Well, I have a new least favorite Precure season, and it's called Kimi to Idol Precure (which I will also be referring to as "kimipuri" throughout this review).
I definitely didn't go into it wanting to dislike it. I was excited about it when it was first announced! I've been a fan of Precure for many years, and I've also become a fan of multiple idol franchises within that time, including Aikatsu and Ensemble Stars. A combination of Precure and idols sounded amazing to me and drew up a lot of ideas about how it could go. When a season is announced and we start to get more information about it, I can't help but speculate a little bit on what I think it will be like. I'm basically never correct, and I'm aware of this at the time, but I am happy to put my own ideas aside and enjoy a season as it actually is. And I really did try my best with kimipuri, but it was such a mess that I simply could not.
I've been watching Precure almost religiously since 2007. I've seen every season in its entirety except Max Heart and the last third or so of Star Twinkle. However, I'm not some curmudgeon who's been watching this show for too long and clearly isn't liking it anymore and should probably leave it behind. I am usually on board for what Precure has to offer, even in recent years:
Apparently a lot of folks didn't enjoy it, but I think Wonderful Precure (2024's season) is one of the best seasons with the cleanest writing that perfectly justified its going against the usual Precure battle formula. Amazing premise, amazing cast of characters with very emotionally affecting relationships. I loved it!
While I recognize that Hirogaru Sky Precure (2023's season) has some flaws in the pacing of its central conflict, I don't find this nearly as bothersome as many people claim it is, and it's one of my favorite seasons containing some of my favorite characters. For me, it made up for its flaws with a fantastic cast who I actually wanted to root for. I could watch them do whatever the hell they want to all day. And I quite liked the finale we did get—wasn't perfect, but was by no means awful.
Delicious Party Precure (2022's season) is a middling season for me—not at the very top or very bottom of my list—but I still very much enjoyed it and and its food-based premise. I get a lot of warm feelings thinking about it. It's a cozy season for me! I think I could easily re-watch it. But I frequently see it cited as "the worst season"...
I've seen much hand wringing from English speaking fans that Precure has "gone downhill," but I firmly disagree. I believe it's still going quite strong.
Out of all the seasons I've seen even part of, before kimipuri there were two I disliked (Healin' Good Precure and Doki Doki Precure) and two that I didn't think were bad but that I just didn't vibe with (Futari wa Precure (thus why I haven't bothered with Max Heart) and Smile Precure). The rest I either loved or thought were a pretty good time. That's out of 21 total seasons (again, before kimipuri). That's a very good hit rate!
So the sheer negativity I've felt towards kimipuri has left me feeling so baffled that I just couldn't help but want to write up a post trying to make sense of where exactly it went wrong (spoilers: it went wrong everywhere. All of it is wrong to me).
Let's get into it.
I'd like to begin with the characters.
Uta is... Annoying to me, personally, but she's not a terrible character. She's your fairly standard upbeat pink lead girl who isn't too smart but has a heart of gold. Actually, at a glance, she isn't that far off from a pink lead girl who I absolutely adore: Haruka from Go! Princess Precure (2015's season—and my personal favorite). So, why the different reaction to them?
There's a few differences—Haruka has a still developing air of elegance and nobility that I quite like that isn't there with Uta—but I think the biggest difference is what they struggle with. I gotta be honest... Uta does not have a lot going on, and considering the season has such a strong focus on her in particular, it's a detriment to the whole thing. Haruka may be a bumbling fool sometimes, but you can also see her constantly struggling with complexity, like the meaning of the single-minded goal she's chosen to throw herself into, or what it means to continue pressing forward in life when despair is unavoidable and pervasive. Uta, on the other hand, is... Singing the same song over and over again every single episode (something else that makes it hard for me to be endeared to her)? Apparently figuring out that she loves to sing only when she's briefly forced not to, despite singing all the time?? Crushing on a guy in a thoroughly uninteresting and anticlimactic way (not that I think it's a good idea for Toei to be showing these two dating, given the age difference, but it could have led to something interesting besides dating--their conversations were all incredibly same-y and ultimately led to nothing particularly meangingful)???
You'll see that I find this is a problem with every character, but what does Uta want, anyway? She wants to sing... But she already gets to sing. All the time. Does she want to do anything bigger with that singing? Apparently she did, because in the epilogue at the end of the final episode we see that she's become a popular idol. Makes sense, sure, but the only way this outcome was built up to was by the show basically implying a "Yeah, isn't this obvious?" Uh huh. It is. Except that Uta herself never seemed to have very strong feelings about it! I didn't feel anything about her becoming an idol in her own right because she wasn't seriously pursuing it! She's good at encouraging people, which is wonderful, but because the stakes of the entire season were so low, I never felt like this skill was put to very good use (compare Uta to Hugtto Precure's Hana and the emotional weight is like night and day). It's so frustrating.
