Would you believe me if I told you this children's animated power ranger magical girl alternative called Smile Precure did indeed make me smile?
I saw a video about precure and decided to watch it on a whim. Eventually the fellas to the left were mentioned and I settled on watching this season because I recognized them from a meme I saw ages ago.
Anyway I went into this kinda just expecting not to particularly like or dislike it but I grew to like it more than I thought I would. Smile Precure is pretty episodic which I think that was to it's benefit in regards to keeping me watching.
I'd just watch an episode a day and slowly the cast grew on me and It's episodic nature set my expectations for any signifigant plot fairly low since you wouldn't know what to expect from the average episode for the most part and the show makes it pretty obvious when there's gonna be a shakeup of some kind with multiple indicators/timers being present.

I guess for the characters, I'll start with the titular main 5 Precure. Firstly we have the pink leader Miyuki/Cure Happy. She is, what I assume is, the typical clumsy and happy go lucky protagonist and she enjoys reading fairy tales, which is a prevailing theme throughout this season. If im being honest I could sum her up with, she is funny and makes me laugh sometimes. She can be pretty goofy and airheaded which tend to make her the butt of many gags that occasionally got more chuckles out of me than I'd like to admit.

Next up we have Akane/Cure sunny. She's the sporty, headstrong bordering on tomboyish lass of the group. I like her attitude and overall vibe and she has my favourite cure design in this season. I enjoy how she banters towards the others of the main cast and how she speaks her mind and tends not to sugarcoat stuff. I enjoyed the episode about her having to cover for her dad at their shop, I found their interactions endearing. The episode with the foreign guy and her was also really great and incredibly,incredibly, endearing. Might even say it made me smile.

From what I've gathered, Yayoi/Cure Peace is a fan favourite and I get the appeal. She is shy and self concsious which makes her quite relatable at times. In spite of that though, she gradually becomes more open around the main gang and we see different sides of her, such as her fondness for nerdy stuff and how she can geek out it. Seeing her act like that made her feel more human since I can certainly relate to being on the more shy side around people but then just not shutting up when I'm talking about something I feel strongly about. I think the episode where Miyuki gets turned into a robot and her respective character focused episode near the end of the season perfectly show what I like about her. Goes without saying what expression comes onto my face when reminiscing about said episodes.

I wanna say Nao/Cure March is the team member I feel the least strongly compared to everyone else about but just barely. I question the heck out of the fact that she's responsible for her 5 other siblings but respect her taking up that role, even if like she shouldn't have to take up a responsibilty like that at her age. Together with Reika I saw them as the older sisters of the group, at least when paired together. I do think that because of how episodes centred around her in particular are often about her role as the oldest sibling, she misses out on episodes where we can learn more about her as a person. There's the relay race episode which I really like as an episode for Nao but even then it's like a 60/40 split between her and Yayoi in that particular episode, which I don't think is a bad thing given that it makes sense in context but you get the idea.

Lastly, Reika/Cure Beauty. She is the most intelligent of the group and also happens to be student council vice president. Despite her position, she is modest and understanding of others and her interactions with the others almost makes her feel like a mom at times. She's kind of the straight man due to her earnest nature and I like how stoic she is even when put under pressure, I respect her ability to do that. She also reminds of Saber from Fate and I like Saber so thats gives her a bump up on my mental tierlist.

Besides the cures we have the fairies of this season who are Candy and Pop from Märchenland, though Candy is more consistently relevant since she's in every episode.
Candy is an odd one. At times, especially earlier on, she could be annoying and even an active detriment on occasion but around the mid season episodes she grew on me a little bit as they toned done her brattiness. But then it felt like after a while she had a lot less of a significant presence outside of providing the main crew with their powerups. If anything I guess that shows she has grown out of how she was near the beginning which isn't a bad thing at all I suppose but after the fact she just felt kind of there until she helped the gang out at the end of season.
Pop on the other hand is a pretty cool dude. I like that he can transform into stuff and he plays pretty decent support whenever involved in any battle. His manner of speech and sort of chivalrous vibe is a little endearing, especially in that one episode where he starred in the makings of a samurai film that one time.

