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 Welcome to the Precure Party!  Since 2004, Pretty Cure has been the magical girl show made especially for  Cure Black, Cure White, Shiny Luminous Futari wa Pretty Cure: The one that started it all! Two girls who couldn't be more different; the sporty, outgoing Nagisa and the quiet, studious Honoko both meet fairies who turn into cellphones and give them special powers to help protect the Earth and the Queen of Light. An enjoyable show, if a little rough where the series is still finding its feet. Right from the beginning it establishes itself as different from other contemporary magical girl fare and asserts itself as its own thing. In the second season, Max Heart, Nagisa and Honoko are joined by a third girl, Hikari.  Cure Bloom, Cure Egret Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star: Not seen any Splash Star. The characters look like bad knock-offs of Nagisa and Honoko, and that has put me off trying to watch it, but apparently it's really good and improves on the original! If someone else wants to write something positive up about it, I'll replace this. From the team-up movies, it looks like both girls get two Cure forms each.  Cure Dream. Cure Rouge, Cure Lemonade, Cure Mint, Cure Aqua, Milky Rose Yes! Pretty Cure 5: I've not watched Yes! All I know is it features a sentai-esque team of five girls who become PreCure. There's a second season called GoGo! where a sixth  Cure Peach, Cure Pine, Cure Berry, Cure Passion Fresh Pretty Cure!: I've seen very little Fresh. Someone tell us about it! It looks fun.  Cure Blossom, Cure Marine, Cure Sunshine, Cure Moonlight HeartCatch PreCure!: Probably the most recommended series for people interested in getting into the show, HeartCatch switches up the formula a little by swapping the usual personalities of the main two characters. Tsubomi is shy and looking to change her image as her family moves to a new town where she meets and befriends the outgoing and energetic Erika. They are conscripted into being PreCure by the fairies Coffre and Chypre who are trying to protect the Heart Tree from the Desert Messengers who want to wilt peoples' heart flowers and turn the Earth into a desert! Notable for stylized art that makes the characters look a bit out of place in the team-up movies.  Cure Melody , Cure Rhythm, Cure Muse, Cure Beat Suite Pretty Cure♪: Two girls who are best friends, stop me if you heard this one before-- one is energetic and outgoing and the other more reserved and studious, Hibiki and Kanade mix things up by not always getting along. Like real friends, they often get into fights and have misunderstandings, which causes them some problem as they find themselves trying to help the cat-like fairy Hummy into finding magical notes from the Song of Happiness which have been scattered around Kanon Town when the villainous Mephisto tries to steal them to make a Song of Sorrow instead. A fun series overall and easy to recommend.  Cure Happy, Cure Sunny, Cure Peace, Cure March, Cure Beauty Smile PreCure!: Miyuki loving loves fairytales! So much so that when the fairy Candy appears and tells Miyuki that she comes from the fairytale kingdom Marchenland, Miyuki jumps right into becoming a legendary warrior-- PreCure! Grabbing the new friends she's made at her new school, the five girls form an invincible team to take on a Big Bad Wolf, Red Oni, and Wicked Witch. This evil trio make up the Bad End Kingdom and look to cause despair in humans in order to revive their leader Emperor Pierrot and give the world a Bad End! A very enjoyable show that I highly recommend for some great characters and amazingly funny episodes.  Cure Heart, Cure Diamond, Cure Sword, Cure Rosette, Cure Ace DokiDoki! PreCure: Mana is the student council president and spends every minute helping other people out. This worries her best friend Rikka. When Mana meets Cure Sword of the recently destroyed Trump Kingdom, the three girls along with Mana's other friend Alice fight against the Selfish Kingdom and the minions of King Selfish to find the Trump Kingdom's Queen Ange and restore the Trump Kingdom. DokiDoki had a bit of a rocky start in both the animation and storytelling department, and the swerve concerning the fifth member of the team turned some people off, but it's still had a fair share of enjoyable episodes and the characters are still great.  Currently Airing!