Maybe there's some lines I'm not reading between, but considering everything else wrong with this season, I don't have the patience to. I can't root for you, Uta, because you're giving me nothing to root for. And considering how much you were the center of attention this season, that's contributing a lot to my issues with it.
I ended up being more interested in Nana than I expected to be. But... Yeah, again, there just isn't much there. We know she likes playing piano, though she's encountered some struggles with it. We know she's a very kind hearted person. The episode in which she helps Zakkuri get out of Chokkiridan is one of only a handful of truly good ones in the entire season. Once again, I do not know what she wants to do with her talents. The finale episode of her personal arc (if you could even call it that) ended with her saying she wants to continue pursuing piano... But to also be with her friends. Okay. That's... Not telling us anything that we didn't already know, except that she clearly isn't running off to Paris immediately to study with her mother. Something like this can have emotional impact, if you give it a nice build up. But once again, that didn't happen here. I am rooting for you, Nana, just because I think you're cool despite being so surface level. I just wish I could have seen more below that surface.
She ended up becoming I guess a music composer in the epilogue. This is the one that makes the most true sense, but I still find the impact lacking here because there was no importance placed on this goal throughout the season.
(A related aside: This lack of focus on what the characters want out of their futures is so unlike Precure that it might be the single most confusing thing about this season to me... I've seen people argue that it's not a bad thing to avoid making it seem like teenagers need to decide on their adulthoods right then and there, and I don't disagree, but in what way is it harmful to show teenagers pursuing talents and interests with enthusiasm that could be what they spend their adult years doing, either as work or a hobby? I dunno about you all, but I still derive joy, in some kind of way, from most of the things I did when I was a teenager. Just not as my job. Also, did these characters who don't have any clear goals honestly come across as interesting or inspiring in any way? These are characters in a story, not real teenagers, so unlike real teenagers, they kinda do need to be interesting and want things out of life.)
Oh, dear Kokoro... You had so much potential... The only character in the cast I did art of (and it will remain that way). I still like her, but that's the heartbreaking part. By the end of the season, she got reduced to being a fangirl and spouting her catchphrase over and over again, if she was doing much of anything at all. These are both parts of her and they should be shown, sure, but there IS supposed to be more to her than that. The two episodes that introduced her are this season's shining gems, diamonds in a pile of regular ass pebbles. The backstory with her father dying when she was so young was genuinely devastating, and her turning to dancing and idols for comfort made so much sense. So did her reaction to finding out that her favorite idols, Cure Idol and Cure Wink, were also fighting monsters, and that if she joined them, she would have to do the same. Precure does not often acknowledge just how terrifying this would be to a real person, and with Kokoro, they did it to great effect. She goes on to start a fanclub for Idol Precure, which also makes sense! She loves them for giving her strength in difficult times. I get it, I've been there with my own oshis. This fanclub would have been better served being a more important part of the season, but whatever, it wasn't useless at least. All of this was setting Kokoro up to be the star of the show. And she still kinda is (not just to me--pretty sure she's quite popular in the fandom at large). It didn't seem farfetched at the time to think that she would go onto big things later in the season.
And then, one of her big finale episodes was about her… Kinda sorta helping some guy from school spin around a lot. I'm sorry, but genuinely what the fuck? What about Kokoro!? Surely there must be some other episode than that? Yeah, actually, there is, only a couple weeks later. It's about some random girl who never appeared before or after showing up to run as student council president on the platform that she's going to dissolve the club that Kokoro started out of goddamn nowhere and Kokoro having to defend it. Which, cool, I do think the fanclub is important to Kokoro's character—though again, not particularly important to the grand scheme of things. It still didn't really wrap anything up for Kokoro in any kind of satisfying way. She got to keep her club and demonstrate her love for Idol Precure. That's good. So what about the dancing? Any difficulties to still overcome regarding her past? I gotta ask you the same question as the other girls, Kokoro: Got any goals? Hopes? Dreams? Anything?? She ended up becoming an influencer...... Okay. I guess this kinda makes sense if she's an idol-focused influencer, but it still feels a little like it came out of nowhere. I know that kids these days all say they want to be influencers, so… Whatever. It's just. Extremely whatever. I just hope she hasn't given up on dance.
Purirun is a silly little creature. I can't deny that she is cute. But I couldn't appreciate her one note antics for the entire season. Not that her antics were particularly interesting or entertaining by the time the back end of the season rolled around. She didn't really seem to have any motivations beyond "want to be with friends" and "want to eat food". Fine, but that's not enough to grab my attention, personally. I did enjoy seeing her realize just what she means to Meroron and begin to embrace it. Would have been nice to see even just one more episode dedicated to exploring that more after it happened.
