Forgotten Island 2026 Animated Movie Characters List: Full Voice Cast and Folklore Guide

Okay, I need to talk about Forgotten Island for a second, because I honestly don’t think people are talking about it enough yet. DreamWorks quietly dropped their 50th feature — their 50th — and instead of playing it safe with another sequel, they handed the reins to Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado, the filmmakers behind Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and let them go completely wild with a folklore-inspired fever dream.

The result hits theaters on September 25, 2026, and it has already generated plenty of excitement, including a reported perfect Rotten Tomatoes score and enthusiastic reactions from Letterboxd users. More importantly, the movie has assembled a voice cast that deserves far more attention than it is getting. So here’s the character breakdown nobody technically asked for but everyone is going to want: who’s who in Nakali, which actors are behind them, and why this cast feels almost unfairly stacked for a 2026 animated release.

DreamWorks Forgotten Island (2026) Movie Cast: Meet H.E.R. as Jo and Liza Soberano as Raissa

What Is Forgotten Island About?

For anyone walking into Forgotten Island completely blind, the setup is surprisingly simple before everything gets wonderfully weird. Jo and Raissa are lifelong best friends spending their final night together before life sends them in completely different directions. There is karaoke, junk food, hanging out, and all the familiar rituals of two friends who aren’t quite ready to admit that things are changing.

Then they fall through a portal into Nakali, a mysterious island populated by beings pulled straight from Philippine mythology.

But here’s the part that gives the adventure its emotional teeth: Nakali eats memories. The longer Jo and Raissa remain trapped there, the more they risk losing the memories that define their friendship. Every hour becomes a race against something much scarier than a conventional monster.

That concept isn’t simply a clever fantasy gimmick. It is the emotional spine of the entire movie. Jo and Raissa are already facing the possibility of growing apart, and Nakali turns that very real fear into a supernatural threat.

The Two Girls Holding This Whole Thing Together

Jo Fatima — Voiced by H.E.R.

Jo is the chaotic, dreamy half of the friendship, and she is also the character whose childhood fascination with her grandmother’s stories about a hidden island ultimately pulls the girls toward Nakali.

Voiced by Grammy and Oscar winner H.E.R., Jo marks the singer and actor’s animated leading role debut. What makes the performance work is that H.E.R. doesn’t simply play Jo as an endlessly energetic adventure kid. There is a soulful, slightly wounded quality underneath all of Jo’s impulsive enthusiasm.

Jo wants to believe that every problem can be solved by simply going for it. Unfortunately, Nakali is about to force her to confront the things that cannot be outrun — especially the possibility of losing the person who has been beside her for most of her life.

Raissa Molina — Voiced by Liza Soberano

Raissa is the practical, anxious counterweight to Jo’s impulsiveness. She has just been accepted into Caltech, which means she is about to leave and begin an entirely different chapter of her life.

That makes her conflict surprisingly relatable even before the monsters arrive. Raissa is the responsible friend who knows that change is coming but isn’t emotionally prepared for what it means. Liza Soberano brings exactly the right kind of warmth and nervousness to the character, selling the fear that growing up might also mean growing apart.

Jo and Raissa work because neither one exists simply to make the other look better. They genuinely feel like longtime friends with different personalities, different fears, and a shared history that Nakali gradually puts under pressure.

Raww: The Breakout Nobody Saw Coming

Raww — Voiced by Dave Franco

Then there’s Raww, a were-aspin voiced by Dave Franco. The character is essentially a shapeshifting stray dog inspired by the Filipino term Askal, and he immediately brings a completely different energy to the movie.

Imagine the attitude of Marty McFly’s jacket combined with the enthusiasm of a golden retriever who desperately wants everyone to think he’s cooler than he actually is. That’s Raww.

He’s loud, insecure, terrified of being left behind, and apparently confident enough to wear a Gap Year headband without a trace of irony. Yet underneath all that ridiculous energy is a character dealing with the same emotional wound that runs through the movie: the fear of being abandoned.

That is why Raww has the potential to become one of those animated side characters audiences remember long after the credits roll. Online comparisons to Donkey from Shrek aren’t completely off base, but Raww has his own flavor of insecurity and chaos. By the third act, his emotional role becomes much more significant than his comedic introduction suggests.

