Please Twins! (Onegai Twins)
Volume 1: Three’s Company

Reviewed by Aricson Tarasova
October 23, 2005

Director: Ide Yasunori Genre: Situational Sci-fi/Romantic Comedy Distributor: Bandai Entertainment Age Rating: 16 and up Website: http://pleasetwins.bandai-ent.com/ Review Rating: 2 out of 10

There is little pleasure to be found in Please Twins. The series protagonist, Kamishiro Maiku, is a 17 year old high school student who: has a high paying computer job that any company family man in his prime would kill for (not to mention works out of his [gasp] beautiful home office with an expensive looking computer set-up, never having to commute); rents the most beautiful, perfectly well kept house which is located in the loveliest Japanese town you can image by himself without any parents around; has the hottest babes in his class lusting for him; and has a gorgeous lady teacher who wants to, uh, ‘teach' him some private lessons.

The first plot point drags in the first episode when a couple of girls show up at Kamishiro's door and tell him that they are his long lost sisters. He tells them to get lost. Only out of the sickening way this anime personifies standard Japanese sentiment does Kamishiro lets go of his selfishness and relent to letting the girls stay with him, albeit for only an evening.

If American films are loud, formulated and obnoxious, Japanese anime/cinema can be disgustingly sentimental. Please Twins also celebrates this Japanese norm with uncanny stupidity. Here Kamishiro's sisters are presented as the embodiment of Japanese sentiment toward women. They are sappy, needy, super cute, coy, exploited, submissive and way overly concerned with personal nostalgia and fake ‘Hello Kitty' feelings that makes me want to go over to Tokyo and burn bras while chanting feminist rants in the streets.

What really angers me about Please Twins is the producers exploitation of the Japanese and American anime otaku fanboy: A young person who probably doesn't have the highest grades, most likely is underprivileged, has little to no chance with any of the pretty girls in his school or job, have very little emotional command and prefers to live in a dream world than living in the real world. This is total opposite to what the main character embodies.

Please Twins is nothing more than an escapist fantasy giving the otaku little more than a soul-rotting animatic jerk-off. There is nothing emotionally rewarding in Please Twins in the least. Even the theme song is a commercial sound byte long devoid of any real emotion, or creative thought. The lyrics express those nauseating Japanese clichéd sentiments, drilling on and on into one's soul like some Clockwork Orange trance robbing of one's humanity.

I would say your average porno has more integrity than anime like Please Twins , because good porn does not pretend to be anything else than something for sexual masturbation. Please Twins disguises itself as a serious work of art in its deceptively ‘sensitive' direction, but what its function is an emotional masturbation for the kid (or [gasp] adult) who is lost in a world of artificial pipe dreams only the worst of anime can supply. The only thing that got me through the first two episodes is watching the beautiful background animation, which could rival any Miyazaki film in terms of quality.

Please Twins fails to please. The four episode DVD comes with very little extras. Since I never want to endure this hallow soul-robbing escapism again I'm giving Please Twins a Low Evolution Rating and a 2 out of 10 quality rating, the two points going only to the detailed background animation. Everything else in Please Twins is wasted emotional spunk.