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Seasonal Discussions Pretty Cure Discussion (current series: “Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure”, plus older series)

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Hello there! This is a place to discuss anything and everything about the magical girl franchise Pretty Cure (or Precure for short), including both the currently airing series and any previously aired ones. Do you have a favorite Precure series that you want to praise, or a not-so-favorite one that you’d like to share your criticism about? Is there a favorite character of yours who you want to gush over, or a villain who you absolutely love to hate (or just love)? Is there an awesome Cure design that you’d like to shout out, or one that just makes you just want to say “what were they thinking”? Are you a newcomer to the series who wants advice about where to start, or who just wants a place to talk about a Precure series you’ve just gotten into? This is intended to be a place for all of that!

Pretty Cure (or Precure for short) is a long-running magical girl franchise created by Toei Animation, which you might recognize as same studio responsible for several other seminal magical girl series such as Sailor Moon and Ojamajo Doremi. Compared to many contemporary magical girl series airing as of late, Pretty Cure represents a more “classical” take on the genre, revolving around a group of everyday girls who transform into “legendary warriors” known as Precure, who battle evil with the help of adorable fairy “mascots” while forming friendships and learning valuable life lessons along the way. It’s primarily aimed at young girls (with a massive merchandising machine to match), but it has a strong peripheral demographic spanning a wide range of ages and gender identities. It’s been running since 2004, with 19 distinct “seasons” or “series” (of around 50 episodes each) having aired annually since then, often with a unique “theme” or “aesthetic” for each.

The currently airing series is Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure (also known by its untranslated name Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure). Previously aired series include the following, sorted by debut year:

(2004-2005) Futari wa Pretty Cure
(2005-2006) Futuri wa Pretty Cure Max Heart (sequel series to Futari wa Pretty Cure)
(2006-2007) Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star
(2007-2008) Yes! Pretty Cure 5
(2008-2009) Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo! (sequel series to Yes! Pretty Cure 5)
(2009-2010) Fresh Pretty Cure!
(2010-2011) Heartcatch Pretty Cure!
(2011-2012) Suite Pretty Cure♪
(2012-2013) Smile Pretty Cure!
(2013-2014) Doki Doki! Pretty Cure
(2014-2015) Happiness Charge Pretty Cure!
(2015-2016) Go! Princess Pretty Cure
(2016-2017) Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure!
(2017-2018) KiraKira☆Pretty Cure A La Mode
(2018-2019) HUGtto! Pretty Cure
(2019-2020) Star☆Twinkle Pretty Cure
(2020-2021) Healin’ Good♡Pretty Cure
(2021-2022) Tropical-Rouge Pretty Cure
(2022-2023) Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure


With the exception of the aforementioned sequel series and their predecessors, each series takes place more or less in their own continuity.

The overwhelming majority of the series has only been made officially available in Japan, although a small handful have been released in the West on Crunchyroll and Netflix. The former currently has Futari wa Pretty Cure (re-titled simply Pretty Cure), KiraKira☆Pretty Cure A La Mode, Healin’ Good♡Pretty Cure, Tropical-Rouge Pretty Cure, Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure, and Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure subbed, with the latter being available simulcast alongside its original Japanese broadcast. The latter has Smile Pretty Cure! and Doki Doki! Pretty Cure dubbed and localized as Glitter Force and Glitter Force Doki Doki respectively, albeit with significant changes in scripting and presentation compared to the originals (comparable to, say, a typical 4Kids dub from the late 90s/early 2000s).

Forum rules apply as always, of course. And for anything that might constitute a spoiler for newcomers, please remember to use discretion with spoiler tags and such; we wouldn’t want to ruin any of the many surprises that this franchise has in store for anyone!

With all of that said, feel free to start the conversation below!
 
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I wouldn't really consider myself a fan of the series, but I do have some comments about the series...
I've only seen Star☆Twinkle PreCure and Healin' Good♥PreCure... One thing I absolutely love about the series are the aesthetics... It is just so colourful! That is what captured my attention when I decided to see Star☆Twinkle. Maybe it is an unpopular opinion, but I much preferred Star☆Twinkle. The Cures have much deeper backstories than in Healin' Good♥, and it had less a focus on school life I felt... My favourite Cure is Cure Milky! Green seems to be an uncommon colour for Cures, and Lala is too cute!

What I didn't like about the 2 series I've seen is how slow moving it is... It is too episodic at parts though I know most shows targeted at children are meant to be episodic... Then, the plot finally starts coming together towards the end and far too quickly... Also, the image songs and insert songs of the series are good! I liked 愛の力 (ai no chikara) from Doki Doki! PreCure, ミライノキミへ (mirai no kimi e) from Fresh PreCure, and Prism Rainbow Heart (Cure Cosmo's image song)...
 
