Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Delicious Party Precure
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Saeryen
 Posts: 880 |
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Looks like spoiler[Cure Finale] is coming next week! I'm so PUMPED!
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Regalli
Posts: 107 |
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A week still to go, alas. Still, it’s nice to see Amane get some time to be guilty about her actions as Gentlu (even if they’re so clearly counter to her true personality - it’s fairly rare for this franchise to go for straight brainwashing rather than manipulation or the villain-to-be-redeemed growing up thinking this was normal, and as such a lot of the time when brainwashing is used it’s been on top of one of the other methods, but there’s no clear hooks for them to have dug into here.)
It’s also nice to see the trio + Black Pepper + Mari’s tactics working together to take the Ubauzo down, along with Takumi’s self-consciousness and need to look cool in front of his crush who’s singlehandedly keeping them from being squashed by a giant paddle. We’ll only really have it for this one episode before Amane changes the team dynamic again (Black Pepper getting to steal the show in his introduction and then being a nonentity for Kokone and Ran’s focus episodes,) but it bodes well once the team’s finally fully assembled. On a… not negative note, but not overwhelmingly positive one, since she’s in the next episode preview I’m treating this as fair game - spoiler[anyone else think it’s weird they’re flat-out doing not just a dessert-themed Cure for midseason, but a specifically Parfait-themed one whose design might actually outrainbow Parfait herself’s? I don’t dislike Cure Finale’s design, I actually really like the wedding cake-like dress and the konpeito hair bits, but ‘purple Cure’ she is not. That’s a rainbow Cure, Toei. You invented the category for Parfait, you used it last year for Summer as lead even as we all know she’ll be grouped with the pinks going forward, it’s been officially established as a color category largely used for midseasons since it’s also Cosmo’s subcolor, and Finale’s a rainbow Cure. If you wanted her to read as purple, you kinda needed to make it a bit more prominent. The lavendar and blonde hair’s a pretty combo, but with those stronger pinks and greens any chance of reading her as ‘purple’ rather than rainbow or white was gone. It’d probably even still work reclaiming the lavendar-white hair she had as Gentlu, or with her natural black, without further changes. It’s not a HUGE deal, really, and I’ve been fine on it reading it as a wedding cake, but once you start actively bringing parfait motifs in with her it’s hard NOT to draw the direct comparison to Ciel, at least designwise. Which is frankly unfair to both characters - while they have such similar theming, their personalities are clearly quite different.] That griping aside, I DO like that the Parfait Recipeppi has a personality, and that personality is ‘impatient and haughty.’ Personalizes them all a touch more by comparison, and plays off the others well. I also like how despite the haughtiness, the Recipeppi clearly DOES love Amane and know her well enough to be OUTRAGED no one else recognizes her glaringly obvious distress. It doesn’t look like she’ll have an energy fairy of her own, since the energy became a heart crystal, but the Recipeppi would be fun to see fill that role. It’s cute. And I like spoiler[the idea of the dessert theme and ‘Finale’ as a name referring to that.] So yeah, next week should be fun. |
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thepepin
Posts: 69 |
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I am going to promote the idea that Black Pepper should be a Tuxedo Mask. Haven't watched many magical girl shows but from what I gather the guys are usually side characters, moral support, character motivations and fuel for usually unrequited love interest side plots right? Not sure why that should change. Does the core audience want it to? Also magical girl shows make more money off the merch than the shows. How many 10 year old girls are going to buy Black Pepper hats and capes? This also may be why they have never made a true male Cure. The secondary audience of adult westerners wants it a lot more than the primary one does, and this secondary audience isn't going to buy Cure Infini swag.
My guess is Takumi will be a small progression from Seiji Sagara of Happiness Charge. Takumi likes longtime childhood friend Yui as Seiji did Megumi Takumi rejected Tomoe (because Yui) as Seiji did Hime (Megumi) Takumi knows the Cures identities and helps them a bit as did Seiji with martial arts If Delicious Party doesn't repeat the infamous "Seiji gets jealous over Megumi and turns evil" arc then yeah that is progress. Several shonen genres already do the "girls and guys fight evil together" thing. No need to have magical girl shows go the Burst Angel route. |
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wolf10
 Posts: 901 |
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I don't think Precure somehow just can't have a male Cure, or that there's some precedent that adding even one guy to the team is somehow bad for sales. If anything, the reverse is true. Cardcaptor Sakura had a boy/girl duo, although it's downplayed in the title. Shugo Chara! had a full-fledged mixed team, and it was an absolute smash hit. The other common element was in-team romance (also rival romance!), though Shugo Chara! disagreed with its source material on the endgame pairing. (spoiler[Ikuto] was objectively better, obviously.)