The part of the Heart Kirari Lock arc dedicated to Purirun losing and regaining her memories was one of the most frustrating parts of the whole season for me. They dedicated five whole episodes to this and Uta being horribly depressed about it--a little over a month. I had a good feeling that the monkey's paw-type stakes laid out for the Heart Kirari Lock were somehow going to be miraculously overcome for both Purirun and Meroron. It's Precure, after all, and I'm used to this. But I firmly believe that predictable outcomes can still be compelling, because I've seen it happen time and time again. So it was baffling to me that, as soon as Uta decided to accept that Purirun would not be getting her memories back and that it would be okay if the two of them made new memories together… Purirun got her memories back. Could we not have run with this idea of new memories being made? Would this somehow have prevented Purirun from ending up where she did or continuing to love Uta? Or, at the very least, could Uta's acceptance not have happened an episode or two earlier so that we could have some kind of emotional weight to this moment before the memories returned? Also, Uta's (understandably) huge reaction to Purirun's memory loss becomes even more funny in retrospect when you realize that Uta and Purirun's friendship became massively overlooked as soon as Uta got a crush. No more friend, only boy. That hits a little too close to home, Toei.
Remember that whole thing where it was heavily implied that Meroron had something to do with Darkiine? Well, that didn't go anywhere at all. Did I misunderstand something here? So Meroron was born as a being of darkness because "darkness and light go together." And this comes up again in the final battle against Darkiine--telling Darkiine that she exists because darkness and light go together. Darkiine herself even turns into a fairy in the end, ruling over Kurakuland, right next to Kirakiland. And yet, despite all this, there is never another line drawn between Darkiine and Meroron after that initial scene of Darkiine yelling about darkness at Meroron. I'm completely blown away by how stupid this is. It was right there, writers! Do you know how much more interesting you could have made this season if you had just followed this one thing to its natural conclusion!? It wouldn't have saved the entire show, but it could have been a decent improvement!
There was also the matter with her refusing to accept anyone except Purirun. It was incredibly repetitive. I actually thought Meroron had learned the friendship lesson multiple times before it actually happened. I won't deny that I did like the actual resolution to this. The common ground she found with Nana elevated both of their characters. But overall, it's yet another thing that didn't work. I wouldn't have even minded it going on for as long as it did if it wasn't so same-y.
Still… I liked Meroron and Cure Kiss a decent amount. One of the characters I considered buying merch for, but something held me back (I guess I already knew deep down months before I realized it consciously that this season wasn't it for me). Pretty much the last scene of the show that got a notable emotional rise out of me was when the group went back to restore Kirakiland and Cure Kiss encountered a frightened fairy by itself when she wandered off. It was genuinely wonderful to see her, someone who used to hide herself away from everyone, reaching out to comfort someone else who was alone. I even got a little teary eyed. Her relationship with Purirun was nice, although it lacked development in the second half, mostly only being acknowledged in gags of Meroron doting on a still clueless Purirun. Even with all those positives, it's astounding that it still feels like her character was majorly fumbled.
Oh, boy, Kaito is gonna go down as one of the most controversial characters in the whole franchise. Let me just get one thing out of the way: While you'll find I see a whole lot of issues surrounding him, I don't hate this guy, and I'm not about to tell you that he deserves to die because a middle school girl has a crush on him. I never saw any indication that the guy reciprocates her feelings, but unfortunately the show didn't have the guts to do what Hugtto did in that regard and left things open ended.
While I don't hate Kaito for the crush, I did find the crush pretty lame. I already talked about it in Uta's section: It contributed nothing particularly interesting or important. It created a lot of eyeroll-worthy moments. Uta's friends consistently pushed themselves aside to get these two alone together, only for them to have the same basic conversation over and over again. They encouraged each other. That's nice. Did it need to happen so often in those later episodes, and be so exactly the same every time?
Sorry, but I'm gonna trot out another Go! Princess Precure comparison here: Kanata. Haruka and Kanata clearly have some kind of spark between them, but there's also a similar age difference between the two of them as there is to Uta and Kaito, thus the comparison. I like this relationship a lot. It's yet another one where it's clear nothing is going to happen between them during the main timeline of the show, which is for the best, but something is building there, and it isn't blushy, fumbly, sappy puppy love. It's genuine respect and admiration, established by going through actual, real shit together. Standing side-by-side, protecting and fighting for one another. By watching each other change and grow into the best versions of themselves. Nothing about Uta and Kaito's relationship is ever going to get me nearly as much as the first time Kanata saw Haruka after they were separated for many years, and seeing that she's begun growing into a fine princess just like she set out to do, realizing that his words of encouragement actually meant something to someone.
Words of encouragement are basically all Uta and Kaito have, but it doesn't feel nearly as earned because they only exist in random conversations they have during low or zero stakes moments. Well, they have that, and Uta blushing and stumbling over her words a lot. It's straight up boring.
