You know how people always say that the book is better than the adaptation. Well, that doesn’t apply to The Tatami Galaxy. The book was written by Tomihiko Morimi and released in December 2004. It later received an anime adaptation in 2010 by director Masaaki Yuasa. This adaptation is, in my opinion, strictly better than the book in every conceivable metric. I’d like to go through the strengths and shortcomings of the original novel, and how the anime improved on those shortcomings to turn a solid book into a true masterpiece.
The Book’s Strengths and Shortcomings
The Tatami Galaxy centers around an unnamed college student who goes through four different scenarios over four chapters for his ideal college life. While the book isn’t perfect, it has its strengths. The image of the college campus where the novel takes place is very vivid. This ranges from the center plaza to the university’s dorm room. All the characters in the book have multifaceted, unique personalities, like the goblin faced college student Ozu. He loves playing pranks and causing mischief, but genuinely cares about others. Then there’s the main character, who also serves as the narrator. He has a very strong and witty personality that comes through in every page. He complains about his situation, remarks on the people in his life and has funny lines that made me laugh out loud – at first.
You see, not just sentences, not even paragraphs, but entire pages worth of content is copy and pasted from the first chapter to the next three. This includes the beginning, character descriptions and even some scenarios, like when the main character encounters a fortune teller. The payoff comes in the last chapter, when the end of one section is slightly different. And while that change did make me emotional, there are better ways to do that than repeat the same section three times. There’s also how organizations like the campus cleanup crew are never explored. Characters like Master Higuchi don’t get significant amounts of development either. This is due to the small number of scenarios. The Tatami Galaxy isn’t a terrible book, but it has significant issues that keep it from being a masterpiece.
How the Anime Is Different for the Better
That’s where the anime comes in. Along with being the director, Masaaki Yuasa also wrote the anime’s script. And Yuasa made significant changes to the book’s structure. First off, instead of four scenarios, the show now goes through ten, spread out over eleven episodes. This gives characters like Master Higuchi, who is mainly relegated to one chapter, more screen time. You get to learn more about Higuchi’s philosophy on life and how he contrasts with the main character. It also explores organizations just mentioned in the book, like the campus cleanup crew, and even creates some new ones. This includes the softball circle Honwaka, which ends up being much less romantic than the main character envisioned.
The other big change is that Yuasa completely removed the repeating parts of the novel. For example, when the fortune teller is first introduced, her description is kept the same from the book. This includes her fortune telling stand, her appearance and what she tells the protagonist. However, in every subsequent episode she appears in, she does something new. This ranges from increasing the price of her fortune in every encounter to wheeling towards the protagonist in a mobile stand to tell him his fortune before taking his money and running away. It’s these kinds of changes that make the anime more engaging to watch.
That’s not even mentioning the production aspects. Scenes blend into others through seamless transitions, and there’s beautiful backgrounds that perfectly capture the atmosphere of Kyoto. There are even some beautifully animated action scenes, including a plane liftoff and an escape from a cult. The anime for The Tatami Galaxy takes the best parts of the book, reworks all the issues, and adds new scenes on top. It’s the definitive version of the story, and I’d recommend it to anyone interested in something unique.
