Taboo Tattoo

Yeah, count me as confused. There was a timeskip, and now Seigi is super strong not because of training, but because he can "see" what he needs to do, I Izzy has a a robo arm and then stuff happens.

Like, when did they capture Liz? Did that happen last episode?

Who is deathflag-kun anyway, and why does he want to die so much?

All those new sealed come and go, and wasn't the creepy guy dead?

Even without reading manga it's easy to tell how much they are rushing this.

Here is the real reason◊ that the show neglected to mention.

That's still a pretty weak reason. BB trained him for like a week maybe, it shouldn't let him outfight actual soldiers.

Unless he mean BB's soul fragment has been training him for the year, in which case I can buy it. But that's something they really should explain.

Yeah, I believe the implication is that BB's soul fragment past on all his tactical knowledge to Seigi.

Episode 11: People fight.

This series sure knows how to desensitize me to death of characters. Like every time there's a battle, so American agents show up only to get killed in matter of minutes. It's hilarious, really.

At least the snake guy is done for. I hated him.

How convenient that she lost her powers, which wasn't mentioned before.

Seigi got to the Princess only to get his ass kicked. Not unexpected but I got to hand it to Princess, she played him like a fool. She knew hate would weaken him and he just danced to her tune.

Wait, that's Izzy dad?

Next episode, is the big final, and with Seigi out of commission, all is left on Izzy shoulders.

The worst part of the episode was the Ox Guy trying to RAM HIMSELF STRAIGHT INTO A SPIKE TRAP. Pure idiocy.

Promised a girl he'll come back alive.

Tries to ram himself on a spike trap.

It's like he's aware of his death flag and is trying to get it over with.

Well, from the halfway point of the episode we are past the point where the fan translations are at so I don't known what is going to happen from here on. Another rushed episode but seeing the Princess going all out was definitely cool.

I think it was mentioned in the manga. If it was it is just another thing the anime skipped, like the Ox Demon tying some Kevlar to his shoulder so that he wouldn't be as heart by his power.

Foster father who took her in after her family was killed. It was implied last episode.

Double Post for episode 12: Suddenly a Kaiju battle. This was a reasonably cool, if odd, way to finish the series. As I said the manga hasn't been fan translated past last episode so I cannot say if this is true to the manga or anime-only. That bit at the very end was also somewhat odd. Was that a trailer for another episode/season or were they just making fun of such trailers???

Oh yeah, it comes down to technobbale and... Kaiju battle? Okay, that's a stupidly awesome way to resolve things.

Izzy managed to put up a good fight against the Princess. Also, as I suspected she made Seigi realize that he isn't fighting for the sake of hate.

Izzy is a Tsundere.

Sanders is a clown.

Okay, I just love how the Princess is like "I'll get you next time Gadget!" and leaves.

Wait, so there will be a second season? Sure looks like it. I won't mind.

Kaiju battle was okay, but not really what I wanted from this series.

The sheer stupidity of the Americans here simultaneously made me laugh and cringe. Hell on the sides, I'm telling you.

You know, the most amazing thing here is that Tamaki (I remember his name!) is alive and kicking. Didn't think he would really die after raising all those death flags tongue-in-cheek, but still, it's nice.

Yeah, the defeated Princess whining like a brat was narm.

It looked like a trailer for a second season to me. It seems Seigi and company will be fighting against ALL the princess. Hahaha.

in the end, a series that frustrated me more than entertained me. Looked like a bog standard shounen battle anime, then tried some plot twists that in better hands would've had real impact but here sort of got lost in the hurry to tell the whole story in twelve episodes. The weird tonal shifts didn't help; you go from grim 'n gritty battle in which a half dozen US agents lose their lives to a "funny" ping pong battle in which we're supposed to get some sympathy for the princess, too bad Seigi's childhood friend is brutally killed not long after.

I sort of hoped but didn't expect Seigi to take some sort of revenge during the second half of the series, both on the Princess and Wiseman for dragging him into this world, but of course that didn't happen.

All in all this was sort of meh. Not a waste of time having watched it, but not sure I'm up for a second season.

The hurry to squeeze some form of complete story into the season was probably the biggest thing. The "one size fits all" 12 episode season format really hurts many stories, and it goes double for adaptations.

I would argue, of course, that the 12-episode format is not a good excuse for a slipshod story. The problem is in trying to cram more story than the timeslot can satisfactorily accommodate, and usually the animation studio itself has little say in that.

In the case of Taboo Tattoo though, the flaws were more fundamental and not something that can be resolved just by giving it more time.

edited 20th Sep '16 5:54:29 PM by fillerdude