Anime Review | Gonna be the Twin-Tail!! (Lights, Camera, Action!) Page 1

Anime Review | Gonna be the Twin-Tail!! (Lights, Camera, Action!)

Gonna be the Twin-Tail!! (UK Rating: 15)

Well… it's easy to see what to expect with this series, at least. The story follows Mitsuka Soji, a regular teenage boy who is obsessed with "Twin Tail" haircuts. A busty alien lady enters his life, named Twoearle, and bestows a "Tail Gear" bracelet unto him so that he can fight against Ultimaguil, a group of animal-based alien warriors straight out of a sentai series that are attacking Earth to steal "attributes." This transforms him into a diminutive, half-naked girl with massive twin tails. Dubbed Tailred Souji, now it is a case of travelling the world destroying these alien invaders wherever they appear. This complete Funimation collection, containing all 12 episodes in dual audio, along with clean opening/closing, trailers, and a dub commentary for two episodes, is out now, courtesy of Anime Limited.

The premise is, of course, absurd, so much so that this is clearly a self-aware parody of the tropes that have become commonplace in at least one new series of anime every season. There is gender-bending, the childhood friend who's been in love with him all this time, the older woman that wants to ravish the protagonist, magical girl-esque transformation sequences, and plenty more. Just because a series employs these trite and cliché story devices doesn't mean it's bad, however. Look at some series like Cromartie High School or, more recently, the superb Space Dandy. There are plenty out there to look at as examples. Gonna be the Twin-Tail!! is… not… one… of… them…!

Each agent of the Ultimaguil comes to Earth, each looking like failed Power Ranger villains and each with their own special fetish and powers related to it. Turtlegildy has a fetish for PE shorts, Spidergildy has a fetish for cross-dressing, Krakegildy has a fetish for flat chests…and so on. The setups to these fetishes are often just used as one note gags that are forgotten after a few moments. Each of the agents comes to Earth to find girls with twin-tail haircuts and absorb the "attribute" of twin-tails. These monster-of-the-week style enemies are quickly dispatched and the story repeats.

On top of Souji, the cast is filled with plenty of other cliché characters. His childhood friend, Aika, is in love with Souji, has a short temper, and a bad mouth, along with a flat chest that she has quite a complex about. Aika gets a Twin Gear, too, and gets to transform into Tailblue to help fight against the enemies. The Student Council President, Erina, eventually also joins the team as Tailyellow, but cannot use the powers until she finally embraces the source of them, her own "attribute" or fetish. She's secretly an exhibitionist and masochist, needing to be abused or treated as a pet to bring out her real strength.

The characters are one note and the writing isn't much better. This is one of those comedies that just fires gags non-stop, and while most of them land completely flat, there is the occasional line that manages to elicit laughs from the audience. The surprisingly coarse level nature of the jokes is a good source of shock laughs, as is Aika's extreme violence. Aika has a short temper and beats those who annoy her, all the while spouting some truly cutting lines. The problem is that these moments are too few and far between to make up for the rest of the problems in the show.

The art and animation are just as bad as the other aspects of Gonna be the Twin-Tail!!, as well. It doesn't just look dated, it also looks very low quality, with lots of panning of static images instead of actually animating scenes. Expect lots of repeated environments and terrible dubbing for both the Japanese and the English versions.

2/10

Very Bad

The first line of the opening theme to Gonna be the Twin-Tail!! is "Why? I ask you..." and that's what you will be thinking after watching this show. It's absolutely baffling that this series ever got made. The story is dumb, the fan-service subpar, the art awful, and although there may be the occasional funny moment, it's a rarity and certainly not enough to redeem the show. Everything it tries to do, other shows do far better. This is definitely one to skip.