[Anime] Go! Princess Precure

Go! Princess PreCure is set in a boarding junior high school, named Noble Gakuen (Noble Academy). The protagonist Haruka Haruno is a 13-year-old first year student. Her big dream is to be a princess someday, because she has admired a princess in the picture book she has kept since her childhood. One day she transforms into Cure Flora with "Dress Up Key" which Prince Kanata of Hope Kingdom gave her as a good luck charm when she was little. Then she also finds other PreCure girls in her school, 14-year-old Minami Kaidou as Cure Mermaid and 13-year-old Kirara Amanogawa as Cure Twinkle. As the Princess PreCure team, with two fairies Pafu and Aroma, they decide to fight against
dark witch Disupia (or Despair) who hates all the dreams in the world and wants to turn them to despair.

After little break from Precure i took since Suite, i've decided to watch 1st episode of newest season, and i really liked it, Haruka is fun main character and her expressions are hilarious, even secondary characters, like Yui, are very likeable, and both Puff and Aroma are adorable, Close was very creepy. Fighting scene was very well choreographed and cool, i got hooked and definitely will continue to watch it

Quite a few fansubs groups are subbing it, i watched every single one, Commie, Doremi, MikaruSubs and Shimakaze. My favorite were Doremi and Shimakaze.

 

People in the CUreCast say they like the Mikaru one better. But I think I'll stick to DOremi myself.

I'm surprised HappinessCharge never got a thread...

 

So this was the first episode of Pretty Cure I've ever watched and overall it felt pretty much like a typical first episode of a henshin hero series - which is just fine for this toku fanboy. :thumbs: I was pretty much going in blind as I hadn't been following any of the build-up to the show, and while I wasn't expecting a macho power fantasy I must admit to being a little wary that it would just bash me over the head constantly with pink and frills and so on; But for the most part it actually avoided that despite the princess theme. Well, outside of the transformation sequence, but I've seen many toku series with transformation sequences that I didn't care for so that's not a deal breaker.

So yeah, cautiously optimistic. I'll try to stick with it, and hopefully at some point I'll finally have the time to go back and check out one of the previous seasons that Ivanhobe had recommended to me in another thread.

Random question, wasn't doremi the sub group that did Armor Hero and a bunch of Chinese dramas? Do they do anime subs now or are you referring to another group?

 

Doremi subs...largely did Magical Girl anime subs. They mostly brought about the Ojamajo Doremi series, but after some other series, they started releasing weekly episodes of Precure from...Heartcatch, I believe? I started with Suite Precure with them.

You can check out their brief history, as well as other works I have amended in this post, here: http://doremi-fansubs.com/index.php/topic,1747.0.html

 

I've figured it out. Doremi is the group that fansubs anime, including Precure. Doremii is the group that translates Chinese dramas. That's not confusing at all. :sweat:

How did episode one compare to previous debuts? Is it pretty typical or did this series have an unusual start?

 

It introduced some new elements (Haruka having transformation key since little girl, all 3 girls not knowing each other) but overall, it was typical 1st episode

 

They eliminated some tropes:

Main girl avoids being smack-faced by fairies for one thing.

 

I respectfully disagree* but, that's neither here nor there.
*Link here.

Happy Charge didn't do that either, I think?
Megumi just got smacked in the head by the jewel that Hime threw.

 

Nice review. Personally I liked the pacing, but I guess I'm judging it more by toku standards. The plot progression is pretty similar to a Rider's debut episode.

 

DokiDoki didn't do it either, now that I think about it. It was just Smile, Heartcatch, Fresh, and possibly Suite?

 

The 2nd episode brings us Cure Mermaid. Flowers and Mermaids? Between this and Ninninger it seems like Toei is on a roll with their "the theme is there is no theme" thinking.

I really like the two MotW designs so far. All I can really compare it to is a season and a half of Sailor Moon so maybe they're typical for PreCure, but for someone who's more used to rubber suit monsters these make a nice change.

 

I finally sat down and watched the first episode. Yes, it took me whole week (i have a schedule, you know).

My general impression is that the producers words rang true and this was a very un-PreCure episode... and i actually found that to be a good thing.