The Monsters — Who Are Somehow Also the Heart of the Movie

This is where Forgotten Island gets particularly interesting. Nakali’s creatures aren’t simply there to provide another obstacle every fifteen minutes. Each creature reflects something that Jo or Raissa is afraid of, turning the mythology into part of the characters’ emotional journey.

Manananggal (‘Manang’) — Voiced by Lea Salonga

Lea Salonga playing the villain might be the most immediately intriguing piece of casting in the entire movie. For an entire generation, Salonga is closely associated with iconic Disney roles including Mulan and Jasmine. Here, she gets to go in a radically different direction.

Manang is a terrifying Manananggal, a creature capable of separating its upper body from the lower half, and she rules over the memory-eating world of Nakali. Salonga’s performance reportedly gives the character a genuinely chilling presence, proving that her range extends far beyond the heroic and musical roles audiences may know best.

Even better, the character’s mythology connects directly to the movie’s central emotional conflict. The Manananggal’s literal act of splitting in half becomes an eerie mirror for the emotional separation threatening Jo and Raissa. Their friendship isn’t physically being torn apart, but the fear of becoming strangers is very real.

Bungi — Voiced by Manny Jacinto

Bungi is a chaotic character inspired by the Tiyanak, a creature from Filipino mythology often depicted as a demon taking the form of a baby. The movie gives that concept a deliberately strange comedic spin.

Voiced by Manny Jacinto, Bungi is essentially a clingy little nightmare with enough chaotic energy to turn any scene into complete nonsense. His behavior also fits the movie’s larger theme of attachment. His exaggerated inability to let go mirrors the emotional problem Jo and Raissa are struggling with throughout their journey.

Batiba — Voiced by Jenny Slate

Jenny Slate brings her unmistakable comedic timing to Batiba, a character rooted in the Batibat, a supernatural being associated with dreams.

Batiba initially comes across as a quirky trickster, but there is loneliness hiding underneath the jokes. That detail matters because Forgotten Island repeatedly uses its creatures to explore emotional fears rather than treating them as disposable fantasy enemies.

Batiba’s trickery therefore isn’t just about making Jo and Raissa’s journey harder. It reflects the fear of being forgotten, ignored, or left behind — an anxiety that sits surprisingly close to the center of Jo’s own story.

King Truffle Wuftle — Voiced by Ronny Chieng

King Truffle Wuftle is the miniature tyrant of Nakali, inspired by the Duwende, an earth-dwelling goblin-like figure from Filipino folklore.

Ronny Chieng gives the character a sarcastic, authoritative personality that makes him feel less like a traditional fantasy king and more like someone who is deeply annoyed that everyone else has entered his kingdom without making an appointment.

That contrast is exactly what makes him fun. Forgotten Island clearly isn’t afraid to let its mythology become weird, funny, and occasionally ridiculous while still treating its cultural roots as something meaningful.

Mermahn — Voiced by Kevin McCann

Mermahn is the coastal pretty boy of the group, a vain merfolk character rooted in the Kataw tradition.

Kevin McCann’s role adds another personality to Nakali’s increasingly bizarre collection of supernatural inhabitants. Mermahn’s vanity and self-importance give the movie another source of comedy without turning the mythology itself into the joke.

The Elders Grounding the Whole Story

Lola Fatima — Voiced by Dolly de Leon

Lola Fatima is Jo’s grandmother and one of the most important human connections to the mythology of Nakali. She is the person who planted those stories in Jo’s imagination when she was young, giving the fantasy world an emotional connection to the real world.

Dolly de Leon voices the character, bringing a grounded presence to a story that otherwise spends a huge amount of time surrounded by supernatural creatures and increasingly bizarre rules.

Her role also reinforces one of the movie’s most interesting ideas: stories passed down through families don’t simply disappear when children grow up. Sometimes they become the very thing that helps them understand who they are.

Datu — Voiced by Jo Koy

Datu serves as the elder who helps explain Nakali’s rules and gives Jo and Raissa some much-needed context for the strange world they’ve entered.

