Precure - Discuss!

[magnuschase]

So the Precure series has to be one of my favorite long-running series yet. I'm not completely caught up with all of them, because there are a lot of episodes and seasons, but I find that each one I watch I just fall even deeper in love with Precure. I tend to fave whichever series I'm watching at the moment, but I especially love Miyuki from Smile Precure and Hana from Hugtto Precure. They're cheerful, energetic, and just overall great.

What's your favorite Precure series? Do you have any ships? Have you read any fanfics that you'd like to recommend? Who's your favorite character? Lets discuss anything that comes to mind when you think of Precure!

Comments

[erinptah]

Hey, I don't remember what the settings for this comm are -- can you, as a basic member, add tags to this post? It would take "precure" and "discussion".

I'm not a big follower of the franchise, but I've seen a couple seasons...

Heartcatch: Recommended to me as a good example of "dark and depressing magical-girl story arcs aren't a new invention that seinen foisted on the pure fluffy shoujo genre." So that was nice. Definitely missed that Itsuki was a girl (and was enjoying the apparent "guy who feels self-conscious about liking cute things" arc...) right up until her transformation. I really liked the "your grandmother was an early Precure" reveal -- I love that feeling of continuity.

Smile: through the Glitter Force dub on Netflix. Joker is the villain of one of my favorite crossover fanfics, so it was nice to see him in action. A few bizarre dubbing choices (calling him Rascal? really?), but some clever ones. (Cure March's dub name is April, i c what u did thar.)

DokiDoki: also through the Glitter Force dub. This one felt like it didn't start as a magical-girl series at all, but some original series about interdimensional politics and invasions, and then it got swept into the Precure brand and had the stock magical-girl trappings pasted on top. So that made for an unusual watch. And I enjoyed the "let's just yell our secret identities to the world, and society can deal with it" ending.

[magnuschase]

Honestly I just forgot to add tags, but unfortunately it doesn't let me make new tags.


Heartcatch Precure was sooo good! There being past generation of Precure including Tsubomi's grandmother has so much potential for fanworks.

I loved Joker from Smile Precure. Honestly, the entirety of Smile Precure was so much fun. I loved the fairy tale inspired villains.

[erinptah]

Okay, I went and changed the settings -- does it work now?

(I also changed the layout to something that doesn't have broken images, whoops.)

I wish Smile had gone a little deeper into the fairytale villains, but oh well, the ending was cute.

[magnuschase]

Yep, works fine! The theme is cute too, I like it.

[leahandillyana]

My three favourite series are:
Heartcatch - for nicely striking a balance between darkness and hope and introducing precure as a generational thing
Fresh - for taking an unusual sci-fi approach to the genre and nicely executed redemption arc
Kirakira Precure A'La Mode - for Chocolade/Macaron interactions (I am pretty sure the romantic subtext was intentional) and bizzare costumes

[magnuschase]

The costumes in KiraKira Precure ARE pretty interesting, aren't they?
Also, yeah, I'm pretty surer that the romantic undertones were intentional. That's one big Haruka/Michiru reference if I've ever seen one! There was even a period of time where Ichika crushed on Chocolat, just like Usagi did with Haruka.

[liri]

I would not recommend Yes Precure 5 if you want to keep that falling-more-in-love streak going, but that might just be me. I've watched... both seasons of Futari wa Precure, about 15 episodes (all I could stand) of Yes, about half of Fresh, and all of Heartcatch, Suite, Smile, Doki Doki, and Happiness Charge. And then I quit Go Princess Precure quite a ways in but before the ending, Mahou Tsukai Precure failed to grab me, and I just never had time to check out... I guess Kira Kira and Hugtto are the two most recent?

I'd say my favorites are Erika from Heartcatch, Rikka from Doki Doki, Kirara from Go Princess and Yayoi from Smile, but my favorite series is Suite Precure - the music, the visuals, the ending, the villains, and most of all Hummy - the mascot was not only not annoying but actively awesome (and the casting gag with her just made it better.) I loved Happiness Charge, too, for the worldbuilding with Precure as a known entity complete with merchandising, the villains striking all over the world and not just in one place... it just felt more real and complete than most of the other series.

And Heartcatch, which I just love for the characters even if the villain has no motivation to speak of. Itsuki/Tsubomi OTP, man.