First Impressions – Doki Doki Precure

Are you ready for magical girls!? We know, we are!

I think this officially marks the last first impressions post for this epic winter season! Smile Precure just recently finished its long fourty-eight episode run leaving most of us needing our magical girl fix, but thankfully the fans did not have to wait very long for Toei Animation to crank out their tenth Precure series, which has me quite excited! So what about you Kara, what are your thoughts going into yet another Precure series?

I was kind of thrown off by the late start for Doki Doki here, but I guess Smile ended just as late last year. So yeah! A new Precure series! I was really fond of Smile, but this new one looks like it will be just as fun, if not even better.

Meet your magical team

Who has the widest smile? Alice or Mana ?!

Makoto and Rika have a glasses battle.

I will try to my best to keep the mention of Smile Precure low to avoid possible spoilers, but we are here to talk about the characters of Doki Doki. Right off the bat we have a few scenes at the start with the purple haired girl or Cure Sword fighting off some giant monsters in an unknown world! What exactly is she fighting for? In previous line of Precure series we have had similar things like this in the ever popular Heartcatch and a few others. Cure sword easily comes off as a fighter themed character that is not afraid to charge head on into a battle, but her real life counterpart is a popular Idol named Makoto Kenzaki which adds to the whole mystery of why is she on earth? I know the evil team is looking for a “princess” somewhere on earth and it might turn out to be Cure Sword/Makoto herself as KrizzlyBear on Cure blogger suspected.

Besides that awesome character we have Mana Aida the redhead student council president that has the desire to help everyone. That was kind of strange for me because I am used to the previous leader types being like Miyuki or Tsubomi because both of them were sort scatterbrained in how they acted at school and in their precure forms, but it really is refreshing to see something new in terms of personality, not that every other leader is “dumb or slow” I mean there are countless other Precure leaders that have awesome brain power. Mana does transform in this episode; however we did not get to see her fight as Cure Heart yet. I know with Smile Precure Miyuki first time as Cure Happy resulted in her screaming a lot and missing with her first attack against the enemy, knowing that I can’t wait to see how Mana handles her very first magical girl fight! As of right now I have to say Makoto and Mana are my current favorites so far, but who knows maybe the other two will jump into my favorites?

Speaking of others! We had some small appearances with Alice Yotsuba or as everyone calls her the rich girl who knows Mana and I assume is a close childhood friend. Now she didn’t do anything amazing in the first episode; however I get the impression that she will be the comedic character that says random one sayings during and after a battle, but nothing like Erika or Akane level of comedy because her personality is kind of monotone or “oh that looks interesting” like when the first monster popped up? She was not freaking out at all and she even wanted to take it home with her!? I certainly can’t wait until she becomes Cure Rosetta.

Wrapping up with the final list of main characters we have Rikka Hishikawa who spends most her time in the episode watching and worrying about Mana which tells me she will be the one girl on the team that will probably panic during every battle or will she become kick ass like Reika in the final five episodes of Smile? Even though she is a bit of a worry wart like Yayoi I am curious to see Rika become Cure Diamond! Yes we are going for a “card” themed Precure this time.

The Doki Doki Series Setup

Alice loves to watch giant monster battles

Mana steals the hearts of young children all over the world.

Well, I didn’t get around to watching Heartcatch or any of the other Precure series that I meant to, so I guess the best I can do is compare this to Smile. Between the two series though, there are already some distinct differences. For one thing, it’s nice to see Mana as a competent leader as compared to how clumsy Miyuki was around episode one. It also started with Makoto/Cure Sword being there and already having a pre-established relationship with the villains, as opposed to the mascot characters having to explain everything (though maybe they still will since Makoto seems like a bit of a lone wolf at the moment and might not want anything to do with Mana). The villains already look like they’ll be more interesting this series since for one, they’re not animals/witches/things from Japanese folklore/ other such nonsense. For once, the mascot characters didn’t get on my nerves either, which is a huge deal since they always do and Doki Doki seems to have more of them than your average Precure show. …Though we have yet to see the baby one (which I’m wondering what they were going for there since the eyecatch in the show made it look like middle school pregnancy or something like that).

They seem to have the usual stereotypes in there with Mana being the stereotypical leader, but the other characters were a bit harder to place this round. I honestly couldn’t tell you what they were trying to go for with Rika’s personality other than she’s some sort of voice of reason for Mana. Alice just seems to be your stereotypical rich girl. …Don’t even get me started on the creepy blonde guy who just oozes lolicon vibes. I don’t know if this means the characters for Doki Doki are going to be deeper than your average Precure character, or if it’s just because they were too busy showing how badass Sword was. I guess the biggest thing for me here was the fact that while this was an episode about exposition, they definitely haven’t explained everything. Normally they wait until episode 2 to drop the heavy plot stuff, but they didn’t even finish the first battle yet here.

Fun with magical girls

Fantastic camera angles in your face.

That hat is kind of strange…

Cure Sword shows off her skills.

Mana-“Yes give me more souls chldren! Err I mean tee hee hee I am glowing.”

End thoughts

With any first episode of Precure we usually have the whole set up of random middle school girl meets a fairy and transforms to save the day, but this episode changed the formula up in a good way because it was just so fantastic. I think Jrow can back me up on this since One Piece is produced by Toei Animation that studio isn’t really well known for having the best quality of all time with the likes of A-1, KyoAni or Production I.G it really is tough to stand out; however Precure has some of the best looking CGI dancing of all time! Then again, that is just a personal thing because CGI dancing can easily come off as creepy looking for some out there. Speaking of One Piece the voice actress for Luffy is staring in Doki Doki Precure as a villain which has me laughing cause we just had Chopper’s actor in Smile Precure as Candy, but they do work at Toei Animation so that kind of helps things in the voice acting department. I wonder if Nami or Robin’s actresses ever plan on making the jump to Precure eventually? I will say the environment detail was amazing, like the massive Clover Tower!? So good job to the animation crew! Aside from animation there wasn’t a whole lot to talk about because this was technically a character introduction episode.

I never paid much attention to it before, but damn, Precure does have some really nice looking CGI dancing. If they can do it with their smaller budget, why can’t everyone else? Anyways, I like the style of the Precure this season (minus maybe Makoto’s normal, non-Precure hair), I like the theme and all of the other things I haven’t mentioned are enjoyable as well. I have to agree that the animation was already lacking in parts, but they made it look good where it mattered (magical girl transformation scenes are always important). I’m curious about the overall plot since they haven’t even started explaining the reasoning behind the magical girls yet (though more than likely it will have to do with the fate of the world… or at least Japan), but Doki Doki definitely looks interesting and even though it’s pretty much he exact same formula, I’m glad that it’s already so different from Smile. Smile was great, but if every series of Precure was the same, things would get boring, fast.

preview

Pink on pink on pink is totally in this year right?

Cure Heart to the rescue!