Onegai Twins
Wait a minute, you mean she isn't even in this one?!
Review by: M.H. "Stressin' Finals" Torringjan
Length: 12 episodes
Genre: Romantic angst
Watched: 12 episodes, subbed
I had watched Onegai Teacher once through and had had plenty enough of that sappy romantic tension crap. I figured, "it's a sequel series, how can the characters be any more annoying and torturous than in the first series?" Most of all, I wondered how they were going to make another viable plot line with those same characters along the same lines. I didn't really care. For another chance to see Mizuho in her skivvies, even only one more time, I was willing to sit through another series. I have since re-evaluated that position.
Plot Summary: Kamishiro Mike is lured to a small town by news reports about UFO sightings because he saw a house in the background of the news report that resembles the house in a picture of his childhood. He's returning there because he wants to reunite with his twin sister who he only knows from the picture taken of them at age 4. When two girls show up at his house, both with copies of the picture and claiming to be his twin sister, things begin to get slightly complicated for the poor dork. Then, both of the girls start to fall for the dork and only one of them can get him (without getting arrested). Insert needless tension, and run with it.
Artwork: Well, it's by the same people who did Onegai Teacher, so the art-style is about the same. Minor upgrades were made for the more recent series, but not all that much. The backgrounds look about the same, maybe a little bit more detailed, it's overall about as crisp, the character design is about as generic, and so on. Nothing new under the sun.
Music: A mixed batch. For the most part, this is stuff that doesn't work outside of the series. It does work while you're watching, though, which is fairly nice. Some of the bouncy tracks are a nice change of pace, and all of the tracks are well-set to the mood of what's going on. A fair amount of the time, though, it really seemed like they were just playing music because the show wasn't doing anything else at the time. The opening and closing themes, though, are pretty standard J-pop. Nothing special, but not something to sneeze at.
Characters: Start with Kamishiro Mike. He's the straight guy of the series, with a much more realistic world-view than most of the other characters, due to having to live on his own and pay his own way through working as a computer programmer. He's the target of just about every girl's affection, and for once, I don't begrudge it to him. His level-headed, stern realism just really sat a lot better with me than that other male lead dork who wouldn't know what to do with a girl when she fell into his lap. Next, you have Miyafuji Miina, the first girl to lay claim to Mike as her brother. She's the energetic, friendly, forward girl who tries to do her best to please Mike. She's also somewhat possessive, judging by her fued with one of the other female leads for Mike's attention. Her partner in crime is Onodera Karen, the token shy, cute-as-a-bunny-rabbit character of the show. She also tries hard to please Mike, sometimes resulting in comedic hijinks the likes of which have ben seen fairly often before this. Oribe Tsubaki is the Student Council VP, token close friend with not-so-secret crush-on-thick-as-a-rock main character.
The only two returning characters with recurring roles are Ichigo Morino and Mizuho. Ichigo has become the student council president in the lag between the two series, and her character's evolved from the silent, observant type into the silent, scheming, sadistic, spying type. She's definitely the comic relief of the series, and probably the most interesting character of the bunch, due to the radical change from one series to the next. Mizuho is back, just hardly as much as I'd like her to be. She's still the teacher, and Mike's in her class. Her personality hasn't changed much, what we get to see of it; she's still the caring, friendly alien teacher we knew her to be. And even though some of the 
characters from the previous series show up with cameos, they're fairly inconsequential. Kei gets about five minutes of screen time in this series, and *he doesn't say a word,* not even in response to statements made to him. What, did he take up a part-time job as a mime between series? Does he have a picture of Marcel Marceau in his back pocket? Even though I'll be the first to admit that he was an annoying, idiotic little prick who didn't deserve Mizuho, if you're going to have him on camera, being spoken to by his wife, I would expect him to reply. Overall, the character development is fairly well done, except that it matches the pace of the rest of the show, around about 25 miles per hour slower than it should be.
Plot: Gyuh... This plot is about as paper thin as... well... a piece of paper. I haven't yet seen a more blatant example of someone taking a single idea and stretching it to the width of a single molecule, trying to squeeze 10 episodes out of it. It seems like they took a sentence that had potential as an idea for a plot, couldn't think of what to do with it, and decided that stating and restating that same sentence would serve as a reasonable substitute for a plot. At least twice in every episode, they use the same phrase (keep count for yourself), "We might be related, but we might be strangers." Do they think that their audience has ADD? (Ooooooooo! Shinies!) Now, as I stated, this idea would be interesting for about a 3 episode OVA (or it would have been if Love Hina hadn't already done the "childhood-lost-identity" plot), when they couldn't afford to say it too many times if they wanted to get the entire series in. And while some of the things that happen in the course of the series are valid, they could have done the same thing in about half the series length, and it would have served the same purpose. The only excuse that they could have for this would be to make the evolution of the characters' relationships more believable, which is somewhat true. However, I have a feeling that a script-writing team with more talent and experience could have done it a lot better and in a shorter time.
CHICKS!! Hold it, they replaced the hottest alien since the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon 6 with jail-bait? Big mistake. This series was a *major* step down from its predecessor on the Chick-o-meter. Start with Miina. She's pretty cute, and her central role would make her the default chick target of the series, since her looks alone certainly aren't enough to carry her. Her figure's lithe, and the distinct lack of cleavage makes it an interesting departure from the stereotypical female lead. Next, you have Karen. Her reserved character makes her the "cute one" of the series. Unfortunately, her frame really seems more fit to an elementary schooler, and as such, you might want to let her mature for a couple of years before going after her. And just because both of them spend half of their time in the bath (they come from a dry planet!), that doesn't mean that they've got anything to ogle. Between them, they might have the form of a single chick. Oribe is the main attraction of this particular series, though, as she's the friend who gets scorned, despite her hardest efforts. She seems like a hard-working, independent girl who just fell for the wrong guy (the one who was desitned to be the lead in a romantic anime series). Also, she's a good cook, which is another lure for her. Plus, her figure's more along the lines of fanservicey, even though it doesn't get shown off often. Finally, what should have been the main attraction in any series with "Onegai" at the beginning, Mizuho, is present in all her glory. For all of an average of one minute in each episode. I am very, very annoyed at this poorly-thought-out decision, to say the least.
Overall: I've seen some rather blatant attempts to play off of the popularity of a series before, and it seems as though this series was yet another example. The insistence to place it in the universe of Onegai Teacher, and then almost completely ignore everything that made the first series interesting (the original characters and the fanservice) was somewhat disappointing. Giving the series an overall tone of romantic tension was about the only thing that made it an Onegai-esque series, and while I went in with an expectation that came with the universe, it was hardly lived up to. It really would have been just as easy to *not* use the Onegai names or any of the original characters and the series could have been done exactly the same way, which is the definition of "copy-catism." Trust me, look it up. This series was overall a big letdown, with the notable exception of Morino. Maybe they should just make a series devoted strictly to her, since it would certainly be more interesting than this one was.
In a nutshell:
+ Nice artwork
+ Decent humor
- Cookie cutter characters
- Nothing to do with original series
- Not enough Mizuho
- Plot poorly executed
Final grade: 5/10