The Battle Begins!
Creative Staff
Story: Shinjiro
Art: Shinjiro
Translation: Christine Dashiel
What they say
Seigi’s not the only one with a keless Spell Crest, and the other powers are on the move! BB is trying to use his remaining time on Earth to foilr the Kingdom’s plans—and that means pushing Seigi to the limits of his new abilities! Meanwhile, Princess Aryabhata’s forces have finally located the last ruin site. Can the United States’s most elite troops stop her before she amasses more power than they could ever hope to counter?!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Many of the characters in this series appear to be linked in some way, though a lot of those ways are only minimally expanded upon. Since we don’t know much about these characters, the mangaka has more freedom, both to expand on the characters’ pasts at their leisure but also to make mistakes and contradict themselves. Whether that’s what will happen or not depends on the mangaka’s ability to tie these people together in ways that make sense.
The only two characters who are not linked to the others through a past that everyone but we know are Seigi and Touko—Seigi’s childhood friend. There seems to be some feelings between them. During the scene around the middle of this volume, a definite sense of romantic and sexual tension filled the pages. I like that Seigi at least seems aware of her presence. Both of them seemed rather embarrassed in each other’s company, which gives a sense that their feelings for each other are mutual. I’ll be curious to see if something happens on this front.
While Seigi spends most of his time training, Princess Aryabhata, the antagonist of this series, has located a ruin in Japan, which holds some significance to the Spell Crests that grant everyone their powers. According to what we learn, she’s trying to overwrite the world and eliminate strife. Of course, Seigi opposes her.
The conflict between Princess Aryabhata and Seigi is one of the oldest tropes in history. Both of them want the same thing, peace, but they have different ideas on how to achieve it. Seigi is like Batman. He seems kind of self-righteous and opposes the idea of overwriting reality, which would essentially erase and rewrite the identities of everyone on Earth, but he doesn’t know of any way to eliminate war. On the other hand, Princess Aryabhata’s aggressive methods will bring peace at the cost of people’s personalities. This sort of plot has been done many times in media from all across the globe. Whether Taboo Tattoo will be one of the manga that succeed in making this an engaging plotline or not is up to the mangaka’s story direction.
From a purely art perspective, this series is pretty good. It has an art style that feels like an older series, using varied line thickness and cross hatching to shade certain parts as a means of adding intensity to specific scenes. Movement during action scenes are created by lines of varying thickness moving in seeming opposition of the character who is fighting. Proportions are nice, though there are a lot of eye shots. All around, the artwork is excellent but not quite compelling.
One thing that should be noted of this series is nudity. I don’t know if this happens in the other volumes, but Princess Aryabhata gets naked near the beginning, and she stays that way for several more scenes. It’s unsure whether there is a plot reason for her to discard her clothes. She doesn’t seem to be doing it for the sake of fanservice, especially since attention isn’t brought to her breasts or butt during these scenes. However, the princess has groped several women in this volume alone, so whether she is being fan serviced or not is up to interpretation.
If nudity is a problem for you, then you might want to avoid this. Also, please note that the series is rated OT for older teen.
In Summary
I would say that this volume, overall, has been enjoyable, but there are so much information missing that a lot of the characters, story, and magic behind the Spell Crest’s is messy. Saying that, I’ll not deny that it’s a mess I enjoyed reading.
Content Grade: C-
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: B
Text/Translation Grade: B-
Age Rating: Older Teen
Released By: Yen Press
Release Date: February 9, 2016
MSRP: $12.99
