Once in a blue moon, there is a show that has a ridiculous premise that you do not expect to be good until you watched the whole thing. Ore Twintail ni Narimasu (俺、ツインテールになります, lit. I will become a twintail) is one of those shows that has twin-tailed girls, gender bending and Super Sentai as its premise. I wonder how good this combination will be?
A 15-year-old teenaged boy named Mitsuka Souji absolutely adores twin tails, perhaps more than anyone in the entire planet. Of course, his childhood friend, Tsube Aika has to put up with his obsession despite having feelings for him. However, his world is turned upside down when an attractive woman from another world named Twirl asks him to save the world from the Ultimaguils, alien creatures that want to steal everyone’s twintails? After Souji witnessed Erina’s twin tails being taken away by one of the Ultimaguils, Twirl gives him a red Tail Gear, which allows him to transform into a super powered armored young twin-tailed girl in the name of protecting twin-tails. With her new powers, she defeated the Ultimaguils and rescued her. Eventually, Aika and Erina were given Tail Gears to help Souji out on his mission.
I have to admit that the characters in this show were very enjoyable compared to the other gender-bender magical girl warrior show known as Kampfer. It is mostly because of the main lead, Souji. He is not your typical weak-minded male lead since he is obsessed with twin tails.
While I don’t mind his character, I just find Tail Red, which he transforms into a more enjoyable character. I think it is mostly because of her cute appearance and fighting skills aside from touching her own twin-tails. It gets funnier when Souji transforms into a girl in the last three episodes named Sora. While I was disappointed that he did not stay like that since Sora was pretty, at least it was enjoyable while it lasted.
At the same time, I felt that Tail Red in general appears weaker in the later episodes when Aika and Erina joins in because they had better fighting skills. Aika as Tail Blue can use water attacks with her blade and for Erina as Tail Yellow, she can become stronger when she strips a piece of armor. Sadly, it doesn’t get any better for Tail Red after Anko kisses her. She basically becomes useless until Souji resolved his fears of losing his love for twin tails forever. This allowed Tail Red to regain her powers while gaining new form, which she uses to beat a powerful enemy in the final episode.
Although I enjoyed most of the characters, I still think that Aika is the best girl because she seems to care for Souji, especially when he turns into a girl and had to learn a few things from her such as taking care of twin tails. Moreover, she also provides some comic relief with her attacks on Twirl. Of course, she also becomes violent towards the Ultimaguils, who made fun of her flat chest. Lastly, there is Souji’s mother, Miharu who doesn’t seem to mind Twirl converting her home’s basement and taking him in the process.
Despite the plot and the characters being really enjoyable, there were noticeable flaws, especially with the production values. Although it was disappointing to see some of the enjoyable parts of the novel such as the male student body obsessing over Sora and the beach episode get left out from the adaptation, the production was plagued with animation quality issues as mentioned in an earlier editorial. The tenth episode in my opinion had to be the worst animation I have seen in a while. I realize that making anime is not an easy task, but Production IMS should at least put some effort into the production to make it look decent for the TV airing so that viewers would have a better impression of the show.
As a whole, Ore Twintail ni Narimasu has a lot of enjoyable moments mostly because the show knows that it is not taking itself seriously besides the twin tails aspect. Unfortunately, Production IMS dragged the show down with its poor production values. While I doubt there will be a second season, if there is one, I seriously hope that a more competent studio will work on it since this studio already messed up the animation for Date a Live II. But then again, who knows?
Overall Rating: 8.3/10, Good, B
“As a whole, Ore Twintail ni Narimasu has a lot of enjoyable moments mostly because the show knows that it is not taking itself seriously besides the twin tails aspect.”
Pretty much this. My personal fondness for twintails aside, Ore Twintail is fun to watch because it doesn’t take itself too seriously-it’s a fun deconstruction of the super sentai genre anthropomorphized as anime girls/archetypes.
Not to mention, this show might be a parody of Hikonin Sentai Akibaranger considering that the members have the same colors (red, blue and yellow) played by one male and two females and that there is a mentor played by the same actress/voice actress, Uchida Maaya sans the twintails and genderbending.
Still, I have to admit that twintails are cuter than ponytails. :p