Power of Hope: Precure Full Bloom

Episode 11

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Bell is hurting. Built to watch over and protect the town, she has instead been a witness to what she perceives as its destruction. The humans who created her (or at least who gave her form) have, in her estimation, declined – they no longer live in harmony with the world around them, instead selfishly bending that world to their whims. Even more frustrating, they know that they're courting disaster, they just seem to think it's too much trouble to change their ways. So if they won't do it themselves, Bell will force it upon them: she will destroy the very thing that created her.

Nothing shows Bell's despair better than the second-to-last Shadow form we see in this episode. Rather than being a recognizable shape, it's a horrible mishmash of screaming faces piled up on a single body. Each face moans out a denial – it's too hard, it's not worth it, someone else will do it. The monster is the embodiment of how Bell has come to see humanity: a cluster of gaping maws spewing excuses while the world burns around them. No wonder she's angry. We should all be.

One of the most interesting elements of Pretty Cure stories as a whole is the way that the villains are, on some level, understandable if not relatable. Fennel from Delicious Party Pretty Cure is a particularly good example (in the shows available legally in English); his descent into villainy is marked by always feeling like he wasn't good enough. That's something most of us have probably experienced at some point, so even if we didn't agree with what he did, we could understand why he did it. The Yes 5 team is also in a particularly good position to see where Bell is coming from because of their own experiences in episodes twenty-three and twenty-four of their first series; during that sequence they were possessed by the villainous organization Nightmare, giving them a first-hand glimpse at what happened to its agents and why they became bad guys. The inclusion of Bunbee, Kaoru, and Michiru in this show is to remind us that some villains can be redeemed, or at least rehabilitated. Or put another way, they're to offer us hope that maybe Bell can also find a way out of the darkness she's been living in.

Hope is in short supply right now, though. Cure Dream falters twice during the battle, and Syrup is alarmed by what he sees in the time flowers back in Cure Rose Garden. Bell's despair has caused her Shadows to move beyond her control – the final Shadow form seems to be moving without her input. It's the ultimate embodiment of her despair: it looks like a being from the natural world, more so than any of the other Shadows, an echidna, unless I miss my guess. In nature, the echidna is a relatively low-key animal, but in Greco-Roman mythology, she's a fierce goddess, one who eats human flesh according to some Classical sources. Bell's echidna looks like the animal, but in place of spines, it has tentacles, which hint at the mythological Echidna, who was half-nymph, half-snake. It's the physical manifestation of what Bell thinks she wants – humans to be destroyed and the natural world to reign.

But…what is a town without people? As the Cures point out, that's not a town at all. Is that really what Bell wants? Even she doesn't seem sure at the end, but by that point, things have gone out of control. Hope is thin on the ground, and it doesn't look like things are going to go well for anyone – not even Saki and Mai's school friends, who have taken shelter with two lost children in their restaurant, because the Shadow is consuming buildings. But even in the darkest hour, you can find a little bit of light. We see that at the end of the episode, and Cures Black and White remind us that it's always too soon to give up. Hope may be in short supply, but it's still there. I hope Cure Dream can help Bell to see that.

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Power of Hope: Precure Full Bloom is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.