The villains of this season, I've honestly begun to appreciate more over time as I watched other seasons. Ignoring Pierrot since as far as I'm concerned he's not much of a character and more aligned to an evil force of nature, The 4 villains this season manage to perfectly balance out between being incompetent yet endearing on one side and truly feeling like a threat on the other.
The primary 3 are Wolfrun, Akaoni and Majorina who show up the majority of the time to bring about whatever mandatory monster of the week the episode needs.

They are based off of the big bad wolf, The oni of japanese folklore and the evil queen from Snow white respectively, keeping up with the fairy tale theme.
Due to the nature of a show like this, these guys' quickly begin to feel like nonissues since we see them get their asses beat just about every episode, more often than not, but thanks to this, they aren't really taken too seriously and most of the time they fufill the mandatory filling of the big bad gauge every episode before fighting precure so it never feels like they are contirbuting literally nothing.
It also helps that a lot of time they are played more for comedic relief during their appearance. After a bit I found them sort of endearing in some episodes where they are being slightly less antagonistic and being more of a mild inconvenience.
Out of the three Majorina probably stands out the most due to how her doohickeys end up being the direct cause of some of the gimmick episodes. She's also able to make herself look young which we see a handful of times.
Wolfrun I like mostly because out of 3 he shows the most outright disdain and hatred for the Precure, particularly Sunny and happy. In a way I found it satisfying to see him lash out like that in the episodes where he did because it makes complete sense for any of these 3 to be pissed after basically getting their ass beat every single episode.
I have the least to say about Akaoni. He is the meathead and dunce of the group despite his seriousness, which at most makes him endearing I guess. He seems to get along with Wolfrun even if they butt heads at times.

And now we finally have Joker who is easily the best villain in this show and perhaps all of precure. This guy is the perfect contrast to everything in the show, even the other 3 villains. Unlike the other 3 villains he never feels incompetent or like a joke. During the earlier episodes he only really shows up every now and then, usually just to give the other 3 villains a power up. At this point he's more like just a kind of weird slightly off putting guy, maybe a bit flamboyant if you will. As soon as the mid season conflict comes around however, we see how much of a threat he can be, easily dispatching the precure and really hammering in how outmatched they are.

Given how light hearted the show had been up to that point, seeing the girls utterly distraught after getting done in by Joker really leaves an impact, even if you know in the back of your mind that they're gonna get back up and win after a motivational speech. Even then, in that instance, their victory felt earned after everything was said and done. So to mince words I just like how much of a threat he is made to feel thanks to how he practically steals the show in any episode he is in and doesn't show up too much to make him feel as incompetent as the other villains. Also helps that he's just a really weird and creepy guy.
One last thing to note on the primary 3 villains is that I absolutely love how their motivations revealed to us near the end of the series and they kinda become almost instantly sympathetic because of how much sense it makes and also because compared to Joker they don't feel as villanous so it's easy to sympathise with them knowing he exists.

With all that out of the way I'll just skim over my thoughts on other things, this is already way longer than intended lol.
The main 5 precure are sort of uniform this time since they have generally the same outfit but with slight tweaks along with being in their respective colors. That leaves their hair which honestly, the only one out of the 5 I like is Cure Sunny's. I don't dislike the rest but it's the only that doesn't make me raise an eyebrow in a brief moment of confusion or amusment. Cure Happy is just okay, Beauty's hair always just looked like octobus tentacles to me, Peace has her weird tree hair and March has... I dunno her hair helmet, I'm not quite sure how to describe it but nonetheless I don't dislike these designs at all, some of their features just make me smile and think, "thats kinda funny."

Their powerup forms we see in their rainbow burst attack are all pretty great and the attack itself is probably still one of my favourites in the series and is only brought down due to how often we see them use it. But about the designs, they're all great and each of them having slightly flowy hair compliments the longer white dresses they wear in this form.


