This is review number four hundred and twenty two. This anime is part of the Fall 2014 lineup, and it’s called Ore, Twintail ni Narimasu or “Gonna be the Twin-Tail!!” It’s a twelve episode anime about twintails, of course, and something else. It’s a weird show, so let’s just read on.

Story

This anime follows the adventures of Souji Mitsuka, who has a big hard on for twintails. One day, he was given a bracelet that lets him transform into a hero that defends twintails from monsters that tries to steal them away. Upon transforming, Souji turns into a little girl called Tail Red and he gains the power to battle the monsters. Follow Souji as he tries to defend the world and its love for twintails!

Taking the Pants Off

This is a light novel anime, which means I get to use my LN Bingo card today. I’m happy, because I can’t wait to actually see a show stupid enough to get a bingo. Check out the result of the LN bingo for this anime below. As for the anime itself, this show is awful. It’s a predictable kind of awful though, because it basically falls symptomatic with a lot of awful LN anime as well. This was a rushed adaptation of a very good LN and its potential was just wasted in this anime. There were a lot of episodes where I actually couldn’t follow the show. Characters were talking, but I was just tuning out. A show about twintail girls fighting in very revealing outfits sounds like a very fun show. Unfortunately, this anime just didn’t get it. It doesn’t seem to understand what makes the original source great, and I actually read the LN just to make sure my suspicions isn’t wrong. I suspected that the anime botched the adaptation, and that was very clear in just the one volume that I read. I wanted to make sure because there are anime that adapts awful original sources from the get go, and I’m not sure if a faithful adaptation of an awful LN deserves my wrath. But that isn’t the case here, so let’s go and sh*t all over this anime.

The show is about a guy that loves twintails. Like, it’s his absolute turn on, and a bunch of monsters plan to take that love of twintails away from him and from every innocent girl that thinks that kind of hairstyle still suits them. He has the power to fight back though using a “Tail Gear” granted to him by a foreigner that acts perverted all the time. The main selling point of the show is that the guy turns into a loli when he transforms using the tail gear. He also sports an awesome twintail himself, so he’s fine with that. This anime now features formulaic Sentai clichés (Power Rangers, and other heroes wearing tights) wherein an enemy appears and then heroes fight them. They defeat the enemy and then the bastards explode. It sounds absolutely stupid, but I really love this premise. I’m not a fan of the loli main character though, because I get flashbacks of Vividred when I see her, but the premise of the show being a love letter to Sentai sounds absolutely wonderful. I’m all for it, one hundred percent. I mostly love this idea because it has been done before, and I loved the experience I had with the similar show.

Kenzen Robo Daimidaler

Let’s go back to Spring 2014. TNK Studio has hit it big with High School DxD, and they decided to release another perverted show with penguins in it, except their tails are in the front. It’s called Kenzen Robo Daimidaler, and the show just completely sh*ts on the mecha genre. More importantly, it’s a love letter to Go Nagai, father of the mecha genre, wherein his soap opera stories are given a stupid spin with a lot of boobs in it. Like seriously, this anime is dirty but the concept works. It was able to create a very serious show, with a stupid premise, while being respectful of Go Nagai’s legacy. It sounds absolutely dumb, but this is the reason why I love this anime. I wholeheartedly believe that Ore Twintail is also doing the same thing. The two shows aren’t parodying a genre, but instead building something new out of it. Kenzen Robo Daimidaler is able to capture Go Nagai’s outdated ecchi stories and meld it with his genre defining mecha works. Ore Twintail is featuring formulaic Sentai elements with the typical LN cliches. We have ecchi things here, an accidental harem and an unforgiving amount of chuuni energy.

Despite Ore Twintail coming off as a very stupid Sentai rip off, the amount of exposition is actually really exciting to me. It explains that loving twintails is a trait that a bunch of monsters would consume. It’s basically the bad guys trying to eat the energy that makes you passionate about something. So, let’s say you love anime. The bad guys will eat that away, and you’ll live on not loving anime. Your passion for the thing is gone forever, and it is a really brilliant setup. These monsters are basically taking away the one thing that makes you special, and it kinda reflects how society considers normalcy as a status quo. While never being an explicit theme for the anime, this kind of feeling kinda resonates behind the premise. You are considered too unique, and the monsters want to take that away from you now. Combined with a loli, a costume that reveals a lot of skin, and the monsters themselves having their own weird turn ons, then the premise is an instant hit for me. When you see the first monster gushing at a little girl holding a doll, you can’t help but face palm. I soon realize though that this is the exact reaction I had to Kenzen Robo Daimidaler. The main character fondled a lot of boobs in the first episode, and seeing the penguins with their tail on the front just looks absolutely dumb. With a strong premise though, the anime grows into something you can thoroughly enjoy despite the obviously stupid things you’re watching. This is an amazing premise, and it can, no, it WILL grow into something more fantastic.

