THESE PIGTAILS PACK A PUNCH!
What They Say
Soji Mitsuka is an ordinary high schooler with an extraordinary obsession. Twintails are his fire, his air, his will to live! But when a mysterious woman from another world enlists his help to fight hideous monsters with various fetishes, Soji must transform into a powerful pigtailed… girl? With the help of his childhood friend, the class president, and his endless devotion to pigtails, Soji and his crew form a twin-tailed threesome to take on the monsters who feed on the “attribute power” of humans. But Soji’s new pigtailed powers come with a price: his surging popularity as the new heroine in town makes the twin-tailed trend explode, giving the monsters ample attribute powers to feed upon!
The Review!
Audio:
Both the Japanese and English voice acting cast for this series is relatively new when it comes to anime. None of the voice actors for either version worked in the industry for long—at least when this was produced. It seemed this series drew in a good amount of new blood. While both are fairly good in terms of the quality of voice acting, I would say the English version is better. My personal opinion is that since neither the Japanese or English versions are better than the other, it’s easier to watch an anime if you don’t have to read the subtitles.
The quality of the audio is also decent. It’s about standard for what I’ve come to expect from a FUNImation production. It’s not the best series with the greatest audio quality I have ever seen. However, it is not the worst either.
Video:
This anime was produced by a studio called Production IMS by former staff members of AIC Spirits. They are responsible for anime like Date a Live II, Date a Live: Encore, The Testament of Sister New Devil, and The Testament of Sister New Devil Burst. They were actually a fairly good animation studio and put out some great fan service anime during their time, though the studio filed for bankruptcy back in 2018.
The director of this series is Hiroyuki Kanbe. He works primarily as a key animator and assistant animation director. Some of the anime he has worked on were Flames of Recca, Full Metal Panic!, Oreimo, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. You can see his wealth of experience in his directing for this series, which despite being a gag comedy, has some very well thought out scenes.
The 1080p quality of the BluRay is fine for what it is, though it doesn’t seem much better than the streaming version. There isn’t anything to complain about, however.
Packaging:
Blue, red, white, and yellow is the main themes on his BluRay sleeve. Each color is dedicated to the hero and one of the remaining three heroines. On the far left is Aika Tsube, then Soji Mitsuka, Twoerle, and Eerina Shindo in that order. The color of their background matches the color of their hair. And in front of the four protagonists is the image of Soji in his female twin-tailed form standing in an action pose alongside Aika and Erina in their twin-tailed heroine forms. The title is below them in red and blue. The back of the book is mostly white and features a red, white, and blue color scheme. Soji’s female heroine form is featured in the background, and the description of the series is surrounded in blue.
Menu:
Gonna be the Twin-Tail!! does not have any moving scenes playing in the background, but instead displays the three heroines (Tail Red, Tail Blue, and Tail Yellow) in action sentai poses. Meanwhile, what sounds like the opening to an action story plays in the background. Disc 1 offers the options to Play All, Episodes, Setup, and Extras.
Extras:
This anime features all the standard extras from textless opening and closing theme songs to trailers and US trailers. It also features episode commentaries. The commentaries are what people would probably enjoy the most, though if you don’t like listening to people talk over your favorite anime, you may not like this.
Gonna be the Twintails is an anime created by otakus, for otakus, that makes fun of otaku. It is a gag comedy that toes the fetish line by featuring a protagonist who has a surprisingly mild fetish—twin-tails—that he takes way too far. Soji Mitsuka is a young high schooler with a passion for twin tails, a passion so great it seems that’s literally all he has going for him. He’s a one-dimensional character with very little in the way of depth. The way he’s made out to be a person who cares for nothing outside of his fetish for twin tails might be a little offputting if you’re looking for a protagonist with depth, but it works great in a gag comedy like this.
One ordinary day, the Earth—Japan—is attacked by evil horny aliens. These aliens are basically otaku aliens who feed off the positive energy known as attribute energy. Attribute energy is basically the love and passion people have for a specific thing. It can be an object, a person, or a fetish. Naturally, the fetishes are what possess the strongest attribute energy, and twin tail attribute energy is apparently the most powerful. Why? Who cares. They never tell you why. This is a nonsensical comedy that runs primarily on gags, so you’re kind of just supposed to accept all this as fact.
To counter these evil horny aliens and protect the earth, a perverted scientist from Outerspace named Twoerle gives Soji a mission. A mission to protect planet Earth from these evil horny space aliens who are threatening to steal all the twin tails for themselves. She provides Soji with a high-tech gadget along the lines of Kamen Rider’s transformation technology, which allows Soji to become a super cute heroine with red hair and twin tails. Yes, this series is basically gender-bent Power Rangers with a perverse twist. Soji then becomes a mecha-suit-clad twin-tailed loli named Tail Red and wields superpowers that are strong enough to thwart the evil horny aliens—at least, until the horny aliens up their game.
Because no sentai series—not even a gag series like this—would be complete with just one heroine, and so our hero… um… the heroine is joined by Tail Blue and Tail Yellow. Tail Blue is Soji’s childhood friend and Tail Yellow is the class president. They somehow get roped into helping Soji when it becomes apparent that one heroine isn’t enough. Like Soji himself, these heroines aren’t what I would call deep and complex characters. Each one is based on a very standard and well-used archetype. Tail Blue is the childhood friend who secretly has a crush on Soji but can’t admit it because… reasons. Meanwhile, Tail Yellow is the class president who is admired by everyone but is actually a closet masochist.
Aide from Soji’s two sidekicks who join him in battle, you also have Twoerle. She plays the role of the scientist/support character who helps the twin-tailed heroines fight against evil from the background. Of course, Twoerle is also a perverted girl who enjoys teasing the flat-chested Aika (Tail Blue) with her massive rack. She falls in love with Soji at first sight and constantly tries to seduce him, though it never amounts to anything. We do learn that before arriving on Earth, Twoerle was the original Tail Blue, but she gave up her twin-tail hairstyle to make the Tail Red gear after her world lost all its attributes.
In Summary:
I will never call this series a masterpiece. It isn’t going to be the next Death Note, Fate/Stay Night, or Violet Evergarden. But it is fun. It tells a short but hilarious tale about a twin-tail obsessed young man and his transformation into a twin-tailed heroine as he defends Earth against perverted aliens. It takes traditional concepts found in shows like Kamen Rider and Power Rangers, mixes them with magical girl tropes, and then nukes these tropes with the kind of ridiculous humor that can only be found in anime. It’s short, it’s fun, and it tells a decent story that is just entertaining enough to be good popcorn fare.
Content Grade: B+
Audio Grade: B
Video Grade: A
Packaging Grade: A
Menu Grade: B
Extras Grade: C
Released By: Funimation
Release Date: May 21st, 2019
MSRP: $29.98
Running Time: 300 minutes
Video Encoding: 1080p AVC
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen
Review Equipment:
55″ Class AQUOS HD Series LED TV LC-55LE643U, Xbox 360 DVD player
