Pretty Cure was first written in February 2004 by Izumi Todo although has had many writers since then. The series is a magical girl franchise consisting of various young girls being given the ability by various magical species from various worlds of light in the multiverse to defeat various threats to the world/universe/multiverse from entities from worlds of darkness in the multiverse. Much like DC Comics, it's difficult to talk about this comprehensively due to it being really more a large amount of series then a single series. Most of my opinions about relative seasons are fairly conventional; I like Heartcatch, Go Princess and Hugtto with Heartcatch being my favorite season and I'm less fond of Gogo and Happiness Charge (Though Happiness Charge's final fight was really cool). I do think I like DokiDoki more then most given the season's negative reception although that one does seem to have a bit of a cult classic following.
3 Reasons I love it:
I should note that one of the reasons people most often cite for loving Pretty Cure is the cool action scenes. While I can appreciate those it's not usually a big reason for my liking a series but if you are reading these blogs to find if you should watch these series, know that Pretty Cure is pretty famous for having awesome fight scenes. Also I am going to resist just saying "Heartcatch" as a reason though it could easily be.
1: The biggest reason I love the series is the hardest to define but the series has an energy I really love. I really love the Magical Girl genre, and Pretty Cure is the perhaps the crystalization of Magical Girls at their most idealistic. The series has an energy of wholesomeness and good-hearted magical girl adventure that is difficult to put into words. I think that's part of what had made this franchise such a long-lasting one that continued literally through the darkest period of Magical Girl history, first in terms of the decline of the genre and the secondly through the darkest thematic period of the genre in the early 10s. Pretty Cure is the idea of Magical Girls, cute girls given fantastic magical powers to save the world. The Magical Girl is a champion of the virtues we strive towards; a very romantic superheroine figure and Pretty Cure exemplifies this in creating an extremely idealistic and friendly world. One of my fondest memories of Futari Wa for instance was not one of the big plot episodes or fights but an episode where the girls help an old couple at a farm and see them bicker and wonder why they are together, only for the old man to try to protect his wife from the monster attack and learn that there are more ways then just words that people communicate their love in. That's one of my favorite eps of Futari Wa eps because it's a perfect example of how the magical girl genre gets us to appreciate the magic in the seemingly mundane, exalting it by showing it's contact with the supernatural.
2: On a seperate but somewhat connected note, I really love how often the characters of Pretty Cure are representations. Most of the Pretty Cure villains are representations of the dark parts of the human psyche like sadness for Noise, selfishess for King Jikochuu, or despair for Dyspear. Likewise the Pretty Cure are represntations of the positive powers in the human soul and their battle thus gets greater meaning. I really like when characters are represenations of something as it allows the interactions of the characters to have both literal and symbolic meaning that entertwines to feel more emotionally fufilling and I think Pretty Cure does this amazingly.
3: The series is unapologetically feminine in it's coolness. I've seen a lot of people try to combat a percetion of androcentrism in a certain area by trying to force androgynizing factors on things which saddens me. I think men and women both have unique perspective and strengths to help make the world a better place nad Pretty Cure more then any other magical girl series seems to delight and exalt the feminine and girly as signifiers of power and virtue. Even compared to other magical girl series, Pretty Cure seems dedicated to the veneration of feminine iconography and symbols.
3 Flaws:
1: By far the biggest problem for me, there's a lot, A LOT of filler. Now obviously some of it is good, but I wouldn't be exaggerating to say for most seasons half of the season could be cut out without doing anything to the plot. It makes for very slow watching. It literally took me numerous years to catch up with Pretty Cure because it's antithetical to how I want to watch things. I tend to like everything to be fast paced and purposeful and Pretty Cure really likes to take it's time. Part of the reason I think I'm more lenient on DokiDoki then a lot of Cure fans is that DokiDoki tries to have a more ongoing plot which to me was quite valuable but I know to a lot of Cure fans this was seen either in a neutral or an outright negative light.
2: Pretty Cure is, if we're being honest, a series made by Toei to sell toys to young Japanese girls. That it has artistic integrity regardless speaks to the ability of some of it's writers however the series is very often pushing new merchandise for the children at home meaning very often there's some plot about the whatever mcguffin that is not as engaging as character drama. New things are added clearly for no other reason then to sell toys and it can get kind of obtrusive.
3: Pretty Cure does not handle romance well. I don't think anyone is going to massively disagree with me on this but there's usually 1+ "romances" per season that are sometimes just one of the cures likes a boy that they are never ever going to confess too (Hello Nagisa), and I can't think of one that I really liked, or at the very least an official one that I liked (yuri shipping between the Cures though is way better even if the show is made for mainstream Japanese television and that's not high on their priorties). Part of the reason Happiness Charge was as unpopular as was is due to the fact that the season is filled with romance plots and they're pretty meh.
My Favorite Part:
Get ready for another example of "Oh you love the part that everyone else loves? Shocking." but I really love Cure Moonlight and her arc in Heartcatch. My favorite moment changes for Pretty Cure it's definitely a Heartcatch one and rn it's Moonlight's reconcilliation with Cologne. I have a real love in fiction for moments when a character is weak but turns out to be strong in some way or when a character is strong but is weak a different way. Moonlight was the bad*ss of Heartcatch, cool and powerful but tormented and while she's physically strong she is emotionally weak from the pain of Cologne's sacrifice. Her coming to terms with it was a really moving scene.
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