Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am delighted to be returning to Hugtto! Pretty Cure, for an episode that by all accounts is going to be almost incomprehensible to me. Our last episode involved the main Hugtto party linking up with about half a dozen previous Cure generations, some of whom they were already acquainted with, all of whom were essentially new to me. Having rallied these supplementary ranks, we then saw half a dozen other Cure parties get frozen in time, trapped in the re-unveiling of Dr. Traum’s totally bullshit time control robot.

For long-time Cure aficionados, I imagine these meetups are a familiar element of the Precure package. For me, this has been a somewhat overwhelming but altogether charming journey through decades of design sensibilities, with each new team demonstrating the diversity of what Pretty Cure can be. The franchise appears to possess a gratifyingly straightforward “if it’ll make for a fun crossover, do it” approach to worldbuilding, while the appearance of all these classic Cures likely gives the current animation team a chance to bring characters they grew up with to life, much like how One Piece’s current staff is stacked with lifelong One Piece fans. When you’re given a chance like that, magic frequently results, so I’m eager to see what wonders await in this pan-Precure bash. Let’s get to it!

Episode 37

“Into The Future! Precure All For You!”

I suppose it makes sense to again use time stop powers for this Precure reunion tour, as “hope for the future” is Hugtto’s main theme, and thus stagnancy its main antagonist

Nice backwards panning shot to convey Traum’s imposing presence as we enter; nothing fancy, just zooming out from backgrounds and then inserting new foreground layers, but it still creates a sense of high drama. I am again reminded how young audiences seem to accept a greater degree of unreality and elements that detract from the cohesiveness of a composite, a trick that both Precure and Ojamajo Doremi use to great effect

It’s a little frustrating how hard-ingrained “cinematic realism” is as an objective good for general audiences. “I must believe that what I am seeing is a cohesive reality” is in truth just an aesthetic preference like any other (though of course one that naturally lends itself to investing in drama), but it’s often treated as visual storytelling dogma, meaning significant deviation from that standard is frequently limited to children’s and arthouse animation. No wonder Yuasa jumped straight from children’s anime to the festival circuit, using tools like Kickstarter to circumvent the desires of anime’s general audience

There are individual creators like Sayo Yamamoto, Shingo Natsume, and Shinichiro Watanabe who essentially refuse to work on derivative work-for-hire, but as far as overall studios go, it seems like Science Saru is currently the only one committed to making unique work as a general rule (though they unfortunately echo the industry’s general issues regarding crunch and pay)

Man, Delicious Party’s head Cure sure has some big hair

All the Delicious Party Precures use their combo attacks, which I imagine must be very satisfying. I’m pretty sure their season came out during that era when Cures weren’t allowed to physically beat the shit out of their opponents, so they’re clearly making up for lost time

And then some excellent beam animation for Dream’s energy attack. Already seeming like this will be a particularly generous episode

All the pinks are very impressed by Dream’s attack

Elsewhere, Homare and a bunch of yellow cures are beating on a different Oshimaeda. This pink-haired girl holding the mascots sure has some ideas about hair styling

And this purple-haired girl has… little hair wings? I guess the magical school season just had wild character designs in general

Wow, she just blew that monster the fuck up. No “please accept my resignation,” no nothing

And now older generations of returning Precure heroes are greeting each other as slightly newer generations marvel at all these other Precures they didn’t know about. This is a continuity nightmare and I am just going to let it wash over me, secure in the simple logic that team-ups are cool

“It’s not that easy to keep us down!” Nah dude, there are like fifty of you. The season one villains should have tried harder, there’s no stopping this Precure army now

Our girls transform into their Cheerful forms, and bust up Dr. Traum’s time changing doohickey

Nice color design and composite as Dr. Traum unlocks some new power, saturating the world in glimmering motes of light and variable splashes of rotten-looking colors. They’re pushing a little further with the post-production than the standard here, adding in lots of color and focus filters

Delicious Party getting jealous of the witches for having brooms is an excellent beat

