Favorite Pretty Cure

Favorite Pretty Cure

“Our Miracle!”

Those of you who have read my previous blog, Thoughts on Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure, should already know by now that I have mixed feelings about the season, though I lean more towards the negative side of the spectrum (if you haven’t already, go and check it out; I can wait). But for those who haven’t read it yet, here’s the TL;DR version: I thought that Mahou Tsukai had the potential to be a really great season but it ended up botching itself because of predictable battles, weak villains, a story that was divided up into two parts that didn’t really connect with each other, and main characters with little to no development. Character development is a big part of why I like certain characters more than others as showing development over time makes a character feel more well-rounded. This is especially true in Pretty Cure where one season can typically range from 47-50 episodes (that’s almost a year in real time) and so I’d be shocked if some aspects of a character didn’t change over that time. Of course despite that, I feel that in the instance where a character is entertaining to watch, I can overlook any faults in their character because I’m having more fun watching their antics than looking at their character.

And this is where someone like Cure Miracle falls flat on her face.

Magical Miracle

I’m going to be completely honest here: I’m not a fan of Cure Miracle. Despite being the most recent Cure to don the color pink (Cure Whip notwithstanding) and having quite the fanbase in Japan, I know I probably just angered a lot of people for putting Miracle dead last. It’s not that I despise her with every fiber of my body; I just have a really hard time finding things to like about her. Of course, I can say the same thing for Mahou Tsukai as a whole as I found that the season only fulfilled the bare minimum of the standards set by previous installments in the franchise, but Miracle is an especially egregious example as not only were most of the things she has going for her have either: a) been done already, or b) been done better, but I didn’t even find her entertaining.

Mirai Asahina is a thirteen year old girl who is about to enter her second year in middle school when she stumbles across a magician by the name of Liko and becomes Cure Miracle. Par the course for the standard issue Pretty Cure main protagonist, Mirai is cheerful, energetic, and always finds excitement over anything she deems interesting (which, considering her optimistic outlook on life, amounts to a lot of things). She’s a total sweetheart who can make friends easily and practically exudes enthusiasm, so much so that it’s infectious; if she’s excited about something, chances are other characters are going to follow soon after. Mirai also turns out to be a decent magician and eventually becomes a sort of bridge between the Magic and No Magic Worlds, connecting her friends in the respective worlds with her sprightly and optimistic attitude. She also has a teddy bear named Mofurun that she absolutely adores.

That’s pretty much the gist of her character right there, and it unfortunately doesn’t get any more interesting from there in the main series. Mirai follows the precedents set by previous main characters by being a whimsical, naive, excitable Genki Girl and that’s that. Yes, she ends up traveling between two different worlds and learns some cool magic tricks and that’s all fine and dandy, but compared to other characters in the same universe, she’s very flat in her characterization and stays virtually the same from beginning to end. Now as I mentioned above, lacking development doesn’t always have to be a bad thing so long as the character can keep me entertained and Pretty Cure has shown time and time again that they can create some very entertaining characters, but the problem is that Mirai fails to do even that. Never mind that Mahou Tsukai already has trouble keeping things fresh and interesting if the battles and villains are any indication, but of the three Cures in the season, Mirai gets the short end of the stick. Her overabundant cheerfulness would have been seen as a good thing if it wasn’t the only thing she had going for her in the first place, and her antics get really old really quickly. You like speeches about FRIENDSHIP and wanting to stay together forever? Well I hope you do, because Mirai coughs one up every other episode or so. She soon goes from being a character the audience is trying to project themselves into to immerse themselves in the story to becoming that one character who’s there for little reason and won’t shut up.

Be prepared to see a lot of this expression in particular

I often find that a character with a one-note personality like her fits better into the role of a side character and yet the show constantly reminds us that she’s still supposed to be the main character, the dominant leader of the group in a similar vein to Cure Black. Her unwavering spirit does help rally her teammates in tight situations and she easily boosts the confidence of others with her personality, but it’s something that her predecessors have done before and, in a season like Mahou Tsukai that lost my interest midway through, it doesn’t make her any better.