(Also, Seiji didn't reject Hime so much as spoiler[Hime decided to opt out of the love geometry basically out of nowhere after 24 episodes of ship tease and one of the best failed pranks to ever make use of a mermaid suit]. No, I am not still mad about this, years later. Not at all.) |
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Saeryen
Posts: 880 |
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I want to see a male Cure because the Pretty Cures are healers as well as warriors, and often deck out in sparkly stuff so are more "girly" than the shounen battle types, and boys should know that it's okay and even good to like "girly" stuff or want to rely on your emotions and gentleness more. It would be a great stance against toxic masculinity. It's for this reason that I keep headcanoning the male allies as Cures (mostly that they became official Cures after the show).
I continue to love Amane with all my heart and am looking forward to spoiler[her Cure debut]! |
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Regalli
Posts: 107 |
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How many 6-10-year-old girls will buy Black Pepper hats? Dunno, probably less than buy the other costumes but still not zero. (Especially that particular hat, the underside has some nice colors.)
But there are also likely a decent number of young boys who like the sparkly outfits too and would buy that hat. Plenty of young kids have interests that don’t match what their perceived gender ‘should’ like, because they like the aesthetics. Girls like Digimon. Boys can like Precure. (And that’s setting aside the fact that some percentage of those kids - by no means all, but still some - aren’t cisgender and/or aren’t straight, and may or may not realize it yet but could well look at a character who doesn’t fit gender norms and feel a twinge of ‘they’re like me.’ Hugtto wasn’t being licensed worldwide. Infini was most likely made, at least in part, by and for the same people who push for representation in children’s media in the rest of the world: Queer creative types who remember being kids who felt alone and different and wish there had been a character that reflected them a little back then. Are those kids statistically significant for Toei, especially in ‘will parents buy these toys for them’? Hard to say. I won’t pretend societal bias changes overnight. But they do exist, and one of the ways to break down that stigma is to just… present people who differ from the norm in some way, existing and not being a joke or evil.) |
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Saeryen
Posts: 880 |
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Cure Finale's transformation reminds me of a fairytale princess. I ADORE her!
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thepepin
Posts: 69 |
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More likely than there aren't. The LGBT population is 5% to 10%. Also, Japan isn't the US. Japan has been producing LGBT content for decades. If there was a way to merchandise characters like Tiger and Bunny's Fire Emblem, Lovely Complex's Seiko Kotobuki, Maid Sama's Aoi Hyoudou, almost everyone in Vandread just to name a very few, Japan would have done it ages ago. Would still be today for characters like MHA's Yuga Aoyama - who I call a magical boy parody - and Yawara Chatora. Like I was getting at in my first comment this is the western fandom wanting to draft a foreign industry for a western fight. ANN had an article on how close to 40% of anime studios are going broke. Merchandising is a huge part of keeping that industry afloat, especially for the genres that don't attract the massive ratings and DVD sales that the Shonen Jump type stuff gets. The magical boy idea is one of those things that sounds a lot better in theory than works in practice as something that generates cash by pulling ratings and pushing merchandise. |
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thepepin
Posts: 69 |
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Sorry about getting the Seiji/Hime thing wrong. So maybe Seiji and Takumi have nothing to do with each other then. You just nailed what seems to be the difference between the magical girl shows that have important male characters and the ones like Pretty Cure that don't: romance. The Princess Tutu love rectangle with Tutu, Mytho, Fakir and Rue is what allowed Mytho and Fakir to be more important than male side characters like Cat Sensei and Author. But unless I missed it because I haven't watched them all, I don't think Pretty Cure has ever done anything but teases like you said without delivering on any actual romances involving the Cures. It began way back in season 1 with Nagisa failing to give her confessions to Fujipi and went overboard with the Doki Doki Pretty Cure nonsense that had Mana in a wedding dress but the groom turning out to be spoiler[her dead dog]. I guess this would fit the pattern if they finally get beyond the unrequited teasing stuff and have Yui and Takumi become a couple. The problem with that though is that it might cause a meltdown with the huge part of the Pretty Cure fanbase that ships the Cures with each other. That Toei does everything they can to play up and fuel those ships doesn't help matters. I am convinced that the Doki Doki Pretty Cure wedding thing was aimed at the people who were shipping Mana with Rikka. |
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Saeryen
Posts: 880 |
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I didn't want to start a discourse but I just can't ignore it anymore. Even if the population is that small (and likely the truth is there are a lot more people who aren't openly LGBTQ) it doesn't mean that LGBTQ kids and boys who don't conform to gender stereotypes don't exist in Japan, and these children need to know that they matter. And human rights and media representation aren't "western" issues, they're universal. I really wouldn't want an LGBTQ and/or gender-non-comforming Japanese child to hear that their identity is somehow exploiting their ethnicity. |
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chex mix
 Posts: 415 |
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I really don't care for Finale's random blonde hair. She'd be much prettier with her natural black. What a shame.
