Taboo Tattoo

Episode 10

One rule I try to keep in mind for myself as a critic is that, whenever I am judging the success or failure of a piece of media, I try and keep it relative to whatever that media was trying to accomplish in the first place. For example, it wouldn't be fair to hold a show like Mob Psycho 100 to the standards of Orange, because those shows are trying to do two separate things. Even when I look at something so uneven as Taboo Tattoo, I do my best to judge the show on its own terms, whatever those terms may be. The problem, as this episode so keenly demonstrates, is that I'm not entirely sure Taboo Tattoo even knows what it's trying to do.

On paper, this episode is fairly straightforward. It is in theory a redo of the failed assault mission we watched go down just a couple episodes ago. After mind-melding with the dead BB, Seigi now has inherited the special "something" that will allow the military to take on Arya and her crew at the ruins. The team emotionally and physically prepares for the fight, and then they go off to kick some ass. Simple.

Except the show constantly gets distracted by weird non-sequiturs that not only feel out of place tonally, but also make it really hard for the audience to figure out what kind of show they are even watching. For instance: the US military personnel that Seigi and Izzy join up with are, inexplicably, otaku obsessed with smutty dating sims. Izzy even acknowledges that this isn't normal, and the show keeps going back to their "comic relief," but why? Is it just cheap comedy? Is it trying to satirize the sometimes unconventional relationship that Japan and the United States share with their cultural exchanges? Our characters are apparently gearing up for an intense final showdown, so it seems odd to spend so much time on such lowbrow humor, especially when it feels directly at odds with the action-adventure-war story that Taboo Tattoo seems intent on telling at least 60% of the time.

Or consider the new enemy the gang squares up against this week, a battle-hungry woman whose tattoo is located on her crotch and activated using an acupuncture needle. Her over-the-top performance would be comedic in any other show, but Taboo Tattoo has done such a poor job of setting its own ground rules that she just comes across as a weirdly eroticized villain-of-the-week, not funny enough to count as camp but not threatening or interesting enough to matter to the actual story.

The easiest defense for this show would be to argue that it isn't taking itself seriously, which I absolutely agree with. The problem isn't that the writers and directors aren't taking themselves seriously; my problem is that the show doesn't know how to do that and still be watchable. Even in the most ironic and lackadaisical stories, you want to feel like the people behind the scenes put some thought into what they were sending out into the world. In this week's Taboo Tattoo, we get things like an entire scene dedicated to Arya and her cronies hanging out at the beach in their swimsuits, seemingly because someone decided that it was high time we had some beach-themed fanservice. There's no rhyme or reason to what's happening, no momentum or direction carrying us through the plot. More and more each week, Taboo Tattoo is becoming a series of decently animated vignettes that can barely justify their own existence.

This is not a terrible episode of television. The animation is fine, the action is fine, the production is fine, and nearly every other surface-level aspect of this show is absolutely fine. The problem is what's below the surface though. The problem is that Taboo Tattoo might almost be better off being terrible at this point, because at least then we might have something to talk about. The problem is that Taboo Tattoo isn't awful, it isn't good, it isn't memorable or exciting or particularly coherent.

I'm beginning to suspect that the problem is Taboo Tattoo isn't really much of anything at all.

Rating: C-

Taboo Tattoo is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.