Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’m delighted to be returning to Hugtto! Precure, after an episode that embodied many of the show’s finest qualities, and certainly had me sniffling as well. Aya’s anxieties regarding her mother’s new baby were relatable and poignantly illustrated, with Hana’s words of advice reflected Hugtto’s general, laudable willingness to acknowledge the fallibility of its adult characters. Hugtto often expresses its thematic focus on hope for the future through the promise of change and excitement of finding your profession, but equally important are moments like this, where young audiences can be assured that even adults suffer from worries and anxieties, and that people of any age are capable of turning over a new leaf.

Having just survived such a tearjerker of an episode, I’m expecting we’re in for some lighter fare this time, but in truth I’m ready for anything. Hugtto has proven itself full of surprises and unexpected treasures, so let’s dispense with the preamble, and see what adventure our crew is getting up to next.

Episode 36

We begin on a cold open of Dr. Traum revealing some terrifying new invention, though it appears he’s actually speaking to a different generation of Precures. Time for some convoluted cross-promotional adventures!

These Cures do indeed look pretty badass, even in their civilian wear. Given their baking aprons and the fact that their mascot animal appears to be some kind of pastry, it seems safe to assume this our preceding Cure generation, Kira Kira Pretty Cure a la Mode

Then Hana pops in for her usual introduction, ensuring us that this is still in fact Hugtto. A cute gag that presumably genuinely kept a few viewers from changing the channel

I’m sure all of these crossovers are more satisfying for fans who’ve cheered and cried alongside all the previous seasons, but they’re also pretty enjoyable to a newcomer like me as gestures towards a much larger fantasy universe, with the lack of a full background for them adding to the sense of a grand and mysterious Cure world. It certainly helps explain why everyone in this world seems to understand who Pretty Cures are even before the current team is introduced

“Hooray, Hooray! Legendary Precure, Assemble!” Guess we’re meeting the whole family then

Sometimes this show’s pleasures are quite simple, like Hugtan monching on rice

A nice sweeping cut up to a la Mode’s pink Cure as Traum attacks

The foreign Precure plummet from the sky, and their pink predictably bonks heads with Hana, while Ruru neatly catches their generation’s apparent Emiru

Apparently Hugtan is old friends with these mascots. How old is this baby, anyway?

Hana also knows this other pink, whose name is Ichika. Did they collaborate in a movie I missed? The extended Pretty Curniverse is getting more complicated by the second

And here’s the witch season Precures, who Hana also knows. So yeah, seems like Hugtto’s crew collaborated with the overall team in a movie some time before Emiru joined the party

Dr. Traum’s new robot reverses time anyone caught in its beam, a clean enough elaboration on their general time freezing powers

Apparently the witch season Precures are able to cast spells with their wands that act differently from their Pretty Cure powers? That seems like it would have made for a conceptually confusing season, but I suppose the allure of making a witch academy in Precure preempted that particular concern

Oh my god, they’re running through like three years of sped-up transformation bank animation at once. My mind can’t handle this density of transformation magic

The makeup of the a la Mode party is intriguingly distinct from the Hugtto group. They’ve got two members who clearly seem a few years older than the others, who presumably adopt a similar “parents of the group” energy as Homare and Harry

Both of them also seem to have a midseason Cure who presumably evolved from a mascot, as opposed to Hugtto’s Ruru. Reaching out to a former enemy frankly seems like a much more interesting route, and Ruru has indeed been one of the most compelling parts of Hugtto

Hah, you can really notice the increased shading detail they’ve added for the closeup composites between the previous seasons and our current one, just by comparing this bank footage

“I didn’t fall! That was just a regular landing.” I have to assume all of these characters are now playing through bits that would parse as nostalgic to anyone who’d actually seen the seasons in question

You don’t have to flash back to explain your own arrival, that just happened! Man, these team ups must be great for giving the animators more time for the meaty episodes; they’re truly a festival of bank animation

Cannot decide whether it’s bullshit or brilliant that Dr. Traum can use reverse time on his own suit, thereby reversing any damage it might take. Both? Going with both

“No matter how much you damage me, as long as I control time, I am invincible!” Yep, time magic is overpowered nonsense, we’re all well aware

Oh my god, Traum’s scandalized posture as his mech collapses around him. Ruru and Papple ended up charming through their moral complexity and human vulnerability, but Dr. Traum is winning my heart just by being a ridiculous weirdo

Yeah, we’re really going hard on the metaverse stuff now, with our Precure teams splitting up to round up even more Precure allies. I generally tend to think of metaverse or media mix franchises not as actual stories, but instead fragments of stories that are mostly designed to be advertisements for other fragments of stories (which are themselves also advertisements rather than narratives). That said, when the metaverse stuff is so clearly siloed like this into special episodes and anniversary celebrations, I’m perfectly happy to revel in the goofiness of bringing the whole gang together. It’s more when the drive towards intertextuality overwhelms the primacy of telling a coherent, self-contained narrative that I start to think of meta storytelling as antithetical to good storytelling

Homare is in her element with a full armload of adorable mascots

The girls run into Love-chan, another previous season leader. As we dip further back into the Precure seasons, it’s interesting to see the design sensibilities shift based on whoever was that particular season’s character designer or animation director

The Cures run into a hungry man named Bunbee, who was apparently assaulted by Criasu creatures. So is this episode essentially acting as the prologue for the next Precure collaborative film? I suppose seeding the film in the ongoing season is a clever way to simultaneously promote the film and avoid the need to spend the film’s first third just gathering Precure together

We run into another Cure, who apparently knows the singer whose song appears in one of Saaya’s commercials. So it seems like the Cure world encompasses both one-offs in unique worlds, as well as several groups who all exist in our own world, like Hugtto

Seems all pinks are destined to be blockheads – new Cure Nozomi immediately bows right into a collision with Hana’s forehead

We have now assembled enough mascots to pull off a genuine kaiju stampede, as all of them race together to avoid getting stomped by Traum’s robot

Dr. Traum’s robot stops all time! All the ungathered Precures are frozen! Pretty clean way to keep this situation from ballooning to sixty protagonists, to be honest

And Done

Ahaha, well that certainly was some kind of episode. Though its runtime was admittedly dedicated to introducing Precure, transforming Precure, having Precure use their combo attacks, and then rushing off in pursuit of more Precure, I still had a great time, feeling both occasionally puzzled and generally charmed by this franchise celebrating its own impressive history. I love how lightly this whole affair is treating the existence of so many simultaneous Precures – this isn’t lorebuilding, this is a loving victory lap, and the production team’s love for all these venerable Cures came through clearly. After spending so much of this season learning what Precure theoretically is, it’s a wild experience to be introduced to all these other things Precure can be.

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