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Regalli
Posts: 107 |
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Yeah, I wish they’d either kept her hair black or at least gone for the standard Purple Cure Purple Hair thing. She’d look good with a slightly darker shade of the lavendar-y white she had as Gentlu. And we’ve had plenty of blonde Cures already, and a decent number of redheads, but very few that go even for darker shades of blue or purple, much less black.
Also, interesting to see we still have the first ED and just added two shots of Finale rather than a fully new ED. Maybe the delay from the hack plus the movie has them running behind? But at least she’s in the OP. (RIP to Laura, at least you’d been hugely relevant in the OP in your fully mermaid form from the start.) As to the plot: Hoo boy, the questions about Cinnamon I have after this week’s episode. spoiler[I’d been assuming he’s Takumi’s father, but it’s also very possible given Mari’s thoughts and Amane’s intel from her time as Gentlu that he ends up being Godatz or at least worked for the Bundoru Gang for a time… and of course, the one doesn’t exclude the other. Presumably, Takumi’s dad told Takumi his Cook Knight name when he told Takumi about the Delicioustone… but it could be he didn’t out of guilt/continuing villainy, or that he also told Takumi about his dark and troubled past and asked Takumi not to tell anyone, or that TAKUMI is trying to avoid that interaction because it would invite a ton of questions he’s not up for.] This could be interesting. Also I hope that either Secretoru takes to the battlefield herself soon, or a new villain emerges, or both. I enjoy Narcistoru as a villain, but some variety is good for the soul… and also that shot of exactly two people in the OP with the ominous disembodied hologram behind them who won’t be fought until the finale just doesn’t seem all that intimidating when you have four Cures and two non-Cure allies on the battlefield, and the shot immediately preceding it is the Cook Knights. (I know they have another name I just can never remember it so I’m going with a wrong name I CAN remember.) Also, I enjoy it when any second-in-command-type miniboss in these series spends months complaining that no one’s bringing them the Season Macguffin, goes out to fight the Precures because how hard could it be, CLEARLY they’re more competent than their subordinates, and immediately gets their butt handed to them by a bunch of middle schoolers. Never gets old. |
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Saeryen
Posts: 880 |
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Preview of ED 2 (first song)
It's SO pretty! The new ED is going to be one of my favorite Pretty Cure EDs, I just know it. |
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moony_badger
 Posts: 50 |
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Love how well Amane is being integrated into the group dynamic! I especially like some of the little things it does, like taking time to show how much it means to Kokone to be given permission to address Amane informally, since it was shown in a previous episode that was something she struggled with with Mari. Just a nice bit of writing without calling too much attention to itself.
I do wish that Cure Finale had either purple or black hair, just to make her more visually distinct from Cure Yum Yum (color-wise she ends up looking like a bit of mish mash of Yum Yum and Precious, just a little distracting) but I love her dress and special attacks so much! I especially like the very regal sounding music motif she gets during her parts of the fight. And her new appearances in the opening are adorable! I'm curious to see where the Mari/Cinnamon/Takumi dynamic ends up going as well; I hope they do make Takumi a more permanent member of the Pretty Cure group, instead of the kind of Tuxedo Mask rogue agent he is at the moment. |
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zrdb
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I don't really pay attention the the plot and all that shit when I watch this show-I just kick back and ENJOY it.
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