So this Girly Bruiser can look extra girly, while doing extra bruising.
A pair of huge pigtails on a girl that are much larger than possible in Real Life for someone with straight or otherwise non-curly hair, at least not without loads of extensions and hair gel. The smallest examples might work if the person had very long, curly hair, but overall most are near impossible for anyone. The minimum hair size of both tails combined must be at least the size of the girl's head.
There can be many reasons for this, although the most common are either to make the pigtails clear even in long shots, or because of Rule of Cute.
Quite often these pigtails have the hair in a spiral, which overlaps with Regal Ringlets. However, girls with Mega Twintails are not necessarily of high station. It is more of a compromise halfway between the proper aspect of the ringlets and girly of Girlish Pigtails, both in looks and in personality.
Note that this trope is about the volume and complexity of the pigtails more than the length. While the two can overlap, merely having improbably long hair in pigtails, like Sailor Moon, Hatsune Miku, Black★Rock Shooter, Ruri, or Hibiki falls under Rapunzel Hair.
A Sub-Trope of Anime Hair, Girlish Pigtails, Bigger Is Better.
Compare '80s Hair, Giant Poofy Sleeves, Ojou Ringlets, Odango Hair.
Examples:
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Anime and Manga
- Bleach: In the anime, when Kyouraku's zanpakutou Katen Kyoukatsu takes human form, his tachi's human form includes Mega Twintails.
- Elizabeth "Lizzie" Middleford from Black Butler. Look at those things!
◊ Also, as her hair is normally much straighter, she has to get them done with curlers.
- In her human form, Flower Card in Cardcaptor Sakura is a young woman in a Pimped-Out Dress and who sports a rather cute and big pair of 'tails
- When young, Rosemarie from Claudine...! had huge pigtails that were bigger than her own head.
- Fredrica from Coffin Princess Chaika has a fairly large pair when in her human form.
- Etia from Day Break Illusion has a truly impressive pair. They look to be larger than she is.
- Leenalee Lee of D.Gray-Man when she is caught by the recently arrived Road in the Rewinding Town arc. It's a part of a Go-Go Enslavement moment, as her captor also puts an Elegant Gothic Lolita gown on her just for the heck of it, and Lenalee's hair is normally in simple Girlish Pigtails.
- Future Diary: 9th's first appearance in Episode 2. She later dismisses that hairstyle and changes her cute dress for her regular action outfit.
- Anchovy, the leader of Anzio Academy in Girls und Panzer, has some epic drill twintails. In the film, Pepperoni complains that they're obstructing her view though that may be because, adding in Carpaccio, the three of them are crammed into a two-seater CV 33 tankette.
- Par for course in Gonna Be the Twin-Tail!!, as every member of the self-explanatory Twintail Warriors sports a pair. But then again, what would you expect for a series with twintails in its title?
- Hanaukyō Maid Team. Ryukka has large pigtails in a spiral pattern that hang down to her shoulders. She is a high-ranking member of the powerful Jihyou family.
- Highschool of the Dead: Saya's pigtails◊ are impressive in terms of sheer length and volume, with each individually being near equal the width of her head.
- Nui Harime of Kill la Kill is a giggling Girly Bruiser with her bow, earrings, frilly Minidress of Power, forearm pads, boots, and Parasol of Pain all in pink and white. She wears her hair up in two huge ringlets that have more volume than her entire body. They possess enough volume for her to be picked up by them and airlifted. When she's sent flying through a wall, her Impact Silhouette has ringlets.
- Kodomo No Jikan has some characters with it, like Rin. It's too thick to just be long pigtails. It's even lampshaded in some Omakes.
- In Ladies Versus Butlers!, Sernia has these◊. They even spin when she gets angry.
- Love, Chunibyo & Other Delusions has Sanae Dekomori, whose pigtails go down to her ankles. For added ridiculousness, she has small weights attached to them, so that she can spin them around and pretend they're weapons.note And get tangled in them.
