Anime Review: Pretty Cure

Nagisa Misumi and Honoka Yukishiro couldn't be more different. Nagisa is sporty and Honoka bookish, and while they attend the same school, they have very little in common - until one day, a shower of shooting stars brings two very unlikely visitors into their lives: Mipple and Mepple, refugees from the Garden of Light, which has been conquered by Darkness. Endowed with new and startling powers, Nagisa and Honoka become Cure Black and Cure White, magical defenders of the light - together, they are Pretty Cure.

(Source: ANN)

Pretty Cure Genres: Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy, Mahou Shoujo

Pretty Cure Synonyms:

Pretty Cure Studios: Toei Animation,

Pretty Cure Review

A far too in depth look at the most underrated anime of all time. No seriously, hear me out this time.

If for some reason all your doing is coming to this review for a recommendation of whether or not you should watch Futari wa Precure, then yes. Go watch it. Right now. I don't even care if you think it looks like a stupid lighthearted magical girl anime (which it absolutely is). I can honestly say that it is the most underrated series of anything I've ever seen ever, and that the rest of this review will mostly just be analyzing and dissecting the characters and monster of the week tropes ect.

So you have my permission to stop reading now and just go watch the anime (preferably the English dub). I seriously don't mind waiting for you to come back later.

But seriously GO WATCH IT.

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I got into anime 6 years ago now when I has 12. I started off with the usual stuff. Naruto, bleach, yugioh, that kind of stuff. As a hopeful 12 year old I of course did what anyone else in my situation would do. I flicked through some TV channels in the hopes of finding some anime to watch. Being a beginner to anime, I was only really aware of what I know know as long-running shonen battle series' so I certainly wasn't expecting to run into a shoujo magical girl anime. Or more specifically, two of them. I live in the UK and as such there used to exist a channel here called POPgirl in the UK. Most people can predict exactly what I'm about to say, but other than reruns of mediocre Disney style sitcoms, popgirl also aired the two magical girl anime mew mew power and pretty cure or as they are more commonly known, Tokyo mew mew and futari wa precure. I even remember the episode of precure that was airing when I happened to land on it after switching channels, it was the one where Nagisa jumps into a river to save a drowning bear only to realize that she herself can't swim.

I should have changed the channel. It was a generic girly show that should have been of no interest of me, but I'm really glad I didn't. By the end of the episode I found myself surprised. The episode was actually really entertaining. The characters interesting and the fight far better than it should have been compared to my very little experience with sailor moon in the past. I brought up tokyo mew mew being aired with it and that's what made me know futari wa precure was special. You see, at first I just assumed that I had grown a guilty pleasure for magical girls, but then when I thought about tokyo mew mew and how mediocre and forgettable it was, I knew that it must have been something about futari wa specifically that I was so fascinated by. I can hear you screaming nostalgia at me, but once again, I liked futari wa this much when I first watched it AND I didn't feel that anything was special about mew mew, which I originally watched at the same time as futari wa.

Enough of this backstory nonsense, onto some thoughts on the anime itself.

The Story:

The over-arching story is simple. But it works massively in futari wa's favor. With monster of the week shows like futari wa it doesn't matter what the long running plot is. It's what you do in-between the instances of plot and the changes that you bring to the genre that matter. Especially since this is the first series of a massive franchise, you've got to keep the original simple and just present the main ideas of your franchise and what makes it stand apart from say, tokyo mew mew, sailor moon and other similar shows like super sentai and kamen rider. So basically you don't need to have an overly complicated plot for the first series unless the series forte is overly complicated plots.

Before we go further we need to establish what it truly is that it is that precure does different to similar franchises, or at least what futari wa says it is. And that would clearly be that the magical girls actually fight their opponent rather than just running around, getting caught and then being reminded by male love interest (or cat) that they have a 1 hit kill attack. However there is a second thing and that second thing is the focus on characters, but we'll get to that in due time as there is a lot to say regarding the subject of characters.

