Tattoon Master

Another in a long line of anime that is really good but ended far too early. The storyline being what it was, the series could have easily been a 12 episode OVA or even a 25-26 episode TV series. The animation studio probably did this series out of boredom between big projects, which is a shame because they had a good thing going. This series does a good job integrating the romance angle into a magic-action story without getting caried away.

This Anime is a very good series, and should have continued on to be a 12 or 24 episode series. The story-line is very creative and develops well, it combines the romance ,fun and action into one . Although it was a 2 episode i feel if the animators take a look back and stumbled on it ,they would surely take it up and convert it into a big series ,but for now we'll have to enjoy it as a short ,funny ,action pack anime.

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.