Smile Precure 25 – 26
Are you ready for a beach party and a festival?!
 |
Ku Ku Ku! So if any of you know me from Twitter or if you ever had a Skype conversation with me you know I have developed a new addiction in the form of Smile Precure or you could say with Precure in general? As far as my backlog on the series goes I have seen Suite and I recently started up Heartcatch with my brother. So anyway we should get back to talking about Smile Precure! So joining me for these reviews are Hawthorn and Kara who I brought along to tag with me because team work is always fun. |
 |
I have yet to watch any of the other Precure seasons that I said I would, but Smile is still going on strong!! Even after these past two episodes, which are the stereotypical beach and festival episodes of any anime, I can still say that I’m not bored of this formula yet~. |
 |
Woo~ tagging with Fosh and Kara! After Suite aired, which I quickly dropped, I had my doubts about Smile, but so far it’s been an excellent addition to the Precure series. I can’t say these last two episodes lived up to the end of the first half a few weeks back, but they were enjoyable nonetheless! |
Let the shipping wars begin! Miyuki x Akane and Nao x Reika…
Nao / Cure March
Do not mess with Nao! She is not afraid to shoot you!
|
It’s been a long time coming, but another green-haired precure has finally appeared! From the start I’ve had worries that Nao and Akane would end up falling into a similar archetype, the tough-spirited competitive girls, and the recent episodes haven’t done much to set them apart unfortunately. Most of the time Nao and Akane will share weirdly similar dialogue and even plotlines (episode 25, for example), and even though it’s nice to see them clash, I do wish they’d get more unique stories that allow them to shine as individuals. What Nao has going for her is the fact that she plays the older-sister role in the group, which is also why I love her character so much! Episode 18, one of my favorite of the series, used those characteristics to produce a very touching episode that gave Nao more depth while also allowing her to stand out. My hope is that another focus episode like that awaits her in the future, and not one like that silly bug episode! |
Miyuki / Cure Happy
Miyuki-“What is this tiny thing on my shoulder?!” Candy-“Your worst nightmare! Muhahahah!”
|
Despite being the main character, I’m rather pleased by the fact that Miyuki seems to be falling more into the background these past couple episodes. Sure, she’s my favourite character, but I often feel like mahou shoujo shows put so much emphasis on the whole team thing and then it’s the main character who the show follows, making everyone else seem like they’re just to make the MC look good (…and fill in the other colours of the rainbow when the fight scenes happen). With that rant out of the way, Miyuki is doing a pretty great job at being the stereotypical happy/clumsy stereotype character without being boring. After this episode though, I kind |
Yayoi / Cure Peace
These new fluffy twin-tails increase Yayoi’s moe powers!
|
Like I stated before, Smile Precure has become my newest addiction in the world of anime along with my love of Yayoi aka Cure Peace! Granted she is the moe blob of the magical group, but Yayoi seriously shines with her electric personality (Yes pun fully intended!) I mean sure she is a scaredy cat and a huge crybaby but once she gets comfortable with her surroundings and people she manages to explode with this hyper energy which I love! She is technically the comical character, which is always a great selling point for a character. So in short I can see a bit of myself every time I watch her do something random or crazy! So what did Yayoi do in episode twenty five? Sadly she didn’t get to do much of anything but hang out with Candy on the beach while she sketched some drawings, but that episode was pretty much followed Akane and Nao. Episode twenty six was your basic local festival themed story filled with lovely looking Yukata, fun mini games, food and fireworks! And like most precure episodes it was complete with the usual Akanbe monster of the week fight. |
Reika / Cure Beauty
Reika-“You are mine now goldfish-sama!” Goldfish-“Nooooooo!! I AM DEFEATED!”
|
Her development (or lack thereof) in these past two episodes aside, am I the only one who thinks Reika’s hair goes super saiyan in her unicorn powerup? I can’t unsee it. So Reika was kind of lacklustre in her yukata (…I was expecting more since she’s THE yamato nadeshiko of the group, but I guess we can’t have her outshine everyone else), but I’m glad that she had a bit of time to shine with her goldfish scooping. I’m afraid that Reika has become a one joke character since all she really has is the fact that she’s serious all the time and her yamato nadeshiko-ness. She doesn’t really stand out other than when she’s making a joke or her upbringing comes in handy since everyone else of the Precure is either outgoing or a moeblob. That being said though, I do enjoy her character a lot. I just wish she had more parts, that one episode for her wasn’t enough and she rarely ever interacts one on one with the other characters. She could have a ton of potential as the character that everyone goes to when they have problems. |
Akane / Cure Sunny
Akane-“Can’t I just burn this Akanbe to the ground?!” Snowcone Akanbe-“I REALLY HATE YOU!!”
|
While Cure Peace steals the show for me, I still have lots of love for Akane aka Cure Sunny because she is a tough girl of the bunch, which means she is not afraid to kick some monster ass every week. But you can also throw Nao aka Cure March in the tough girl category! So what does Akane bring to the table for the other girls? I like to think of her as the other tomboy character due to her choice in clothes outside of school and her fiery personality (YES MORE PUNS!) Akane is also very competitive when it comes to a contest and we see that in episode twenty five because her father opened his Okonomiyaki stand on the beach right next to Nao’s family shop that was selling snow cones which pushed Nao and Akane butt their heads together afterwards during volleyball, soccer and while they held a sandcastle building contest? Yeah those two were true rivals during that entire episode and thankfully through the power of team work and yuri hand holding they saved the day. In episode twenty six it was pretty much festival excitement with the other girls and Akane wearing a fabulous Yakata! That was nice to see the girls wearing something different even though they all managed to keep up with their magical girl color themes. |
Extra fun with Smile Precure!