As the first series in a franchise, futari wa precure needs to build up a mythos. What is mythos? Mythos is a set of new words and phrases invented specifically for that franchise that the marketing team hope that the general audience use in eveyday use. An example of this would be the franchise power rangers that coined the term "morpher" as in that thing that the characters use to transform with. Shows like sentai and kamen rider had the morphers before power rangers, but power rangers was the one to give a name that actually caught one (who actually calls them a henshin device?). Futari wa attempted this too with it's names for the universes. The garden of light, the dark zone and the garden of rainbows. The disappointing thing is that none of the series' (to my knowledge) past max heart actually use any of this mythos. They just call earth "Earth" and not the garden of rainbows which breaks continuity since mipple and mepple say that every dimension calls earth the garden of rainbows.

Back onto the story, the best part of the simple story is the way it's told and how much time is left for character development in every single episode. The overall story is told to us slowly over time by mipple and mepple and not just frontloaded during the first few minutes of the first episode. The first episode is just used to introduce us to the characters and get the audience interested enough to want to watch more the series. It's only once episode 2 starts that we actually learn anything about the characters (other than obvious information such as honoka being smart and nagisa being into sports.) and the actual plot with the prism stones and mipple and mepple's backstory. Then in later episodes we learn even more like the existence of the prism hopeish and the painter that used to own mipple.

Futari wa precure takes a lot of magical girl (or anime in general) tropes and pulls a clever spin on them that are genuinely subtle and well executed. Why aren't the characters attacked by the villain during the massively long transformation sequence? Well it shows a light that is created by the morphers and you see pishard cover his eyes as if the light is blinding him. Show don't tell. Even better though, there's even more to it than that. Yeah. Not only do the morphers expel light upon activation, but also heat. Heat that can burn someone alive if they come too close to it, so even if pishard didn't care about his eyes, he would still be burned alive if he tried anything. Wow, sometimes even I'm impressed after all these years by the attention to detail. Ok, so what about the catchphrases and slogans that the magical girls call out and the characters blank expressions during the transformation? Well Nagisa even says herself that the morpher forced her to do it. Remember the previous sentence I typed out though, there yet another clever twist to it that I'll come to later. I can't say too much more about the plot and structure of the show without going into the characters first, so please bare with me as I attempt to find a decent way of structuring this write up.

The characters:

Where do I even start with the characters? Well I'll talk a little about the structure of the show and how it helps the characters and then follow it by talking about some of the more standout characters in more detail.

Because of the loose story that keeps coming back every few episodes (see also: Sense of progression) and the collection of prism stones, the structure, villains ect ect. All of this culminates with a show with a lot of down time and scenes with characters just chilling out and having some small talk. This and the series only having two magical girls is the best thing the show has ever done. Why? It means that there is a massive focus on characters, their personalities, their interactions, their everyday lives, and everything else that can be associated with that kind of thing. From my point of view, the character focused and slice of life elements of futari wa precure are actually more important that the action sequences a million fold. Many shows and anime before have taken ordinary people and put them in life (and even world) threatening situations that they have to fight their way out of, but futari wa precure is the first to truly feel like it. There's so much time spent on menial tasks like winning a sports game, falling out, perusing a crush, putting on a play and even littler tasks than that, so that when a villain enters the fray and things go down it feels purposely juxtaposed and feels like cure black and white are really normal people that are trying their hardest to save people. There's things at stake and you truly want them to win. It's not just a case of a bunch of personality-less characters that don't even care about the fight or the villain that always win with zero struggle.

Nagisa:

Nagisa is the main character of the series. You see most of the series from her point of view and it's assumed that she's the leader of precure even though they don't really need a leader since they're a duo, not a team. She's into sports and usually acts like a klutz, but my favorite thing about her is her reaction to getting her precure powers. She doesn't feel good enough to get the powers. She talks about how she doesn't deserve the powers since she can barely even do her homework on time let alone save peoples lives. She takes the powers 100% serious when she's transformed witch juxtaposes with her lighthearted mood the rest of the time. She looks up to Honoka and see's Honoka as perfect and better than herself in every way. She envies her witch leads to their fallout early in the series. For a duo like this to work, they need to see each other as equals. She has a crush on a guy names Fuji P, but that relationship is mainly used for jokes and as a catalyst to progress the characters and create situations, but it does have enough nice and slow moments for it to be worth it overall, even if it is a little cliched.

