Please Twins: Complete Collection (Review)
Tuesday, 12th January 2010, 18:52

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Extras

All 4 single-layer discs are packaged together in an m-lock case following the standard Bandai Anime Legends presentation. All four discs get animated menus. All four discs also get trailers for Ghost In The Shell Stand Alone Complex, Wolf’s Rain, and Stratos 4. There’s also an English language credit scroll at the end of each disc.

Disc 1

You’ll find 4 Image Vocals, 2-minute animated music videos showcasing some of the music from the show, or music that’s available on the tie-in CD. You’ll also find one promo clip, and one promo commercial, again running to 2 minutes apiece.

Disc 2

Here you will find 3 Image Vocals running to a total of 6 minutes, as well as the textless ending.

Disc 3

Once more you get 3 Image Vocals, totalling 5 minutes, a minute worth of trailers for the soundtrack CDs, and the textless opening from episode 1 (including that weird aspect ratio switch).

Disc 4

We get three final Image Vocals, running to a total of 6 minutes. You get the textless ending for episode 12, the series conclusion, and that I’m afraid, is that.

Conclusion
I did it again; I clicked the order button without reading enough about the product that I was buying. This time, I learned that there is a weird phenomenon that surrounds Please Teacher and its sequel Please Twins. Apparently, certain fans of Please Teacher do not think highly of Please Twins, and vice versa. It all seems to boil down to which series they see first, and it’s as if there is only room for one risqué concept romantic comedy in their collections. I saw Please Teacher last year, which means I ought to loathe Please Twins. Well, I’m not at the loathing stage yet, but I do think that Please Twins lacks a little something in comparison to its predecessor, and I found my enjoyment of the series was tempered with a series of niggling criticisms. Perhaps there is something to that exclusivity phenomenon.

Just like Please Teacher, in execution Please Twins is nowhere near as prurient and exploitative as the premise suggests. The orphans decide early on that nothing is going to happen until their relationships with each other are resolved, so most of the comedy and melodrama comes from trying not to give into one’s feelings. Maiku remains the perfect gentlemen throughout, despite events conspiring to make him look like a pervert, and if his feelings for Karen and Miina may stray beyond the brotherly, they’re nothing compared to the non-sisterly feelings that Karen and Miina have to restrain. In fact, for all the potentiality of the situation, the only two of the orphans who actually spend anytime naked together are Miina and Karen, who find that the bath is the one place that they can have a girly chat without Maiku overhearing. And so the fan service quotient of the show is fulfilled.

If you’re wondering why no DNA test, then that is explained away with the straitened financial circumstances of the orphans, and evidently no Jeremy Kyle exists in this universe, which instantly makes it a more desirable place to live than the real world. Please Twins plays out much like your standard harem comedy, albeit with a harem of just two, and it’s played strongly for laughs, with awkward situations, and pratfalls, crossed wires and miscommunication. It isn’t particularly unique in this regard, but it does have an energy and vitality to it that makes it appealing. Unlike Please Teacher however, it’s not all that forthcoming with the drama and character growth, and beyond the initial set-up of three orphans looking for their past, it isn’t until the final episodes that the show tries to bring on the waterworks with a heart-wrenching plot development about Miina’s home life prior to her arrival at Maiku’s, which really isn’t heart-wrenching at all. Instead it feels shoehorned in at the last minute.

The most disappointing thing is that the show feels very much like a rehash of Please Teacher, following the same dramatic structure, and even transposing some of the same events, if to different characters. The Magumi and Mizusumi sub-plot from that series passes on to Shimazaki and Tsubaki here, the whole bunch of them wind up in Okinawa again for another beach swimsuit episode. Also, the new characters are the most interesting, but the cast from the original series also show up, in roles ranging from brief cameos to strong supporting positions. Mizuho has to be there of course, she is the teacher, although she’s a source of friendly advice, rather than following a character arc of her own. More disappointing is how some of the characters have changed from the first series. Matagu Shidou, eternally unlucky in love, is back, this time wholly as the comic relief. Whereas Maiku and the two girls are trying to keep things off the boil under their roof, Matagu is openly perving on his kid sister Haruko, who remains blissfully oblivious to her brother’s idiocy. Of course it’s acceptable here, because Matagu is the comic relief. Similarly, Ichigo Morino, who had such a strong and well-written role in Please Teacher, here is reduced to a caricature, a voyeur student president with a creepy laugh. Please Twins doesn’t really do the first series justice, which is a shame. It should have ignored that show completely, or more thought should have been put into using that world to better effect than just for cheap gags.

Marie is a case in point. The writers obviously couldn’t figure out a way to logically introduce Mizuho’s computer avatar into the story, so Karen just encounters the little sprite on the day that she arrives in town, and thereafter Marie is practically a part of their household. Another sign of lacklustre writing is that the conclusion is ambiguous, although we do learn in no uncertain terms who is the sister, and who is destined to be the girlfriend, the clear explanation of why and who is lacking. It’s just given to us in a blurry bit of illegible text, and we have to accept it at face value. Again, just like Please Teacher, Please Twins tells its story in a twelve-episode run, and leaves the thirteenth for a direct to DVD episode for fans, which gets to be racier and more ribald than the broadcast series. Except that the final episode on this set isn’t all that racy, certainly not in comparison to Secret Couple. Still, it is funny and entertaining in its own way, even if comic relief Matagu gets the final word.

Maybe it does depend on which you see first, but I think that Please Teacher is by far the better series. Please Twins plays it more for laughs, and by doing so is perversely less funny. I think it’s because it lacks the drama to counterpoint the comedy. However, Please Twins is a very pleasant waste of time, especially if you like your harem romantic comedies in anime. The central characters are pleasant enough, and you do get emotionally invested in their journeys, hoping that the guy ends up with the girl. With Please Twins, you can have a debate afterwards over which one you wanted to be the sister, and which one you wanted to be the girlfriend, and what series gives you that opportunity?

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