Kaito's relationship with Kazuma had so much potential and the little bit of it they did give us was great! It's too bad they decided to rush through it so quickly. I swear, in any other season, there would have been at least one full episode dedicated to telling their story ("full" episode--outside of the government mandated weekly battle scene, of course). I admit I'm very BL-brained, and I'm certainly not the only one who picked up on that aspect of it, but that's not even what I mean when I say there was potential. Their story is genuinely intriguing, what we got of it was good stuff, a very brief exploration of what can happen when someone can't make their way in the world of idols. But it felt like too little at the same time. That resolution episode was one of the best episodes in the season--as a standalone, at least, because it's frustrating in retrospect, but I'll get to that in a moment--but we don't see what happens with these two at all after it, except that they're spending time together mostly doing nothing and then they fuck off to New York City to train as idols or whatever. Enjoy your honeymoon, boys. Unless I missed something, I don't believe it was ever outright stated that they're trying the whole idol duo thing again, we're just supposed to assume it.
Now, what was frustrating about that episode? Cure Connect. Hey, pretty cool in the moment! Made for a fairly effective emotional climax for a side story that wasn't built up very well, but still one of the better side stories in the season. In hindsight, it felt like a cash grab. Literally a one episode thing with no appearance or mention ever again. Not even a whiff of this mysterious guy in the finale. Never utilized as a way to let Uta and Kaito CONNECT in a more meaningful way by both being Precure, even if it's only temporary for one of them. I genuinely think this was nothing more than a way to get more money out of the fans of Kaito's real life idol VA's fans by selling merch. And yes, there was merch being advertised on social media immediately after the episode aired--acrylic stands and can badges. Standard oshikatsu supplies. Sorry if this is too cynical of a take, but what the hell else am I supposed to get from this Cure appearing in exactly one episode and then immediately being merchandised? I know this guy's fans were all over this show, because he talked about it a lot on his social media and the fans were responsive. Not to mention the season felt like it was pushing the advertising harder than Precure usually does, but I'll talk about that more later.
Chokkiridan: Well, I liked Cutty and Zakkuri, because it made perfect sense to have antagonists who were convinced to leave their lives of antagonizing behind because they became fans of two of the Idol Precure. The moping and getting wasted in between jobs was honestly pretty entertaining, but also helped me feel for them. These dudes are so miserable in their shit jobs that's all they can manage to do in their spare time, and they don't have much of it. Cure Idol and Cure Wink showed them a way out of their misery (though Cure Kyun-Kyun not being included in this is yet another way she got overlooked--does the team behind this season not like her or something?). Genuinely one of the only ways in which this season felt like it was successfully combining "idols" and "Precure". They were fine and occasionally funny as side additions to the main group. I didn't have any problem with them sticking around and helping out with certain things. Not like they could go back to Kirakiland before it was restored, so what else were they going to do?
Chokkirine... Was ultimately poorly utilized. Would have been better off following a similar storyline to Cutty and Zakkuri, honestly. I don't have much to say about her. Her cruelty makes sense in retrospect, being a part of Darkiine and all that. Still think she would have been more interesting as just another wayward Kirakiland refugee who could also use some help from idols to gain a new outlook on life and lighten up. There were even hints of this happening! It never really did. Glad she gets a second life as an adorable fairy.
I've already talked about Jogi/Kazuma a bit, but not really as an antagonist. Appeared threatening at first, also wasn't put to great use during most of his run, did have a pretty threatening final act and a good resolution to the pain that caused him to turn towards darkness in the first place—though again, this felt poorly set up. He's fine, I guess. I could have liked him more if the backstory just got more attention and if he showed more often that he was capable of causing serious damage.
Darkiine is, to me, the absolute lamest main villain this franchise has ever had. Absolutely no backstory until the final episode, and that backstory is "I am the darkness and I'm annoyed at humans." This is such basic magical girl villain shit that it feels like it came from a low effort parody. I'll talk about this more later, but while I do like the character designs in this season, that does not extend to Darkiine. Her design somehow manages to be both too simple and terribly ugly. It feels like an afterthought. I am not immune to thinking it was cute that she was turned into a fairy who continues to rule Kurakuland neighboring Pikariine and her land, but this did feel like it came out of nowhere and would have worked far better if there was some pre-established "there used to be two lands that lived in harmony, until…" kind of story. Is that basic? Sure, but it's better than "this mysterious land suddenly attacked us for mysterious reasons," at least when there's no good pay off to said mysteries.
Long live Tanaka, the real MVP of this season. Didn't have enough of a central role to improve my opinion of the season at all, but he's a cool dude and genuinely entertaining to watch.
Perhaps the funniest thing this season did was get Tsudaken to voice a dog who only barks and has one episode of inner monologue. I honestly thought Kyutarou might end up being more important than he seemed, but nope, he is simply dog. And he was adorable, I'm glad this season at least had a cute dog to look at. And his inner monologue episode was pretty decent, even if it did feel like it rushed through some of the harder hitting emotional beats. Trying not to make the kids cry so that the parents don't complain, I guess?
