An adorable episode, focused on Yuri again. Most of those series that introduce an extra hero or heroine to the team never really make those characters stand beyond their role of side-characters. Like, they may add extra abilities, but the show still revolves around the lead characters. Heartcatch is completely different: Yuri is completely awesome, and she is as important as Tsubomi and Erika. The latter already had a lot of episodes dedicated to them in the first half, so right now the creators are really focusing their effort on making Yuri a proper lead character. It’s awesome to see a bit in what she was like when she was still in middle school.
The story of the boy that she grew up with is also really charming. Again, he’s a kid, but he’s far from annoying. This episode was about the love between two childhood friends, but the age difference between the two here made it miles away from the usual cliches. At the end, the way in which the boy confessed his feelings, yet said that he knew that he was way too young for any real romance was very manly.
Speaking of manly: the OP was updated with the most awesome scene involving Koppei. Seeing these scenes alone was just amazing, but something is telling me that the creators were foreshadowing here. I’m dying to see Koppei in action again. This episode was in no way meant to be dark, but there were plenty of hints at future dark episodes with dark precure awakening. Not to mention that Cobraja seems to be the next one heading into the way of Sasorina. There are too few episodes left to make this progress go as smooth as it went with Sasorina, so the creators are going to have to end his story in a bit of a different way than with hers, and i can’t wait to find out how they will do it.
There has been some bad news this week, though: we got our first look into what Suite Precure will look like, and it looks utterly terrible. For those who haven’t seen it, click here. The fact that Toei isn’t returning with Heartcatch Precure’s character designer is just a minor issue here. The mascot also doesn’t look too good (I’m much more a fan of a realistic drawing of cats than with anime’s trend of reducing them all to moe blobs), but that too is just a detail.
No, instead the big thing that bugs me is how little effort was spent into drawing that promo art. It’s a really bad sign when the freaking promo art of a series is off model. The poses are completely moronic, the hair feels literally pasted on and the clothes are unnecessarily detailed with pointless frills. I’m calling it right now: enjoy the three months that we’ve still got left on Heartcatch Precure, because that’s where the awesomeness is going to end. Toei have shown that they don’t really care anything about maintaining quality with Digimon Xros Wars, they’ve shown that they can make enough pointless sequels that come nowhere close to their original with Marie & Gali 2.0, so at this point I’m not expecting anything from Suite Precure anymore.
Rating: *** (Awesome)
I think the cat mascot looks rather cute, as I’m normally a fan of animal mascots. But Heartcatch is the only Precure series I ever became ambitious about (and loved. Didn’t attempt all the other ones). I’m just gonna try out episode one of Suite when it comes out and if I don’t like it, then I’ll drop it. I have enough anime to deal with (and finish for that matter).
It took me one episode to get hooked on Heartcatch, so I’m harboring similar expectations from Suite.
Kitties make everything better, huge heads or not. Plus, he’s voiced by Koyasu Takehito.
THE OLD ART SUCKS WHY DIDN’T THEY STICK TO HEARTCATCH >_
Oh, yeah. That Promo Art. Just crushed my entire hopes. orz Why. Why the hell did they decide to take 1-2 steps back again. ah well, let’s see how episode 1 is going to be …
I also loved the new scenes in the opening. I’m honestly expecting an epic finale, esspecially with this writer here.
I guess they were experimenting with Heartcatch and went back to the old formula while assessing Heartcatch’s success. If they find it was more profitable with Heartcatch, they might decide to try more original concepts/art for the season following Suite.
I can’t see this promo you’re talking about. the “here” link doesn’t work.
dmonhiro: ah sorry. That was indeed a typo. Fixed now.
@Lily: WHAT!? THE CAT IS BEING VOICED BY KOYASU TAKEHITO!? ANOTHER WRONG MALE SEIYUU FOR AN ANIMAL MASCOT?!? This is one thing I don’t like about Precure series! They ALWAYS give the wrong seiyuus to their mascots (except for Heartcatch. Cologne’s voice took some getting used to, though). I mean, they made a squirrel get voiced by Taiki Matsuno! They made a penguin get voiced by Romi Paku (as much as I love her, she’s better off doing human males than animals)!
@Firechick: It’s only a rumor from Livejournal but it’s possible. Don’t think of it as true.
In the previous episodes, have the clips in the opening been from the movie?
Is the new scene *not* in the movie?
Either way, I really liked it.
While the clips in the recent opening were nice, I’m glad to be back to an opening that’s timed to the music.
Uh… I hope you realize that the promo art for Precure ALWAYS looks bad. Go back and take a look at the Heartcatch promo art. It looks nothing like the show we have now. So relax.
http://spg-web.sytes.net/PasteChart/prettycure/pixmicat.php?res=2279
This is probably closer to what the animated Suite will look like. If you still don’t like it, that’s fine. But don’t judge the entire show based on it’s badly drawn promo art. It makes you sound silly.