Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei

One autumn evening at a mysterious ramen stand behind the Shimogamo Shrine, a lonely third-year college student bumps into a man with an eggplant-shaped head who calls himself a god of matrimony. Meeting this man causes the student to reflect upon his past two years at college—two years bitterly spent trying to break up couples on campus with his only friend Ozu, a ghoulish-looking man seemingly set on making his life as miserable as possible. Resolving to make the most out of the rest of his college life, the student attempts to ask out the unsociable but kind-hearted underclassman Akashi, yet fails to follow through, prompting him to regret not living out his college life differently. As soon as this thought passes through his head, however, he is hurtled through time and space to the beginning of his years at college and given another chance to live his life.

Surreal, artistic, and mind-bending, Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei chronicles the misadventures of a young man on a journey to make friends, find love, and experience the rose-colored campus life he always dreamed of.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Watashi Main

Asanuma, Shintaro Japanese

Akashi Main

Sakamoto, Maaya Japanese

Ozu Main

Yoshino, Hiroyuki Japanese

Higuchi, Seitarou Supporting

Fujiwara, Keiji Japanese

Johnny Supporting

Hiyama, Nobuyuki Japanese

Hanuki, Ryouko Supporting

Kaida, Yuuko Japanese

Jougasaki, Masaki Supporting

Suwabe, Junichi Japanese

Fortune Teller Supporting

Mayama, Ako Japanese

Kaori Supporting

Asanuma, Shintaro Japanese

Aijima Supporting

Satou, Setsuji Japanese

Ozaki, Noriko Producer

Takeuchi, Fumie Producer

Fujio, Tsutomu Producer

Yuasa, Masaaki Director, Episode Director, Script, Storyboard

Reviews

Jul 15, 2025

B-sideFunk

Recommended

Funny

Well-written

As of writing this, I've watched this series a couple of times and I feel like I should share my opinions about the world, the characters, and the overall ideology behind Tatami Galaxy.

Before I get into the review, I can't help but mention that I am currently consuming a Samyang Buldak Hot Spicy Chicken Ramen. It's the one that comes in pink. Now, I really enjoy the Samyang Spicy Chicken however, I can't really recommend the pink one. The inclusion of the cheese powder stuff really muddles with the spicy sauce and creates a really awkward taste. It's the same awkwardness I've experienced with the ... Habanero Lime flavor. I don't get why you would ever enjoy habanero and lime together, but whatever, I can honestly say it's my least favorite of them all.

Now about the pink package noodles, you might recommend that I simply leave out the cheese packet. Yes, that is the logical solution, isn't it? However, there are a few things wrong with this. First, the hot sauce packet has been reduced in the pink packages, so you get a lot less flavor and heat. Also, by removing the cheese powder packet, you essentially create the regular spicy chicken that comes in black. I would highly recommend just buying the black packaged noodles instead of the inferior pink ones.

If you're like me, you actually enjoy when the noodles bite back, so instead of buying the black spicy chicken, you will go for the 2x spicy chicken that comes in the red package. This version does indeed feel like it's "2x spicy" and I guarantee you will need milk to accompany it. However, there is a considerable drawback, as the regular spicy chicken is freely available in the store I frequent, yet the 2x spicy I can only buy from online retailers. It's certainly a bit more of an expense, but if I'm perfectly honest, I would say it is definitely worth it.

Anyways, back to my review of Tatami Galaxy. It was pretty good! I highly recommend.

