Who cares? No one cares. This show has no meaning. It has no purpose. What would you even classify this show as? It can't possibly be a horror, since nothing horrifying happens. It can't possibly be a suspense show, since the show doesn't even try to create suspense on a basic level. You might classify it as a comedy, if you interpret it's awfulness as a an attempt to create something so unintentionally bad, except here's the plot twist: they did it on purpose!
That's the only argument I ever see that may potentially be the show's saving grace. But you know what I think? They tried too hard to make it bad, that it just ended up being bad. Outrageously bad. Stupendously bad. Ungratifyingly bad. Think of all the proper adjectives to insert in front of "bad," and keep it there, because there's no other word for this show except bad. It's banal, devoid of thought, and by the end, no one cared. The show was so self aware to the point, that it made everyone just not care. It's hard to care for something that doesn't care about itself. So I won't care. Because the show doesn't even want me to care.
STORY
Thirty uninteresting and unintelligent strangers meet up at a bus, with a kooky bus driver, y'know, feeling nervuos, singing songs about hippopotimi, whatever you can think of! These strangers are travelling into a far off mysterious and "lost village" (wow, fantastic!) in order to escape from their past lives. So they find the village, sorry for the spoiler about the show called The Lost Village, but they find the village for sure. And then literally nothing happens.
Nothing. Nothing at all. Oh, the show tries to make it seem like something happens, but really, nothing happens. The people go crazy, witch-hunt this girl, people disappear but not really, yadda yadda, Nanaki Nanaki...
If you want to actually know the story, well, this show attempts to be some sort of character study? I don't even know what it wanted to be, but it presented itself as something that wanted to look into the minds of people who are too weak to accept not being able to join the military because of a breast implant inside their head. Except it doesn't. Our main characters sort of gets a resolution, but it happens to fast, you can't even blink by the time they disappear and the show successfully underwent "development" for it's terrible characters.
ANIMATION & SOUND
Character designs are pretty damn ugly. Everyone is so damn skinny, you can use them as swizzle sticks for your fruit baskets. Throughout the show, our main character tries his best to bone with a bunch of girls, but with a design like that? He couldn't even dominate a librarian. It gets a relatively decent grade however, because the CGI for its monsters are so wickedly stupid, it becomes tolerable. Yes, the CGI monsters represent what the show wanted to become.
Soundtrack is nothing special. Opening is okay, ending is pretty boring, soundtrack is pasable...run of the mill soundtrack, but nothing you'd probably look to search for on Soundcloud.
CHARACTERS
What? Characters? There are characters in this show? Wait, actually, there are thirty of them. Thirty caricatures. These characters are barely characters at all, in fact. There's one character named Lovepon who's only gimmick in the show is to spout out irritating and violent quips about executions. She had a sad past, sure. But the main issue is that she's annoying. That's a helpful description of 90% of the characters in this show. There's one fat guy who's a stereotypical fat guy, who exists only to be a fat guy. There's a slut, who's a stereotypical slut, who exists only to be a slut. Then there's an annoying couple, a deadly annoying chuuni, a kid with some sort of lethal disease, etc, etc., and these characters don't serve any function whatsoever except to occasionaly make extremely stupid and annoying remarks.
These "remarks" are supposedly a part of the comedy. People say that these remarks somehow contrast against the serious tone the show is giving (a serious, monotonous, boring tone), yet I personally don't find it funny when each comedic line is simply the fat guy going "I'm tired I'm tired I'm hungry" any time he gets a pinch of screentime. But of course, comedy is subjective, so if you think watching a sexy girl make sexy remarks during sexy serious scenes is comedic, then this show is right up your alley! I guess.
But these are just the supporting characters. There are a couple of characters...there's a detective lady (who I admit, actually had a couple good lines -- she was one of the few tolerable characters) who behooves herself to feel her love handles everytime she makes an analysis. There's this girl who can predict death...though that's her only trait, otherwise she's a stoic loli. Then there's this businessman kind of guy who keeps shouting and doesn't stop shouting and always shouts cause shouting is healthy and gets your point across this isn't shouting THIS IS SHOUTING.
But, you know what? Most of these characters are all annoying. And no one trumps annoying like our main character, Mitsumune. To be fair, he gets some deal of development, and by the end he's not the most intolerable character (I chalk that up to everyone else becoming more intolerable than him, but I digress), but you'll have to endure the first half of him having no personality whatsoever -- only a weak boy who has orgasmic brainfarts every time a girl walks up to him and even breathes in his presence. And this irritation transcends any sort of development in the second half of the show.
In the end though, the gimmick of these characters going into the village (which if revealed would be a spoiler to the main "twist," if you can call something so obvious a "twist") doesn't amount to anything. The resolution for the characters either hit a dead end, because they end up becoming so lazy (I imagine the writers were channeling themselves through the characters) or the show just doesn't have enough time to give the characters who "deserve" a proper resolution the ending they should have gotten. So nothing changes between the start of the anime and the end. Absolutely nothing. Most of the characters enter the village the same, and come out the same.
CONCLUSION
This show sucks. It sucks. The characters know whatever world they're in sucks. They don't want to be there, they want to come out desperately. Maybe this show is poetic, somehow? Maybe it's actually a masterpiece of direction -- each brillant scene of characters spewing out pointless line after line is absolutely hysterical, and will have you literally imploding on the floor, laughing your head off because of how amazingly directed it is. Indeed, stupid characters saying stupid things is the sign of a true director. I can only dream to be as artistically envisioned.
...Well, if you find that sort of stuff funny, I won't judge you. Go ahead and spend the next five hours of your life laughing at something that's unintentionally "funny." But I will say that this anime will be forgotten. It will most definitely be forgotten. No one will recommend this anime. No one will even speak of this anime again. It's bad, but it's not bad to the point of becoming a cult classic, like Troll 2. No, this show is just bad. There's no excuse for this show being as bad as it is. So this show will be forgotten. Thrown into the void with other pointlessly pointless anime. Because it's The Lost Village. This anime disappears just like it's village -- which is mindblowingly artistic - but y'know, I'm just not an artsy guy. I can't fully understand how amazingly crafted this show is in it's comedy. But I guarantee you, most people won't either.
You hear that, Mari Okada? You're too smart for us. You're too smart for us, dammit.
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