normal guy x overpowered magical heroine/s. A genre of anime popularize by Kinoko Nasus Fate/Stay Night who WILL burn in hell for all eternity dw whose impact throughout the 2000s and even early 2010s was massive to say the least. Gonna Be The Twintail is neither that type or anime nor came out during this time period so why do I bring this up? Apart from the excuse to shit on Nasu a bit I do so because at a first glance Twintail might appear to be this exact type of show However its far from it and what might look like some ecchi action slop ends up being an order of magnitude deeper and more thought provoking than anyone could really expect Do you have a fetish for any sort of hairstyle or clothing style or body part or anything of the sort? I believe most of us do and our protagonist definitely does. A selfproclaimed expert/lover of twintails through a series of ridiculous circumstances is thrown into a Super Sentai like plot where he must use his affinity cool word for fetish power with twintails to transform into Tail Red a twintail adored mecha girl and defeat a variety of weekly monsters The guildy each with their own affinity towards something: Napes flat chests crossdressing you name it if it wasnt in the anime its probably in the light novels Now when tackling a genderbender plot the question always arises on why are we transing our characters are we doing a quick joke without thinking too hard about it? Are we trying to thinly veil some deep insecurities? Or do we just have an extremely specific fetish?. This is exactly where Twintail shines because its a lil bit of everything. The transformation in any henshin hero show can mean a lot of things and in Twintails case its used to convey the shows primary theme of growing up and finding yourself and your sexuality As I mentioned through the 12 episodes of this anime we meet a bunch of these Guildy monsters each with a specific affinity or fetish usually relating to some body part or clothing style with their leader having great affinity towards twintails much like our MC. This could be a quick and dirty setups to do a different subgenre of ecchi every episode right? In this episode we dress up the girls with swimsuits in this one theres tentacles etc. Twintail however does much more than this using this affinity as a way to explore our characters and how they interact with the world. Souji loves twintails yes but why does he love them? Is he attracted to girls or just twintails? If he were to fall in love how would he balance his fetish with that first burst of teenage love? When he turns into Tail Red why does he become a girl? Does he have some level of dysphoria or does his love for this type of haircut run that deep? Souji isnt the only one who is faced with all these questions either our tertiary heroine Erina also discovers herself her sexuality and who she is through her transformation and her fights and Ill leave it there bc if I go on Id just spoil everyones arc Going back to the title of this review while I dont think Twintail is necessarily a show with a trans character I also cant say it isnt I know people that point towards Twintail as their awakening or something that made them question who they are and thats fantastic because thats the whole point of the show Nobodys born with all the answers and nobody knows everything about themselves the only way to find out is to try out youll be wrong sometimes sure but if you never try youll always be wrong. Theres this small arc later in the anime where Soujis transformation fails to go away and hes stuck as a girl for a while and once again I repeat myself: What could have been just a throwaday joke and excuse for ass shots becomes kind of a beautiful epitome of the discovering yourself idea a stretch of scenes of Souji learning more about himself twintails love everything. Im not sure how else to word it in a way that doesnt just spoil the show so uhh trust me : In Conclusion. Gonna be the Twintail is fantastic. Funny meaningful well paced and an immense amout of earnest at developing its message with the only real downside being that its clearly a small part of a huge light novel that aint ever getting a season 2 and some lowerend budget animation far from a deal breaker really An anime made because someone had a niche fetish spare money and most important of all: A passion for twintails I aint proofreading this