Next, I'd like to discuss the story, the tone, the themes, and the message. The Precure-ness of it all, and the idol-ness of it all.
To be honest, I had a weird feeling about this season from episode one. There was something about how unseriously it was taking itself and how the humor seemed to mostly be wasting time that didn't sit well with me. Of course humor plays a big role in every Precure season. We enjoy our silliness here, don't get me wrong, and in isolation the episode gave me some laughs. I'm also well aware that this show is, of course, intended for children first and foremost. But it also felt... Disjointed? Slightly TOO unserious? A first episode is a big deal, and deserves plenty of big deal moments, after all. Why was so much air time taken up with jokes about a giant Momotarou-style peach and a sumo wrestler and a fairy acting clueless? Why was the ruler of the fairy land that needed saving yet another comedic character, considering that her land was destoyed? What did any of this have to do with idols, anyway? But I remained excited and optimistic, because it was only the first episode, so there was no need to worry.
"Disjointed" is actually one of the main words that I would use to describe the entire season, especially in its back half but really for the whole thing. Hardly anything felt grounded or linear. Certain plot points would be abandoned for too long or go on for too long. Meroron's arc for learning to like and be friends with everyone besides Purirun took too long to resolve and felt repetitive. The entire central conflict of Kirakiland needing restoration was abandoned for too long with little to no mention of it for a very long time, and it felt anticlimactic when it finally happened. "Anticlimactic" is another word that I would use to describe basically everything in this season.
Going back to the beginning of the season, "lacking impact" is another way I would describe kimipuri. Episode three, Cure Wink's debut, is when I really started to worry that this season had some serious problems. There were some moments in this episode that could have had good emotional weight, but they were quickly passed by, not given any room to breathe. The introduction of a new Cure should be met with a lot of fanfare--A+ story, A+ animation. That's the treatment Kokoro received. But Nana's introduction had the feeling of a random episode that would air in the summer. This lack of impact would be a common problem throughout the season. Actually, even Kirakiland's destruction lacked significance. I never once found myself caring about Kirakiland, aside from caring about the major characters who came from Kirakiland. The land itself and its importance was rarely emphasized. Pikariine being presented as a comedic character made it hard for me to feel like the situation at hand was dire or that she even particularly cared about it. I do not know what's so special about this land. It has a big ribbon that keeps it going, and this ribbon needs to be fixed? Okay. Again, what does this have to do with idols? The fairy citizens are cute and I want them to be safe and happy, but this show is supposed to be telling a coherent, interesting story, and there was nothing done here to make it compelling or coherent with the idol themeing. We can have an interesting story about saving cute little critters that also fits in well with the universe trying to be built, right? Yeah, of course we can, because Precure has already done it.
It's aspects like this that make me realize that I don't really know what kimipuri is trying to say except that "enjoying idols is fun." I don't disagree with this, but I'm not sure this is a satisfactory premise for a year long magical girl show? An idols-only show for kids will be about that, sure, but I know what I'm getting out of that already, and those are still more interesting than kimipuri because they depict the characters pursuing goals, facing challenges, growing and changing. They're inspiring.
I'm no idol myself, but I've been doing some fairly simple idol dances myself for fun and for exercise, with no prior experience, and it's difficult. I'd love to see that difficulty reflected back to me, with a positive voice telling me that it's worth the effort, but that's genuinely nowhere to be found in kimipuri. That struggle and growth is exactly why I love the idol kid shows I was talking about previously. Some of the characters I'm most drawn to tend to be very skilled and therefore struggle less, but they're not utterly perfect and do run into their own unique problems. The Precure… Mostly felt perfect, at least as idols. There's just nothing interesting about that. It's easier to root for characters who are working towards big goals, individually and as a group. While I know on some level that they have aspirations, they get so little focus that I can't connect to them emotionally. What are these girls all about? It's hard to pinpoint. Again: What the hell is this show trying to tell us?
I admit, I went into this show expecting something a little more like standard idols. Not exactly like it, of course, because usually they don't involve fighting monsters. But I was expecting to see, like… Idol practice? The group working hard to gradually improve at their craft? Actual performances? Things that I consider incredibly standard in any idol show. And we got next to none of it.
The lack of performances outside of battles was particularly baffling to me. The Christmas episode actually showed some still shots of the idols performing for a crowd, but that's the closest we got. Though this did leave me thinking: Well, other idol shows do a lot of this too, where the only performances we see are 3D stock animations, some of which get repeated multiple times. I would even argue that Precure's look nicer. Why do I feel like this same thing doesn't work in kimipuri?
