Escapism is a major part of the story. Each of the 30 characters want to start their lives over again because of a troubling past. Now don't get me wrong, Mayoiga had, has a very interesting concept, plot, and story however I felt like it wasn't able to execute (get the pun) important things like dramatic scenes and capturing realistic emotions very well. The story and plot felt a bit too cliche, predictable, and badly written to the point where I don't even want to go back and re-watch it. The plot for each episode undoubtedly displayed more faults than corrections. Now ordinarily when I'm watching a show, it doesn't have to be too good nor too bad. As long as a show is unique, promising, and delivers great things then I'm okay with it. Unfortunately this was just not the case with The lost village. An entire episode of Mayoiga can be slow and very unbalanced in terms of what elements to the story are being used. So at the beginning of an episode I'll notice that drama will start, then some sort of action, later horror, then back to drama, the direction certain episodes would go in were just too complex. The so called “horror” is unfortunately not Mayoiga's strength. If anything dramatic and bizarre conclusions to an episode would be.
Some episodes you expect to see certain issues & concerns resolved however they are not looked into further. Yeah, they'll show a character who drowned and another who fell off a mountain or cliff however none of that is explained any further. The other characters quickly forget about those people who appeared to have met some sort of grim fate. I understand that there was an attempt made to keep a mystery flow to the lost village however for the most Part I didn't feel like it was working out properly.
How the producers tried to go about it made it look & feel unnatural, as if they were trying a bit too hard... well maybe not with the setting. I'll admit fog and the woods does make for an overused, yet satisfy place for events like these to occur. With regard to the characters back stories, I really disliked how long it took for me to get a proper introduction to each of their traumatic pasts. I felt like if back-stories were introduced during the earlier episodes and not midway maybe I could establish some sort of personal connection and really get to like the characters, I'll explain further down below. Out of the very few things that I did admire about the show was that every time an episode was ending it would always end with something completely insane or bizarre that would get me excited to watch the next episode.
In fact, the #1 reason why I continued to go on with this show is because of that! I love the build up! I would say that it is in fact very intense. So intense that I would just be questions to myself and with others what could we see happen on the next episode. Dialogue was another issue I had however I think I'll discuss more about this a bit later. I thought the story was alright, not the best, however it was still tolerable and decent enough to be engaging.
My biggest disappointment with the show had to be the cast of characters. In my opinion, all the characters were too plain. Their back stories, personalities, actions, I just could not establish a connection to any of the characters and that really made tension and other moments pleasurable to me. I'm not going to get exciting when some homosexual shooting arrows at people arrives. I'm not going to freak out when every character thinks that the adorable Masaki is a ghost. 30 characters, Thirty! Each with different personalities and trauma, after the show was finished I had no favorites, no characters that I really liked, none that I could really understand it was such an unpleasant experience seeing the characters interact. A majority of the time it was like watching a bunch of clueless children. I honestly, and for the first time in quite a long time and I mean almost 2 years times, I've watched a show where I didn't like any of the characters. Moving on, I felt like a majority of the characters were effortlessly written. By that I mean it was as if the team working on each episode didn't take their time to give most characters interesting characteristics. It was like all the group did was put a bunch of index cards with personalities written in a bag, shook it, pulled one out and said “Okay, we have drawn crazy” lets add a crazy personality to Love-pon, that's all. Each character acts according to certain archetype like dandere for Lion, or Nanko, nadeshiko for Masaki, genki for Nyanta etc. Characters did have the potential to be greater however. From what I saw, their actions, interactions, developments, I was not too impressed. I do not think it is possible for me to come back to this show just to see certain characters or relive special moments.
Animation was really good. The special effects used to represent some characters fears or traumatizing life experiences looked both hilarious and amazing to a certain degree. I did notice that there were some animation problems, in particular I mean the moment in one episode where there are two Koharun's visible. Character designs were certainly interesting too. I admired the fact that no two characters looked alike. The animators made great use of CGI and 3D for silicone boob monster and other various things (I actually couldn't tell because that sort of animation was used during night settings.) Background settings looked pretty nice. I mentioned earlier that the main setting, fog, woods, mountains, etc(although cliche) works well with the stories plot because what better place to get away from all your troubles and start over again than an abandoned village out in the middle of boonies.
For the most part I liked the soundtrack. The background music, the dramatic music worked pretty well when something strange, dramatic, or supernatural was occurring. The sound sort of helped add fear to the already hilarious joke of a “horror” show however, as stated earlier, they tried too hard. Music was quickly drowned out by the exaggerated screams and yells of characters in fear. Rule opening & ED songs were pretty great! I had no issues with Em' Sound effects held up pretty well, and everything else in general was good.
At times however the biggest enjoyment comes from the well executed (PUNS PUNS PUNS!!!) plot twist/bizarre endings of each episode. In all honesty, that was the biggest reason I had to finish this show. The directors knew, they knew that they were going to have a difficult time keeping things interesting for fans, so they purposely added the bizarre endings and twist just to keep fans like me coming back every week, Clever bastards. That aside, I don't really don't think this was Mari Okada best work compared to other projects she's worked on.
Overall Mayoiga has its issues and it just didn't have the lasting appealing for me. I won't think to myself a year later “Hmmm what was the name of that show where a bunch of people go on a crazy start life all over again trip?”
