Gonna be the Twin-Tail (Boxset Review)
By: Rae
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Soji Mitsuka is your normal, everyday highschool boy. With a pigtail fetish. So I guess to be fair… probably still your normal highschool boy.One day, after a long, hard day of ogling classmates to decide who has the best pigtails, Soji and his friend Aika meet a mysterious woman who introduces herself as Twoearle. Twoearle is from a parallel world, and she’s come to both warn Soji and prepare him.
Aliens have appeared in Soji’s town, and they’re stealing the “twin-tail attribute power” of girls – found in their pigtails. Twoearle gives Soji the power to transform into a pigtailed, female, mecha warrior who calls herself Tail Red. Tail Red successfully fights off the aliens, but will need the help to continue protecting earth.So yes, before I continue, this is a show about a boy with a pigtail fetish who turns into a girl to fight aliens who are trying to steal girls’ hairstyles. And a lot of sexual innuendo.
Be ready for twelve episodes of strategically-placed alien tentacles, boob size arguments, and Erina asking all the boys in school to recommend types of porn (“Bondage is where it’s at!”). This definitely is not the show for anyone who doesn’t like a good, healthy dose of needless fanservice and intensive sexual dialogue. It’s also definitely not the show for anyone who can’t laugh at a little bit of ridiculousness.
Guest Commentary: My boyfriend, Dustin’s, review“What. The. ****.” WatchabilityWell to be honest… I’m a little confused as to who sat down and thought “I have an AWESOME idea for a story!” I spent a lot of time thinking “Uh…. What is going on?” After a couple decades on the internet, this still might be in my top ten weirdest experiences (might – afterall, the internet is a place where Hogwarts Castle x lake squid fanfiction exists). I get that its original form – the light novel – is considered a parody, though I haven’t read it myself. But as far as parodies go it’s definitely an over-the-top one.
I have to admit though. After awhile it became… kind of fun? I think if you’re in the right mood for it, Gonna be the Twin-Tail can be weirdly enjoyable. You just definitely have to either know what you’re walking into, or be the type of person who is unphased by surprise shenanigans. The characters aren’t super three-dimensional, but they’re silly enough that it doesn’t matter too much. At some point if you’re going to get bizarre with a humour show, you have to really go all-out, and Gonna be the Twin-Tail really does. The show doesn’t shy away from its crazy premise – it just keeps adding on. At one point I thought "clearly this will get a low rating." But as it went on, I realized I was having a good, weird time.I also really liked the music. The openings and endings, while they feature hair-centric lyrics, are super-catchy – worthy of any magical girl anime. The background music is nice too, but it was that ending that had me dancing in the kitchen.
This is definitely a case of “the sub is better than the dub” for voice-acting. That said, the dub voicing isn’t necessarily bad – but it does have that bad habit of trying to make female characters sound girlier by trying to pitch their voices as high as possible, and a lot of the voices didn’t sound super-authentic. The Japanese voices sounded a little more real, and definitely were easier on the ears. You won’t miss much though if you decide on the dub – each time I switched back and forth to rewatch a scene, the English translation was pretty accurate.Altogether, I don’t regret taking on this review. It was a fun way to spend a day, and if they ever put out more of it I’ll probably watch. It also would make for a great drinking game.
AnimationI always struggle in this section because there is this big gray area between “oh god that looks awful!” and “eye-gasm!” that I don’t really know how to comment on. I usually just refer to it as “standard,” and that’s kind of what the animation for Gonna be the Twin-Tail is. I might put it on the higher end of standard, but it wasn’t stunningly beautiful. It’s about what I would expect for a fairly recent anime.
In a few fight scenes, they skip having to put in background details by just putting a little pattern behind the character, which bothered me a little. That tends to bring down the fluidity of the fighting scenes. But a lot of them were pretty decent.The character designs are good as well, with my favourite being Anko. I also can’t believe I’m about to write this in a review, but they did a nice job of varying hairstyles. In a show where a good 80% of the characters have pigtails, that’s pretty appreciated. However, I don’t think I can go into detail here without actually talking for five minutes about different pigtail styles, so we’ll leave it be.
BoxsetHallelujah! I’ve been constantly saying I would love to see an artwork insert, poster, or something like that in a Funimation boxset.At last! I found one! Granted, it’s the inner part of the dvd cover insert, so you have to decide if you’d rather keep the cover in your dvd case, or show off the mini-poster. But it’s there, and it’s cute, and I am happy. Other features include the Funi usuals – episode commentary, textless opening and ending, and trailers.I like the boxset design for this one. The back is a nice clean design and the front has a lot of great colour.
Interested? Buy Gonna be the Twin-Tail from Funimation here!
