The archetypal school anime series - a group of young girls having fun in the bloom of their youth - except they all have their secrets: Rikka is an alien who is trying her best to get back home; Chiyo is a runaway shinobi constantly on guard from assassins; Sekine has the ability to read minds along with other psychic abilities; and Tsubasa is actually Tsuyoshi, a boy forced to pretend to be his twin sister.
The Little Lies We All Tell (Yonin wa Sorezore Uso o Tsuku or "Four People Lie in Their Own Way") is a 4-koma manga starting in 2020 that received an anime adaptation in the fall of 2022.
The little tropes we all find:
- Alien Blood: Rikka's blood is bright pink. A viewer might initially think this is just censorship, but a) Chiyo gets blood splattered on her several times which is a more realistic color, and b) Tsuyoshi even mentally comments about it at one point (though he thinks Rikka was acting and just got cheap "fake" blood).
- Alien Food Is Edible: Rikka hasn't had any problems eating anything on Earth. Even, to Hanzo's chagrin, poisons - in fact, Rikka asked for seconds.
- Always Someone Better: For Hanzo, that would be his sister Chiyo. Even when they were children, she was consistently shown as being the more capable shinobi. Naturally, to this day, he's still unable to best his sister.
- Art Shift: Frequently for the sake of a gag, with one notable extended example being when Tsuyoshi and Sekine play a card game for a deluxe melon bread bun that has the main cast suddenly drawn like the characters of Akagi and Kaiji as a Shout-Out.
- Big Sister Bully: Granted, not by much since they're twins, but Tsubasa is Tsuyoshi's older sister, and pretty much every scene with her (be it forcing him into attending an all-girls school in her place, selling off gifts given to him, or badmouthing him to his friends) involves her being a monumental Jerkass to him.
- Bizarre Alien Biology: Rikka's "ribbons" are tendrils connected to her respiratory system, and she somehow survives in an oxygen atmosphere despite being chlorine based.
- Brainwashed: Rikka's stuffed animal is actually a rather sophisticated device that she uses to remain undetected on Earth. The most common way she does it is manipulating memories such that people think, among other things, that an alien spacecraft sticking out of their school is completely normal. To some extent, it even works on Sekine, who has caught onto some of the brainwashing via her telepathy.
- Brown Note: It's not quite clear if she just can't sing, or if she could sing normally but doesn't think to, but Rikka's attempt at karaoke come out of her tentacles, and it knocks out any humans who hear it.
- Class Representative: Sekine holds the position.
- Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: Sekine has to constantly deal with Rikka and Chiyo doing things that normal people won't do and lead them to act normally. Tsuyoshi also does the job at times.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Three of the girls have them due to being a ninja deserter, an extraterrestrial military officer, and an esper under surveillance.
- Defector from Decadence: Well, more like defector to decadence, but Chiyo left behind her strict nd austere ninja clan to live the life of a normal fashionable teen girl. She's hunted by her old clan as a consequence.
- Does Not Like Men: Chiyo appears to have an intense dislike of men, responding to a playboy at the beach touching her shoulder by judo flipping them strongly enough to create a crater, and she has to resist the urge to outright kill Tsuyoshi, who's forced to hang out with them as a guy, because he interacted with them like he's grown used to instead of maintaining the distance you'd expect of a male stranger. This becomes Inverted when Rikka Gender Flips the whole school, with Chiyomaru becoming a He-Man Woman Hater obsessed with masculinity who comes close to physically assaulting Rikka for still wearing her girls school uniform and attempting to shave her head. Fortunately, by the time Tsuyoshi is forced to reveal the truth, their friendship and the fact that he wasn't the only Secret-Keeper, means she's pretty quick to forgive him so they can focus on stopping Rikka from leaving.
- Dragged into Drag: Tsuyoshi is forced by his twin sister Tsubasa to be her so that she can pretend to be him and attend his school, where her favorite idol is also attending.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: Much to Tsuyoshi's chagrin, he can pass as a teen girl even when he's not trying to do so. He doesn't realize just how feminine his appearance is until he starts regularly hearing his friends praise him for it.
- Extreme Omnivore: While only used as a gag once or twice, Rikka apparently can eat anything on Earth, even if it's poisonous to humans.
- Failed a Spot Check: The most common form of comedy in the series as each of the girls, and Tsuyoshi, fail to fully recognize how weird the others are.
- Fake-Out Fade-Out: Midway through the first episode, Rikka declares with anguish her decision to return to space. It's followed by an end card and the OP starts to play, before Sekine interrupts and declares they just started.
- Fish out of Water: A triple dose: Rikka is an alien that knows very little of how things work on Earth, Chiyo is a ninja who knows little of how things work outside shinobi clans, and Tsuyoshi is a boy forced to study at an all-girls school.
- Gender Bender: Rikka causes it twice:
- Due to one of her devices, Tsuyoshi spends some time actually in a girl's body.
- In a later occasion she misinterprets Tsuyoshi's feelings about how others react to "her androgynous beauty", and changes the school to an all-male one alongside everyone else's genders, also changing their backstories and personalities to fit. She quickly comes to regret it when the overly manly Chiyomaru tries to shave her hair and take away her ribbons for being too feminine.
- Gender-Restricted Ability: Played With in that the ability isn't restricted; the user is restricted as to which gender they can use the ability on - Sekine can only use her telepathy to read the minds of women. However, she doesn't know this limitation on her powers, so she's mystified as to why she can't hear "Tsubasa's" thoughts.
