{"id":3039,"date":"2012-02-21T22:38:10","date_gmt":"2012-02-21T21:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/?p=3039"},"modified":"2020-10-11T21:07:52","modified_gmt":"2020-10-11T20:07:52","slug":"mikan-watch-62-the-tatami-galaxy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/?p=3039","title":{"rendered":"Mikan Watch #62: The Tatami Galaxy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><center><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"piccytures\/mikan\/mikan_tatami.jpg\" \/><\/center><br \/>\nFrom, well, it&#8217;s in a couple of different episodes, I guess. I took this shot from the last episode, but it&#8217;s reused footage from an earlier instalment.<br \/>\n<!--more--><br \/>\nTatami Galaxy is an interesting show. Whilst I wouldn&#8217;t necessarily call it a <i>dense<\/i> show, it&#8217;s more demanding viewing that most anime shows. It&#8217;s not something you can watch semi-passively in the same way I end up watching most shows, if only because our protagonists narration runs at such a high clip that a mere momentary lapse in concentration results in the loss of information.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also one of those shows which can make you feel kind of bad about criticizing. I don&#8217;t necessarily mean it&#8217;s a bad show, but I do think it&#8217;s one which would have benefited from a format differing from a TV show, even at the truncated noitaminA length of just eleven episodes. The middle stretch in particular, where if runs through several episodes which utilises a much narrower branch of variation in it&#8217;s time-repetition story than those which proceeded it, tried attention a little. It&#8217;s difficult not to think that the show may have benefited from a smaller number of episodes, perhaps at a longer length than standard duration. Alas, shows of such a format rarely get made these days, so I suppose that you need to take what you can get.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s difficult to criticize, however, because it&#8217;s rather different. It&#8217;s kind of the Tiger and Bunny thing where people seem to have a habit of over-inflating it&#8217;s quality because it&#8217;s scratching an itch that has been long neglected. Not only is it not derivative of anything else that&#8217;s getting made in anime (at least in mass), but it&#8217;s tries to do it with a modicum of intelligence. It&#8217;s easy to slag off a lot of other anime, regardless of their <i>actual<\/i> quality simply because it&#8217;s really easy to be cynical about it &#8211; you can see the marketing hooks, the characters it&#8217;s trying to get you attached to, and the merchandising it&#8217;s trying to get you to buy.<\/p>\n<p>Tatami Galaxy, on the other hand. Well, it&#8217;s not like Maasaki Yuasa is the only anime director whose works are rich in peculiar visual metaphors, but the likes of Ikuhara at least straddle a middle ground. Penguin Drum and Utena both have cute character designs and a broad sense of humour. Tatami has weirdness, interesting animation and a rather high-level sense of humour that many probably won&#8217;t get. If you don&#8217;t get what&#8217;s going on in Utena (and I have to admit, I&#8217;m a little too dumb to follow much of it&#8217;s final arc, or at least I was when I last watched it many moons ago), there&#8217;s something else for you to enjoy if, like the cool swordfights. If you don&#8217;t get Tatami Galaxy, well, I guess it at least spells out it&#8217;s point in it&#8217;s ninth episode (though, really, that&#8217;s probably more of a negative).<\/p>\n<p>Not unlike an episode of Tatami Galaxy, I&#8217;m rather somewhat rambling here. I think my point was that, whilst I really rather enjoyed Tatami Galaxy, I&#8217;m really not sure how much of that comes down to genuine quality, and how much of it was pure novelty value. But I&#8217;m not sure. Because I&#8217;m dumb.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From, well, it&#8217;s in a couple of different episodes, I guess. I took this shot from the last episode, but it&#8217;s reused footage from an earlier instalment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mikan-watch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3039"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6321,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3039\/revisions\/6321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.beta-waffle.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}