Ever wanted to see a middle school boy take on a perverted princess bent on taking over the world by using military weapons? Now is your chance to see exactly what kind of chaos follows suit in the Summer 2016 series Taboo Tattoo.

Seigi, a middle school martial artist is gifted with a strange tattoo that begins to change his life. He suddenly develops super natural strength, healing, and an ability to eat up all molecular matter!

Synopsis

The genre is a mesh of action, comedy, supernatural, and mecha/military types. The character Seigi is given a mysterious tattoo which endows him with supernatural abilities to create black holes that devour matter. He is then whisked away from middle school and into a branch of the American military called the Tattoo Retrieval Unit. The military is at war with a fictional Kingdom ruled by lewd Princess Aryahbata who wants to claim all tattoo weapons for herself. Seigi goes through all sorts of twists and turns dealing with the Kingdom’s army while trying to maintain a somewhat normal life as a young man. But he soon accepts that there is no escaping from the weapon that he has become, and embarks on a mission to train himself to perfect his abilities.

Plot

The plot for this series remained extremely jumpy, full of holes, and unnecessary attempts at comedic one liners. Seigi goes from training to being thrown into full battle scenes where he almost always nearly dies and has to be saved by someone. America’s military is constantly being beaten by the Kingdom, and the Princess’s random crudeness and fondness for her underage soldiers makes her more of a joke than a serious villain. I had a hard time staying focused on this anime because it jumped around so much itself from scenes to characters to unimportant deaths of soldiers on both sides of the war. Princess Aryabhata is probably one of the most irritating characters to listen to in this anime, because every serious thing she does, she immediately undermines by making herself look reckless and silly. The overall plot could have been much more thoroughly developed. Moreover, the creator needs to decide if the anime is serious or comedic.

Art & Music:

The artwork and animation of this anime are some of the most redeeming features about it. The action scenes animation coupled with the j-pop music worked out much better than I would have normally expected. The gore scenes are honestly very well done and always kept me engaged. Some of the best scenes of this series are of someone dying.

Themes & Trivia

A lot of what I have noticed about this anime seems like fan service. Princess Aryahbata and a few other characters are queer. The Princess especially has a thing for younger girls with big breasts. At one point we get to see tentacle porn mentioned in an episode. Seigi’s childhood best friend has boobs the size of watermelons. Obviously, a large theme in this series is sexuality. The other big theme is justice. Seigi is hell bent on a quest for justice, which he picks up from his mentor, Blood. Blood has taught him that to be a hero means to carry out all your ideals of justice, without exception. Many things happen to Seigi as he tries to follow Blood’s advice and to carry out justice on Princess Aryabhata. Mostly he learns how hard being truly just is. Japan and America both believe in justice as an overlying theme of their culture. The fact that Seigi is a Japanese boy fighting for the American army just seems to further unite those themes.

Comments:

This anime is awesome to watch: it has action and boobs at the same time. Since it’s based on providing fan service, it caters to a little bit of everything. There’s romance, war, death, tentacle porn, and so much more. I love it for its boldness, but I hate it for its lack of thoroughness. Almost everything about this anime is random. Which is great for those of you who love unpredictability, but sucks for those who just want a little bit of stability in life. I had trouble keeping up with it for the most part, and I gave up on it ever coming together to make any sense early on in the series.

And the rating is:

Plus:

• A lot of girl-on-girl action
• The battle scenes are awesome
• The concept of tattoo weapons has a lot of potential

Minus:

• There is too much randomness going on
• Princess Aryabhata is too absurd to be frightening as a villain
• Not much character development

This anime was pretty good, but I believe it could have been better. However, that’s just my personal opinion. I’d really like to see what everyone else thinks about this anime as well. Watch a few episodes and see if you agree or disagree and give a rating of your own! Most of all, tell me what you think of Princess Aryabhata!

●Official Website: http://tabootattoo-anime.com/
●Official Twitter: https://twitter.com/tabootattoo_ani

©2016真じろう・ＫＡＤＯＫＡＷＡ刊／タブー・タトゥー製作委員会