Right. Taboo Tattoo is like finding a good book with a good summary printed on it, only when you flip it and start to read it, you realize it's horrible. I imagined the creation of this anime started out with a guy who had some sort of checklist.
"How to make a good shounen anime. You need:
- Child protagonist ( )
- The Chosen One ( )
- School setting ( )
- Comedy ( )
- Female fanservice ( )
- Romance ( )
- Token Loli ( )
- Good backstory for side characters ( )
- Big boobs ( )
- Badass characters ( )
- OP antagonists ( )
- "Nakama" power ( )
- Gore/Death ( )
- Swear words ( )
- Yuri ( )
- Torture, for MC's growth ( )"
And the guy makes sure it's all there. Sure, they are all there, but the pacing of the story is awful. Some episodes aren't entirely linked to the previous, and the anime's pacing can go from serious to comedic in less than a second, destroying the mood. Half of the time I wasn't sure what I was watching. The first four episodes looked decent, and then it started going downhill. It feels like the anime wanted to please many audiences than what it was originally capable of at that point that it became a joke itself. Maybe that was the whole point? In that case the seriousness of the anime didn't justify itself. The so-called "tattoo" that granted people powers suddenly turned the anime into a magical one, where almost everyone is capable of using it. The story is so thinly threaded despite it was to "defeat antagonist". Then they added some pointless gore and death, crossing their fingers that it would make the whole thing better. It did not.
When your side character has more story than your main character, this is where it goes wrong. I relate more to a certain side character that appears for only 3 episodes than the MC who did probably nothing but tried to kill himself (and failed because plot armor) for 12. Sure, side characters need love and backstory too, but I literally know nothing apart of MC's unjustified strong sense of justice, extreme recklessness, and that he's the main character. Though, he finally picks up and became slightly better at episode 9, but he's still a mystery to me. Is he even the main character, I wonder? Some side characters have proven to be more interesting than an empty shell of "Justice" he is.
Nothing much to say about art and sound. They're at least better than what it's trying to convey. The art is pretty good, I must praise it. However, despite how much I can praise it, it will not change how much a mess this anime is.
I was hoping it to at least achieve the bare minimum of average, as a shounen anime that has a decent start. It turned out to be a lot worse than what I was expecting. Just finished it earlier, and towards the end I was dragging myself with the episodes. The ending of the anime was probably a nightmare. That whole thing was hinting for a season 2? Jesus, if that ended up getting a season 2 it would've been a miracle. It was even worse than Charlotte that I hated, because this was so hard to watch, and that it actually gave me hope before it trampled all over it. This whole thing is a mess. Sugar and spice, mix in together, and you'll get this thing called "Taboo Tattoo" - a mess that doesn't know how to fix its own mess, and ended up becoming a bigger pile of a mess.
