The best way I can describe this show is it’s like a soap opera. There’s so many cliches, so much wish-fulfilment, I mean drop dead gorgeous girl somehow has never had a boyfriend and is childhood friends with the 4 hottest guys in school who all are in love with and competing for her ? It’s the sort of stuff a 16 year old might write as a fanfic on tumblr. But goddamn it, I kind of liked it. The messiness was fun to watch. I like seeing drama play out and this show had it in spades. My one big issue with the story is that at times, Mizuho just feels like a prize to be won by the boys rather than an actual character. Like she’s floating back and forth between the main two dudes depending on the time of the day. Everyone just does stuff to win her over without giving her feelings any concern or trying to talk to her.
The show bounces around from present day(2020) to several years in the future with Mizuho established as a manga author. This was kind of frustrating at times because we would get really invested in something in 2020 with the pandemic year and then we’d bounce around to the future and vice versa. I’m not sure if it went like this in the manga or what, but in the anime it sort of kept you engaged in watching the show because you wanted to see what happened to all the guys and who ended up winning. They gave us bits and pieces of that all the way up to the finale episode where there’s a big reveal that alone makes me want to watch season 2.
The guys are all basically the sort of caricatures you’d get from a fanfic. Smart guy with lofty ambitions of being a doctor, cute twink model, the hot aggressive jock who’s way too into you, etc. All of them have their own personalities and quirks, different designs reflecting that and varying levels of aggressiveness in pursuing the MC. What I find crazy is how all of these near perfect guys end up going for the SAME girl. Like were there no other girls on this island? I also had an issue with the main guy who has some serious stalker energy.. feels like the author rewarded a guy for harassing the MC and making her uncomfortable, not respecting her personal space etc., again, really reinforcing those negative stereotypes of shoujo romance.
Production values are atrocious here. It’s no doubt the worst put together series of the season. The animation is a PowerPoint, the art is able, character designs are cute for the leads, but literally every other background character is greyed out. Not sure if that’s a stylistic choice or if it’s budget constraints as I haven’t read the manga, but it’s certainly one of the looks of all time. This show also has a very weird tendency to hold frames and scenes for way too long, creating this awkward pause in the action that makes it uncomfortable to watch. I refer to this as “dead space” because it feels like space on a video editing timeline where you’d normally cut to create a jump cut or make things flow together better. This is a constant in the series and it makes watching it feel very melodramatic and cringe at times, and this is coming from someone who LOVES shoujosei more than anything, so don’t feel like I’m attacking the demographic.
Koishima isn’t a great show, but it’s like watching a train wreck. You somehow can’t take your eyes away from it even though you know it’s not a good thing. There’s a reason why the score went up from the first few weeks until the end. It does gradually grow on you and because of all the cliffhangers, you find yourself wanting more and more. I’ll be around for season 2 because I need to know how things end in present day and the past timeline.
Koishima gets a very frustrating 6 out of 10.