Botched Adaptation

Of course, that didn’t happen. You can tell the show has a troubled production, but the awful writing particularly stands out. The show doesn’t really punctuate a moment, so things just happen in a monotonous manner. For example, we discover that the timid student council president is actually a massive M. She’s similar to the blonde girl in KonoSuba wherein she loves being treated as a pet. The show didn’t build this reveal, and it just happened with no really shock or comedy behind it. The status quo just constantly changes without any real emotions to them. The anime had really good three episodes, but things went into a spiral afterwards. Episode four is particularly frustrating because the main characters fought a mid-boss, but they kinda had a weird segue where they accused one of the characters of plotting something bad by spreading the twintail love. Something about the entire world being into twintails is an evil plot that will lead the world to ruin, and then the characters just talked. Towards the end of the episode, they reached a resolution and they beat the mid-boss but I, a guy that has been watching and reviewing anime for close to six years, could not follow or make any sense of the entire conversation. This is bad writing, and it’s so bad that it’s unintelligible. Like seriously, is it that hard to write a script?

I also have a problem with the series composition. The person tasked with this job arranges the episodes and their progression. A good series composition would make an episode consistent. For example, if the episode starts with a beach episode then it should end in a beach episode. If you’re planning on doing a big plot twist at the end of the episode, then you’d naturally take the entire episode to lead up to it. If you introduce a bad guy in this episode, then they should be able to leave a mark in that episode. It’s not hard for this anime, since we’re following a light novel with an already amazing premise. A turtle monster with a love for bloomers is not a hard sell, and yet this anime badly f*cks that up. I look back at that weird earthworm character, and I feel like I should give more of a damn about him. The series composition of this anime is all over the place. A discussion about being flat chested would be immediately dropped to focus on a new character the girls will fight. The show basically feels like it’s just doing a checklist of all the big events in the light novel, but it’s doing a really bad job at featuring them. There’s a word I like to use for lazy shows like this.

Auto Pilot Storytelling

This kind of storytelling is basically a lifeless one, with no real idea on what makes a moment important. It just features it with no real weight to the scene. The problem with autopilot storytelling is that the characters are dragged to a scene or a moment even if they aren’t prepared for it. For example, we only met the student council president at episode five, but at episode six we’re already revealing her M personality. The build up from the introduction to the reveal is lost, because auto pilot doesn’t care about that. It only cares to feature point A and point B. This results in horribly one dimensional characters that you just cannot learn to invest in. I don’t really give a f*ck if the blonde timid president is a masochist, because I don’t know enough about her. What makes her reveal as an M shocking? Why didn’t you put effort in making that reveal shocking? Why is her reveal suddenly forgotten after she disposes of an enemy? I thought it was a reveal, a shocking twist. Oh wait, it’s a shocking CHARACTER twist and auto pilot storytelling doesn’t care about that. You cannot imagine how much it hurts to learn a premise is squandered badly like this. I wanted to love this anime, and it just sucks after each episode. I wasn’t convinced, because I know there is something amazing in this anime so I decided to dig deeper.

A Great Light Novel

I don’t really like to read, because I prefer visuals. When I talk to someone, I listen more to their body language than anything else. Yeah, I just caught you lying and I never would’ve known that if I just read a report you wrote. Real life is full of details I want to enjoy in real time. But, anyways, I checked out the original source after I finished the anime. I only read the first volume, but it was enough to confirm my suspicions. The light novel, is, indeed, pretty great. It did resonate the same feeling that Kenzen Robo Daimidaler had, and the anime did clearly botch the entire thing. One of the biggest points the anime missed is the celebration of your chuuni and your weird turn ons. I mentioned before that it is an underlying theme of the anime, unspoken yet evident in its presence. The light novel explores it deeper, as in you’re actually drowned in exposition because the original source is so dense. It actually breaks my heart, because very little of the light novel is actually adapted into the anime. The spirit of the LN is not carried over by the show despite taking lines verbatim from the source. Anyways, there are bigger risks in the light novel. It explains how the monsters would take the world’s Elemera, your passion for your weird fetish, and lets it live on in absolute normalcy. It’s a grey world where nothing grows in it. The LN also explained that the monsters and humans are basically predator and prey, so there is no talking to be done. They know full well that they’re taking someone’s passion despite sharing the same deep passion, but it doesn’t matter. This is how they survive. The LN is so clearly laid out that the stupid premise of a girl fighting in a formulaic Sentai setup is slowly turned into a serious story.