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Aug 12, 2025

elumizu

Mixed Feelings

"If I had just done X, maybe my life would be Y." That’s the kind of lie we tell ourselves to survive the weight of a thousand unmade choices. The Tatami Galaxy is built entirely out of that lie, and then proceeds to dismantle it with a smirk, a headache, and a lot of talking very, very fast. I didn’t watch this anime. I tumbled through it. Like the protagonist, I kept thinking, “Maybe this next episode, this next club, this next timeline, will finally make it all make sense.” It doesn’t. Not in the neat, symmetrical, hand-holding way we like. But somehow, by the ... end, you’re left staring at the ceiling, blinking, thinking: So this is what it feels like to be cornered by your own potential. The structure is deceptively simple. Each episode resets, but the same relationships and decisions keep cycling back with small, telling differences. It’s not a gimmick; it’s a slow, hypnotic build, a mirror for the patterns we can’t seem to break. The worldbuilding is equally sly: a version of Kyoto that’s grounded in student life but bent by surreal exaggeration like clubs, dorm rooms, riversides, all familiar yet dreamlike, like memories you’re not sure are yours. The visuals? A fever dream built in Adobe Illustrator and philosophical malaise. Characters don’t so much move as they swirl. The animation loves abrupt transitions, split screens, and collage-style cut-ins, weaponizing visual chaos to match the protagonist’s mental spiral. The protagonist, nameless, faceless, and relentlessly self-absorbed, is less of a character and more of a thesis statement with a voice actor. And yet, weirdly, you know this guy. He’s the voice in your head that romanticises regret. The one that thinks a different haircut, a different major, a different friend group would’ve solved everything. Music here doesn’t dominate but it nudges. The opening theme is a burst of playful urgency, the ending a calm, almost wistful release. Background tracks range from jazzy mischief to quiet melancholy, perfectly pacing your emotional whiplash. Voice acting is a technical marvel: the lead’s mile-a-minute delivery borders on inhuman precision, while supporting roles, Ozu’s sly drawl, Akashi’s cool detachment, balance the chaos with texture. There’s repression here, absolutely, intellectualised to the point of self-parody. Interpersonal connection becomes a Rubik’s cube of avoidance, performance, and low-grade existential dread. All delivered with such speed and wit that you don’t notice the heartbreak until three scenes later. Every episode restarts like Groundhog Day, but not for comedy, it’s psychological self-flagellation with punchlines. We do repeat the same patterns when we refuse to confront the parts of ourselves we don’t like. We just rename the clubs. There’s no single moral wrapped in a bow. No life-changing revelation handed out in episode twelve. But somewhere between the surreal metaphors, the noodle metaphysics, and the janky, glorious chaos of it all, it quietly teaches you something about freedom. Not the kind where you do anything. The kind where you stop running from who you’ve always been. Enjoyment depends entirely on your tolerance for absurd repetition and verbal machine-gunning. If it clicks, it sticks. Rewatch value is medium, not for comfort, but for spotting the quiet threads you missed the first time. It’s definitely not for everyone. It talks too much, moves too weird, and refuses to give you emotional breadcrumbs. But if you’ve ever sat in your room thinking, “Why does every road feel wrong, even the ones I chose?” then maybe this anime already knows you and maybe that’s why it hurts a little. If this were a podcast, I’d slap a 10 out of 10 on it but since it’s an anime, well...

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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May 21, 2025

1stDecame4Danime

Not Recommended

Pure filler. If you insist on watching this garbage, take my advice: Watch episodes 1-2 and skip as much as you want (ideally everything) to 11-12. The show as a whole and eps 11-12 are actually made worse by having seen the redundant filler in between since it's all recapped anyway and becomes boringly spoonfed redundancy of beating an uninteresting dead horse otherwise.

The MC is the generic turbo-virgin 3000 who refuses to ever actually have romance with a woman despite his sole character trait/motivation of wanting to have romance (so he spends the entire show pointlessly cockblocking himself for no reason other than the usual ... that the author is incapable of writing romance and so strings the audience along writing filler instead).

This isn't romance, nor mystery, nor suspense, and award-winning isn't a genre. It's a SoL shit-post up it's own ass.
It isn't comedy either. There isn't a single joke attempting to be funny in here. The absolute closest to humor it gets is if you derisively laugh at the author for being such an idiot for some of these worthlessly dumb scenes. This is a non-comedy joke of a show that mistakes half-assed shitpost-level filler for humor. It is not parodying anything nor subverting anything nor saying anything interesting really, it is just low-effort SoL filler garbage on repeat.

