The Tatami Galaxy 11 [END]

Realizations that have been building for over two months...

“Nothing else is as boring to tell as a story of successful love.”

And with that we reach the end of our story; and I reach the end of my first series. You may have noticed that I usually blog House of Five Leaves first, however I wanted a Maaya show to be the first one I finished. As of writing this I haven’t watched the finale for House of Five Leaves, but it will be very hard for it to top The Tatami Galaxy. Throughout the entire last half of the episode I was hitting my desk, holding my head, smiling and generally punching the air in an embarrassing happiness. It is very rare that a show ends well; especially in anime. Usually they are based off another source and are unable to end appropriately, not to mention that most manga and anime generally have disappointing endings. However while not as mushy as a hopeless romantic like me would like; I couldn’t think of a better way to end a satisfying story.

I'm going to fit as many couple shots as I can into this post!

That is what it’s all about, after all; I was completely satisfied by Tatami Galaxy. It had its highs and lows; certainly when Akashi was missing. Yet even then I have been able to talk about this show for the eleven weeks that it has been running, hardly ever saying a bad thing about the show. This could mean one of two things; either I am a terrible reviewer and you should get the pitch forks, or we have genuinely found a great show together. And for the sake of my life; I am going to assume the latter. It seems quite a while ago now that I started blogging a third show based solely on the fact that the main heroine was voiced by Sakamoto Maaya, a voice that I will never grow tired of. Yet, after being introduced to Watashi, Akashi, Ozu, Jougasaki, Higuchi and Hanuki; I don’t feel as though I will miss them, just that I’m happy to have known them.

This image was FAR too good to pass up!

The moment that Watashi broke out of his hidden dimension and walked around breathing the fresh air and seeing all the people in the way they have constantly appeared, was literally breath taking. The finale of this show was incredible in multiple ways; both as a narrative, and as a ridiculous run and jump that was so powerful that it could rip the clothes and beard off our nameless protagonist. And as Watashi stood naked in front of an Ozu that did not know him; we got to know an Ozu that was metaphorically naked and quite embarrassed by his own situation. I think that we have all been waiting for Watashi to admit that Ozu was his true friend; and the last scene in the show did a great job of conveying their relationship in a way that was both humorous and touching.

Man, the music was so good during this scene.

If you have gotten to this point then you’ve probably realized that I’m quite the fan-girl and as such I haven’t said a bad thing about the episode. I would like to tell you that you’re wrong, however I have had to search quite far and quite wide to find problems with the show now that it has ended. I am certainly going to have to re-watch the show to find all of the answers, but there was no explanation to why Higuchi first introduced himself as a shrine god. Nor was there an explanation for Ozu’s physical difference. My assumption is that he was represented as being a human over our usual image of Watashi thinking that he’s a youkai. Speaking of which; Watashi turning into youkai Ozu at the end was a great way of representing their friendship and the strange form of love that they have.

Great scene!

Many episodes back I assumed that because of the supernatural aspects of the show; that Ozu was a youkai and Higuchi was a shrine god. However now that we have reached the end I’m sure that the conclusion here is that Watashi quite literally had an identity crisis. Not only is his name up in the air, but he had no clue what he wanted to do at university, which landed him in the situation he was in. He blamed Ozu for his problems and made him out to be a youkai, when the truth of the matter was that he was just a love stricken college student. Thankfully Watashi saw the truth before the end, and he even pushed Higuchi and Hanuki onto the right path. I liked the fact that he told the viewer that his love with Akashi was successful, since we all knew going into the episode that we would not be able to see their life together. It was nice to know that Watashi and Akashi will have a nice life together eating neko ramen, discussing mochiguman and avoiding moths at all costs.

To be able to do this...forever. It's an improvement, ne?

“I think that underwear will fit me perfectly.”

Something that I am really excited about is to see Funimation release this show on blu-ray. This is a show that I would buy without a second thought; and I hope that this is a good sign as to what Funimation will do in the future. I loved Watashi proclaiming that if he escaped the Tatami Galaxy that he would do everything that he had already done over again, though he had not done it before; it was a nice bit of irony that I highly appreciate in a show like this. I also enjoyed him running towards Ozu in all the outfits we’ve seen him in throughout the show, only to lose clothing entirely after winning the gold medal for long jump. Shows like this don’t come around very often, this season we have been lucky to have two of them in this and Arakawa Under the Bridge. You may have noticed that both shows have Sakamoto Maaya in them but that’s fine, because;

It’s the way I show my love.

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