Hello there Internet mongers, after a long hibernation period that involved plenty of videogames (I am a modern Bear after all), I finally found some time to write the latest addition to my series of reviews/articles/retrospectives/cleverly disguised riddles, and this time we are going to tackle the PreCure 10th anniversary series, DokiDok- errr… I mean, Happiness Charge PreCure!!!
Worth The Watch: HappinessCharge PreCure
Well, this has been a long time in the making hasn´t it? And there´s a good reason for that: I am physically incapable of properly organizing my schedule, and more importantly, HappinessCharge (yes, it is a single word. Ask Toei) is a particularly hard series to wage. On one hand this show introduced some seriously interesting ideas that had never been done before and plenty of charming characters, but on the other the show made some seemingly baffling decisions that worked for the detriment of the show in spite of the clear amount of talent and effort put into it. That might seem like I am condemning the show right out of the gate, and while I certainly try not to, it is fair to say that while there is a lot of things within HaCha that I genuinely loved, there were also several things that did not work for me.
Before going fully into the whole review thingy, I think it is worth nothing that this is Hiroaki Shibata´s second and seemingly last produced season. Why should you care you ask? Well, unlike in western TV and movies, in the Land of the Rising sun the role of the Producer is actually quite important and is often the defining factor for the tone and development of a show, so you can usually gauge the quality of a season by looking at who´s producing it and what has that person done before.
In Shibata-san´s case, he´s been working in Toei animation for a while and he joined the PreCure franchise as a main Producer in DokiDoki, a season that while uneven, it was farily good to say the least (you can find my review of it here). I wanted to bring this up because when watching HaCha It is hard not to see how this season tries to improve or fix some of the problems DokiDoki had, but also how it ends up doing completely different mistakes. Again, I am not trying to condemn this series up front, but watching this show in the context of DokiDoki really does help to highlight some of its achievements… and a few of its problems.
Without further due, let´s get this proverbial party started.
Story
Back when I reviewed DokiDoki! PreCure I mentioned how that season had a really intricate plot that while good, it became a mess as the series progressed, something people usually overlooked due to the series strong sense of storytelling. Luckily for us HappinessCharge learned from that experience and while it still had an elaborated plot, it kept things simple by avoiding the use of high-end concepts and decided to focus instead on the drama of the characters. That is not to say that the plot of HaCha was dumb or anything, the fact that the show actually packed some surprising plot twists should speak by itself, but this series plot wasn’t nearly as ambitious as its predecesor´s.
Sadly, that does means less Dragons
The gist of the plot will be familiar if you have stuck with PreCure for the last decade or so; an evil force known as The Phantom Menace Empire has invaded and consequently conquered The Blue Sky Kingdom, an idyllic, magical realm located in an undisclosed location.
Presumably Iceland or New Zeland.
Since evil, conquering Empires are far better at conquering than they are at ruling a fictional country, the ruler of the Phantom Empire, Queen Mirage, has set her sights on planet Earth and that´s where the show actually starts; a planet under siege by the Phantom Empire whose only line of defense is, ehm, a massive army of Magical Girls.
So it’s kind of like Pacific Rim, except not at all.
This is probably one of HaCha´s biggest departures from the usual formula; the Phantom Empire is a global threat, but instead of having a single Super Hero team fighting the good fight somewhere in Japan, pretty much every country has its own PreCure team defending them against the slightly goofy threat of the Terribads. Well, at least every country with a major landmark in it.
Sucks to be Scotland.
I will admit, this is a cool idea, but sadly this ends up being nothing but a footnote in the series; beyond the set up for the story and a couple of episodes, the idea of having international Cures its forgotten most of the time and I would even argue that you could easily write off this element of the series without causing any substantial changes to the plot. Sadly, this is not much of an isolated case as much as it is a recurring thing that happens a lot during the season, the other big example of this being the aforementioned Blue Sky Kingdom.
It could also be Canada.
Having some magical kingdom figuring prominently on the plot only to be quickly forgotten is pretty much a PreCure tradition by now, which made it all the more surprising when HaCha followed up on this particular plot thread. Granted, this was mostly because of the Blue Sky Organization Kingdom connection to one specific character, but the tragedy that befell the idyllic realm and the events that followed were an important part of the show, or at least they were until the second half of the show, at which point the Blue Sky Kingdom is almost completely forgotten.