Honoka:

Otherwise known as the best character in anything ever. Where do I even start? In episode 1 we see her from Nagisa's point of view as the perfect person. She's smart, she's rich, she's kind, she's selfless. But it's not until later that she truly shines and we learn more. She's not a flawless mary-sue and is actually kind of envious of Nagisa. She has bad anger problems and blows her top more than once. She's not even remotely athletic and can't quite control her emotions not matter how hard she tries. She reacts to getting her powers with positivity and thinks the whole superhero thing is really cool (she's such a genuine nerd) and doesn't quite understand what she's getting into when becoming a cure. She tries her hardest to be nice and get along with everyone but she does have to deal with some pretty big problems deep down, like her parents always being away and her relationship with Kiriya. Her relationship with Kiriya is almost the exact opposite of Nagisa and Fuji P. It's not used for jokes. It's does actually have an arc with an end. Kiriya and Honoka bring out the best and worst of each other with their arguments and ideals. They don't quite understand each others problems but still try to help each other anyway.

Despite trying to suppress her emotions, she isn't afraid to tell someone off and put them in their place. Got stuck in a bank robbery on your birthday? Why don't you just yell at them and establish dominance. Show them who's boss and don't play the poor victim. The guy you have a crush on just horribly reject your competition in the love triangle? Yell at him and tell him that he was too harsh to her even though she's your only competition.

It's absolutely fascinating to she how she reacts to things.

The animation:

I remember for the longest time not careing about the animation. I thought that it was serviceable but nothing spectacular. But then I put two things into consideration. 1)This anime aired in 2004 2)This was animated by Toei.

If you know anything about animation, then you know that Toei are garbage when it comes to animation and the more recent the anime, the worse the animation by toei. They do have some strong anime when it comes to animation like early one piece and dragonball, but over time they've gotten lazier and lazier using repeated animation and excess CGI. I know that some people don't mind CGI, but it's the absolute bane of my existence and just looks bad when used in anime.

But I hear your cries "Futari wa does include CGI! The queen of light is almost entirely CGI!" Fine then, I wasn't going to give my thoughts on this specific use of CGI since it's far too overcomplicated and honestly a waste of time, but if you really are trying to find every flaw possible with this write up and don't understand that there's an exception to every rule, I'll gladly explain. I usually hate CGI when it's used only to save money. CGI models are cheaper than 2D frame by frame, but there's a reason. 2D actually looks far better (unless you're pixar, but that's pretty much the only exception) because it's so much more expensive and takes far longer to do. I'm gonna backpedal a little now because I'm terrible at structuring this write up and mention that when a character is designed they are designed with a certain art style or animation type in mind. Anime characters usually look better 2D whereas the characters in Inside Out for example are designed to look better in 3D animation because that's the style of animation they were created to be used in. Let's take Go Princess precure and assume that the characters were (just like every other character from everything ever) designed to look in one animation style. I'm going to assume 2D since we mostly see them 2D, but when they are in 3D scenes (form changes, charge up attacks ect) they look atrocious because they wearn't designed to look good. They were designed to look good in 2D and the CGI was just used to save money. Do you see where I'm coming from here? The constant switching feels juxtaposed and takes me out of my immersion.

Ok then, what about futari wa's use of CGI then? Well, to my knowledge, the CGi is only used on two characters throughout the entire series. The dark king, and the queen of light. Can you see something in common with these two characters? They are from different dimensions to the two main characters and carry an immense amount of power. The CGI is used specifically to make them juxtaposed. They are supposed to feel out of place and stand out compared to the other characters because of their power and other-worldly-ness. The anime used a simple animation technique to make us feel exactly what the two main characters feel. The characters feel that the queen of light and dark king have a strange presence to them. But what about the scene where the queen of light shrinks down to help cure black and white fight? She changes to 2D animation. Yes, I admit that she does look a little better 3D since she was designed to look good 3D, but I'll let it slide since it serves a purpose. Cure white an black no longer feel an other-worldly presence from her since she's now come down to their level and are directly helping them.

Looking back on it, it was far too much effort to explain that, but yeah, overall the animation is pretty good considering the animation company and the year it was released.

