The Lost Village has an intriguing premise and makes no major mistakes in Episode 1, despite going hard enough on the foreshadowing and menace that even a dullard could sense things won’t be going too well for our 30 heroes.
Yes, 30 heroes: the plot centers around 30 young men and woman on a shady bus tour headed towards the possibly nonexistent village of Nanaki, where it’s rumored that you can “redo” your life. The art style kind of reminds me of Persona with rather less funk. The hair and eyes have smooth gradients, and the animation is just as smooth, though they’re not exactly animating intense fight sequences yet. It’s sad to point out that an anime has achieved a bare minimum standard, but a lot of anime these days do wind up missing that mark due to crazy schedules or terrible budgets.
It’s hard to get attached to 30 different characters, so while Episode 1 does introduce you to everyone, it focuses its efforts on the more quirky ones. Everyone does get a chance to speak, as the 30 characters literally introduce themselves to one another over the bus mike. They range from a fake rapper, to an elite business heir, to a dying woman. They all have different reasons for why they’ve decided to head to Nanaki: the misunderstanding of cruel parents, the shambles they’ve made of their own lives, a mere boredom with their choices…. Some refuse to speak about why they’ve come at all.
The mystery of Nanaki is a compelling one. A fantastic village no one has ever located, where the young and disaffected can go to correct their life? It takes the bus driver, who seems well on the way to crazytown himself, to point out how very young everyone on the bus is -- and how ridiculous it is for people so young to demand a do-over so ardently. But the bus driver is worked into a homicidal froth at the myth of Nanaki Village, so perhaps we aren’t meant to take his side despite how much sense it makes.
Everyone also seems to go by their online nicks, like Lion or Speedstar and the three different girls who all go by Yuune, as they found the website about Nanaki despite “layers of protection.” The tour guide displays classic cultish overexcitement as he leads the 30 young people through creepy songs and games: one strange song about an unlucky hippo dying, one weird game where the youths are tasked with thinking of torture implements on the spot.
Like I said, it doesn’t take a genius to unravel the levels of ominous foreshadowing here, but there’s still no solid clue that points to the mystery of Nanaki. We get to see most of the episode through the eyes of a friendly kid who goes by Mitsumune, and see some visions that clearly terrify him, but when we’re asked to care about so many different characters it’s a little hard to feel invested. Still, the central mystery is compelling enough to keep me wanting more.
Finally, I’m not sure I care much for the background music, which feels like bad video game music. Heavily synthetic, it demands to be noticed rather than creating a mood unobtrusively.
So should you watch The Lost Village?
The premise is interesting enough despite the bland and inoffensive mediocrity of its execution that I’m interested in following along. The Lost Village does nothing wrong and offers a really interesting mystery that should offer plenty of opportunity to do some great character studies. Depending on where the plot of The Lost Village goes, this could be a sleeper favorite or it could be completely unmemorable. Episode 1 left me with a tepidly positive impression, so I would recommend giving it a watch to see if it’s your style.
The Lost Village is available streaming on Crunchyroll every Friday at 6:30 PM EST here .
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