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precuredaily · 4 years

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Precure Day 165

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 17 - “Love Story of a Pure-Hearted Maiden” Date watched: 12 December 2019 Original air date: 27 May 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/md9kwKC Transformation Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/6k6SzS0 Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

Remember the Prism Love Checker, the Takoyaki Handy, or the Charm Pencil Case from the last three seasons? Yeah, it’s that time again! Time to loosely base an entire episode around a toy that doesn’t fit the theme of the series.

The Plot

Natts House is sold out of everything, and for some reason there’s an implication that Rin should be doing something about this, but instead she’s crafting a bead bracelet, ignoring her surroundings, and generally acting strangely. Nozomi recalls that only other time she’s seen her friend this way was when she had a crush.....

Later, the girls pay her a visit at her mom’s shop, and see her giddily selling flowers to a handsome young man, and blushing. They confront her and she doesn’t admit to having a crush on this guy, but doesn’t deny it either. Since she agreed to deliver a flower to him, they urge her to make the delivery now while they mind the shop, and dress nicely to do it.

Nuts gives her a blue bead bracelet to match the red one she’s wearing (again, toys) and she sets off. However, the girls are curious to see her shoot her shot, and after some debate Karen justifies it by saying she’s just looking out for the students, so they follow her in secret. Rin arrives at his residence but hesitates, unsure what to say. Meanwhile, Girinma watches ominously from a tree....

As she’s just about to knock on the door, he opens the porch door and sees her. She gives him the flower and is just about to confess her feelings when a lady comes over and he introduces her as his girlfriend, for whom he buys the flowers. Rin goes from crushing to crushed, but manages to hide her feelings long enough to give them both the bracelets and wish them well before running off and breaking down. She sits on a bench and reflects on how she met him, as a patron of her shop, and starts to cry. Girinma shows up, taunting her dream for being pointless, and he prepares to attack her. The other girls catch up, declare Rin’s feelings to be precious, and they all transform. Girinma turns a nearby water fountain (the large, decorative kind, not the ones you drink from) into a Kowaina, which tosses the girls around. Even Aqua, who is supposed to be able to manipulate water.

Despite being overpowered and heartbroken, Rouge declares that she still wants to look forward to good things in life, and refuses to give up. The Kowaina suddenly weakens and it turns out Coco and Nuts have cut off the water supply to the fountain. Lemonade, Mint, and Aqua handle Girinma while Rouge and Dream take out the Kowaina, and the day is won.

As they all walk home, Nozomi, Urara, Komachi, and Karen suggest activities to cheer Rin up, but she knocks them each down in turn because they’re impractical or not to her tastes. Then she realizes that with all of them there, including Nuts and Coco, nobody is watching the shop, so they have to get back there as soon as possible, and the episode ends with a still frame.

The Analysis

First off, if I haven’t established this by now, I’m a sap for romance episodes. Always have been. So seeing Rin crush on someone warms my heart, even if I know it’s not going to end well for her. Also, she’s really cute when she’s like this. I mean, she’s always cute, but more cute. Actively cute.

I have to give props to her actress, Takeuchi Junko, for this. She sounds a bit more high-pitched and aloof than normal. Also there’s a sequence where she’s roleplaying in the mirror as herself and the guy, switching between personas and voices and it’s hilarious and a good show of skill.

I can’t really say her taste in men is great, this guy’s only notable feature seems to be “he comes to her shop, is personable, and is moderately attractive” but since she’s modeled after Nagisa, the bar isn’t exactly high. And of course, young love is rarely rational. It’s less about who she likes as much as the fact that she likes someone, and the writers’ ability to craft an episode around that. As far as episodes of this show goes, this one isn’t very good, especially coming off the fantastic Komachi focus episode, but it’s still fun overall. In this series, even the bad episodes are still pretty solid. They spend just the right amount of time showing Rin as lovestruck, doing silly things, and then getting heartbroken, before they move into the battle.

Now, the elephant in the room here is the Pop’n Beads Maker. It will appear again, and I know it appeared in HUGtto under a different name. This is a toy that was released in the Precure 5 toyline with branding from the characters, but it doesn’t have any plot relevancy. We’ve seen this before, but the previous items they were plugging were a bit smaller than this.

