Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu

Title:Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu
Gonna be the Twin-Tail!!
俺、ツインテールになります。 (Japanese)
Overall:Rent
Keywords: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Notables: SHIMAZAKI Nobunaga
UCHIDA Maaya
UESAKA Sumire
Souji is an ordinary high school student with an extraordinary love for pig tails (or "twin tails"). One day a mysterious girl from another universe named Thuearle appears in front of him. At the exact same time, alien monsters begin attacking the city where Souji lives, declaring that they will drain the world's Twintail energy. Souji receives a powerful suit of armor from Thuearle called "Tail Gear" which transforms him into a mighty Twintail warrior named Tail Red. The only problem is, Tail Red is a girl.
(Synopsis courtesy of ANN)

12 episodes
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Rent Stretch [series:2983#628]
(All episodes watched--twice):

My first impressions of Twintail were that I wasn't sure if this was a clever parody, or is just dimwitted fluff. It did kind of amuse me, what with the bizarre claims that Twintails possess some amazing power which alien invaders crave, and, going one step farther, that for some reason Souji becomes a girl each time he transforms. But I'd like to know why both of these things happen. If a decent plot would come together, this might be OK. Comedy seemed to have priority over fanservice, which is good (and rare). But I also got the feeling that unless this show managed to stay fresh, with lots of additional weird twists, it would be easy to tire of it. It would need to keep moving at a fast clip in order to prevent that from happening.

Twintail must have met all of those conditions, because I watched it to the end. In some ways this show is very generic, with stuff like the every teenage boy's dream of a sex-crazy strange woman, Thuearle, showing up and propositioning him, and her competing with the next door neighbor girl, Aika, who he has known forever and obviously expects to be his wife someday. But the jokes were halfway decent, and the show seems to be maintaining some madcap momentum. Unless the jokes are reliably ROFLOL funny (and that is extremely rare), there has got to be a decent plot and likeable characters as well. Aika's warning that the odd woman might not be telling them the entire truth suggested that there was some plot still ahead, not just dumb comedy. In episode four we learn that indeed Thuearle hasn't been entirely honest with Souji and Aika, and learn some more details about what happened on her home planet. This is a pleasant surprise for a show which makes use of fanservice. The principal characters have some personality and are fairly interesting, which is good since the show could easily have bet everything on goofy comedy. I found myself to be liking this show more each time I watched a new episode.

My sense is that here's a show where more effort and talent was put into the writing of the plot and jokes than usual, and comedy does indeed maintain priority over fanservice. By all rights this ought to be a stupid and banal show that relies on cheap fanservice rather than expensive quality to attract viewers, but it seems to have some genuine wit and good comedy instead. The use of boobs and asses is relatively restrained compared to most comedy anime for boys. Instead of wallowing in fanservice it sort of ridicules it--like the scene in which it looks like Souji is going to grope himself while in female mode, but he does something else instead. Twintail sometimes sets things up so that we expect a stereotypical result which we've seen countless times before, then yanks the rug out from under us. I don't know how much of a conscious choice doing that was, but I appreciate it.

Except, that is, the way Erika behaves while in Tail Yellow mode, which I thought was rather crass and ugly. To have the respected and proper Student Council President engage in cheap and suggestive fanservice was a bad move. If only she hadn't seemed to be gleefully enjoying it, and instead was clearly acting foolishly by accident (or at least felt a little embarrassment at the questionable weaponry of her suit), that would have been much better. This kind of sullies an otherwise fun and silly show. The villain 'Dark Grasper' in episode seven was fairly fun, however, which was good news since it showed that the quality of the show as a whole hadn't taken a major dive. Tail Yellow's behavior was a major stumble, but at least it is limited to her, and the others don't encourage it.

I think it's mostly the general spirit of the show--in particular it's absurd premise being taken semi-seriously--which amuses me more than the jokes themselves. The jokes are subdued but funny nevertheless; they gain from the premise and the premise gains from them. All too many anime comedies have no idea how to accomplish anything like this. The show had a good ending—what turns things around when Souji/Tail Red seems to have lost the climactic fight with the toughest Elementarian was brilliant and made me burst out laughing. Twintails remained a fun show to the end; the plot made sense, comedy kept the upper hand over fanservice, the characters were likeable, and it stayed fresh. I'd love to watch a second season (Dark Grasper is still at large), though that's probably unlikely. Twintails is without doubt my favorite comedy anime of the Fall 2014 season. I noticed at one point that even when an episode was over, when I thought back about it afterwards it would make me smirk. I rewatched this series in 2022-23 and enjoyed it again, perhaps even more than the first time since I didn't have to wait a week for additional episodes and forget a good deal over that time.

Last updated Thursday, January 05 2023. Created Saturday, October 18 2014.

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