Potsticker fucked around with this message at 22:31 on Oct 12, 2013 |
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Oct 4, 2013 13:24
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 00:21 |
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I've watched the first episode of most Precures, and the only one to really grab me was Heartcatch. Not coincidentally, it's the only one I've watched in its entirety. Its fights are just so much more dynamic. They still have the standard "run away until Cure Main Girl gathers the wits to use her Instant Win I can enjoy a magical girl show just for the bright colors and cute storylines outside of combat, but Heartcatch had good enough action to make me want to watch it instead of re-watching Cardcaptor Sakura.
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Oct 4, 2013 14:12
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HeartCatch is the series that I see most often recommended to people and as you say, it's not afraid to let Cures other than Blossom finish off the monsters and the fight scenes are way more dynamic. Even late in the series the finishing attacks are used during combat or to finish off monsters after all the girls receive power ups. Suite I feel like still had pretty good fights, if that's what you're looking for specifically, but Smile is stock attacks and Cure Happy finishing off the monsters all the way down. It's really great for everything else, though! DokiDoki starts out relying just on stock footage, but eventually lets the characters do other stuff during fights. The recent episode with Cure Rosette's father particularly stood out as being really great. But Cure Heart still has to finish everything off.
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Oct 4, 2013 21:03
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Some of this I've seena nd some I've heard described to me in painstaking detail. Splash Star is mediocre at best but from what I've heard is supposed to be sort of charmingly so, though it takes right up until the very end for that to kick in for some people. I love Yes precure 5 but that's because the entire show runs on insane idiot dream logic. Here's a famous example: Nuts, one of the fairies, runs a jewelry store out of a storefront that the blue girl owns because she is hilariously wealthy. One day the gang shows up to discover that Nuts is quite literally starving to death because he hasn't sold any jewelry. He refuses all offers of food and charity (even though he is already living off blues generosity???) so they problem solve by using one of the mini fairies as a xerox machine and plaster up advertising all over town. Then they get into a fight and win and then because they advertised Nuts has customers again so he gets to eat food and everybody is happy. There's another episode involving a ghost that wants to make the red one his bride because she looks like his old dead fiance. Nothing ever logically follows more than one or two steps from anything else and I love that because it's weird. Also one of the fairies, Milk, totally loving owns because she's a maid to the other two Coco and Nuts but she's a total misanthrope and is awful to everyone but in a sort of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia kinda way. She becomes the 6th Precure in the sequel. yes owns go watch Yes if you also liked Pretty Rhythm. If you haven't seen THAT, then drop precure and go watch it instead it's batshit. I'd like to posit that DokiDoki sucks rear end by the way, thanks for reading~
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Oct 4, 2013 21:17
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Heartcatch (and Ojamajou DoReMi) are insanely good magical girl anime. Yes! is crazy in a way that makes it seem like it's taking the piss out of itself. Smile has a nice team dynamic and I'm a sucker for dark magical girls. The rest have their moments, but don't quite hit the same level as those three. Heartcatch is drat near required watching for magical girl fans, though.
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Oct 4, 2013 22:07
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From what I've heard of Milk's antics, she sounds like the most entertaining reason to give Yes! a go. As for DokiDoki, at least you can take solace in the that we're in the last quarter and information on the next series should be popping up soon enough.
