Manga Review: Taboo Tatoo

Title: Taboo Tatoo
Author: Shinjirou
Release: Monthly
Status: Ongoing
Genre: Seinen, Fantasy
Art: A
Originality: A
Story: A
Characters: S
Humor: A
Action: A

Impression: This is a relatively new monthly manga that has my hopes high up there. It’s about these secret magical tattoos that grant their bearers unbelievable powers and nations all over the world are vying over for them, maintaining the illusion of normalcy only to have someone passing a good number of these out to random bystanders in Japan. One such bystander happens to be the main character of the series, a hot-blooded young man with a strong sense of justice and the martial arts skills to back up his ideals and he just happened to receive a particularly special tattoo from the man who gave it to him. Not knowing what he had been dragged into, a female American agent of a seemingly similar age to him fills him in on the situation, beating the crap out of while doing so. Throw in a megalomaniacal princess brutally overthrowing her parents and effectively becoming the dictator of the country these tattoos originate from and you get a very well done manga. The first chapter did follow a rather predictable formula that has become common enough nowadays for these sort of stories but the manga quickly cut to the chase and dives right into the action, trick-shooting off all sorts of tropes at rapid fire at a pace that was not only invigorating but also accommodated the story, characters and the premise satisfyingly well. It’s rare to see a series that manages to maintain such a fast pace without compromising its quality much less one with characters with such strong personalities. That female agent could very well be THE poster girl for the Little Miss Badass trope with her being an eternally adolescent secret agent with CQC skills along with a super power. Heck, she even pulls off a Badass Longcoat trope from time to time. Basically, if you like your manga with superpowers, amazing fights and great characters then this is the manga for you. Somewhere down the line, I expect that they will adapt this into an amazing anime series but I imagine half a decade will have gone by before this even gets to a point where it’ll get a proper adaptation. Shame about the wait but I’m betting it’ll be worth it.