Another thing I've come to appreciate in hinidsight is the action of some scenes. In some of the later season I've watched it feels like its been toned down a bit but here it was oddly refreshing to see these guys throw hands the way they do. It was quite a surprise if im being honest





The opening is just okay, compared to some of the others I've heard. The first ending I like but 2nd is a bit of a downgrade in terms of visuals and I guess since it might be relevant if I do another precure review, all the individual cure attacks are good and the group attacks are all great, except for rainbow healing which looses relvance quickly and like I mentioned before, rainbow burst is overused so often that it loses it's luster but its still a very cool looking attack.

Last thing I'll touch on is that this show was made just a bit after the Tōhoku earthquake in Japan so the people behind it decided to go in a more light hearted direction with this season with the intent of making the people who watched this smile. Knowing that, whilst watching this made me appreciate it better and I dont doubt they succeded in doing so.
With this longer than needed rant out of the way, thats my thoughts on Smile Preure, probably should've written this sooner since some of the memories are hazy but yeah.
Smile is pretty good and it made me smile, yeah.

Found out about this one when I came across the opening on youtube. I won't say too much this time, simply put, this show is about a world where in which memories and bodies are a commodity as a result of being able to implant, copy or remove one person's memories into another's body. I found this concept pretty interesting and liked how the show protrayed it and what can be done with it, whether it be to satisfy one's hedonistic desires, impersonation or just fitting yourself in a new body. One particular usage of it made me think a lot, since it was a character who had their memories manipulated and then copied into another body which looked completely different from her original one and by the end of the series it comes into question if the two bodies having memories of that one person are even the same person after a while.


Anyway, the show is unintentionally(?) divided into two halfs, the first primarily revolving around world building, where we follow our main character who we know as Kaiba who has lost his memory and ends up planet hopping with a horny police officer guy named Vanilla who is, for a lack of a better word, a simp due to one of the bodies Kaiba inhabits. The latter half has more of a focus on Kaiba's past and the ties he had with others before he lost his memory.



I found the first half and it's self contained episodic stories to be a really good engaging considering how we spend only an episode with the majority of the characters we meet. All their stories are deoressing or bittersweet but I don't think I ever felt it was overly sad or anything due to the vibe of the show and how it presents these things like, it is what it is, and we move on. This isn't to say these were unmemorable but its more like the show telling you, this is how things are.
As for the 2nd half of episodes, assumably due to the lack of time to properly smooth segway into them from, it can feel confusing at times but I think it ultimately did a good job at showing us Kaiba's backstory, even if a bit scuffed, and it really elevates a particular scene and other smaller details in a neat way.

Visually this show reminded me of Osamu Tezuka's artstyle and given that this came out in 2008, it looks quite distinct for that. The character are fairly easy on eyes and simple but also very bizarre in some cases. Bodies aren't as permanent, there are a lot of characters who dont look typically human, beyond what may just be a stylistic choice and I think that's cool and adds to making the world building since of course people would chnage their bodies to whatever they would prefer, or the most that they could afford. Even on a particular episode where its clear they are thin on budget, they manage to make character designs that, on paper, look sorta messy or unifinished contribute towards the world building whilst not looking deliberately low effort, given the context.

The music is great, I love how mellow the opening is compared to what I usually expect form an anime opening. Left a bittersweet feelinng in me whenever I watched it. The ending is just as good and gives me similar feelings but more aligned with deep thought and introspection.
The different arrangents of the planet theme all fit where they are used and I like that they have on particular song or maybe you might call it a leitmotif that they use throughout the series. I'd say it compliments the first half's episodic nature well.
There's the tree song and its renditions too, it honestly reminds me a lot of the song of healing from Majora's mask. Besides those songs, I like twinkling photon as well. It just reminds me of mario galaxy and that makes me feel content.

That's about all I have to say about Kaiba, I really liked it and think you highly recommend it, hence why I didn't spoil much. A melancholy, visually distinct world and pondering one's self or identity, is what Kaiba brings to mind.