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Oct 4, 2013 22:10
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Splash Star has A LOT in common with Futari wa but rather than being a bad rip off, I'd say it's more like the show they should have made in the first place. Where Nagisa is weirdly pessimistic and keeps having to be told how cheerful and courageous she is, Saki just is that cheerful and courageous. Where Honoka is some kind of perfect human being, Mai is an actual character with flaws. Where the original show had an omnipresent, weirdly depressing atmosphere to it, Splash Star gradually builds up to become an unrelenting snowball of the sort of positivity you'd expect from this sort of thing. It has a really slow start, probably the most aggravating mid-season lull in the franchise (and that's saying something) and an unfortunate predilection for deus ex machinae but it also has the most memorable set of antagonists in the franchise, some of the best fight scenes on the franchise, some surprisingly genuine heartwarming moments and Michiru and Kaoru. Precure Tier List Top Tier Heartcatch -The best one that isn't just one big joke. I shouldn't need to elaborate in this thread. Smile - A sincere celebration of the best kind of abject stupidity. High Tier Fresh - Dumb and bad in a lot of ways but silly and energetic enough to be a lot of fun anyway, the so bad it's good Precure. The world needs a spinoff that is just Scooby Doo but with the donut bros. Splash Star - See above All-Stars New Stage 1 Meh tier Everything else Trash tier Futari wa / Max Heart - I'm pretty sure the creative staff would rather have been making a terrible, angsty Kamen Rider show. Dokidoki - A horrible waste of good character concepts. All-Stars DX 2 Actively making the world a worse place to live by virtue of existing tier All-Stars DX 3
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Oct 4, 2013 23:29
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Been wanting to try this franchise so guess I'll watch Heartcatch, thanks for the thread.
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Oct 5, 2013 03:27
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Demicol posted:Been wanting to try this franchise so guess I'll watch Heartcatch, thanks for the thread. You may want to watch it weekly with the BSS-Commie subs of the re-air, as every complete release is aggressively bad.
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Oct 5, 2013 03:36
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I wouldn't call the Doremi subs of HeartCatch agressively bad. They're better than the TV-N subs at least. And that's not even counting TV-N's horrid need to add huge graphics.
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Oct 5, 2013 03:55
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So I just watched the first episode of Heartcatch, and this is pretty danged interesting. Erika is a jerk, though.
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Oct 5, 2013 04:57
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No troll no joke recommendation: Just Watch Pretty Rhythm.
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Oct 5, 2013 04:59
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Futari wa/Max Heart being a kind of dark, toku-esque magical girl anime was what gave the Pretty Cure series its subversive charm in the first place. It was the first all-ages (read: not made for pedophiles or older women) magical girl anime that was aware of and allowed to openly embrace older audiences, as well as the logical next step from what Takeuchi had to fight for with Sailor Moon. Paper Lion is also right, but you should watch Ojamajo DoReMi too.
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Oct 5, 2013 05:06
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Waffleman_ posted:Erika is a jerk, though. She gets better. The good thing about having 49 episodes of Monster of the Week is there's plenty of time for character development.
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Oct 5, 2013 05:16
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Waffleman_ posted:Erika is a jerk, though. Erika is the best and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.  And Moonlight... Moonlight is more badass than most shonen protagonists. 
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Oct 5, 2013 05:27
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I am watching Futari wa (or First Precure, as I'd like to call it), and liking the mood of the ED that being a magical girl is more trouble than it's worth. Also the director did practically all of Dragon Ball Z, hence the rather physical fight scenes. What makes Heartcatch a great show from just good was the ending/final arc. Man.
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Oct 5, 2013 16:00
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The only one I've seen in its entirety so far is Fresh, and I loved it. It has a good blend of relatively thoughtful storytelling and entertaining campy dumbfuck antics, and the supporting cast is really solid. It was a lot more fight-oriented than the other magical girl shows I've watched, with them actually vaulting around punching monsters and setting up attacks and having choreography. Heartcatch seems to be the one famous for doing that sort of thing, so that's probably what I'll watch next.
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Oct 5, 2013 16:45
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MadRhetoric posted:Futari wa/Max Heart being a kind of dark, toku-esque magical girl anime was what gave the Pretty Cure series its subversive charm in the first place. This is pretty much the opposite of the impression I've gotten from watching the shows. The whole Precure franchise (with the semi-exception of Heartcatch and the weird reverse exception of Smile) feels kind of at odds with itself. It's like they've ignored Sailor Moon-esque shows entirely and just kind of smashed together elements of the non-violent kind of magical girl show with elements of sentai/Kamen Rider in a way that doesn't really gel properly or like the shows are pitched too young for the sort of overall plots they usually go for. Being fascinated by this is actually what carried my interest through most of the shows, especially Futari wa, where the disconnect is at its most extreme.
