makun tells him that he only wanted one wish, and he wished to only have one wish, so he used up his one wish wishing for that. This, of course, gets Ikuto quite agitated but Chikane is able to persuade Makun to give Ikuto one more wish. Ikuto thinks through a couple of wishes, remarking “that’s not what I want” before finally wishing to go to where Misaki his sister is. However, Makun once again doesn’t grant the wish, and Ikuto demands to know why. Makun just tells him that he said he didn’t want one of the wishes he was thinking about before to be his wish, so that counted as his wish.

Ikuto gets depressed about the failure of Makun, when all the girls try to comfort him by flirting with him. Suzu gets frustrated with the other girls, telling them that this isn’t the time for doing that since, if Ikuto leaves, he’s never going to come back to the island. Suzu runs out of the room and Ikuto chases after her. While chasing her, he runs past the Grandma, who stops him. Suzu runs to the beach, and sitting there depressed with the Grandma comes by and tells Suzu that he hears about what happened from Ikuto.

Suzu tells her that she originally wanted to help Ikuto off the island, but now is unsure about it since she’ll never get to see Ikuto again. The Grandmother tells Suzu that there is only one way off the island, but if she tells Ikuto about it, he and Suzu will have to part. Back at the house, Ikuto is waiting for Suzu when she finally comes back. Ikuto tells Suzu that he’s sorry, and that he didn’t consider her feelings when he wanted to get off the island so bad, but Suzu tells him that it’s ok, and that it’s natural for him to be worried about his sister. Suzu then tells Ikuto that there is only way off the island.

Suzu tells him that the only way on or off the island, as we already heard in the first episode, is if a thunderstorm comes by and causes a tidal wave to come and washing things in and out of the island. However, Ikuto reminds her that they come only once every 100 years. Suddenly Grandma shows up and tells Ikuto about an old folk song that’s been passed down on the island that says that when water collects on top of a Kappa, a thunderstorm is coming. She thing shows them Tohno, which has water, well, accumulating on her head.

However, Grandma continues, saying that the tidal wave is a double-edged sword, and while it can allow someone to leave the island, one may also get killed in the attempt as well. She tells Ikuto that if he prays to the Dragon God of the Sea, it should protect him on his journey. She tells Suzu and Ikuto to go to the lair of the Dragon God of the Sea to pray for it’s blessings before the storm comes, or else she won’t allow Ikuto to leave. She then goes into Suzu’s house to tell them how to get to the Dragon God of the Sea. The other girls on the island hiding in the bushes decide that they aren’t going to let Ikuto get off the island so easily…

We finally appear to be starting the final story arc in the series with Ikuto having a good reason to get off the island as soon as he can in his sister apparently being in trouble. Now the question will be can Ikuto get off the island, and will he take Suzu with him, which would be an interesting prospect. Or will Misaki, his sister, arrive at Airantou herself and get stranded there.

I’d always thought “well, they doesn’t someone just send some helicopter ships or something outside the whirlpools and send in some choppers to get everyone off the island” but I guess all the waterspouts would make that difficult now. I suppose they could always send a sub in, though I’m guessing the whirlpools would make getting to the island via going under water difficult as well. It’s just one messed up island.

It appears that Suzu and Ikuto will be going to see this “Dragon God of the Sea” next episode which, I’m guessing, is the giant dinosaur type thing we’ve seen every now and then, and that the other girls will try to get in Ikuto’s way to try to see it. I’ll be interested to see how the final two episodes end up playing themselves out.