This might not seem like a surprise, as I said, this is something that PreCure does a whole lot, but in the case of the Blue Sky Kingdom the show literally dropped an important plot point for no reason whatsoever and didn´t even brought it back when it became important again; one of the climactic arcs near the end of the show takes place in the Blue Sky Kingdom, but instead of being a big fight to save the realm the show barely even acknowledges it and even when it does, we literally only got a few seconds of pictures with a small narration.
This still image is all the closure that plot point gets.
As I said, this is not an isolated problem as much as it is a recurring issue with the show; there are plenty other plot points in the show that are introduced and then forgotten about almost completely and only brought back when it’s absolutely necessary. A good example of this are the arcs of Cure Tender and Phantom Hunter, two plots that involve the characters of Cure Fortune and Cure Honey respectively but that the show only seems to acknowledge when it needs to; unlike the Blue Sky Kingdom case, these two arcs do get a proper resolution, but it feels like the show only did it because it had to and not because it wanted to. When you get down to it, each of those arcs got developed and resolved in 3 or 4 episodes each, sometimes overlapping with each other, which wouldn´t be so bad if they weren´t spread across a 50 episodes show and even then there were a few details about them that could have really used some further inquiring.
Like that graveyard dimension full of magical girls that no one seemed to miss.
You may be wondering by now, if the show hardly developed all those plot points and more, then what focused on? A heart-wrenching romantic plot of course!!
This image is deceiving in too many ways.
The second half of the show focused almost in its entirely on a love-hexagon that involved Cure Lovely, her best friend Seiji, Earth´s God Blue, Queen Mirage and occasionally Cure Honey and Cure Princess (sucks to be Cure Fortune), and while Love stories and Magical Girls are not exactly strangers to each other, HaCha´s Love Voltron suffered from a crippling case of being-terribly-written-itis. I am serious, the romance itself is so badly written that a lot of the time the only reason why we know that there’s Romance going on is because of the use of some 90´s anime romance cliché or because some character factually tells us that X is in love with Y.
And by ‘some character’ I mean ‘Cure Honey’.
I am quite aware that this romantic subplot caused a lot of people to drop the show, and while I can certainly see where they are coming from, I have to give credit where its due; the romantic plot, while a bit cliché, was actually not a bad idea and when put on paper it actually sounds great, it’s just that the execution of it falls flat due to a number of circumstances, mainly the misuse of certain characters and the show’s tendency to ‘tell us’ that characters had feelings for each other instead of showing it, which is particularly notorious because some of those characters barely even had interactions at all. Granted, one bad storyline is not exactly going to ruin a show, but dropping several good plots for the sake of it like HaCha did will.
Like say, HappinessCharge One True Pairing.
As much as I am displeased by how this particular plot turned out, the way it was developed during the final episodes actually worked really well, particularly the way in which it started to deconstruct the ideas of Love and Romance in a rather clever way. It was a bumpy road to say the least, but the goal was kind of worth it.
Overall I can say that HaCha actually had a good story that while somewhat predictable, it was still more ambitious than your average PreCure season and certainly fared better than its predecessor, it’s just that its execution had several problems; there were a few plots like the whole International Cures thing that ultimately served no purpose to the show, some great plots that the show rushed or forgot about and one central plot that while not bad, it had such a messy execution that it literally dragged down the second half of the season. For what it’s worth, I really did enjoyed the first half of the show, with the mid-season climax being the high point of the show for me, and the final arc really did managed to wrap up the show rather nicely, it’s just that the Romance and lack of proper focus on other plots hindered my enjoyment of some of the best parts of the season.
*whispers Cure Honey into the night*
Music
You know, I usually have troubles when it comes to judging the OST of these shows since I am not particularly savvy when it comes to the understanding of music. I mean sure, I get when a song is catchy, boring or just downright plain and I can easily tell if a song is genuinely great (it usually gets stuck in my head for days or was written by David Bowie). My point is, I am not by any means a Music Guru, so I usually focus on how well the Songs are integrated into the show rather than their quality, and this is precisely why I have plenty of issues with HappinessCharge´s OST.
