The Fall 2023 Anime Preview Guide

Power of Hope ~Precure Full Bloom~

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It's been a long time since Nozomi Yumehara was in middle school, fighting with her friends as one of six Pretty Cures. Now, Cure Dream is all grown up and a teacher herself, but being an adult comes with its own challenges and heartbreaks. When she discovers that she can't help one of her students fulfill her own dreams, Nozomi is reminded of when she had the power to transform and wonders what would happen if her transformation item hadn't disappeared from the box she stored it in years ago. Just when she feels uncertain, she and Rin reunite by chance with the other four Cures starting to set things in motion.

Power of Hope: Precure Full Bloom is part of Pretty Cure's 20th anniversary project by Toei Animation. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

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Rebecca Silverman
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What does growing up mean when you were a magical girl? Not many series explore that; I think Sailor Moon may come the closest with Usagi's future as Neo Queen Serenity laid out as part of the main plot. It's too early to know if this will turn into a magical woman story (like Arina Tanemura's Idol Dreams, which has a grown woman transforming), but either way, I like how this one is starting. Yes, we have the typical heavy-handed theme laid out for us, but alongside the climate change discussions and demonstrations, the idea of time not moving in any direction but forward is well done. Nozomi is still very much stuck in her past as Cure Dream, or at least in a place where her adult life isn't going quite the way she expected it to, which makes her think about what would be different if she could still transform. She's become a teacher, like Coco, and she's trying her best, but whenever she attempts to make what she sees as a necessary change, people tell her that she's a grown-up now and needs to act like one.

I get where she's coming from. Of her formerly tight-knit group, the only person she's still friends with is Rin (who has also turned what she learned from her time as Cure Rouge and with Coco and Nuts into a career designing jewelry). She can't seem to manage to make the kind of significant change in her students' lives that Coco made in hers. That's a genuine frustration of teaching, and it's also not uncommon (at least in my experience) to be told by older, more burnt-out teachers to stop dreaming. The world is almost on fire, and she can't even get a scholarship for one kid. It's a heavy place to start a new chapter in the Yes! Precure 5 girls' lives, but it also isn't too off the mark in coming to uncomfortable realizations about the adult world.

We've only gotten to interact with Nozomi and Rin at this point (and the Splash Star Cures haven't shown up yet), but they're very recognizable from their first two series. The same goes for Kurumi/Milk; even though we only see her complaining about work, it is absolutely in keeping with her previous character. I'm also relieved to see Syrup, Coco, and Nuts all in the opening and ending themes, albeit in animal form, because I want them to come back into the story as well. And come on, this series is perfect for an actual romance subplot – and if they do provide that, it's worth noting that Kurumi's Milk form shows up in the ending theme with Karen, whereas the guys are pictured with the other halves of their pseudo-established couples. This may be a bit bleaker than child-oriented Precure titles, but it looks great, and I like how they're handling the heavier realizations. The Yes! Precure 5 series may not have been my first choice to get a sequel, but I'm looking forward to following this one and seeing what the franchise can do when it attempts something different.

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Nicholas Dupree
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I was pretty curious about this one. While I've never seen the Precure series this is a sequel to, the main torchbearer for kid-focused magical girl anime creating something aimed at adults is an interesting proposition. Would this be a full-on graduation to Magical Women, with our adult cast getting the same transformations and darkness-destroying battles of the past? Would it be more in the spirit of Looking for Magical DoReMi and tackle mundane adult drama with the cast's magical girl past as more of a thematic throughline? The answer to either is still up in the air, but I can at least say this premiere was pretty interesting.

Admittedly, I'm sure I'm missing out on some prime fanservice here, even if I don't know much about Yes! Precure 5, I know the visual language of references and cameos well enough to recognize when they're happening. I'm sure long-time fans will get a kick out of recognizing whatever dance is being referenced in that one part or whoever the married couple who owns that restaurant is. I have a friend who won't stop hollering about something called a "Bunbee," but she seems to be having a good time. Thankfully, all those references are delivered with a light enough touch that it doesn't feel alienating, and the actual meat of this episode is self-evident enough that I never felt lost.

I may not have the context for who these characters were in their original series, but I can still relate to their struggles as adults. Even as a teacher, Nozomi maintains the boundless enthusiasm and optimism of a lead magical girl and tries to keep that spirit alive for her students – even as she faces the often cruel and cynical reality of "adult" problems. It's easy to relate to her sense of powerlessness when trying to help a student whose family is divorcing and moving her away from her friends, proposing solutions only to see them dashed apart by apathy or finances. It's inspiring, even aspirational, to see a character keep a constructive attitude, doing whatever they can in the face of the problems we all encounter in life, even when they can't be solved by punching a monster really hard.

Or can they? At the end of this episode, the big question is whether the cast here will be donning their magical girl outfits again. Because there decidedly are monsters and a mysterious villain that seems to be building them out of the angst and despair of humans. It's a classic magical girl formula, but things like a failing business and family life or the apathetic nihilism of climate change now drive the emotions. I have some potential misgivings about how well the series will be able to tackle those topics if we do get the full-on Magical Woman treatment. Still, I appreciate that it's taking the idea of "Precure aimed at adults" seriously, and I'm willing to give it a lot of leeway if they let these ladies transform.

I plan on watching more, if just to see how this experiment works out. Institutions like Precure don't often branch out from what has always worked, and I'm inquisitive about just how far this new branch will sprout out. Even as a relatively newbie, that's enough to keep me locked in for a while.

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James Beckett
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I'm not a diehard Precure fan, but I am a tokusatsu fan in general, so I fully understand the franchise's appeal. Magical girls kick ass, even (and often especially) when they're not suffering at the hands of a grim-n'-gritty Madoka Magica wannabe. All of that said, I didn't need to be a franchise devotee to be interested in the premise of Power of Hope: Precure Full Bloom, because it's brilliant all on its own: What happens to the magical girls when they grow up and have to live the often frustrating and disappointing lives of adults, especially when they know that they used to have the power to truly change the world, once upon a time? Magical Girls are all well and good, but Magical Jaded-But-Ultimately-Still-Optimistic-and-Kickass Women? Sign me the heck up.

Granted, I will admit that having no knowledge of the Yes! Precure 5 series puts viewers like me at a slight disadvantage. Nozomi, Rin, and the rest of their (formerly) Precure pals are all interesting and likable enough. Still, I'm sure I'd be much more emotionally impacted seeing where they all wound up as adults if I'd gotten to know them in the original series. Still, it's easy enough to get the gist of Nozomi's central conflict: Global warming is destroying the earth, she has students who are struggling with family issues and economic burdens that they can't possibly fix on their own, and all of the literal magic and sunshine that she used to use to defeat evil has oh-so-inconveniently appeared now that she's a grown-up. As it so happens, “Frustrated public school teacher who wishes they could henshin the ills of society away” is a premise that hits me so deep in my core that it almost hurts.

Plus, despite the sudden onset of adult ennui to the story, this is still a Precure story at its heart, which means we've got all of the current-events-themed demons and magical shenanigans that a toku fan could ask for. It's all as brisk and easy to digest as any of its older but simultaneously younger sibling series. I don't know if this is a show that I'll end up watching until the end, at least not without playing some catchup on the prior seasons, but I'm thrilled that Power of Hope: Precure Full Bloom exists. We need more shows like it.