Hello everyone, and welcome on back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to announce we’re returning to Hugtto! Precure, a show that most recently tore my heart to pieces with the introduction of Hana’s grandmother. Last episode’s reflection on the cruelty of time, and how we can age out of the things that define us, was an unexpected but very welcome compliment to Huggto’s usual optimism. There was no great victory Hana could achieve to dispel last episode’s worries, no villain to defeat in order to restore her grandmother’s youth; aging is just tough, and I always appreciate when a children’s show handles such difficult aspects of life with both sensitivity and frankness. We cannot hope to stop the clock or turn back time; all we can hope for is to age with grace, and not miss out on future happiness by lamenting the things we’ve lost.

Episodes like that demonstrate the emotive potential of great children’s media, stories that trust their audiences can handle complex and difficult topics. Most children are not foreigners to loss, and can appreciate media that acknowledges and helps contextualize the hard moments in their lives. That said, I’m also a big fan of Hugtto’s goofier content, and I’m guessing an episode that heavy demands an extremely silly followup. Let’s see what we’ve got!

Episode 30

The gang are currently flying in a plane together. This plane’s interior has a wild design sensibility – it feels more like a theater audience than plane seating, complete with rich blue curtains in the back, royal green wallpaper, and lots of little gold fringes around the windows. Does some airline actually decorate like this, or are the designers just having fun with it?

Ah, this is Emiru’s family’s private jet. That explains the decor, and also holy shit Emiru, your family really is loaded

“Seven Cities from Around the World: A Voyage on House Aisaki Private Jet.” God damn they’ve got a nice vacation planned. This kinda seems like it’ll be hell for Precure’s background artists, though – the show’s stable main locations mean they generally only have to produce a manageable number of new backgrounds for each episode, but a trip around the world throws that assumption out the window

It’s been fun getting more attuned to invisible costs like that within animation. Characters don’t gravitate towards consistent sets of outfits just because no one thought to give them different ones – every design you add to a show meaningfully increases the production workload, and so you have to carefully choose where you allocate your design resources

Extremely good hungry Lulu face as she peruses the food brochure. It seems like they’re slowly turning up the dial on her expressiveness, visually illustrating her process of becoming more fully human

The gang use their Mirai pads to take on flight attendant costumes. I suppose last episode was particularly useless at selling toys, so we gotta make up for some lost time

Oh my god, Hugtan saying “kawaii” has melted my heart

“Noooo, you stole my beef or chicken!” Is that like the quintessential flight attendant line in Japan? Given it also inspired one of Pop Team Epic’s most enduring gags, I have to assume it’s a local flight attendant cliché

Either way, Hana’s goofy face sells the hell out of it

Precure presents its most implausible fantasy so far, a genuinely appetizing in-flight dinner

Oh god, I’m making “what’s the deal with airline food” jokes, this is it for me

They arrive in Hawaii. Please let this be a Sun and Moon crossover episode, I would lose my mind

Aaand then they’re immediately back on the plane, because seven stops leaves no time for anything but airports

Oh my god, why did they have Hugtan do the Marylin Monroe dress-blowing meme. Why would you do that, Hugtto

I’m beginning to see how this episode will handle its background art problem – by having the whole cast stay on the plane most of the time, with only a background or two for each of their vacation destinations

Now they’ve dressed Hugtan up as Marie Antoinette, complete with her best stab at “let them eat cake.” Someone in this show’s production staff has a messed up sense of humor

Also, like a third of this episode is just Lulu biting into snacks and blissing out. Not that I’m complaining, this is all top quality content

Love the Criasu Corp members all bickering over who gets a Precure-fighting overseas trip

And apparently Lulu was previously robbed of a hot springs trip by a coworker who told her that her limbs would get rusted. These petty squabbles feel very true to office life

With their world trip concluded in a lean six minutes, we’re apparently transitioning into a haunted hot springs episode

Love that as everyone else screams at an apparent ghost, Saaya is starry-eyed with excitement. Stay weird, Saaya

Apparently Dr. Traum’s clockwork hat stays ON for onsen trips. He actually looks quite good for an older guy, though I suppose a portion of that comes down to the staff not being interested in drawing in a bunch of skin creases

At some point I’m going to have to try cold milk after a hot bath, as all of Japan agrees it is one of the greatest perks of existence

It’s interesting to me that a tengu is being framed as the spooky monster haunting this place. My understanding of tengus was that they were more like independent tricksters with mysterious powers, not cryptids who were likely to show up in your nightmares. Apparently their popular conception has shifted over time from harbingers of war to more ambiguous or even protective figures, but I suppose their base design and temperament still makes them plenty scary for these kids

Children’s anime can give us a unique perspective on cultural elements like this, as it is generally aimed at accommodating the most baseline local perspective – through shows like this, we can see what even a nation’s children have already internalized about the world around them. Every culture on earth has its own version of “common knowledge” or “common sense,” and it’s interesting to see those assumptions laid bare like this

The hot spring proprietor lays some heavy knowledge on us, telling us that the hotel is empty because most young people go for the bigger hotels these days, which are more instagram-friendly

As someone who’s already well past this stage, the perpetual public documentation is definitely the oddest thing about youth culture to me. I’m pretty happy to have grown up before it was fashionable to perform your own youth for a wider audience

Another Mirai Pad switch, leading into a concert montage. This definitely does feel like a cooldown episode after last week’s intense storyboarding and animation direction

Love that Dr. Traum cultivates his own negative energy by winging a ping pong ball into his opponent’s face

And of course, the Oshimaeda he summons takes the form of a giant tengu. Emiru is briefly terrified, before being reassured that this is just the kind of giant monster they’re already used to fighting

“If your summer vacation is so fun, why not let it last forever?” Once again, Criasu Corp’s mission is framed as an attempt to preserve the fleeting joy of the present. Given the events of last episode, it’s not hard to sympathize with their feelings

Emiru counters that as long as instagram exists, their memories will never die

The crew get an assist by an actual tengu

With Traum defeated, the team conclude their action-packed summer vacation. And of course, Hana forgot to do her homework

And Done

Oh Hana, you reliable mess of a person, you. This was certainly a lighter episode on the whole, relying heavily on stills and bank footage to presumably allow other episodes to shine. Fortunately, while its art design was a little constrained, its subject matter was indulgently fun in all the best ways. It effectively leaned into Hugtto’s powerful slice of life appeal, presenting a charming vision of the gang hanging out without any real objectives, and making full use of rich concepts like “Lulu likes good food.” Just the breezy sort of episode I was hoping for!

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