TumbleRead

Read, reblog, and resonate!

So This Is Incredibly Subjective Here And I Recognize This - Blog Posts

6 months ago

In my opinion Precure is at its best when it incorporates the communities that the girls are protecting into it.

This of course stems all the way back from the original Futari wa. That shows main premise is "Ordinary days and people are important", and is by nature a normal slice of life whose drama is highlighted by the lengths Nagisa and Honoka go to protect it. As such, the girls have an extensive supporting cast, and the climatic battles often feature some level of emotional support by the supporting cast, even if they're not literally physically present. The girls are the vessels through whom humanities collective will to live is channeled. We spend our time witnessing this will within the people in the girls communities.

I've mentioned before how big a theme of community is in Fresh. There are a ton of minor side characters who make brief but frequent appearances to help flesh out this bustling city. In the end the girls reveal themselves to their community.

Princess and Heartcatch make great use of the victim of the week format to help build a strong supporting cast, understanding the motivations of these characters, who in turn help support the Cures in some way during the 11th hour.

This is part of what makes Happiness Charge and Doki Doki fall relatively flat to me. Their supporting casts aren't as fully developed. There's more one off victims. But there are still moments where this aspect shines, to me in Doki Doki in the involvement of the girl's families. The moment where Mana shouts her identity as Cure Heart is fantastic to me, I can practically see the gears turning in the family member's heads. The Oh Shit of it all.

While an identity reveal isn't a prerequisite for a strong sense of community it certainly contributes to the feelings. Both Futari wa's manage to have a strong sense of community, despite their final fights taking place when earth is reduced to a barren wasteland devoid of people, the fact they still take place on earth helps them make heavy use of the fact that despite being currently devoid of life these are places where there are meant to be life, and where life can exist again.

It's a big part of why while I love Suite, I feel it's objectively weaker than it's two predecessors despite mimicking them in so many aspects. In fact it's probably tied with the futari wa's for my favorite season. But I don't think it's nearly as good as it could be in part because of the lack of community compared to its predecessors. But what we do get of Kanon owns majority real estate in my heart. The entire town is so goddamn weird, and just down for whatever. If I could add an identity reveal to any season it'd be this one. I struggle to believe that no one in this town doesn't know (though that might be because they all are so oblivious). I'd take it away from Healin Good and Doki Doki if I had to and I love those seasons reveals.

Smile I feel is far more popular than Suite, and while I enjoy smile and think it's simplicity is to its strength it's really no surprise that the episode I care most about, more than 3/4 of the season combined, is the episode where Nao sort of kind of has an identity reveal. That's also partially because I just have a huge soft spot for kids. (Muse is my all time favorite. Go, make things worse you funky little messed up 9 year old. And I am probably one of the few people who actually LIKE the baby plotlines... which makes it honestly such an accomplishment that DeliPa got me to dislike their baby). But Smile has a lot of plots that are really self-contained to the main cast, and while I do enjoy how fleshed out the girls' families are the fact that they all turn into living rocks when the villains attack really makes them less interesting to me. Same with Tropical-Rouge, but Tropical-Rouge doesn't even fully flesh out any family that isn't Manatsu's.

Maho Tsukai and Star Twinkle both have fun main characters and worldbuilding, but the fact that, like Smile, the action and human town exist sort of separately from each other really keeps them from catching my attention. I want to like them. And I do. I just don't quite love them. I really love HiroSky's cures in particular, and adore the episodes where they are part of their communities, but do wish we had more of that.

And for what it's worth the miracle lights bring this sense of community into our reality, and they used to use the side cast to help illustrate this in the all star movies. It's great.


Tags
Loading...
End of content
No more pages to load
Explore Tumblr Blog
Search Through Tumblr Tags