In stores now! Wait, I’m 12 years late.

Based on translated Amazon reviews it seems it was well-liked. I don’t have much to say about this. It threads beads onto a string for you so you don’t have to do it by hand. I read mixed reviews of how good it was at doing this. It may feature the least into the story of any of these gimmick items. For reference, the Prism Love Checker was used by Nagisa to see how compatible she was with Fuji-P.... or would have been if she hadn’t chickened out. The Handy was shown to be useful at Akane’s takoyaki cart, and Honoka used it to control a slideshow as well. The pencil cases in Splash Star were used to share messages about how Saki and Mai cared about each other and were sorry for upsetting one another. The bead maker is shown once, as Rin makes a bracelet, we see Nuts hold one more bracelet, and then it’s never seen or heard about again in this episode. Very weird. It’s preferable to forcing their whole relationship to center around the bead maker, but then it comes across as a less effective toy plug. I feel like there’s a middle ground for effectively marketing your product and integrating it into the plot in a non-hamfisted way, but I don’t want to waste time coming up with one.

I would like to point out that, despite being portrayed as sporty and tomboyish, they always take care to show that Rin also has feminine interests as well. She’s happy making flower arrangements, and here she is fawning over a boy. Her friends make note of this, and I’m not bringing it up to say it’s unusual for her. I like that she’s able to express all aspects of her personality mostly freely (she feels a little embarrassed about the crush, as people are wont to do).

I really like how they showcase Rin and Nozomi’s old friendship. We know they’re second generation friends who have known each other since they were very young, and we know they always look out for each other, but I love is how they show it in this episode. Nozomi recalls Rin’s previous crush that got her acting all giddy, and wants to support her wholeheartedly. When she gets her heart broken, Nozomi gives her some space, but when Girinma mocks her, she jumps on the offensive and declares how important Rin’s feelings are. When it’s time to strike the final blow, she works in tandem with Rin and says “Don’t make a maiden angry! You wouldn’t like us when we’re angry!” She has no time for anyone who upsets her friends, especially Rin, and that’s admirable.

Komachi, Urara, and Karen don’t have a whole lot going on this episode. It’s not about them. They’re mostly moral support, and encouraging poor decisions. All of them know they should leave Rin alone to go talk to this guy herself, but they’re also curious to see how she does. Karen is initially the voice of reason, saying they should give her her privacy, and Nuts backs her up. However, when Nozomi insists, she comes around and says as student council president, it’s her responsibility to look out for the students, and comes along. This is a pattern of behavior with her, she acts reasonable at first but then she makes poor decisions. I kinda like that about her, it shows that she’s not the unflappable student council president they all think she is, she’s just good at logic-ing her way into situations. And then when they’re all coming up with ways they can cheer her on, using their unique skills, Komachi suggests that she could write lines for Rin and Urara says she’ll be her stunt double!

she is unique.

They’re a bunch of dorks and I love them.

Also over on the villain side, Girinma isn’t doing so hot. Bunbee handed him his termination papers and threatened to fire him if he didn’t improve his performance, so he’s especially cynical of Rin’s misadventures when he spots her, but it doesn’t really relate to his attack. It doesn’t seem to amount to much of anything, except to show that Bunbee is at the end of his rope with his employees, which will come into play in a few more episodes.

To wrap it up, it’s a filler episode with the intention of plugging a toy they couldn’t advertise any other way. No Pinkies are gathered, but we see a little insight into Rin’s softer side, and some machinations behind the scenes. It’s not a bad episode, but if I had to recommend ones to skip for time, this would be one of them. I do understand the importance of fleshing out your cast so the audience cares about them and appreciates the bond between characters, which is what this does, but ultimately it’s not especially relevant. I would rate it a 7 on a scale of 10.

Next time, Masuko Mika interviews Karen at home, and we see spring uniforms! Look foward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 Kettei!

#Precure #Pretty Cure #Yes! Precure 5 #YPC517 #PCD165

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