End thoughts
Damn these two episodes were a lot of fun for me; however, nothing spectacular happened because one of the episodes focused on a beach story that showcased Akane and Nao’s competitive nature. The only downside to that episode was the fact they pushed Yayoi, Reika and Miyuki to the sidelines, but in the end it was still very entertaining to watch. After all isn’t that why we love anime in the first place for entertainment? And now for episode twenty six up next I found it to be really cute just to watch the girls get together and have some fun at their local festival. I think you could actually call it a candy themed episode because it was her very first time at any festival and the monster of the week in that episode was freaking hilarious to look at, until the Smile girls powered up to defeat the monster with their new unicorn power! Hooray! I really can’t wait to see what happens in episode twenty seven.
So as fun as the last two episodes were, I can’t help but feel… disappointed after that awesome mid series battle a couple of episodes back. There was so much despair! I don’t think I’ve ever seen expressions like that on characters from a children’s show before and that made the triumph over the forces of evil just that much more satisfying to watch since it felt like they actually had something huge to overcome. …And then Precure got right back to it’s regular episodes. I’m really looking forward to what happens after Pierrot powers up again. Anyways, back to the episodes at hand, we had the stereotypical beach and festival episodes. The festival one wasn’t really anything special, but the beach one was fun to watch since Precure wasn’t occupied with fanservice, so we actually got to see less boobs and more character interaction. It was also nice to see that the Precure world doesn’t just revolve around Miyuki and Candy. It’s about time Nao and Akane had a bit more exposure as characters.
I have to agree with Kara that compared to the climax of the first half these recent episodes just weren’t at the same level of excitement! There was a welcomed surprise in episode 25 however that I wanted to mention, and that’s the Akanbe fight routine that was spiced up with some interesting new precure techniques. I doubt it’ll be brought up in any future episodes, but watching Nao and Akane combine their powers of wind and fire made me realize just how much potential the fight scenes have and almost always fail to live up to. I understand that Smile is more about the moral than the method, but when given five super-powered magical girls you want to believe that the action would be a strong point of the series. That’s not the case, and often times I wonder why the girls don’t simply activate their pegasus powers from the start and skip over all the strategy-devoid nonsense in-between. Thinking back to Heartcatch, the girls all had many unique abilities that provided some entertaining battles. I now wish Smile would do something similar, perhaps a variety of attacks that occur when certain girls combine their powers, but I suppose it’s a bit late for that now! Anyway, until next time~
Preview
Miyuki-“Awwwww snap dawg this is some good stuff! I CAN TASTE THE STARS!”
Stay tuned for more Smile Precure on Metanorn!
About Tag Team
We live, laugh, enjoy and strictly believe on "more the merrier". When together, we usually come up with very chatty, conversation-based episodics and interesting posts.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
I had to look up what shipping meant and found out there is a page on it in wikipedia. I fail ~ orz
I have to say that the character designs aren’t bad… for an anime that was described as a kid’s show, I was expecting something more rough and unpolished, but they look decent.
Based on the pics, and description, I think I’m a fan of Yayoi. Twin-tails and blonde ^^
I liked the ika musume cross-over, really cute! Ooooh, that reminds me, here is a related pic
And for kyokai, some <a href="http://img3.sankakustatic.com/wp-content/gallery/comiket-82/comiket-82-day-2-cosplay-2-112.jpg”>fate/zero =P
p.s. is the cache on the website off, my gravatar isn’t refreshing correctly, it’s using an old one.
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
Hmm, broke the link, here is the fate/zero pic of gilgamesh ^^
POWUH: Meta Resident and Werewolf Chaser with 1270 comments
LOLZ
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Epic lulz
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
LOLOLOL no problem! Twitter has pushed me to use such terms because of non official canon “pairings” and Precure is always pushing certain characters together! Especially with Smile because of five different girls <3
Yeah this is a "kids" show hence the bright colors and amazing transformation scenes complete with a message of "friendship" or "teamwork" I love the style of Smile! If you are into drastic designs I recommend you give Heartcatch Precure a shot! That seems to be the best series to introduce new fans to the series.
Lolol I love crossovers and Ahahahahhaha that Gilgamesh I saw that and died laughing! That guy is either brave or he was probably dared to do that type of cosplay xD
Hmmmm yeah I have seen peoples avatars crap out on them T____T and I have no idea why! I will ask Kyokai or Will later on
POWUH: Meta Resident with 1557 comments
Mm, I like cosplay, so I thought I would share some others from the Comiket that passed a few days ago:
Some Precure, I don’t know which series though
The next are unrelated, but wanted to share ^^:
Natsume!
Steins;Gate:
Mayuri1 1 Mayuri 2
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
Dat smile cosplay group! Awesomeeeee
POWUH: Meta Resident and Werewolf Chaser with 1270 comments
Mayuri 1 Oky, Mayuri 2 fail lol.
POWUH: Metanorn Regular with 109 comments
@Foshizzel akaoni was very funny in the beach episode when he was sarfing he reminded me kaito from mermaid melody pichi pichi pich
POWUH: Meta Team and PreCure Mastah with 9203 comments
hahah ya