To be honest, the last few years of PreCure had tried a bit too hard to stuck with "PreCure Formula" and it was starting to feel stale. Hell, HappinessCharge (yes, it is one word) was a HeartCatch PreCure rip-off half of the time. But seriously, as much as this episode deviated from the usual PreCure template, it actually reminded me a lot of the first episodes of some of the older shows like YPC5 and Fresh since those shows really tried to reinvent themselves as PreCure seasons while still sticking to the basics, and it that sense GoPuri was quite successful since it did it´s basically creating its own status quo using the PreCure formula as a base but not as a guide.

I was also really impressed about the animation, i could ramble infinitely about the animation issues i had with HappinessCharge and this episode was a huge improvement over the usual style of that show. I still have a few nitpicks, it is obvious that the animators of GoPuri were cutting corners as much as they could (basically, the animation quality drops every time a scene is not a close up), but the more than made up with the episode Battle. Seriously, we haven´t had such a dynamic camera work since Suite.

So overall, it was a pretty good start for the series, in terms of first episodes of PreCure it is definetily one of the best, though that bar is not a particularly high one (PreCure first episodes tend to be pretty basic, and they are usually part of longer introduction arcs). If i had to rank it, i would say that it was better than HaCha´s first and as good as DokiDoki´s, if not a little better in it execution (i am only comparing with those two since those shows were made by the same producer).

PreCure MOTW designs vary from season to season, they usually come up with a "Monster template" for each series and they rarely stray too far from that. I have only seen one so far but these Zetsuborgs look alright to me, though i still like the Selfishes (the ones from DokiDoki) a little better. If you are curious, i recommend you to check out some of the MOTW designs from Suite, that season had some awesome designs.

PD: Looking forward to episode two, mostly ´cause i love Mermaid´s design.

 

i might overthink it a little, but maybe it means, that this Precure theme is nature? We have Cure Flora, the Princess of Flowers, Cure Mermaid, the Princess of the Sea and Cure Twinkle, the Princess of Stars (There will also be Cure Scarlet, but we have no information about her yet)

 

I must admit I wasn't really looking forward to episode three so much. First off, even from the next episode teaser at the end of episode two it was pretty clear that it's just there to pad out a little time before introducing Cure Twinkle. Plus what I've heard about the fairy companion fairy characters made them sound rather annoying, so I feared that an episode based on them would get irritating fast. But actually I don't mind the little talking dog, so all was good.

It's the typical earth-sea-sky trio, but I think any pattern beyond that seems like a stretch. :sweat:

 

There seems to be nothing more going on than the usual color-coded themed Cures, who just so happen to be following the Fresh pattern since apparently Cure Scarlet, The Princess of Flames, is going to be red.

I just watched ep 02 and it was actually pretty good in terms of characters, though i can still play the old 'spot where the budget for animation went' game. Mermaid´s transformation was fantastic but the fight itself wasn´t as good as in ep 01, though it must be noted that this has to be the first underwater debut battle we´ve ever had.

So far i have quite liked this season, i have only seen a couple of episodes but they left a better impression on me than HaCha did. I don´t want to make it sound like i despised HaCha, but that show had some serious issues and so far GoPuri has felt like an overall improvement in almost every way.

Being annoying is half of their charm.

 

the series is becoming cooler and more cooler every episode, in 3 episodes is far better than Hapiness Charge

Also im Couting all Gokengaious of the series, untill episode 3 we have 50 Gokengaious :v

 

Anyone Noticied this in the Magazine in Episode 4 of Go! Princess?

Reference to HeartCatch

 

Im already loving Kirara, she is nice, but straight to the point, not caring if person she speaks to is her classmate, or senior, or even villain, much different from previous Yellow Cures. Im surprised they fixed small animation error from episode 4 preview, where Kirara eyes looked little off, but in actual episode, she looked normal.

 

Finally got around to watching episode 3, it was quite nice for what was essentially a filler episode. That said, from what i saw on the episode my guess is that Haruka´s roomate will figure out that she is a PreCure eventually.

Well, Fairy Drop has become a general occurrence in PreCure as an in-universe brand. It even appeared on Smile and i think it was in some episode of DokiDoki.

Also, i haven´t watched episode 4 yet but people are hyping it so much that it better be the single most amazing PreCure episode ever or i will be sorely dissappointed.

 

I'd prepare to be disappointed then. It's not bad, but I didn't think it was as good as the first two episodes. Or is there a big following for yellow PreCures that I haven't heard about?