The time-travel aspect and 4.5 tatami infinity is just there with no cause given. It's merely used as a (meta) narrative device for beating simple philosophy like a dead horse (because why put effort into writing this story when can make time-wasting filler instead? This is even explicitly lampshaded at the end by the writer with a 'haha fku I wasted your time on this filler story').

Aside from the last 2 eps, every episode after the 1st is a reskinned repeat of the 1st. The show never really advances beyond the premise of ep 1. About 50% of the series is just copy-and-pasted repeated scenes almost line-for-line and frame-for-frame every single episode for eps 1-10. Each episode it will more or less repeat the exact same scenario of: flashforward teaser of him being in trouble, recap of starting high school choosing a club to join, generically repetitive club garbage in which noncharacter robot MC can't make friends with noncharacter clubmates, recap of meeting noncharacter love guru and/or devil-friend Ozu, generic club garbage falling out leading to him getting in trouble because of tryharding self-defeating idiocy with him and Ozu, generically repetitive ramen-shop/restaurant filler, recap of meeting generic noncharacter manic pixie dreamboat he ignores to protect his virginity via her mascot toy hanging in his apartment he does nothing with, recap of meeting fortuneteller, generically gives up and recaps blaming Ozu and his circumstances and wishing he could start over and do things differently, recap of time reverse clock, the end. Repeat it all again from the top every episode. The entire series constantly cannibalizes itself, watching it is a pointless endeavor like listening to a conversation between parrots.

The 'climax' of eps 11-12 people here seem to think is so great is baby's 1st bottle episode of more dumb repetitive multiverse meta filler ala the infinite backrooms of his 4.5 tatami apartment analogy for a hikikomori followed by finishing the series by ending the setup of every prior episode all at once exactly as I and anyone else had already predicted. You don't even have to watch the redundant episodes 2-10 to get exactly the same boring nothing it has to offer. It's all filler. If anything watching episode 1 and maybe 2 or any other of the other equivalents followed by eps 11-12 would actually make those last episodes more interesting on top of not wasting your time on all that redundant filler they're just going to recap in eps 11-12 anyway.

None of the characters have any meaningful character through-line consistency nor development, it's all just pointless bs made up as it goes. A matchmaking god? Dropped. A devil? dropped in favor of pointless symbolism of being le bad. Movies, doll, tennis, biking, airplane, cult, (non)romance mcguffin dreamboat, etc. Pointless.

The dialogue is pure repetitive filler. Much of it is used to narrate the story itself, brainlessly telling instead of actually letting the animation show anything itself. The animation is instead almost completely auxiliary to the constant stream of exposition word vomit harassing the viewer (like gibbering psychosis if you don't speak Japanese). Aside from showing goopy characters over-emote while lip-flapping their lines, the primary use of animation is to show dumb (often meaningless, irrelevant, or even just text on the screen) unsubtle infographic imagery of what the narration is already telling you.

The art is repetitive, low-effort, juvenile, and vapid. Not that you'll be able to see it anyway since most of it will be flashing by entire shots in the blink of an eye while the absence of a dub and the extremely fast speaking of the mc to cram as much filler self-narration exposition as possible means you'll be constantly struggling not to miss what is being said as you are forced to choose between watching the text or images flashing every second, and even then you'll frequently pause/go back to catch some filler you missed.

Theme on repeat: 'Life's about the journey not the destination' = 'the grass is always greener on the other side' mentality is le bad = don't greedily 'fly too close to the sun'. (Of course despite what the author doubtlessly intended the MC doesn't actually learn this lesson. If he had he would've been happy staying in the 4.5 tatami room. Instead the MC learns the lesson of "One must imagine Icarus happy." in that he meaningfully changes nothing about endlessly coveting in a way that makes him unhappy and just decides that he's happy doing so now. Truly the greatest lesson of anime dealing with mental health issues: "Instead of being sad, just be happy!").

1/10 (where 5/10 is average)

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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