Fortunately for Mirai, she does happen to have two silver linings. The first is her characterization in the movie. In it, she gains some much-needed attention as the film centers around her and Mofurun and the bond that the two share. Mirai becomes much more emotive in the movie, shares some of her own issues regarding her having no wish she wants fulfilled or what dream she wants to pursue, and proves that she will always try to save her friends if they’re in a tight spot. It’s a far cry from how she acted in the main season, but it’s definitely something that Mirai sorely needed to at least give her some depth. The second is in the epilogue of the series where a grown-up Mirai is living life in the No-Magic World without her friends from the Magic World. You really start to feel for this girl as despite her wishing to stay together with her new friends in every other part of the season, she is ultimately denied that chance and ends up spending the majority of her life without them. Oh, it’s a classic Disney ending and everything goes back to normal at the end, but it was one of the few instances where I actually started to care for Mirai and I admit the scene where she tries in vain to cast one last magic spell to see her friends again tugged at my heartstrings. But sadly, it wasn’t enough to better my opinion of her.

I know that I’m just talking about how much I don’t find the character interesting and I apologize if I did offend any fans of Mirai, but there really is very little I see in this character and anything she did others simply did it better. There’s not much else to say other than Mirai is very weak in comparison to her predecessors and even her own teammates, and this lack of any substance quickly did away with any interest in her which is why she’s this low.

At the very least she’s voiced by Rie Takahashi, who also voiced the one and only Megumin from Konosuba. I guess all those explosions in Ruby form make sense now.

"EXPLOSION!"

“The Big Love Spreading Throughout the World!”

Love comes in many forms. You’ve got familial love, love between friends, unconditional love, sexual love, love for food, etc. And then you’ve got what’s called “tough love,” and Cure Lovely is someone who manages to take that to its literal extremes.

"Shiawase Happiness!"

Once again, I decided to place another lead Cure near the bottom of the list. Originally, Lovely was going to be at the absolute bottom but of course things changed after finishing Mahou Tsukai. Things like this are initially why I was hesitant at first to make this list as Lovely is adored by the Japanese if the recent popularity polls are any indication and most Western fans hated a certain other lead Cure more. But with this and the previous segment, I might as well take this opportunity to make one statement clear: I’m not like most fans.

Megumi Aino is an upbeat and energetic girl who absolutely oozes happiness. Remember the title Happiness Charge Pretty Cure? Yeah, Megumi’s pretty much the embodiment of that. Her openness allows her to make fast friends with a lot of people and it’s this friendliness that allows her partner Hime to break out of her shell. In fact, she’s gone on record saying that she’s in love with love itself, and the world can use several more pounds of it. That’s practically the gist of her character right there, but she’s by no means a flat character, as she does develop over the course of the series on what love actually means and what it means to love. Of course, the way it gets shown in practice is where things fall apart.

Let me address a problem I have about Happiness Charge: each character has a unique trait that distinguishes that character from the rest, but the writers stress it to ridiculous lengths to the point where it’s a bit cringeworthy. The most noteworthy examples are the villains: Namakeruda and his laziness, Oresky and his obsession with being number one, Hoshiiwa and her selfishness, and the Bigger Bad’s tendency to say “love is bad and hate is good” every five minutes. Megumi’s trait, as previously stated, is her love for love itself. She constantly talks about love and happiness and isn’t intent on stopping anytime soon. Some find this side of her to be endearing and even a bit funny, and I can certainly see the charm in that, but I also got bored of her antics very quickly and she eventually became just another character who was just there for little reason except not shutting up. However, what really kills it for me is the irony in all of this: despite being a literal preacher of love, she herself doesn’t quite understand it, and this really comes out in one of the worst things to come out of Happiness Charge: the romance plot. Basically, she starts to display affection for Blue, one of the main allies of the Cures, who’s in love with someone else (who happens to be the main “villain” for all but the final arc of the show), and one of Lovely’s friends, Seiji, shows feelings towards her that goes beyond simply “childhood friends who grew up like siblings.” It wouldn’t be too bad normally, but the romance plot completely overrides the latter half of the show, completely forgetting about its other characters and their developments for something else entirely. And because Lovely doesn’t understand love despite her name, everything starts unraveling. Having a dense character put into a love triangle is about as exciting as every harem anime with a typical dense male protagonist, and that’s not even getting into some of the other issues like how Blue says that “Pretty Cures can’t fall in love” and he’s a hypocrite himself. Lovely does manage to figure out everything and makes things work out in the end, but when that happens it’s already the final episode, and by then I had had enough.