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Well, the first episode of Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure just dropped earlier tonight. And as the first time that I’m watching a Precure series live as it airs, I’m actually kind of excited, haha. I’d figure that I’d use this space to detail my thoughts on everything! I’ll keep them in spoiler tags for those with wandering eyes who have yet to see it; click below to read!
Well, not much really happened so far, really other than setting up the premise. But that’s clearly what this episode is meant to do! What’s here shows promise, I think, and I enjoyed the episode overall. I actually kind of liked how it focused on setup and while leaving some mysteries up in the air, and boy, there are many. Namely:
  • Exactly who the hell is Sora anyway? Who’s the giant talking bird that she’s allied with? And where does she even come from? Is she a resident of the kingdom whose princess she’s trying to save here, or does she come from some other place that we don’t know about yet?
  • What is this kingdom, exactly? I don’t think we even get a name for it in-episode (a stark contrast to Delicious Party, which made damn sure that there were subtitles for anyone and everything that showed up on-screen, for better or worse).
  • Other than the obvious (power, duh!), what do the villains want with Princess Elle? Is there something particularly special about how her powers work, and how do they tie to how Sora was able to become Cure Sky? It seems like she might’ve had a hand in that…
Of course, I’ll look forward to them providing satisfying answers to said mysteries in a reasonably timely fashion. In the meantime, what did I think about how things went down right now? Well, some things that I liked include:
  • Sora being a badass even before becoming a Cure, or at least looking the part with all of that parkour and flipping around and stuff. Not that it helped her much against the Ranborg, unsurprisingly, but the girl’s got guts for sure! Definitely living up to the whole “hero” theme from the very start here.
  • Kabaton being a relatively competent villain, at least against the not-particularly-powerful people in his way. For all of the evil he’s clearly capable of, though, he’s also clearly on the sillier side of the villainy scale (especially with the weapons of mass disgusting he pulls on Sora early on; eww). We’ll see if he can keep up this sense of menace if he ends up returning multiple times in a row.
  • Princess Elle not being a complete brat (not yet, at least), and possibly even being useful if she was indeed responsible for providing Sora with the means to become Cure Sky.
  • The “Fish out of water”/“culture clash” storyline that we seem to be heading towards, with Sora’s world having its own separate script — as seen in her notebook — being a nice touch in this direction (even if both Sora and Mashiro being able to understand each other instantly is just too easy, haha, even as I completely understand why they would do it like that).
  • The existence of the aforementioned notebook, which shows us that Sora has dreams, and makes us feel sorry for her when we see those dreams literally shredded to pieces before her very eyes. Said dreams might seem a bit… weird considering that her physical prowess seems to begin and end with her parkour skills, but then true heroes rarely think or act like regular people, do they? It also really helps justify Sora becoming a Cure, I think, beyond her simply being an adolescent girl with spunk so of course she becomes one; instead, it’s clear that she’s lived and breathed the role of a hero long before receiving any fancy powers to help her. Other Precure series have played with this idea, but I think that it’s telegraphed particularly nicely and naturally here.
  • A very solid and epic transformation sequence for Cure Sky, with as much sparkle, style, and CGI as one could ask for in modern Precure. Oh, and of course the transformation items, which many a Japanese parent will surely be buying very, very soon for their children, haha. (And for some of them, maybe even one for themselves…)
  • The opening sequence, which is oh-so-very fittingly spirited and engaging for the “hero” theme and is the kind that I’d happily leave the fast forward button alone for every episode. More so for the music than the actual visuals, but the latter is pretty solid, too!
  • The requisite Precure dance ending sequence, which seems a lot more technically accomplished than those from previous series and is overall just really pretty to look at, on top of being inexplicably, infectiously kawaii as usual. I liked said visuals more than the music, which is fine, but it didn’t leave much of an impression on me versus the surprise I got from its Delicious Party equivalent. Perhaps future listens will grow on me; who knows?
Things that I didn’t like or so much or that I’m ambivalent about include:
  • Transforming objects into enemies again!? That brought me back to Futari wa, and not in a good way, haha. I wonder if they did that on purpose… anniversary season, right? Hopefully they’ll get a creative streak going with future Ranborgs, or at least make them so gloriously ridiculous that they circle back into awesome somehow.
  • We don’t really know much about Mashiro yet, do we? That’s not really a problem, since this is clearly Sora’s episode here, but it does have the side effect of making her the least interesting character here by a mile (incidentally, running is pretty much the only useful thing that she does here). Hopefully next week’s episode makes up for that, and that it won’t be too long before we see her become Cure Prism (given the show’s apparent two-Cure focus, I have high hopes).
On a final note, it’s going to be very interesting to see how my impression of things will be affected by the fact that I’ll be waiting week after week for each new episode versus being able to watch two or three of them in a row whenever I want. I imagine that this new way of watching will be much less forgiving to bad or boring episodes, so I’m hoping that things will go well enough for this series that it won’t be a chore to watch in ways that aren’t easily mitigated by just loading another episode up.

I think that’s about all I have. Not much more to say than… looking forward to the next!
 
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