Love is Indivisible By Twins begins with twin sisters Rumi and Naori Jingūji moving into town with their family and meeting their next door neighbor Jun Shirosaki (Shogo Sakata). We then see both girls begin to fall in love with Jun as the years go by. Rumi, the tomboyish and athletic twin, admires Jun for his empathy and intelligence. Naori, the girlish looking and nerdy twin, bonds with Jun over their shared interests in literature and otaku culture and she opens up thanks to his company. While not openly acknowledged, both sisters are aware of the other’s feelings for Jun. This initially leaves them in a stalemate until Rumi decides to ask Jun out.
I kind of admire the premiere for immediately having Rumi become Jun’s girlfriend. If nothing else, it’s bold. The problem with this decision however is that it complicates any chance Naori has in the plot. Ideally, the viewer should be torn between the two sisters. But by having Rumi ask Jun out and succeed, you pretty much go “well, that’s that, I guess” and this is only within the first episode of the cour! It’s a pity because I frankly think Naori has better chemistry with Jun. All Rumi does is look longingly with Jun from afar. Naori meanwhile shares some things in common with Jun and there’s something romantic about how Jun unknowingly makes her become a better person. But to root for Naori now would be to ask for things to get messier.
Naturally then, the show proceeds to get messier because just a couple scenes later, Rumi decides to break up with Jun. On one hand, I get that she feels guilty for robbing Naori of her chance with Jun. Conversely, she’s the one who musters the courage to ask Jun out and things seem to be going steady between them. Plus, I know for a fact that Rumi will have second thoughts once Naori finally decides to confess to Jun. To have her bow out is infuriating. In the end, it feels like the show shouldn’t gone this far in the first place and instead kept the stalemate going on definitely, like most romance anime do.
Throughout all of this, I can’t help but feel bad for Jun. Like, I wouldn’t call him a particularly deep character but the show does a good enough job portraying him as a nice guy. It sucks then to see him confused when Rumi proceeds to dump him. Even worse is that you just know that his love life is going to get more complicated once Naori gets involved and/or Rumi changes her mind again. I suppose it’s on him for being oblivious to both girls’ feelings but that doesn’t mean things should get so messy for me.
The one saving grace is the visuals. While there isn’t any fancy animation going on here, the show looks pretty good throughout the first episode and there is some direction and stylistic choices that really compliment the narrative. Apparently, this is the first major production for studio ROLL2 and I honestly would not have realized that without looking it up. For a debut production, this ain’t half-bad.
Honestly, this show seems like a trainwreck to me. The premise is perfectly fine but because of one massive decision made in this first episode, the show pretty much dooms itself into becoming a dumb and melodramatic love triangle story. That said, I am morbidly curious if this will at least be an entertaining dumpster fire so I may watch a little bit more of this.
Watch Love is Indivisible By Twins on Crunchyroll
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