When we really get down to it, the show doesn´t really have a bad soundtrack; the opening is good albeit a bit generic and while the two endings songs are catchy enough, they are not nearly as memorable as any of the ED songs of previous years. The rest of the OST is alright, though if I am to be honest there were only a couple of memorable songs in there, so the only real problem for me is that the way the music is integrated into the show is downright terrible.
This scene will become relevant in a moment.
Now, when I say terrible I don´t mean that the songs don´t match the tone of the show, but rather the way the music is edited into the show is really badly done. For example, there are plenty of comedic scenes in the show, like the one above, where instead of using a whimsical song to create a silly mood, there is nothing but silence in the scene with the exception of the voices of the characters and environment sounds. This happens mostly in the first quarter of the show but the result is quite noticeable; instead of having a funny, quirky scene we get an unintentionally awkward moment and there are even times where while they do use music for a scene, it starts at a rather inappropriate moment.
Not as inappropriate as this outfit but I am not going there.
Probably the best example of this (the song, not the outfit) happens during episode 30 where we get the climactic PreCure Hunter vs Cure Lovely Fight; for what it’s worth, the fight in that episode was really well done and could have been one of the defining “Heck Yeah PreCure!!” moments of the series, but the music in that scene is really badly edited; the epic victory music completely misses its cue turning an awesome battle into an awkward moment.
This kind of pummeling deserves better.
It might seem like nitpicking, but this actually exemplifies how the right timing with the right music can make or break a good action scene. The sound editing certainly does improve during the last 20 episodes or so, but this was actually a huge thing to overlook in the first place so that is not much a consolation. Still, while these problems do not happen very often, they are very noticeable.
Before I move onto things that I can actually understand, there is one more thing that is worth talking about: the idol aspect of this show.
Or AIDORU for those of you who don´t speak ‘normal’.
As you may be aware, the last few years PreCure has found itself competing with the ever so popular idol animes like Aikatsu and Love Live, because apparently people in Japan are more into little girls singing and dancing than they are into little girls punching giant monsters and I don´t know what to believe anymore. But crisis of Faith aside, this shift in popularity has caused for PreCure to try and emulate said shows in a noble attempt to get back its usual audience and their money.
You could argue that there has always been an Idol component to PreCure, after all this franchise has been doing the CGI Dance numbers since 2009, but up until now this has always been a straight Magical Girl/Super Hero show, even when there were characters that were technically or even literally idols. This season however introduced a number of elements that were very clearly taken from Idol anime, like the transforming cards gimmick that is an obvious attempt at banking on the multiple outfits rage (people rage about that, right?) and the newly implemented CGI special attacks that were an obvious analogue to Aikatsu´s CGI dance sequences.
For the record, I know literally nothing about Aikatsu.
Not only that, but the show also tried to push the musical aspect a bit more: the aforementioned CGI Dance Endings were designed to be more Idol-y and while PreCure has always been fond of insert songs, this season tried to push them into the show more prominently.
I hate the rice song almost as much as I love it.
There is nothing wrong with that, PreCure and music are a ridiculously good combo as my iTunes can testify, but this Idol Mania did led to one of the most glaring missteps of the show; the Cures Ultimate Attack, Innocent Purification.
I am 90% sure this is not what “Purifying” means.
See, the final attack of the Cures is actually a small musical number, which doesn´t make a lot of sense in the context of the show but hey, the animation is nice and the song is actually quite good, so no harm done right? Well, not quite; there´s nothing wrong with the attack itself, but the way it was integrated into the show had varying degrees of success, as in, sometimes the lead up to the final attack build up to the song nicely, but sometimes the song itself didn´t match the mood of the episode which could be rather jarring.
Jarringness in PreCure? No way.
Granted, this was not exactly a capital sin, but it did add to the uneven quality of the show; sometimes the song worked great within the episode, and sometimes it felt completely out of place. This is kind of a shame because the music in HaCha is certainly not bad, hell, some of the songs are pretty damn good, but the show not always made good use of its music, and while there are certainly cases where both music and show reach a perfect harmony, those moments are few and far between.
Let no day go by without discussing ‘Yuuki Wa Umarero Basho’.