More importantly, the character interaction is revealed to be a very important part of the story. In the end of the first volume, the two twintail heroes are fighting the bad guys. In a monologue, the childhood friend reveals that she wears a twintail because the main character loves twintails. That’s adorable, and the author revealed that bit at the very end despite the entire thing being fairly obvious from the get go. Why? Because the reader is invested in the characters at that moment, and they realize the first volume ends after that declaration, making you want more of the characters. This is actually the big fight at episode four, where the dialogue is unintelligible. This was not the case for the LN. The mid-boss actually revealed that their plan has always been to send small fries into battle, and they expected the media to have a big craze over the twintail heroes that’ll defeat them. By spreading the twintail love by sacrificing some pawns, the enemy’s true goal is to actually steal Elemera from the entire world. Doing so, the heroes are actually the main reason why the enemy would succeed. The big kerfuffle in episode four is actually the heroes doubting the person that created Tail Gear. She left her dimension and came to the heroes’ dimension to give them the Tail Gear, but it is actually part of the enemies’ calculated plan. Confused by the shocking reveal, they suspected that the creator is intentionally sending their world to doom because of her own regret. This is such brilliant writing. You might be wondering why I’m talking lengthily about this.

It’s because the anime turned such a wonderful scene into an unintelligible one that I could not follow. It lacked the emotion, the character investment, and the strong writing. It was a lazy adaptation of a really smart story, and they thought it’d be best to leave it on auto pilot.

Searching for Positives

Now, to be fair, the first three episodes are pretty good. I believe the strong writing and the strong visuals really made the anime outstanding. The show already strayed away from the intended vision of the LN since the first episode, but the show still looked cool. I personally love the way characters display their weird fetishes. Monsters would die after expressing no regret for their chosen passion, and it just looks entertainingly dumb. I also love the small subplot of how the power of the internet turned Tail Red into a popular figure. It only took hours for a wiki of her to be setup, and the LN had this brilliant line of people creating bot accounts of her. It just feels refreshingly up to date with how people online build up hype. The anime never revealed that this was part of the enemy’s plan though, but that’s fine. In the three episodes this subplot was featured, it was pretty fun to watch.

More Negatives

Character interaction is greatly missing from the anime. While they featured Aika and Twoearle’s violent interaction, they didn’t seem to capture Twoearle’s character properly. She is supposed to be a foreigner so her machine guns gags should come off as very foreign. Souji also constantly comments on her foreign beauty despite seeing her elbowed to the face by Aika. In the anime, this character just feels like a goof character but she is more than that. She’s really complex, and I don’t think the anime had a chance to properly feature her. Aside from that, the anime also never explained that she used to be Tail Blue. When Aika donned the outfit, it actually exposes her cleavage but she is flat as an ironing board. The internet mocked her for it, and that’s why she was obsessed with obtaining Tail Yellow. The subtle bond between Aika and Twoearle is never properly established, and the long running gag of Aika wanting fuller chests is never explored by the anime. So many good things just outright wasted, and I’m just talking about the first volume.

One criticism I do have in the story is that Souji doesn’t really seem to be a huge twintail freak. He does like them, but I was never convinced that he holds the “ultimate twintail Element” that the bad guys want. I actually hate Souji, because he is pretty bland compared to his accidental harem. I did learn that the reason why most LN protagonists are bland is because they often narrate the story, gives quick comments to a scene and their personality does exist outside of the narrative. It’s all inner monologues, and most anime don’t adapt it. I think that’s why Kyon narrates a lot in Haruhi Suzumiya, because he has no chance to really show personality. Kyon can only describe it.

Kanbe, Arakawa and Production IMS

Naruhisa Arakawa wrote the script and series composed this anime. He is actually a really impressive screenwriter, and he also writes stuff for tokusatsu shows so he definitely deserves to handle this anime. Now, I want to hate his script, because it’s awful, but I should also note the quality did significantly dip after the third episode. I think the anime went through a troubled production and the episodes after the third reflects that. The fact that the anime also have five producers might also give some insight as to what happened here. Given how awful the quality is around the later episodes, I won’t be surprised to know that production ran out of money and they just cobbled whatever they can with their limited budget. Still, this was an awful showing from a great veteran and he should be ashamed of his screenwriting for this anime. He made Jinsei awesome, so it feels unfair Ore Twintail got no love.

