YMMV / Jewelpet Twinkle☆

• Awesome Music:
  • The opening, with the French and Spanish versions sounding particularly lovely.
  • The BGM has a wondrous quality to it. Check out Jewel Land's theme to see what we're talking about.
• Broken Base:
  • Go ask any fan of the series whether the title should be "Tinkle" or "Twinkle". It doesn't help that this topic was wildly inconsistent in many dubs around the world: some of them spelled it officially one way yet read it up the other way, some used one way for the anime yet labelled the merchandising with the other, and the worst ones changed it arbitrarily within the same dub.
  • The OVA is seen as either a good epilogue to the story or creepy otaku pandering.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Monica Sakura is pretty well-regarded in the fanbase, receiving a disproportionate amount of fanart despite not getting a lot of focus.
  • Sara might just be the most fanned over character in Twinkle (if not the whole anime series).
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • This is the most famous season of Jewelpet in English-speaking countries, since it was the first one to be subbed and it's not nearly as strange as the ones that followed it.
  • The series was well received in Spain, despite the fact that the first Jewelpet series had went mostly unnoticed and thus nobody expected Twinkle to be such an improvement. As none of the following seasons of the franchise would ever reach Spain (eerily, an echo of what happened to Pretty Cure), Twinkle was considered by some a big lost chance for distribution company Luk Internacional.
• Growing the Beard: Either episode 8 (one of the first major emotional points and instances of character development which the season prides itself in) or Alma revealing herself to the protagonists, which sets the major dramatic plot in motion.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: It's rather funny to see Dian getting worried about Leon suffering from Taken for Granite when he had such a power in the previous season.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Subverted. For some strange reason, the Spanish dub decided to give Akari the same voice actress as Rinko from the previous season; the only real difference between the character's voices is that VA Pilar Morales used a slightly more cutesy tone as Akari. However, pundits agreed Morales actually sounded way more comfortable and natural while playing Akari than she did with Rinko. This, along with the season's general much higher quality, allowed them to pardon the miscast.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Alma. Yes, she's anti-social and bad-tempered, and she recklessly wants revenge on Jewelina. But remember that she lost her mother, then she was separated from her brother and taken to Jewel Land in what's tantamount to a kidnapping, even if it's "for her own good", and spent her chilhood in solitude. And before all that, she was bullied in the human world just for using her powers to revive a dead bird.
  • Nicola may be a condescending, smug little ass, but it's hard not to want to give him a hug when you learn about his relationship with his Stage Mom.
• Moe: The character designs lends the series to this very nicely.
• More Popular Replacement: Akari is a lot more popular and iconic than her predecessor Rinko.
• Narm: An example of unintentional hilarity happened in the othwerwise impeccable Spanish dub, as its translators somehow saw fit to translate Miria's "Kanzen Muketsu Bishoujo" into "Kacho Mega Bonita". To explain: while "bonita" ("cute") is certainly a correct word for "bishoujo", "cacho" is a Spaniard redneck expression translatable as "freakin'" - vaguely correct too, but horribly out of place in the tone of the series.
• One-Scene Wonder: Hilde and Sagan. All they do is fight main characters and lose against them. Apparently, viewers liked them enough that they got to appear in the OVA opening. Gunho did not have the same luck, despite having the same profile, which tells you a lot about the nature of said viewers.
• One True Threesome: Some fans are supportive of the idea of Yuuma/Akari/Alma after the huge load of Les Yay between the latter two in the OVA.
• Pandering to the Base: Thanks to its Moe-tastic characters, Twinkle is considered the start of pandering to the Periphery Demographic in Jewelpet.
  • The OVA does this as well, and can get away with it more easily since it's direct-to-video. Where else would you get to see Alma in a leotard?
• Sequel Displacement: This is by far the most well-known Jewelpet season (at least to a Western audience), to the point where many people think it's the first one made, which isn't helped by the fact that many anime streaming sites mistakenly replaced first series' episodes with episodes from Twinkle.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: From a technical standpoint, Twinkle is a massive improvement over the first series, featuring elaborate backgrounds and color schemes and a sleeker, more professional-looking character design. These improvements carried on to following seasons. It's also generally thought of as much better written than the first series, due to its well-developed characters and emotionally-rending plot.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Hilde, Sagan and Gunho could've made good additions to the secondary character roster. Hilde especially, given how she is stated to be the greatest prodigy in Jewel Land; who wouldn't want to know more about her? But we don't, and these characters just appear in a scene or two only to be defeated by the heroes. Aww.
  • And since Gunho comes from the same school as the French sisters, it would've been interesting to see how such different classmates play off each other, but they don't even interact.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Jewel Star Grand Prix shows that there are many more magic schools in Jewel Land besides the one with Akari and co.. The only one we learn anything about is the school with the French sisters and Gunho. Wouldn't it have been interesting to characterize the ones Hilde and Sagan come from, at least? Or have Akari and co. visit other schools throughout the season?
• Tough Act to Follow: Twinkle is considered the gold standard in Jewelpet; Jewelpet Sunshine's Genre Shift fractured the fanbase (though it has very passionate fans) and, as such, it and all the seasons that followed (with the arguable exception of Lady Jewelpet) have had trouble living up to expectations.
• Unnecessary Makeover: In the "Freaky Friday" Flip episode, Miria, who is in Sara's body, dresses up in a showy dress. Sara is already attractive in her usual labcoat get-up.
• The Woobie: It might be all in her head, but it's hard not to feel for Akari when she's about to break into tears from thinking about how her parents give more attention to Monica and how Monica is better than her at everything she can think of (also, she's cute, so that magnifies the feeling).
• Woolseyism: The Portuguese dub translated "Kanzen Muketsu Bishoujo" (Miria's self-chosen title) as "Kyuper Mega Beautiful", retaining the initials in the process.

---