I will say that I did enjoyed the music on HaCha quite a bit, most of the OST is quite unremarkable but the insert songs do make up for it, unfortunately the show didn´t always made the best use of what it had, which again, adds to the uneven quality of the show; all the right elements are there, but the execution leaves you wanting for more.
Except for the rice song. Someone please make it stop.
Animation
I usually try not to be too severe when it comes to animation in PreCure, this is, after all, a show aimed at little girls produced on a limited budget, so using my adult cynicism to judge it would just not be right.
Incredibly satisfactory? Yes, but still not right.
My point is, when it comes to PreCure a certain level of wonky animations is to be expected, more so than with other anime that air during the prime time sloth or are produced by dedicated studios, so when an episode of this series has subpar animation we kind of accept it and move on with our lives.
Unless it was animated by Hoshino or Kawano, because Jesus Christ.
That doesn’t meant that it is A-Ok for PreCure to look bad, even kids have standards after all, so it is reassuring to know most animation directors try to find workarounds to still deliver a quality show; some like Toshie Kawamura use animation tricks and clever use of stock footage to save the budget for where it’s needed, others like Yoshihiko Umakoshi use a stylized animation design that make animation easier ensuring consistent quality, and some merely try to cut corners in some episodes so they can save budget for the moments when good animation its most important.
Pictured: Most Important.
Still, sometimes the stars align in such a way that even the most earnest of intentions cannot avoid a complete disaster, which incidentally brings me to HappinessCharge animation.
As I am sure you have noticed, HappinessCharge PreCure, the franchise 10th anniversary series, is very much based on HeartCatch PreCure, arguably one of the most successful PreCure seasons ever. Given that the fine gentlemen at Toei were clearly trying to emulate the success of that season, they went the extra mile (as far as money could allow) and even brought back some of its staff, including the main director.
So you might be wondering, having the extra budget of an anniversary season and an experienced staff to animate the show, what could possibly go wrong with the animation?
Hint: The answer is not Ninjas.
The answers is (suprisingly) the series designs. See, in an effort to further be like HeartCatch the staff of HaCha chose to use a stylized animation design, a decision that while makes sense it had an unintended side effect: the designs for the show make everything look terrible and bad.
So you could say they look…Terribad!
To be fair this is not anyone’s fault, the particular animation style on HaCha looks good when it’s just still images like in storyboards and the such, but the moment you try to animate it everything starts to look odd even when there’s clearly budget available for the episode. I would even argue that the episodes that had some extra budget still only manage to look okay for the most.
Funnily enough, this is a problem that the staff figured out early on in the show and they did tried their best to fix it, hell, they even brought famed anime director Yamauchi Shigeyasu for a pivotal episode.
You know which one.
Sadly, the only real solution would have been to completely overhaul the entire animation style of the show, something that was simply not possible, but by the gods they did try; during episode 43, one of the most important episodes of the story, they actually completely changed the style of the animation for one fight and what do you know, it looked great even if it didn’t looked like HaCha at all.
This is the same character. Seriously.
I think the biggest testament to how troublesome the animation style of the show could be is the yearly movie for the show; as anyone familiar with the series can tell you, the movie looks damn amazing, and let it be known that I don’t use the word ‘damn’ lightly. It is not uncommon movies to have a slightly higher than average budget so they can look good, but due to a series wacky situations (i.e. bad toy sales) this movie actually had a relatively low budget, lower than the one of the DokiDoki PreCure movie at least, and yet this movie manages to look great due to a simple reason: they used a completely different animation style.
The liberal use of Funassi and lasers also helped.
In spite of everything I said, I do not think that HaCha was badly animated, it’s just that it took a lot of effort and money to make a regular episode look good and even then the character models had a lackluster look to them, not to mention that whenever the animation quality dropped even slightly it was painfully obvious. At its best, HaCha looked okay but rarely as good as some of its predecessors (and successor), and at its worst the show became a game to guess which character was off model the most.
A game where everyone loses.
Characters
Talking about the main characters of a franchise like PreCure is always an interesting endeavor, mainly because, unlike other similar Toei properties, the sales on PreCure do not rely solely on toys but also on the side merchandise like clothes and phone accessories that are based on said characters, and as such it is important for the franchise to make them memorable so that the audience can relate to them and build a fandom around them.