- Touko Matsudaira from Maria Watches Over Us has earned the nickname of "Drill-chan", due to her long, drill-shaped twintails. And she actually weaponizes them in the doujin Fighting Game Maribato!, where she appears as a playable character, fitting with her drill-themed style: Her standing A and Crouching A have her hitting her opponent with her twintails.
- Mileina Vashti from Mobile Suit Gundam 00. Until she lets her hair down in The Movie.
- When the members of the Ouran High School Host Club try cross-dressing, the twins wear wigs with these.
- Sayaka Suzuki "No.6" in Pani Poni Dash!. Sometimes she is referred as "big ribbon" or "over-sized" due to her hairstyle - giant pigtails tied with two large white ribbons.
- Pokémon Heroes: Each of Annie's pigtails is about twice as big as her head.
- Mami Tomoe◊ of Puella Magi Madoka Magica had her iconic haircut become a subject of massive memetic popularity. While relatively modest on its own, it's often exaggerated in parodies and homages to the character, like the above-mentioned Vivid Yellow. The Movie revealed she uses magic to maintain the look.
- Sailor Moon:
- Chibi-Usa has similar hair to her mother, but instead of the pigtails being thin and ankle-length (and wouldn't qualify for this trope), they are poofy and shoulder-length. In her adult form as Black Lady, they're still big and poofy, but also extend all the way to her feet, whereas when aged up and not made into Black Lady her twintails are longer than usual but to a lesser degree.
- Big Bad Nehellenia wore these as a child.
- Miki, and her android double in Sailor Victory (no, not Codename: Sailor V) have large swirling tails, the latter even able to turn them into high powered fans.
- Tiara from Shamanic Princess has huge pigtails, contrasting with her rival and friend Lena's longer but much straighter and loose hair.
- Symphogear GX introduces Micha Jawkân, who has not only a huge volume of drills, her twintails also function as rocket engines!
- Princess Fine in Twin Princess of Wonder Planet has large swirling tails.
- Variable Geo: Because of how short she is, pink-haired Manami's pigtails are actually bigger than her body. Both are long enough that they nearly touch the floor, and have enough volume that they look as if they'd weigh more than she does too.
- In Vividred Operation, Vivid Yellow has Mega Twintails larger than her entire body. They actually look like a cape from some angles.
- A couple of the Artificial Human girls in ×××HOLiC have pigtails that are very poofy and nearly go down to their feet. Himawari's own pigtails aren't.
Films — Animation
- In Barbie and the Secret Door, the Big Bad, Malucia, has huge purple pigtails twice the size of her head.
- Harley Quinn sports these in place of typical Harley pigtails in The LEGO Batman Movie. They're the same size of her head and have been curled into spirals while also being split down the middle between black and red colours, mimicking the appearance of her iconic jester hat.
- The N-Pop Girl in The LEGO Ninjago Movie uses the same mold as Harley's hair but in pastel blue and pink. They're instead evocative of a typical Japanese pop idol look due to the Asian-inspired setting.
Music
- Kasane Teto, an UTAUloid, has the same hairstyle as Amy Sorel in the above picture, except in pink. That style was called, just for her, "Twin-Drills."
- While Bella Poarch typically rocks more subdued, realistic versions that’s more Twin Tails than Mega, she wears a more traditional version in a photo shoot for Inked Magazine. Bonus points for it being pink and yellow.
Puppet Shows
- Red Fraggle on Fraggle Rock. Each poofy globe is roughly the same size as her head.
Video Games
- Advanced V.G. As the runt of the group, Manami's pigtails are long enough that they nearly touch the floor, making them bigger than her body. And their sheer volume makes each of them look like they'd weigh more than she does.
- In ARMS, Twintelle combines this trope with Prehensile Hair, seeing as how her massive twintails are where her ARMS are attached.
- Catherine from the eponymous game sports two enormous twintails, along with grade A Zettai Ryouiki and a Yandere personality. Grade S Zettai Ryouiki gone overboard ? Considering her physical appearance is based on Vincent's tastes... Also possibly justified as representing horns due to her succubus nature.
- Cookie Run
- Lime Cookie is a Tsundere with twintails that are each the size of her body.