And we once again get an absurd “mascots flee a kaiju en masse” shot

Hana is briefly captured, but our original two arrive to rescue her! And holy shit, this is some of the most beautiful animation of the series so far. Wonderful fluidity and expressively stretched proportions as the two conduct a barrage of punches and kicks. Their style seems to echo their era – no post-production glow like the makeup effects used for Hugtto’s recent upgrades, just fundamentally excellent drawings embracing the expressive potential of distorting and exaggerating their physical forms

They actually seem more like genuine fighters, too – not single big magical attacks, but a wave of punches and kicks

Even the storyboarding feels different for their introduction, with lots of dynamic partial body shots adding impact to their declaration of intent. I assume they’re harkening back to the directorial style of the first season?

Another neat cut enforcing a sense of scale as Traum’s craft rises above this city, and we pan across the rooftops to convey just how large it is

“Dr. Traum is using his own Toge-power and growing in strength.” That was always allowed?

Ah, I see, it turns you into a mindless berserker. Still enjoying the color design of his nightmare world, though

Trapped in a world of darkness, the only light Hana can see is the charm bracelet she made with her friends. I quite like that; even this handmade piece of toy jewelry can reignite her power, as it is a symbol of their collective strength. A subtle request to the audience to let their friends know they care about them, as they cannot know how much small gestures like these bracelets can truly mean

“Hooray, Hooray, Me. Hooray, Hooray, Everyone!” ‘You have to believe in your future even when you can’t clearly see it – in fact, that’s when you have to believe hardest of all’ is such a lovely core theme, and so neatly encapsulated in Hana’s cheer. I have to imagine not all Precure seasons have such a resonant core theme

The Precure break free! But then Traum summons an army of Oshimaeda! Is this the end!?

Fuck no! The other remaining Precure teams show up, including the Heartcatch group that everyone seems so fond of. Gonna have to check that one out eventually as well, given it’s apparently the Rie Matsumoto season

My god there are so many Precures. They had to split them into two waves of introductions just so we could do anything else besides introducing Precure

Yeah, there are over fifty Precure on-screen at the moment

Just panning over all of them attacking at once takes ten seconds. This is absurd and incredible

Ahahah, just one ridiculous blast or combo attack after another. When you line up all these Precure, I can’t help but feel bad for their opponents

I assume this is the first season’s theme song playing, just hammering on that nostalgia with everything they can

The princess Precures obliterate their enemies and then politely bow to them, some real cold motherfucker shit

“They’ve got their own separate vibe going on over there…” Apparently there’s a subthread of “dashing, prince-like Precures” that we only run into once every two or three seasons

Even I can recognize the original Cure Black’s “leaping just in front of an explosion” pose, here complimented by a dozen generations of pink cures

And here’s the insane payoff, as the camera spins around this monster while twenty different warriors lay into it with signature attacks. This franchise gets some truly incredible animation work

Welp, now their enemy’s the size of a planet. I suppose there’s no helping it, gotta just pull off another three straight minutes of ambitiously boarded and gloriously fluid fight choreography

This blue-haired gremlin from Heartcatch is like the only one not smiling as they make their inspiring speeches. Probably warrants further investigation

And at last we see Dr. Traum’s personal reason for desiring a return to the past: he misses the time when he and Lulu were close, when she treated him as a father rather than an enemy. I hope we get to explore his story in more detail; the villains’ stories have been some of the most emotionally impactful material in this whole show

And Done

Holy shit, that sure was a lot of Precure. With over fifty protagonists to cover, this was obviously a highly abridged introduction to fifteen years of magical curedom, but nonetheless an extremely entertaining one. Though I obviously couldn’t bask in the nostalgia of seeing long-time favorites return to the screen with all their gags and signature attacks, I was more than capable of appreciating the sumptuous fluidity, dynamic action choreography, and ambitious camera control of this episode’s fantastic battle sequences. This episode was overflowing with love for Precure, and that love is powerfully infectious; I’m now more curious than ever regarding the grand pantheon of Pretty Cures.

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