Taboo Tattoo Episode 12 (Final) Review: The Deciding Battle

Plot

This episode was all about the action. The very opening scene has Seigi engaged toe to toe with Princess Aryabhata beating him with her source monster. At this moment, Seigi has overused his power, which the Princess Aryabhata knew would happen from the start. She caught on right away to Wiseman’s intention for Seigi to be beaten and devoured while he was filled with poison. Seigi is frustrated to the point he is gritting his teeth over the fact that he cannot beat the Princess, but he pushes forward.

While Seigi is busy holding his own, Tom, Izzy, and Tamaki are on their way to assist him in battle. Colonel Sanders is telling all his troops to withdraw so that he can blow his nuke in the name of America. Once the gang arrives to that battle, Izzy commands Tom to take the obliterated Seigi onto the helicopter with Colonel Sanders. She vows she will not lose Seigi to Princess Aryabhata. Izzy and Tamaki hang behind and fight the Princess with all they have got. They rile her up into her completed source state, as she has assimilated the power of all four ruins now. Colonel Sanders tries to end things, fully prepared to die by detonating the nuke. Unfortunately his plan goes south quickly because the Princess uses her source’s tentacles to cut the nuke’s detonator wires. The Princess, who is now through toying with the gang, goes full out against Tamaki and Izzy, releasing a powerful explosion.

Seigi wakes up in time to see the explosion and vows to never again lose someone close to him. He jumps out of the helicopter to save Izzy who is suspended in air from the sudden explosion. As the two are falling, Wiseman reveals that his plan was never to poison the Princess directly, but to poison her indirectly. He hits a trigger that causes Seigi’s source to unfurl and envelope him. Wiseman says the Princess made two big mistakes: 1) Assuming that the source only consumes the body once the soul has burnt out and 2) linking her and Seigi together by kissing him. Since the two are linked, any poison Seigi consumes, automatically affects her as well. In a similar sense, the Princess is drawing all her source’s fuel from her sister’s souls. Kujuli senses and feels all the strain of being drawn on by Aryahabta and takes both the strain from Seigi and the Princess upon herself as a link to end her sister’s suffering. Furthermore, Izzy has now also been consumed by Seigi’s source and is hanging out inside some kind of suspended realm with Blood.

Tom shouts at Seigi from a helicopter above as the Princess’s source lays into his. Tom cheers and cheers until Seigi regains consciousness. Once he does, he is able to regain control of his source and make use of his marital arts training to render the Princess’s attacks as useless. He catches her source by the jaw, pries open the teeth and then ejects himself out of his own source and into hers through her seal’s gaping mouth. Right as he is about to punch her into next week, she teleports away in defeat. Team USA rejoices over their victory to make up for their massive defeat they suffered a year ago.

Themes

Justice: Tom cheers for Seigi to keep fighting for the sake of the 7 billion people on Earth and each of their individual ideals of justice. Kujuli takes on all suffering of her sisters because her sense of justice is martyrdom.

Comedy: Colonel Sanders’s nuke never went off so he starts spazzing out in the helicopter calling himself a clown

Comments

The animation in this episode was astounding. It was very interesting to watch because of the action being such a redeeming feature. As always there were a few plot holes in what seemed like complete scene skips, like how Izzy ended up suspended in air needing Seigi to rescue her suddenly after Princess Aryabhata’s explosion. I’m not sure if she was blown up there or fell of Aryabhata’s source or what. There was also a scene near the end where the USA wins and Tamaki busts out of some random rubble to fist pump. I wasn’t thrilled about the Princess’s teleportation either. The anime could have easily ended on this episode, but for some reason the animators wish to draw it out even more so. I have no idea what else they could possibly add into this series that hasn’t been done or built up to and the Princess’s escape felt very much like deus ex machina. The anime draws off of several others such as: Gurren Lagan, Evangelion, and similar series but really cannot quite compare as far as holding good standing.