Tattoon Master

Tattoon Master leaves a lot to be desired. While the premise is interesting and the art direction is fairly strong, it's not enough to make up for the fact that the story is a total mess, in ways that cannot simply be explained by a rushed production. Beginning with the story, it is here where Tattoon Master loses the most points. The idea of secret tattoo-based magic is interesting, and the powerful fish out of water magical girl from a foreign land who's madly in love with the protagonist is a concept that has the potential to produce near-infinite episodes.However, its potential is almost totally squandered in poor execution. Not only are the tattoos left almost totally unexplored as a concept, but character motivations make almost no logical sense. Why anybody does anything they do is nonsensical and contrived, in all likelihood because they warped their characters to fit the demands of the story with no explanation. Why is Hibio so needlessly mad about a beautiful woman from a mysterious land falling madly in love with him? What does Nima like about him in the first place? Why can Nima speak Japanese if she's from some mysterious tribe? Things just happen, and the anime just sort of has to hope you don't ask any questions. I get this is a comedy, but everything feels just a little too flimsy as a base for even something as short as a 2 episode OVA. Above all, though, it is only passingly entertaining, and only rarely funny, which is a shame given that's one of the tentpoles upon which the show itself rests, and it really had the potential to actually be funny, which it wasted. The art is the strongest aspect of this anime, with fun 90s visuals and action scenes, though characters do suffer from what I call the 'dreaded mask', where facial emotion is not animated to the degree it should be. One interesting note about the art direction is that, while I can't confirm this, the mountain-dwelling Tattoon tribe seems to be pulling aesthetically from a real-life group, the Tocharians, who were blonde or red haired Indo-Europeans living in the far west of what is today China, leaving behind tattooed mummies. Not sure if this was on purpose, but it is certainly an intriguing point nonetheless. The sound is good, meeting all basic standards of quality for the time, though the music stands out, as it embodies this playful 90s profile that fits the show rather well. The characters, however, do not meet the basic standards of quality, constituting nothing more than unconvincing puppets which the story strings along for its own ends. They are thinly characterized, with rare moments of competence or narrative interest. Of them, Nima's the best, but she only just barely outdoes those around her, probably because her motivations are so simple they're hard to complicate. Overall, Tattoon Master is a project which fails to make use of its potentially interesting premise, and does nothing more than occupy your time for about an hour.

Tattoon Master is an okay anime to watch with the subtitled version. It is too short to enjoy fully, one of those shows meant to be several episodes but isn't. The plot only begins and then stops, it is sad because the two episodes easily leave you wanting more. However, because the show was incomplete, I'm guessing, the Dub team took heavy liberties to increase the comedy value. I rated the show 7, in reality, I'd give the subtitled version a 6 and the Dub version a 10. The only anime I have ever watched in which the Dub version far exceeded the subtitled versionin entertainment value.

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