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The Tatami Galaxy Sequel Novel Tatami Time Machine Blues Gets Anime
posted on by Rafael Antonio Pineda
The official YouTube channel of Fuji TV's Noitamina anime programming block posted a video on Thursday that announced that Tomihiko Morimi's Tatami Time Machine Blues (Yojō-Han Time Machine Blues) novel is inspiring a television anime. Shingo Natsume (One-Punch Man, Space Dandy, Sonny Boy) is directing the anime at Science SARU, and Makoto Ueda returns as scriptwriter from The Tatami Galaxy. Yūsuke Nakamura also returns as character designer.
Tatami Time Machine Blues is a sequel to Morimi's earlier The Tatami Galaxy (Yojō-Han Shinwa Taikei) novel. It shipped in July 2020, 16 years after the original novel. The novel is inspired by Makoto Ueda's Summer Time Machine Blues stage play. Morimi wrote the novel, and Ueda, Morimi's friend, is credited with the original concept. The sequel novel combines elements of the stage play's story with the characters from Morimi's novel. Nakamura returned to illustrate the cover.
In the sequel novel's story, The Tatami Galaxy protagonist's trouble-making friend Ozu gets the student apartments' only air conditioner remote control wet, breaking it on a certain midsummer day. The students wonder what to do about the situation for the remainder of the summer and make a plan with Akashi. An unstylish male student from 25 years in the future arrives in a time machine. The protagonist travels back in time to try to retrieve the remote control before it is broken.
Ohta Publishing released Morimi's original novel in 2005, with Nakamura illustrating the cover. The novel inspired an 11-episode anime by Masaaki Yuasa in April 2010.
HarperCollins' HarperVia imprint will publish The Tatami Galaxy novel in English in fall of 2022. The release will be followed with the sequel novel Tatami Time Machine Blues in summer of 2023. Emily Balistrieri is translating both novels. Balistrieri previously translated Morimi's The Night is Young, Walk on Girl novel, which inspired a 2017 anime film also directed by Masaaki Yuasa off a screenplay by Ueda.
Yuasa, the director of The Tatami Galaxy television anime, co-founded Science SARU with Eunyoung Choi.
Sources: Noitamina's YouTube channel, Comic Natalie
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