Designs:

The character designs look great. Each character looks different enough for you to be able to tell them apart. But at the same time they're not blindingly bright and colorful with bright pink obnoxious hair. It matches the tone of the show because each character looks like an actual human with how they dress and their hair design (apart from the villains but that's kinda the point the villains aren't supposed to look human.), but at the same time they do all look like different characters with real thought put into their designs. The only real repeated features is that one of the side characters has the same hair as Nagisa but it's addressed and there's a reason for it so it's fine. The costume designs just like everything else in the anime have had far too much thought put into them. For example the first time you see Honoka she's in the science class with a crowd around her yet she stands out because she's the only one wearing a lab coat. In an instant we know that shes the smartest one there, one of the main characters and should be the main focus of the shot. We know all those things about her just because she's wearing a coat. Show, don't tell. Same with her and Nagisa's casual wear. Honoka's civilian form is more timeless and plain, but still says a lot about her and that she doesn't care too much about trends and prefers something more timeless that wont go out of date. Whereas Nagisa's clothes look outright awful because she does care about trends and more complicated clothes, meaning that in the over a decade since it aired, her clothes did get outdated, just like Nagisa's personality. The costume designs weren't chosen to necessarily look good, but to give yet more subtle insight into the characters and what they would actually wear back in 2004. I'm willing to bet that if the series was released this year instead Honoka's clothing would look almost exactly the same whereas Nagisa would be wearing current trendy clothes.

The sound:

I'm going to talk about the dub and sub in a different category. This is exclusively for the music. There are two separate openings, the japanese opening and the english opening. Each being a completely different song. The Japanese song took a long long time to grow on me. It seemed far too generic and just not very good. It did grow on me after these 6 years, but I'm still not the biggest fan of it. But that's fine though because I love the English opening. This one really might be because of nostalgia but there's something about the more chilled out guitar focused slightly alternative rock vibe that I love. It hits the right middle ground between "saturday morning cartoon" and "song that I would legit listen to" and it never grows old. It's highly underrated and the best opening in the entire franchise. The ending theme (the english version didn't get a seperate ending theme) is pretty good. It's better than the Japanese opening but it's not often that I'll be in the mood to listen to the ending theme on it's own.

The vocal album is an alum consisting of the japanese opening and ending theme, the insert songs shining star and Darkness and some other vocal songs created specifically for futari wa precure, even if they weren't created actually used in the anime. The albums hit and miss honestly but that was to be expected considering my taste in music. Songs like Darkness are truly epic and I don't mean that lightly. Shining star get's me pumped up every time I hear it, but the rest of the album is mediocre over all. One special shoutout goes to the song "Arittake no Egao de". I really really like that one. Again though, I'm a fan of chilled out stuff so this one is great and the song from the vocal album that gets listened to the most often.

The soundtrack itself is not hit and miss though. It is entirely hit and one of my favorite soundtracks of all time. The use of violin is godlike. The character themes perfectly sum up each character. The mood given off is perfect and nostalgic. It builds up tension, it compliments calm moments, it can sound grandiose. It's just really really good. I really mean it when I say that it's one of my favorites.

The Dub:

This category wont just be looking at the english dub, but the japanese dub too.

I'm sorry but I'm going to have to be controversial here. I like the english dub more than the Japanese. I'm not the biggest fan of he Japanese voice acting but I do have a theory why. I originally watched the english dub which means that I got attached to the characters with their english voice. Whenever I saw Honoka I expected to hear her english voice, not her Japanese voice so it felt jarring when I heard these characters I already knew but with unfamiliar voices.

I do also have to say that there are some nitpicks I have with the Japanese such as the constant lesbian jokes and once again the voices not sounding right (there's no way honoka's voice is supposed to be that high pitched. It barely sounds human and kinda ruins my favorite character of all time.) The english dub on the other hand is really good. I hate it when english dubs just use the same voice actor for absolutely everything because the character sounds more like johnny yong bosh rather than Ichigo Kurosaki, if you understand what I mean, so Futari wa precures use of almost exclusively unheard of voice actors and giving them exposure is fantastic. Because these actors have been in virtually nothing before this, they have to actually try to act rather than phone it in because everything is riding on this for them and they want nothing more than to be a breakthrough. And I'm going to admit it, Michelle Molinuex is my favorite voice actor. Her voice is perfect for honoka, you can tell she's actually trying really hard, and she's an amazing singer (for all ten seconds of singing she gets anyway). The rest of the casting is great too though with no real weak or forgettable performances.