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Oct 5, 2013 17:14
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Most of the shows are directed by people famous for shonen anime, if that helps explain anything. Futari Wa was directed by the guy who directed the DBZ anime.
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Oct 5, 2013 18:11
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Add me to the list of people disappointed byDokidoki. I've been a huge PreCure fan since Futari wa, but even I'm not watching the current series. Something about it just seems generic, like the staff isn't putting their love and effort into it. And this is coming from someone who likes a lot of magical girl shows that have been labeled 'generic'. I'm sure I'll finish Dokidoki eventually, since I'm a completionist. But I doubt it will be any time soon.Potsticker posted:As for DokiDoki, at least you can take solace in the that we're in the last quarter and information on the next series should be popping up soon enough. Unless they stick the new Sailormoon in that time slot. I hope not. MadRhetoric posted:Heartcatch (and Ojamajou DoReMi) are insanely good magical girl anime. They're my two favorite anime. I've spent so much money on importing DVD/Blu-ray and other merchandise.
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Oct 6, 2013 00:23
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Alopex posted:The only one I've seen in its entirety so far is Fresh, and I loved it. It has a good blend of relatively thoughtful storytelling and entertaining campy dumbfuck antics, and the supporting cast is really solid. It was a lot more fight-oriented than the other magical girl shows I've watched, with them actually vaulting around punching monsters and setting up attacks and having choreography. Heartcatch seems to be the one famous for doing that sort of thing, so that's probably what I'll watch next. There are some amazing fight scenes in Heartcatch so if you like that sort of thing it is right up your ally. The fight scene at the park with Moonlight. 
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Oct 6, 2013 00:44
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Waffleman_ posted:Erika is a jerk, though. But she's the strongest jerk so watch your step, fool
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Oct 6, 2013 02:24
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The only thing I don't really like about Doki Doki is the aspect of the show with the baby, and all the girls taking care of the baby together. It being such a big part of it unsettles me a bit somehow.
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Oct 6, 2013 03:02
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I've been a really big fan of Precure for a long time. There is just something about these shows aimed for little girls that always amuses me. My favorites are Splash Star and Heartcatch. Splash Star I believe has the best writing / plot in all of the pretty cure series, and Heartcatch has the best of everything else. Cure Marine / Erika is the best pretty cure. Another show that I would like to recommend for this thread would be Aikatsu. It has a very similar tone to Heartcatch. It filled my need for little girl shows too, seeing how that I agree also that DokiDoki just is a very disappointing season overall. The problem I mostly have with it is that the show doesn't know the sense of direction it is going. Regina turned out to be really useless in the long run, yet getting her own arc.
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Oct 6, 2013 03:32
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Justin_Brett posted:The only thing I don't really like about Doki Doki is the aspect of the show with the baby, and all the girls taking care of the baby together. It being such a big part of it unsettles me a bit somehow. The guy, Joe, too was pretty creepy. Calling the girls "My Sweet Heart" and the baby-- The girls bust into this strange guy's house and find a giant egg, it hatches and there's a baby-- and now the girls have to take care of it for some reason? It's easily the most  part about DokiDoki and I'm so glad that Joe's been absent and whole deal is just sort of forgotten about.For those who dropped the show, the baby is still around, but mostly just acts as the fairy for Cure Ace's transformation.
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Oct 6, 2013 03:54
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MagicalDuck posted:Unless they stick the new Sailormoon in that time slot. I hope not
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Oct 6, 2013 08:45
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Splash Star was one of the last seasons I started watching, precisely because it looked like a carbon copy of the first one. However, it turned out to be better than the original in almost every way. It ended up being my second favorite after Heartcatch. As for Dokidoki, I also thought it was pretty meh at first, but it's begun to grow on me. I especially enjoy episodes with Sebastian in them. In fact, every season other than Heartcatch and the original has taken a while for me to start appreciating it. I absolutely hated Suite when it first started, but it ended up being one of the better ones by the end. It seems like they've been taking longer and longer to get good recently, though.