Now, how did this picture get in here?
I mention this because I needed a good way to start this section AND because I think that HaCha actually introduced one of the most interesting groups of protagonists that we’ve had in while. I would even argue that the main Cures of HaCha could have easily been more memorable than those of DokiDoki and Smile, but in what is becoming a common theme on this article, the show somehow managed to mishandle its main protagonists in spite of having some really solid character concepts.
And the miracle that is Cure Honey.
Part of what makes this particular cast so interesting is the fact that while some characters are exactly what you would expect from PreCure, others are a complete subversion of the norm, the best example being Happiness Charge PreCure main protagonist: Shirayuki Hime AKA Cure Princess.
Spoilers: that’s not her real name.
This is probably one of the most fascinating things about HaCha; as I’ve said plenty of times already, HaCha is heavily based on HeartCatch PreCure, a season that is quite famous for its inversion of the usual Magical Girl Formula: instead of having a happy-go-lucky main pink protagonist and her down-to-earth blue partner, HeartCatch introduced the idea of a shy, introverted pink protagonist and whatever the hell Cure Marine was.
She’s like a Cartoon inside a Cartoon.
Instead of blatantly copying that successful formula, HaCha introduced a spin in the Magical Girl conundrum yet again; this time the main protagonist was also the shy, socially anxious girl while the Force of Nature that she partnered with occupied the second place, except that this time Blue took the central spot while Pink was the friend who provided emotional support and bludgeoned things on a regular basis.
You should look forward to the ‘Battles’ section.
So basically, it was Cure Princess who became the protagonist whom we followed as the battle against the Phantom Empire developed, and I have to say that this was arguably one of the best parts of the show since Hime (yes, there’s a pun there) was actually a fascinating character by herself; as it is revealed during the second quarter of the show, she actually played a very important yet unintentional role in the invasion of the Phantom Empire and the Fall of the Blue Sky Kingdom, making her indirectly responsible for the destruction of her home and the imprisonment of her parents.
Yes, there is an episode about it.
The fact that such an insecure girl had to carry such a massive guilt and still stood up to fight against the Phantom Empire made for some great character development, and even if that weren’t good enough this actually made for one fascinating relationship with another main character: the obligatory Cure with a sad backstory, Cure Fortune.
Why, of course she is purple.
Iona Hikawa is actually one of the first characters introduced into the show (second only to Hime) but she only joins the team around the midpoint of the series, the main reason being that she hates Cure Princess’ guts; unlike every other Cure in this series who got her powers from God (literally), Iona inherited her powers from her older Sister, Cure Tender, who fell to the Phantom Empire before the beginning of the story, and since the whole “Phantom Empire’s Invasion of Earth” thing was technically Princess’s fault, Fortune/Iona refuses to acknowledge her efforts as a Cure and only occasionally helps her out of obligation.
Tsun Tsun Dere Dere.
I’ve got to say, Cure Fortune is probably one of the most unique characters in the history of the franchise due to the fact that, unlike literally every single character before her, her reasons for fighting are not entirely noble; she still fights to protect people, but she is equally motivated by kindness and vengeance, not to mention that she only sees “comrades” as tools useful to fulfill her own goals. Of course, this being PreCure she eventually turns a new leaf and learns the true meaning of friendship in what is arguably one of the best moments of the series, and that all came about thanks to Hime and her Quest for redemption. Suffice to say that they solved their differences and bonded with each other.
*Shipping intensifies*
I would love to say that the Fortune/Princess arcs were the highlight of the series, and they might have been if the show had actually bothered to finish them; as I mentioned when talked about the show’s plot, the second half of HaCha is almost entirely dedicated to a romance subplot that revolves heavily around Aino Megumi/Cure Lovely.
AKA She of the Rampaging Fist.
While Cure Princess was the de facto protagonist of the show during its first half, once the dreaded romance subplot kicks into high gear the show almost completely forgets about her and gives the title of protagonist to Lovely. Because of this, all the development we had for Princess is dropped and all the important plot points for her character that were established during the first half are never given a proper resolution. The worst part of this is that most of the development Fortune went through is also almost completely forgotten and her friendship with Hime is not given a proper follow up.