Hiroyuki Kanbe, on the other hand, is a very green director. His only directing credit is this and OreImo. This seems to be his true chance to really display his directorial chops, and the dude bombed. Hard, I think, because he hasn’t done work after this. Yikes. As for Production IMS, they’re a fairly young studio back in 2014. They made Date A Live 2 and Inari Kon Iroha before this, and this is certainly some growing pains from a green studio. They’re still around as of 2017, so they are doing something right. Given how bad this anime is though, I assume the worst moving forward. I hope I’m wrong, but we’ll see.

Sight and Sound

Character design is done by Ayumu Kasuga. If you google the name, you’ll actually get Osaka from Azumanga Daioh, the cheeky bastard. Ayumu’s design is pretty typical of LN covers. It’s bright, it’s flashy and its fan servicy. It doesn’t really stand out from other LN designs, like Date A Live and such. They still look pretty cool though. I’m a fan of the Tail outfits of the girls. It’s a combination of mecha and some Sentai while still being ecchi in smart areas. I am not a fan of Twoearle’s design though. I just think you can make her cuter, more foreign-like than the actual design. I imagine someone like the weird girl in Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko. Doing a quick google search of the anime, I actually came across this image and this does evoke the Twoearle described in the LN. Atleast for me, but I’m just not a fan of the typical design done to her. I do love Aika’s design, both in normal and hero mode. I guess I love her twintail too, but her design is also expressive enough to make her look pretty and violent at the same time. Aside from the Tail outfits, I also love the monsters. They’re based after animals and bugs, and they’re awesome. They do remind me of Power Ranger monsters, and I would actually love to see them done in live action. I’d love to see a cosplay of that earthworm character, because he’s just so damn weird. If you want to enjoy the character design at their maximum, then you should try the first three episodes. The color palette and the visuals are just top notch here. Things take a decline afterwards.

Animation is awful, aside from the first three episodes. Fourth and beyond are awful, and it gives you an idea how bad the production is for this anime. My biggest gripe is that the fan service is never accentuated properly, so we only see half naked girls but never really enjoy these scenes. We’ll get ass shots and boob shots, but they just don’t feel right. Animation looks bland, and they are downright awful at some episodes. I believe they did change the animation for the BD release, but it just proves how much this all sucks. It’s like you slowly watch the anime lose steam, and it’s heartbreaking. I’m fine if an awful anime has awful animation, but this damn show misleads us by giving us three good episodes first. It’s an outright trap, and I don’t like that practice.

The anime’s OP is “Gimme! Revolution” by Maaya Uchida. She voices Twoearle in this anime, and I do love this OP. It’s fast and it’s pretty catchy. The lyrics are typical fluff about burning passion and love, but the song itself just has a good energy to it. I also love how Maaya brings that energy forward, so it does hype you up for the show. The OP sequence is pretty great as well. I love Tail Red’s twintail swaying in the wind while the title card appears, and the sequence itself does feature the amazing animation that is slowly sucked out of the show. It features some good action, and it also establishes a lot of things the anime itself doesn’t really focus on. I also like that it’s cute, so that’s a plus.

The anime’s ED is “Twintails Dreamer!” by Twintails [Red Tail (Sumire Uesaka), Blue Tail (Yuuka Aisaka), Yellow Tail (Chinatsu Akasaki)]. This is like the theme song of the anime, and it is pretty cool. The lyrics talks about being loyal to your twintails and believing in friendship. Its absolute cheese, but the novelty of the three Tail heroes singing it is really awesome. The song itself is pretty much like the OP, with a good energy to it, but the three voices are distinct enough to make the song standout. The ED sequence feels like a continuation of the OP, but with less animation. I do love the transforming scene where the normal characters turn into heroes. That’s pretty awesome. Aside from that, it’s mostly just stills, and it ends with Tail Red looking great in high quality animation.

Overall Score

4/10 “It’s a botched adaptation coupled with awful animation. There’s very little to love here, the monsters already ate it.”

I suggest giving the LN a read. It’s so good that I think a lot of the volumes are being translated at a reasonable pace. As for the anime, give it a pass. The writing is awful, the animation is awful, the characters are bland and the fan service just feels dead. It has some impressive episodes, but it doesn’t make up for the overall bland experience it’ll leave you. If you want a better experience, again, try the LN. I do not recommend this.