- Carrot Cookie has huge drill tails that look like, well, carrots.
- Yuni from DanceDanceRevolution; they're every bit as rich and showy as Yuni herself.
- The archers◊ from Disgaea and other Nippon Ichi Strategy RPGs have large blonde twin tails, at least from Disgaea 2 onward. They had multiple small ringlets in their hair in the first game.
- In Fire Emblem Fates, Elise has a huge pair of blonde twintails that are almost the size of her entire body.
- Yuna from Mega Man Legends 2 has pigtails that are not only long, but also unfeasibly wide and flat.
- Luna Platz/Shirogane from Mega Man Star Force. Her boss form, Ophiucus Queen/Queen Ophiuca even uses them as weapons.
- MÚSECA Series Mascot Illil not only has ridiculously long twintails, she has them spiral around her arms.
- Carmen from Persona 5 has her hair tied into two long and thick pigtails the same size of her head that mirror the hairstyle of her summoner Ann Takamaki.
- Pokémon:
- Gothitelle has four large black discs stuck to either side of its head that invoke this trope, as well as its pre-evolved form Gothorita.
- For a literal case of Mega twintails, Mawile has this effect after Mega Evolution, with its two giant mouths extending from the back of its head. Each one of them is larger than Mawile's body◊.
- Lopunny displays this trait with Ears as Hair. Inverts the literal Mega nature, though, as Mega Lopunny's ears are of the long-not-voluminous variety of twintails.
- Yurika Kirishima from Project Justice has large swirling tails which rest on her shoulders. Along with the violin she carries, this makes her look like a proper rich girl.
- Skies of Arcadia: Legends: Aika's pigtails are often compared to Pippi Longstocking's, to the point of Marco referring to her as "Scarecrow Hair" — due to their size and the fact that they jut outward like a pair of handlebars. And when they first arrive in Yafutoma, one of the children of the village wonders what she eats "to make her hair do that".
- Soul Calibur IV: Amy Sorel provides the page image, with her massive twin tailed Ojou Ringlets.
- Female Inklings from Splatoon have two long and thick pigtails. Their size is justified, as they're actually tentacles that are some of the retained aspects of the Inklings' squid forms.
- Ashley◊ from the WarioWare series has a pair of black pigtails that are almost as tall as she is.
Visual Novels
- Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc: Celestia "Celeste" Ludenberg◊ has a massive pair. A few pieces of character art show her without the pigtails, suggesting they're detachable hair extensions.
- Junko Enoshima's◊ are also fairly impressive. While the "Junko" the player meets in the prologue is actually her twin sister, Mukuro Ikusaba, posing as her, the real Junko also turns out to have them when she appears in the final chapter.
- Junko Enoshima's
- Shiina "Misha" Mikado in Katawa Shoujo is known for her huge pink twintails. In Shizune's route, it is revealed that she colors her hair, and she cuts her twintails off after Hisao and Shizune hook up. Her natural hair is light brown, actually; she took up this hairstyle after being rejected by Shizune.
- In Melody, Sophia’s pigtails stretch below her waist.
- The second Tokimeki Memorial gives us Miyuki; they're also a pretty shade of purple.
Webcomics
- In El Goonish Shive, Tedd has these in a couple sketchbook strips which are about elbow length and each are about the volume of Tedd's head.
- Amber in Matchu has gigantic blonde twintails that are both as tall and thick as she is.
- The peanut butter monsters Molly, Golly, and Jolly in The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! each have gigantic hair poofs on the sides of their heads.
- Sleepless Domain: Outrageous Lemon, a Magical Girl with an Elegant Gothic Lolita aesthetic, has a pair of bright yellow ringlet twintails that are just longer than shoulder length.
Web Original
- The "splash page" art for The Nostalgia Chick videos is often done by Andrew Dickman, and he draws her pigtails thick and large.
Western Animation
- Entrapta in She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, as might be appropriate for such an Animesque series, has a pair of these. Fascinatingly, there's a practical element to it for Entrapta, since she has Prehensile Hair; the twintails basically act like tentacles, serving as extra arms or legs whenever she needs them.