Well, for one, those shows tend to have longer performances and a larger variety of performances. Also, there's a major difference in presentation: Attack animations still feel like attack animations even if they're presented as performances--in other idol anime, you know that the intention is to put on a show for an audience's enjoyment. But I think the biggest difference is that I don't feel like these girls had to put in the work to get where they ended up. There's exactly one episode I can think of that was somewhat dedicated to them training, but otherwise, the actual physical work of being idols usually came easily to them. No strength training, no practicing choreography, no practicing songs. They were quickly asked to make a CD. They quickly got their very own store dedicated to them. Their fan club was inundated with sign ups without any serious work to recruit people. But they're Precure. Precure are supposed to be amazing. Could they not have struggled a little bit more, though? Was there a possible path where they could have done just as well at defeating monsters as Precure usually do, but had to work a little harder to be well known idols? That could have possibly culminated in big, important live shows spread throughout the season that would get bigger and better as the group improved and gained notoriety?
Up until now, I've mostly avoided talking about seasons I don't like--there aren't many of them, but they do exist. I want to bring up Healin' Good Precure (2020's season) to do a little comparison. I won't get into a lot of details about why this season didn't work for me, because it's in a similar position to Kimi to Idol Precure where there isn't much about it that I enjoy, except that unlike kimipuri, I also find it aesthetically displeasing. But it ranks slightly higher than kimipuri for me because of exactly one thing: The Nodoka and Daruizen plotline. A very compelling and emotionally gripping subplot that's basically an allegory for abuse and assault as told through the lens of chronic illness. It's remarkably unique for Precure, and I find myself thinking about it often despite how much I dislike every other thing about the season (except for Nodoka herself—I like Nodoka!). It's the one thing I get excited about when it comes to Healin' Good Precure. At this point I can't remember if I was satisfied with the pacing of this subplot—it started at the beginning of the season and ended in the finale, so it took basically the entire year to resolve—but every step in its progression was so interesting that it didn't really matter.
Kimi to Idol Precure does not have an equivalent. There is no one subplot or character arc that brings up anything close to the same feelings for me. Some of them could potentially get there, like Kaito and Kazuma, or Purirun and Meroron, if the episodes for them packed more of a punch. They came close, but somehow, they always ended up coming up short on the emotional tension for me. There was no consistency with what tension there was, either, or with progression. Precure has to run for an entire year, so sure, there's always going to be some jumping around. Kimipuri felt like it was jumping around basically every single episode. The pace was so confusing! I never felt like I had anything to grasp onto. This season feels like air--I know it exists, but it's difficult to perceive and I can't hold onto it. Even after typing all of this up, my head feels fuzzy trying to think through it all. Given the general lack of character and story progression, I find myself wondering what on earth I was even watching for the past year. Unlike Healin' Good Precure, I can only see myself continuing to think about this one by puzzling over what the heck it even is. I simply cannot comprehend it.
To return to kimipuri's central conflict, this in particular was a real bummer. As I mentioned in the characters section, we didn't even learn what Darkiine's whole deal was until the very last episode. It was incredibly lame that not even the characters who had been under her the whole time knew what was up with her. Not even an inkling. Just "we fell to The Darkness, what can ya do!" You did all that work for this organization without even knowing WHY!? That's genuinely ridiculous. The final battle tried to do something like Go! Princess Precure, with its whole "darkness and light would not exist without each other" thing, but given how much better Go! Princess did it, and how much that ending means to me, I honestly just felt insulted by this. It did not feel earned because there was no coherent build up to it. Nothing in this show felt earned. The central conflict was based on a vague concept of "darkness", and anxiety, and sorrow, and sadness, and just like… Bad vibes in general, I guess. Go! Princess banged the drum of despair for the entire season. It got SPECIFIC. One of many reasons why its ending actually made me feel something, unlike what just happened with kimipuri's very standard, completely not special finale. I actually kinda liked that the Darkranda's were feeding on the anxiety of people who were upset about monsters being in their town at the end of the season. Too bad it came so late, and once again, it was very unfocused when taken alongside all the other ways in which the villains of this season did their dirty work.
Kimi to Idol Precure basically threw all of the absolute most basic aspects of an idol show and a magical girl show into a blender and didn't even bother to blend it sufficiently, because what came out was a slurry of half-finished, poorly explained nonsense.
Next, the art.
Honestly, this season's only unquestionably great aspect is its character designs. With the exception of Darkiine, every character looks great. The Precure in particular, of course. No notes. If nothing else, I do enjoy looking at this season's art. The character art and outfit designs for the merchandise has also been top notch. They really pulled out all the stops to make these characters visually appealing, probably to better convince people to buy oshikatsu goods for them...
