Anime Sunday: Taboo Tattoo Episode 01 Impressions

Michael Blaker
Game Industry News is running the best blog posts from people writing about the game industry. Articles here may originally appear on Michael's blog, Windborne's Story Eatery.

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This week for Anime Sunday I’m covering a brand new series from the Summer 2016 Season! It’s my Taboo Tattoo Episode 01 Impressions!

Plot Synopsis: After saving a homeless man from some thugs, Seigi receives a strange tattoo from the man as a gift. This act leads to a series of events that will pull Seigi into the middle of a conflict…

Plot: This first episode was way more intense than I thought it would be, but I’m not complaining at all. I loved every single minute, and I’m kind of regretting that this is the first series of the Summer 2016 Season I’ve given a look at other than Tales of Zestiria’s adaptation, which I’ve had to postpone writing about until after today’s upcoming episode is aired. The reason I’m regretting it is that I don’t have more episodes of this series to watch, and I very rarely feel that way after just a single episode these days. I loved all the action we got to experience in this first episode, and for a premier episode it had an awesome amount of it.

Characters: Seigi is an awesome main character, and totally lives up to his name (Seigi means justice, a do-gooder would be called Seigi no Mikata which translates to Ally of Justice). I actually enjoy him, he’s clearly well aware that he’s not powerful even though he can take out the average thug on the street with ease and that makes him a very likable character. Touko, his childhood friend we didn’t get to see much of in this first episode, but from the time we did see, we can tell that she deeply loves Seigi and it’s fairly obvious to just about everyone, except maybe Seigi himself. Our female lead Izzy on the other hand is a bit of a creeper, and honestly I hope we don’t get to see any sort of love triangle between the three characters. The only other character we get to meet is Tom, an assistant who is not very competent thus far. Maybe he’ll shape up, but I see him being a rather minor character overall from just this first episode. Who knows though, this is after all just the first episode.

Art: J.C. Staff is the studio behind the series, and they’ve done some amazing work with past series including a personal favorite of mine the Toaru series of Anime adaptations. This adaptation of Taboo Tattoo doesn’t disappoint in the least and I loved every single minute of it. This is just the first episode however so I won’t be too surprised at any animation flubs in later episodes. Not every studio can be like ufotable and just create masterpieces of animation.

Music: The music we got to listen to in this episode was pretty good, and although not the best I’ve listened to, it’s probably in the top 10%. The opening theme by May’n wasn’t bad, and the ending wasn’t terrible either, but neither was really noteworthy either.

Overall: This first episode shows great promise, if the quality doesn’t dip too much in later episodes this might turn into one of the gems of the season.

For those who like: Urban Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Seinen, Action, Drama, Martial Arts, Exellent Plot, Fantastic Cast of Characters, Great Artwork, Good Music.

Not for those who don’t like: Any of the above.

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