- Technically, Sekine can only hear the thoughts of those of the same gender as herself, which was an important distinction the time Rikka gender-flipped everyone in the school other than herself, the result being that male Sekine could only hear the thoughts of other boys.
- Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: While Chiyo would love nothing more than to completely abandon her ninja training and just be a cute and fashionable girl, she's quite comfortable relying on said training for more than just defending herself from her brother's assassination attempts.
- Half-Identical Twins: Tsuyoshi and Tsubasa look extremely similar save for being a twin brother and sister respectively.
- Highly-Visible Ninja: Hanzo is usually running around in all black, even in broad daylight. Unsurprisingly he's spotted by others (in particular, Sekine) when doing so. Curiously, he does sometimes wear a school uniform as a disguise, and the only one who ever sees through that is Chiyo (for that, see Always Someone Better).
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: Episode 11 has Rikka use her tech to enhance Chiyo's intelligence to help her on their upcoming tests. As a result, she also gives her Awesomeness by Analysis that allows her to deduce everyone else's secrets. And while Rikka does reverse it, the fact that the other three's secrets got close to being exposed creates an awkward atmosphere at the sleepover, and it's ultimately what drives Rikka into trying to leave.
- Identical Twin ID Tag: The difference between Tsuyoshi and his sister (besides their obvious gender differences) is that he has pierced ears.
- Jerkass: It's evident that Tsuyoshi's sister is this; she forces him into switch schools with her so she can stalk a male idol attending his school, Blackmails him with photos of him crossdressing against his will when he tries backing out, doesn't bother cultivating a social life for him there due to looking down on the boys in her class, and is heavily Implied to frequently take pictures of people without their consent. Even the opening realizes this, depicting her as the most sinister of each of the main characters' antagonists, with an evil-looking Battle Aura and a Psychotic Smirk, despite her more mundane actionsnote .
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: The Organization (the nebulous group that keeps watch of psychics, including Sekine) has the ability to alter memories to make people forget about a psychic and their use of powers. However, they only know how to do this to humans; Rikka turns out to be completely immune.
- Lemony Narrator: The narrator beyond the first episode seems to act more like a one-man Greek Chorus than anything else, making snide and/or sarcastic comments about what the four mains are doing/thinking. He even gets into an argument with Sekine at one point when she objects to his jokes about her penny-punching.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Zig-zagged. Two of the four are known to be lying by one girl who can only read female minds, meaning she is locked out of the fourth loop.
- Only Sane Man: Played with in that Tsuyoshi has the most realistic backstory. Also, while Sekine has strange circumstances, her psychic powers mean her role in most episodes is quietly stressing out and trying to keep things from getting out of control as her friends' secrets devolve into shenanigans.
- Poison and Cure Gambit: Hanzo attempts to do this by proxy to Tsuyoshi (to make Chiyo surrender and return to the clan), but figures it works just as well when Rikka drinks the poisoned coffee instead. Except it doesn't work on aliens.
- Power at a Price: By using "Mistress Time" Sekine gains full control over her psychic abilities and they even increase in power, but she quickly gets fatter as long as it's in use.
- Power Incontinence: Sekine's powers are mostly out of her control, unless she wants to pay the price as above. She has no way of shutting off her telepathy, and without her glasses, she starts throwing things around with her mind uncontrollably.
- Power Limiter: Sekine's glasses. In order to keep her telekinetic powers from running amok, she has to wear them at all times, even when sleeping.
- Sacrificed Basic Skill for Awesome Training: Chiyo is basically the pinnacle of ninjutsu for her generation, and possibly of her whole clan, and on top of that her post-ninja life has shown her making elaborate arts and crafts. The flip side is that she has no aptitude for anything outside of those subjects - her grades are atrocious, and it's shown that she still struggles with her multiplication tables in particular (having a hard time remembering seven times four as an example).
- Secret Secret-Keeper: Rikka and Chiyo are unaware that Sekine is fully aware of their secrets.
- Shout-Out:
- During the Takopa in episode 6, an anthropomorphic wedge of cheese (don't ask) sinks into a Revolutionary Hot Pot (don't ask) while giving a thumb's up, declaring "I'll be back."
- In episode 7 Chiyo thinks everyone's been kidnapped by her old clan and decides to kill the others to keep them from being tortured but Rikka stops her with a hook punch and then starts bobbing and weaving while jet engines are heard in the background.
- Telepathy: The one power Sekine can use without consequence, allowing her to read the minds of any women nearby. She doesn't know about the "women only" limitation.
- Time Travel: One of Rikka's alien abilities is to turn back time, and as usual Sekine is the only other one even partially aware of what has occurred. Most notably, it's used as a Reset Button to Retgone the events of the Grand Finale of the anime where a bunch of even crazier than usual stuff happened, including everyone's secrets being exposed, up until the four protagonists were falling to their doom.
- Too Clever by Half: Sekine's abilities as a psychic allow her to read minds, she's often the Only Sane Man of the group when Tsuyoshi isn't, and she's among the highest scorers in her class. However, she's never able to realize that Tsuyoshi is actually a guy even in scenarios where she should be able to logically deduce it, such as when Rikka Gender Flips the whole school, with it even becoming an all-boys school, and "Tsubasa" is supposedly the only one to remain the same gender.