Jo Koy brings the comic-relief energy you’d expect, with plenty of Filipino-uncle personality baked into the performance. In a movie where the emotional stakes can get surprisingly heavy, having a character who can break the tension is essential.

Why This Voice Cast Actually Matters

What’s most striking about the casting is how deliberately assembled it feels. H.E.R. makes her animated lead debut, Lea Salonga gets to play a supernatural horror villain, Jenny Slate leans into her comedic strengths, Jo Koy brings mentor energy, and Dave Franco gets a bizarre shapeshifting dog-man role.

On paper, that combination sounds like it shouldn’t work. Somehow, it does.

The important thing is that the performances don’t feel like celebrities simply being dropped into an animated movie because their names look good on a poster. The characters are designed around distinct personalities, and the actors seem to understand what each role needs to contribute to the larger story.

That becomes especially important because Forgotten Island isn’t relying entirely on jokes or spectacle. Its mythology is connected to the characters’ emotional problems. The creatures are weird because the movie wants them to be weird, but their fears and motivations are often recognizable.

A Visual Style That Matches the Weirdness

The voice cast isn’t the only thing that makes Forgotten Island stand out. The movie reportedly combines hand-drawn 2D touches, visual influences associated with 1990s anime, and modern 3D rendering.

Normally, that combination sounds like a recipe for visual chaos. Here, it fits the movie’s premise surprisingly well. Nakali is supposed to feel like a place that exists somewhere between childhood stories, dreams, mythology, and reality, so a deliberately mixed visual language makes sense.

The animation style also helps distinguish the movie from the increasingly familiar house style of mainstream CG animation. Instead of simply chasing photorealistic textures and polished character models, Forgotten Island appears to be embracing something more illustrative and expressive.

The Music Adds Another Layer

The soundtrack is another major part of the film’s cultural identity. Alongside original scoring from Nathan Matthew David, the movie incorporates music from Filipino pop acts including BINI and SB19.

That combination helps reinforce the sense that Filipino culture isn’t being used merely as decorative background material. The mythology, characters, music, and setting are all part of the movie’s identity rather than interchangeable elements that could have been transplanted into any fantasy world.

The Real Emotional Hook of Forgotten Island

For me, the most interesting thing about Forgotten Island isn’t actually the monsters. It’s the memory-eating concept.

Jo and Raissa are already facing the most ordinary and painful kind of separation: growing up. One is going toward college, the other is trying to figure out what comes next, and their childhood friendship is being tested by circumstances neither of them can completely control.

Then the movie asks an absolutely brutal question: What if you didn’t just lose your best friend, but eventually forgot that you ever had them?

That gives every hour inside Nakali additional weight. The girls aren’t simply trying to escape an island. They’re trying to preserve the memories that make their friendship meaningful in the first place.

That’s also why the monsters work better when viewed as emotional reflections rather than traditional villains. The Manananggal represents separation. Batiba connects to loneliness and the fear of being forgotten. Bungi’s clinginess exaggerates the desperation to hold on. Even Raww’s insecurity comes back to the same fundamental anxiety: what happens when the people you love move on without you?

Final Thoughts on the Forgotten Island Cast

Forgotten Island has the ingredients of the kind of animated movie that can sneak up on audiences. It has recognizable stars, bizarre creatures, Filipino mythology, a genuinely emotional friendship story, and a visual style that isn’t afraid to look different.

More importantly, the cast doesn’t feel assembled simply for the sake of having famous names in the credits. H.E.R., Liza Soberano, Dave Franco, Lea Salonga, Manny Jacinto, Jenny Slate, Ronny Chieng, Kevin McCann, Dolly de Leon, and Jo Koy all bring very different energies to a world where comedy, folklore, horror, and coming-of-age drama are constantly colliding.

If you grew up with Filipino ghost stories, the cultural references alone give Forgotten Island plenty to dig into. If you didn’t, the movie still has an accessible emotional hook: two best friends realizing that staying together isn’t always something you can take for granted.

And honestly, that might be why the cast deserves more attention. Beneath all the supernatural chaos, Forgotten Island is ultimately about something painfully ordinary — the fear that the people who know you best might someday become memories.