Case in point, I ran out of HimexIona pics.
As you may recall, I did mentioned that the aforementioned Romance subplot is very badly written, and a lot of that is due to Cure Lovely herself. There’s no way around it so I will just say it: Cure Lovely simply does not work as a protagonist, she has almost no interesting traits (especially when compared with Fortune and Princess) and has no romantic inclinations to begin with, which makes the so-called romance feel unnatural at best. The fact that every other character is more invested in the “Love Triangle” than the main character itself should speak volumes.
This is not how you write Romance.
The reason for this horrible romance miscasting is actually quite simple; since the show first half focused on Hime as the protagonist, Megumi was relegated as a supporting character, a role that actually fitted her quite well and so there was never any need to develop her as nothing more than that. Taking what was essentially a secondary character with no real motivations of her own and turning her into the main focus because the plot demanded it was a terrible move by all means.
I know it seems like I am being too harsh on a fictional character, but by all means Lovely was never going to work as protagonist after being set up like that and the show would have benefited a lot had she remained as a supporting character for Hime. You want to know how I am so sure about that? I give you two words: Cure Honey.
I may have mentioned her before.
See, when we really get down to it, Cure Honey and Cure Lovely are essentially the same character; they have similar backgrounds, personalities and share arguably the same motivations, the only difference being that Honey was always meant to be a supporting character without heavy involvement in the plot. She did have an arc that focused on her and one other character, but at the end she remained as a nothing more than charming character that quickly found her way into people’s hearts.
I stand corrected.
Going back to my initial statement, PreCure is a franchise that relies more on its characters and their relationships to drive the show (the primary theme is Friendship after all), and HaCha didn’t have any shortage of great characters; Princess was an endearing character with a great backstory, Fortune added levity to the cast, Honey was eleven shades of charming and while Lovely wasn’t particularly deep, she was the glue that held them together.
It’s just a shame that a show with such a great initial cast decided not to make proper use of them, all in the name of a good storyline that ironically got ruined by casting the wrong character. They are still good cast, but it takes more than that to make a good story.
Merchandise
The first thing that stands out when looking at all the merchandise for HaCha is that everything is awfully pink, but there’s no surprise there. The second thing that stands out about the toy line is that for the first time since the first couple of seasons of the franchise, PreCure has gone back to using cards as the main transformation gimmick of the show, a decision that makes a lot more sense once you consider that HaCha was meant to be used as a platform to re-launch the PreCure Card Collecting game that has been running around Japanese arcades since the days of YPC5.
Still no word on a PreCure Fighting game though.
Card gimmicks are not new ground when it comes to shows produced by Toei/Bandai, but if there’s one lesson that can be learned from Kamen Rider Blade is that the secret to create a successful card gimmick is to make it intuitive and to properly integrate it into the show that is supposed to be selling it. As you can probably tell, I really do suck at foreshadowing.
Using Cards to transform was actually a pretty cool idea that allowed for the use of form changing, a new for the franchise, and due to the particular way this gimmick worked (you had to combine the parts of each costume), the characters could also transform into an array of different forms that could help them in their daily lives, like Ninjas, Roller Skaters and even a Teacher.
And a Dog. Make of that what you will.
While the point of the card gimmick was obviously to cash in into the idol craze, the idea actually worked for a time and collecting cards for power ups became an important part of the show, not to mention that gathering cards was also an important plot point since completing the card album would grant a wish to our heroines. It’s shallow as all get out, but you can’t deny that it’s a good way to integrate card collecting into a show.
Fine, you win this round, Bandai.
The problem is that, as you can probably guess by now, after the middle point of the series the role of the cards in the show became almost none existent and the whole wish granting thing is not even mentioned ever again. The cards are still used to transform but no new forms are introduced beyond the mandatory third quarter upgrade and even the existing transformations are kind of dropped. The funny thing is that they actually had plenty of more toys, like the Honey baton, the Fortune Tambourine and the Shinning Make Dresser, but most of them had no real interaction with the main gimmick of the season.
Also, this barely even works like a Dresser.