I do want to talk a little bit about the background art and setting, though, because this is an aspect that tends to get overlooked but that's quite important to me, since it sets the whole vibe of a show. Most Precure seasons give their settings something interesting and unique, sometimes very interesting and unique (i.e. Delicious Party's Oishiina Town). Kimipuri's settings were honestly... Pretty standard and boring. Just a normal town with an everlasting sakura tree that's heart-shaped, and a cute cafe. Kirakiland is also the most standard, basic fairy land you could possibly create for Precure. It's cute, yes, but that's all it is. Yeah, there's just nothing interesting going on in this season's settings.
Now, the music.
Good songs, but also way too few for an idol show. If I'm counting properly, there were a total of five songs associated with attacks, not including the slightly different version of Cure Idol's song used for her pointless power up. And then there was one OP theme, and two EDs themes, but that's standard for Precure. That's… Incredibly few for an idol show?? To make matters worse, there actually were more songs made. They just never ended up in the show. What a waste. Also, they really didn't end up making any more songs than a Precure season will often have. At least within the past decade, if not longer, Cures introduced at the beginning of each season will very frequently end up with one character song for the first half of the show, and one for the second half. They just get put on CDs and on streaming and very rarely get used in the show itself. Literally the only new thing kimipuri did was add those character songs that they would have been making anyway to the show. They did not put in any effort to make additional songs for their idol season. At least the songs were particularly good, I guess, though I admit I kinda don't want to listen to them anymore now that they remind me of how much this season was a let down.
Now, the merchandising.
I think this is what truly killed this season for me.
I'm well aware that Precure has always been part toy commercial. Hell, I've bought my own fair share of Precure merch. But kimipuri pushed this farther, and it was easy to spot and left me feeling uncomfortable. Prior to the season's airing, I did see some criticism of the very idea of making idols the central theme of a season due to how fraught the world of actual idols is. Not just in the way the idols within the industry tend to be treated, but in the commercialism and expectations of fans to spend truly ridiculous amounts of money. I wasn't in agreement with this at the time. I believed (and to some extent, still do believe) that it's by no means impossible to make a great and genuinely uplifting season based on idols that isn't overly focused on marketing, because I've already seen existing idol shows that are on the line between "just idols" and "idols who are also magical girls," and they were able to do it. I haven't felt like the Pretty Series shows I've watched were trying way too hard to push me into playing their arcade games, for instance. But I have to concede that Kimi to Idol Precure definitely did not accomplish this, so I guess Toei blew its chance on that.
There was an entire Idol Precure store in-universe that appeared in a few episodes, a branch of the real life Precure Pretty Store, with people absolutely flocking to it. It showed off lots of actual merchandise that can be purchased from these real stores. Can badges, acrylic stands, plush toys, etc. In one such episode, a customer was encouraged to buy an entire set of five acrylic stands--these are not cheap, so this probably cost at least as much as a transformation toy would in real life. The actual Pretty Stores have existed since 2011, and while there has been some merchandise beyond the transformation and weapon toys briefly advertised in the show before--cosmetics, stationery, jewelry makers--this is the first time they started to push the small oshikatsu goods that have been available in the stores for quite some time, which I'm pretty sure were largely being purchased by adult fans. They're basically trying to get the kids in on it more, and that... Kinda grosses me out, to be honest. There is a grossness to the other advertising, to be sure, but the problem with pushing oshikatsu goods is that oshikatsu very frequently involves purchasing several of the same exact item. It's a problem of quantity. Participating in oshikatsu in the popular way means spending way more than you would on a notebook or a few units of cosmetics. Arguably okay for an adult who knows what they're getting themselves into, not okay at all for a child.
Am I one to talk, as someone who is typing this post up while sitting next to a tall display case filled with sets of figures and acrylic stands for Precure and other shows? And my itabags are also in plain view? Perhaps not. But I'm well into adulthood, didn't start collecting like this until I was well into adulthood, and I'm not the main target demographic for Precure. I enjoy oshikatsu, and was even looking forward to seeing it done in the show when I saw some key art that showed the girls doing just that before the season began--although they were shown making their own things, not buying them. My excitement was misguided, though, because it didn't occur to me that they would end up literally selling oshikatsu to children as much as they did. I do give the show props for putting a spotlight on handmade merch, something that actually did come up in multiple episodes. I like this, because I do understand that oshikatsu is popular and widespread enough now that kids must be curious about it, too. Showing them they can make their own oshikatsu crafts is a fine way to introduce it to them. I don't know about saying "Go ahead and buy the whole set of acrylic stands" to a 5 year old, though. And then the eyecatch cuts to the girls shoving their wands directly in your face with a big smile and calling out the names of them, no subtlety whatsoever, telling you exactly what you can ask for when you beg your mom to take you to the toy store. The handmade stuff feels a little emptier after that. Again, Precure has always had transformation toys getting shown close up and demonstrated in detail. But it hasn't had oshikatsu on top of that. I guess I should be glad it didn't show up in more episodes.
