The Island of Giant Insects (Volume 1) - Lost

The Island of Giant Insects Volume 1 Front Cover

Mutsumi finds herself washed ashore after her plane crashed. Now, she had to find her classmates and find a way off. However, she’s not the only thing looking for the stranded high school students!

The Island of Giant Insects (Volume 1) – Lost

What happened?

Luckily for Mutsumi, she possesses a unique set of skills that could decide whether any of them survive or not. After waking up on a strange beach, Mutsumi slowly pieces together what happened. She realised that the plane carrying her classmates on a school trip crashed. As she searches for other survivors she finds some barnacles which will be a great source of food, especially given how unusually large they are. However, she can’t get them off. That’s when she finds Ayumi, the captain of the softball team, who is strong enough to get to the fleshy middle.

They’ve barely finished eating when they hear a scream and run into the forest. There, they find more survivors and three giant butterflies, feasting on those survivors. Given their size, there’s little anyone can do to stop them. Luckily, Mutsumi has an aerosol can and a lighter and sets one on fire, causing the others to flee. Among the survivors is Mutsumi’s best friend Chitose. Suddenly, Chitose pushes Mutsumi to the ground and is carried off by a giant digger wasp. It stings her and then flies away.

Mutsumi tells the others that Chitose will still be alive and that they can save her, however, no one wants to run into the nest of a giant digger wasp. That was until Mutsumi points out that Chitose has a working phone which could mean life or death. Reluctantly, they go to help and find other students being eaten alive by digger wasp larvae. Mutsumi eventually finds Chitose, but now she needs to get her to the medical centre, which is the other side of a giant tick nest!

The Island of Giant Insects Volume 1 The Giant Tick nest

What did you think?

Lots of the prominent reviews of this series are very negative. They will go on and on about how trashy it is or how horrible the characters are. Well, I’m going to take a very different approach. I love it. I love it because it’s trashy. If you’re a fan of ridiculous B-movie monsters then this will be perfect for you. Yes, it’s fairly straightforward and you’ll see some of it coming, but that’s fine. It’s all about the ride and not the destination.

There’s also a lot of fairly accurate information about insects and survival methods. The research has clearly been done and that explains a lot of the things that some people would describe as gratuitous. Yes, it’s gross. It’s supposed to be. Hell, just watch a documentary about insects and see for yourself how unforgiving they are. They have evolved to survive and that is what they are doing here. This volume covered the first half of the movie and there are another five for me to get through, so I’m understandably excited to see where the movie ends and how much more story we get after that. There were a lot of unanswered questions. This series is a lot of fun. Gross and horrific, but fun nonetheless.