It’s not like that show had bad toys because it didn’t, it’s just that the main gimmick of HaCha that should have been the selling point of the series became more and more irrelevant as the show went on. For all the good it did, they could have might as well replaced the Card gimmick with something that little girls might have found more appealing.
Like say… Magic Rings! That’s a novel idea right there.
Generally speaking I did liked the toys that the show produced, but unfortunately (te-he) Happiness Charge suffered from the same problem as DokiDoki; while there were plenty of good toys, there was a big disconnect between their themes (card gimmick, make up, music, mirrors) and their integration with the show, which is not a very good incentive when it comes to collecting a toy line.
Battles
Let’s get this out of the way: yes, Cure Lovely is a mean, pink, pummeling-things-into-the-ground-machine.
There is a lot more from where this came from.
I may complain about her as a character a lot, but I cannot deny that her, let’s say, unrestrained fighting style is one of the most entertaining parts of the show, and while watching her annihilate waves after waves of kindabads/terribads its more amusing than anything, when the plot gets serious she still manages to deliver some equally emotive and epic fight scenes, which goes to show that only in PreCure problems can be solved by equal amounts of Friendship and punching things.
I cannot stress that part enough.
If there is one downside to all this child friendly violence is that beyond Cure Lovely’s predilection for rampaging there is almost no other aspect of this show that stands out fighting wise; Honey is almost exclusively a supportive fighter, Princess is hilariously bad as a warrior and while Fortune is a skilled fighter, arguably the strongest of the four, she is not nearly as, let’s say, explosive as Lovely, and due to her character’s role being downplayed later on in the show she barely even gets a chance to show her strengths as a fighter.
But speaking on broader terms, even if the fighting on this show could be pretty good, the action scenes themselves were not very dynamic; the fighting choreographies were okay, but the camera rarely made the action stand out and even look mundane at times, which in all honestly was a disservice to some of the action scenes this show got.
It’s not every day that a Cure gets to fight a God. In Space.
I probably only complain about this because this franchise has done a lot better (just refer to literally any fight in Fresh), but I can see why it turned out like this: doing a more elaborated action scene takes both money and time, and as the show went on you could see how HaCha began to struggle with both of those things. In fact, the only reason why the final episode managed to pull off such an epic Kombat was because they cut every possible corner on the previous one.
Moving on beyond that, the Cures Special attacks did felt a bit underwhelming for me; as I mentioned, form changing was an important part of the show (at first, anyways), and this meant that every form had a special CGI move that could be used to purify enemies. This is clearly a result of the “Aikatsufication” this season went through, and while these attack sequences looked nice they barely even felts like attacks. It’s not all bad though; besides those special attacks each Cure did have a number of special techniques that used regular animation and those ranged from hilariously ineffective to pretty damn sick.
Case in point, Laser Eyes.
All in all, HaCha actually had some very good fights, it was definitely a step up from last season (which was not bad to begin with) and while the quality of the fights could be uneven and the special attacks were all over the place, it still had plenty of good, entertaining fights. Besides, I simply cannot hate a show where there’s a special attack that can only be described using the words ‘orbital’ and ‘drop’.
In the words of a wise man, Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ!
Villains
And finally we arrive to the coup de etat. I have no idea what that means so I will just pretend that it made sense.
The Phantom Empire are a really hard group of Villains to pin down because, while the show actually tried to build them as this terrible threat to earth (remember the global invasion thing), as the show goes on they become remarkable inoffensive to the point that their constant attacks resemble more a scuffle than an actual threat.
Take the three main generals of the Phantom Empire, Namekelder, Hoshiwa and Oresky; of those three, Namekelder and Hoshiwa are clearly more selfish than evil and most of the time it seems that they can barely be bothered to do the whole ‘invasion of the earth’ thing. I know that in this franchise villains can’t be exactly murderous psychos, but even the goofiest of PreCure villains (*takes a long glance at Smile*) were committed to their evil cause, not mildly bothered by it.
Now that I got those two out of the way, let’s Oresky.
Why yes, I just used him as a verb.
I won’t mince words here, I love Oresky for how over the top he is (reminder: his name is “Oresky”) and that has a lot to do with the fact that he is voiced by Takehito Koyasu, famed anime voice actor that most recently became the voice of the most Evil Man in History, Dio Brando from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. This is quite important because A) The man has the most deliciously evil voice in anime and B) For all intents and purposes Oresky is a PG-13 version of Dio, which sounds dumb until you remember that it is still DIO.