Another thing Precure also hasn't had before, as far as I can remember, is an entire episode that was essentially an advertisement for a live show. This was the episode where I could no longer brush off the unease I was feeling about this season, and I fully turned against it. I had been waiting the entire season to see the girls perform in front of a crowd outside of doing their attacks at the end of a battle. I wanted to see them singing to actual people and to see those actual people cheering them on, not just a sea of pen lights with no visible faces behind them--they are cool attacks, don't get me wrong, and the songs are good, but they don't have the emotion of a true live show environment. The title of this episode is "It's Settled! You And I Concert!". Sounds like they're going to perform, right?
Wrong. They talk about hosting a live show. They decide on a venue for this live show (an actual venue in Yokohama). They go to the venue to plan things and meet up with another act performing there (the actual singers for the season's opening theme, who of course appeared in the live show as well). But they do. Not. Perform. Not counting the finishing attack at the end of the episode's obligatory battle. I was livid. I have absolutely nothing against a real live show happening. Precure has had plenty of them, they look like fun and I would go to them if I could. I don't keep tabs on them, because I don't live in Japan and can't access them. Maybe if I had, I would know this one was happening and temper my expectations for the episode accordingly. But even with the advertising still in place, I would not have been so upset if they had just. Fucking. Performed. It feels a little misleading to have an episode with a title and summary that suggest they will, only for it to basically end with "And now you need to purchase a ticket (or Blu-ray later on) or else you're never, ever going to see this! Good bye!!" The very next episode, they briefly mention that the live show was fun before moving onto other things. Sorry, audience, you don't get any performance whatsoever unless you shell out for tickets and perhaps also transportation and lodging, depending on how far you're traveling. I will give them a tiny bit of credit for having a less expensive streaming option available (though it appears this is now no longer available), but this all still feels really nasty to me. If you really must do an ad episode, can't you give us something to make it worth our while? A cool, unique performance of even just one measly song? I genuinely cannot remember Precure ever being THIS greedy before.
(That wasn't even the only time the show felt like it was pushing a real life event, either, because the Dancing Star Precure boys made brief cameos in one particularly bad episode near the end of the season. If you're not familiar, Dancing Star Precure is a stage show with an all boys Precure team, and at the time I'm writing this there have been three of them.)
After the live show ad episode, I completely stopped believing in this season. It was hard for me to not think almost every remaining episode was incredibly stupid. I honestly wish I had dropped the season here, but watching Precure has become a habit of mine after so many years. I'll try to get better at recognizing when I need to do this in the future. Watching the remainder of the season was only worth it for the sake of demonstrating that I gave the entire thing a fair shake before writing this review.
I suppose the marketing all worked, because by all accounts that I've seen so far, Kimi to Idol Precure has been beloved in Japan and much more commercially successful than other recent seasons. Congratulations to Toei, I guess. All of my griping about how much of a failure I felt this show was in how it was executed means nothing when money is all that ultimately matters to its success.
Maybe the folks who enjoyed this season are smarter than I am. I've seen a handful of people making the case that "this season has a lot of intentionality behind it" after reading interviews. Maybe they are the ones who "get it" and I'm completely missing something. But for my part, intentionality does not automatically mean something is good or that it works. I can tell they intended to go lighter here, something more akin to Tropical Rouge Precure (2021's season). But Tropical Rouge made me care about its characters and the central conflict a whole hell of a lot more, despite being easily the most comedy-focused season. Also, it was much funnier.
One thing I didn't have with Tropical Rouge were expectations, unlike with an idol show. I guess it was inevitable that I would disappointed, if there was a strong intention to make kimipuri very much unlike other idol shows, and that I was foolish to not drop them entirely. But that's asking an awful lot, isn't it? I also think I would have dropped my expectations and gotten on board if literally anything about this season besides its visuals worked for me--I am very aesthetically motivated, but not to the degree that I'm willing to overlook bad storytelling and bad character development. There is a possible version of this season that's still very different from a standard idol show but that I can at least say was decent--giving us more with the characters' motivations and hopes and dreams would have gone a long way and probably wouldn't have interfered with the intended tone--but it isn't what we got.
Seasons I enjoy often have the same or similar problems to kimipuri, sometimes even multiple. In isolation, none of what I've mentioned is an absolute dealbreaker. Everything taken together is what destroyed it. I genuinely wish I could have enjoyed this season, because again, I found the premise very exciting. It's a shame that it ended up like this.
Well, onwards to Star Detective Precure. This one frankly does not have to do much to be an improvement, and I still don't think I'm too picky when it comes to Precure, considering I can count on one hand the number of seasons I largely disliked or just didn't gel with. So, chances are good that it will be a better experience for me. Maybe the fact that I'm not a fan of other detective media and therefore don't have any expectations of how it will go will make it more enjoyable for me.