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Oct 7, 2013 01:25
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I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who holds Heartcatch in such high regard. I've tried to get into the series after that (only watched one of Suite, and about half of Smile before I dropped it) but I just don't find them as interesting as Heartcatch was. I wasn't sure if it was really that good or of I was just biased by the fact that it was my first.
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Oct 7, 2013 02:07
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Oh, there was one season that didn't get better for me as it went along. 5GoGo is easily my least favorite out of the 10.
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Oct 7, 2013 04:06
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DokiDoki is the first Precure series since Futari Wa/Max Heart that was just too annoying to watch and at least Futari Wa/Max Heart had the excuse of it being new and still trying to find it's groove. Doki just feels schizophrenic like it doesn't know what it wishes to be or what direction to go in and it builds up promising plot points only to discard them for something else. I'm also not overly keen on the fascination the show has with Mana either, I know she's the main character and all but too much of Doki seems to be about only her. Every other season is campy fun though and I like Heartcatch, Splash Star and Yes 5 about equally.
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Oct 8, 2013 13:27
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Potsticker posted:For those who dropped the show, the baby is still around, but mostly just acts as the fairy for Cure Ace's transformation. Well, in the last few episodes there's been a thing where the girls have to keep the baby happy, or it'll cry, and make the villains stronger. And depending on how much patience you have I imagine that could become really, really tiresome, especially with the subtext it has.
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Oct 8, 2013 13:41
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I'm slowly watching Futari wa now, and I haven't seen any of the other series. I appreciate the more physical nature of the fights, though it has the usual Sailor Moon-esque problem of always using the same stock footage finishing move. It's ok, otherwise, but not really remarkable.
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Oct 8, 2013 17:18
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Justin_Brett posted:Well, in the last few episodes there's been a thing where the girls have to keep the baby happy, or it'll cry, and make the villains stronger. And depending on how much patience you have I imagine that could become really, really tiresome, especially with the subtext it has. I'm not sure that the crying is going to become a plot point outside of that one episode. To me it felt like just a Rikka-focused episode where the highlight was just how good at being motherly Rikka was. As Mr. Fortitude noted, Dokidoki seems to enjoy throwing out plot points and then dropping them. It's hard to say whether or not this was a one-off or part of some actual build up.
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Oct 8, 2013 18:05
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Well, they did it again the next episode, so I don't know.
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Oct 8, 2013 21:36
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I don't think even Toei knows what they are doing with Doki at this point. I appreciate that Doki tried to be more complex after the fun, simple slapstick nature of Smile but it's just a giant clusterfuck right now.
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Oct 9, 2013 01:42
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Did Kobraja just give the Cures his headshot? Holy poo poo, the baddies in this series are great.
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Oct 10, 2013 04:07
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Waffleman_ posted:Did Kobraja just give the Cures his headshot? Holy poo poo, the baddies in this series are great. Yes, yes he did. HeartCatch is so wonderful and my only real criticism is that Professor Sabark just kind of stands around for 40-odd episodes not really doing anything important. When the plot does get to him, though, it is amazing.
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Oct 10, 2013 05:28
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Waffleman_ posted:Did Kobraja just give the Cures his headshot? Holy poo poo, the baddies in this series are great. They really are. Heartcatch is a Legitimately Good Show, not just the best of the Pretty Cure franchise. The Recurring Miniboss Team is entertaining, the Big Scary Evil Counterpart is threatening and pretty much unstoppable. The cast of the story is universally well fleshed out, and it never actually forgets about the random Victims of the Week--and they frequently actually pop back into the story just to remind you that people exist who aren't just victims, or props for actual important people.
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Oct 10, 2013 08:34
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Also Yuri Tsukikage is way cooler than Homura Akemi.
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Oct 10, 2013 08:44
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 00:21 |
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My only real issue with Heartcatch is how Sunshine was handled. She appears overpowered and then quickly just fades to the background without much of a presence.
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Oct 10, 2013 11:32
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