Don’t pretend you can’t hear his voice right now.
Suffice to say that his sole presence in the show is overwhelmingly entertaining, even if it’s just for how over the top he is. Granted, at the end he is not really more useful than the other two, but at least he was far more committed to his cause, even if said cause was less conquering of the earth and more feeding his superiority complex.
This was an actual plot.
Speaking of things that are complex, let’s talk about PreCure Hunter Phantom.
Phantom, whose name’s origin remains a complete mystery to this day, was Queen Mirage evil enforcer whom only appeared when plot needed to happen. If you are familiar with the franchise or have been reading along so far, you won’t be surprised to hear that Phantom was very obviously based on HeartCatch’s very own Dark PreCure.
Only less monochromatic and with a longer skirt.
This is not really a bad thing since Dark PreCure was indeed a cool character, but unfortunately Phantom shares the same problem as her: mostly due to plot constraints, he is barely in the show at all. To be fair, Phantom figures more into the show than her counterpart did and he actually has more interactions with our main characters, but this actually brings me to one of his biggest flaws: He is just too likeable.
Picture actually related.
I know, I know, a likeable character is like, the opposite of a problem for a show like this one, but here’s the thing, the more you we got to know him the more we sympathized with him, and in turn that made him less and less fearsome as the show went on. Granted, this is actually part of the show’s grand design and it makes sense from a plot stand point, but this is what I mean when I say that by the end of the show the Phantom Empire become remarkable inoffensive, and yes, that also applies to their ruler, Queen Mirage.
Seen here doing evil. Probably.
Unlike almost any other main villain in a PreCure show, a good chunk of the series plot does revolve around her origin and her ultimate identity, and to be perfectly honest she is a rather interesting character to have, in fact I wouldn’t mind seeing more villains like her in the future, but at the end this goes back to the same problem; for a villain, Queen Mirage ends up being too relatable and could even be considered a victim of the circumstances and not really evil at all.
I know what you are probably thinking by now, what about the real main villain of the show that everyone and their dog knew about yet no one within the show seemed to have realized that he was the real bad guy, not even his own brother? First of all, that is a really detailed question so kudos, and second, while you can say that the show’s real bad guy, the God known as Red, is the one who did the most Evil of them all, he is also the least threatening.
Because when I think of unspeakable evil, I think cardigans.
He only really appears during the final arc of the show, but in spite of being arguably the source of all the bad things that had happened up to that point, he has absolutely no evil presence at all. You could argue that an evil that doesn’t look evil is the worst kind of evil, but in Red’s case as you start to learn of his backstory and motivations you can’t help but to feel sorry for him. I know PreCure has a tradition of redeeming villains, but HaCha’s ultimate big bad is way too sympathetic, which does make for a great character but not for a great villain. Call me old fashioned, but I kind of prefer it when my main villains are, you know, bad.
Almost crushing the earth with another planet hardly counts.
All things considered, a group like The Phantom Empire does make for a great story, but without a genuine evil or looming threat most of their actions, as cruel as they were, end up feeling void and the PreCure’s battle to save the earth does not feel as pragmatic as the show liked to pretend it was.
Final thoughts.
Well, that was certainly a show.
I know it seems like I bash on this show a lot, mostly because I do, but the truth is that there’s actually a lot of things that I like about it; the music ranges from good to great, the main cast its quite charming, the plot is quite solid and in terms of actions the show excels most of the time. My only real problem is that all those good things are often hindered by an uneven execution, and as such most of the great potential the show has ends up being squandered. I still don’t think the show is terrible, there’s plenty of fun to be had with it, but considering all the hard work and talent that went into the show and the high expectations that Toei had for it, it does end up being disappointing.
That was a bit of a bummer, can I have another YuuYuu picture to cheer me up?
This is the last one, I swear.
So what did you think? Are my complains as petty as my jokes? Is HaCha the epitome of what PreCure should be? Did I write this as an excuse to post a bunch of Cure Honey pictures? What a silly question, I don’t need an excuse for that. In