So yeah, Cure Lovely is a good character at heart but she’s not great in my book. In my opinion, she should have remained as she had in the beginning of the show: someone who supports others with her one-note personality and optimism rather than being an actual protagonist. Because as many animes have shown us, having a one-dimensional character as the main protagonist isn’t always a good idea, even more so if it’s a character with no idea what love is who’s thrust into lazily written material.

Though with all that said? This girl gets some pretty freaking awesome scenes.

"SHORYUKEN!"

While Cure Lovely (in my opinion, at least) may not be the most deserving of all of the awesome scenes she stars in, that doesn’t change the fact that these scenes are still awesome. Seriously, name another Cure who gets to bash an enemy using the bodies of other enemies, stop a giant Monster of the Week with just a shield and sheer force of will, make playing baseball look awesome, or, most impressively, KICK A SAIARK INTO SPACE THEN PROCEEDING TO FLY AFTER IT AND SMACK IT BACK DOWN FROM THE STRATOSPHERE. WITHOUT POWER UPS. And that’s not even counting the capabilities of her main weapon.

The Love PreBrace is honestly one of my favorite weapons in the entire franchise (and that’s saying something). On the surface, it’s just a bracelet with some fancy jewels on it that’s used simply for activating a finisher. However, the real kicker with this thing is that the powers it has are limited to the imagination of its wielder, meaning that the potential of this thing is endless. It’s doesn’t become a question of what it does, but what it can do. Think of Green Lantern’s ring only shaped into a bracelet for 14-year-old girls to use. And it’s no less deadly. Lovely has access to basic energy projectiles and a shield for protection, but then you have things like a rocket punch as big as her body, an energy sword, and laser beams that come out of her eyes. Yes. She shoots laser beams from her eyes.

Cyclops would be proud

On top of this, she gets access to the Power of Flight right from the beginning (in a contrast to previous seasons where the Cures had to earn that ability through Mid-Season Upgrades), meaning that she can fight brutally both on land and in the air. Couple that with some alternate forms to turn into to damage enemies even further, and you have a pretty brutal combatant. I may complain about her as a character a lot, but even I can’t deny that Cure Lovely is without a doubt one of the greatest, meanest, pinkest fighting machines in the history of the franchise. Just goes to show that love can be very tough indeed.

Twinkling, Shining, Light of the Future!”

Time for another Cure that everyone in the Japanese fandom seems to love a lot. From one lead Cure to another, here’s Miyuki Hoshizora, a.k.a. Cure Happy.

A Glow in Your Heart

I can probably guess what you’re thinking: “You really have a thing against the lead Cures, don’t you?” Well, yes and no. I have a love-it-or-hate-it relationship when it comes to lead Cures. I either like them a lot or hardly at all, and the problem with this stems from the fact that it’s very difficult to create a solid lead with the character archetype most lead Cures possess: that is, the loveable idiot with a positive outlook on life. Most of the time a character of this archetype can come across as loud and annoying and if there aren’t subversions to their optimism every now and then I quickly lose interest in the character. That is to say, if their entire character is centered around them being a Genki Girl and nothing else, it gets old very quickly. Of course, I believe this also hinges on the nature of the show, and a loveable idiot in a light-hearted show can make things very entertaining. Cure Happy is one such example.

Miyuki Hoshizora is best described as “Adorkable”. As the Spiritual Successor to Cure Dream, Miyuki is about as energetic and optimistic as she is a klutz, though she takes the last part way past number eleven (see Episode 13 for more). This makes her one of the show’s most prominent comic relief characters despite her being the main protagonist, and it’s great. Some of the most memorable moments of Smile were courtesy of this girl, from getting an endless string of bad luck (long story), switching bodies with the resident mascot (longer story), and turning into a giant robot complete with a rocket punch (even longer story).