When describing a beached whale, for instance, she leaves out the part where it's a rotting carcass being slowly torn apart by mangy seagulls, its intestines splayed over the shore in a grisly tableau. Voiced by Megan Gay, the narrator - who also pulls double duty as Mo's inner monologue - tells the story of the brave mechanic who lives underground, the sole caretaker of massive machines operated by giants, eternally fated to turn the cranks like hamsters at a wheel, running air purifiers that protect the archipelago from poisonous hallucinogenic spores.īut the most interesting thing about the narrator isn't what she says, but what she leaves out.
Minute of Islands conveys this through what is hands-down my favourite use of an omnipresent narrator. It's deeply isolating, maybe even traumatic. Thinking you're the only person who can save the world isn't some grand, noble mission. The writers at Studio Fizbin, however, seem much more interested in what a quest like this does to a person and those who love them. Much like Dark Souls (no, really) Mo isn't saving the world she's just doing what she can to keep it going. When we meet her, the world is already breathing its final breaths. She feels like a person having a bad day at a job she hates. Mo, our hero, doesn't feel like someone on an epic quest. The heart of this story lies in those most secret parts of ourselves, that nobody but those nearest to us can see. The hero's journey here isn't a globe-spanning epic quest to save the universe from utter doom, it's something much more intimate. But Studio Fizbin wastes no time in setting itself apart from its genre peers.
The world is in peril, a hero with a magical thingy is the only one who can fix it. When boiled down to its very essence, Minute of Islands is a fairytale.
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