You know, I'm thinking more about the differences between Sailor Moon Crystal/the Sailor Moon manga and the 90s Sailor Moon anime. What I remember being the major difference is the amount of time we got to spend with the girls who weren't Usagi. Back in the 90s, having such a female-driven show that (usually) passed the old Bechdel Test was a rarity, and a lot of us grabbed on to that part over all else.

I didn't like the Sailor Moon manga. I didn't like Crystal either. And there's a part of me that wonders if the reason why I had an attachment to the 90s SM anime versus those two other variants is because I was there for something other than what the manga and Crystal had to give.

That is NOT to say that either form is bad, far from it. Just because I didn't care for it does not mean it was at all bad. It just wasn't what I was looking for.

Precure Day 157

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 09 - “Precure is Exposed!?” Date watched: 19 October 2019 Original air date: 1 April 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/1yYupZl Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

five girls are friends, more on page 2

In the Futari wa seasons, people typically fell unconscious whenever evil was around, and the girls didn’t usually have to worry about being discovered. There was that notable exception in FW14, but it’s been largely glossed over. In this show, though, the activities of the Precures and Nightmare have attracted attention (in fact that’s how Karen and Komachi got involved), and the sudden and kind of unusual friendship between the girls has not gone unnoticed. What’s a nosy reporter to do?

The Plot

The girls find themselves as the subject of several headlining articles in the school newspaper, commenting on everything from their eating habits to their mysterious friendship. The paper’s editor introduces herself and her slogan: “What the people want to know, I want to know!” She gives her name as Masuko Mika, but puns it into “Masukomi-ka” which is shorthand for mass communications.

When the girls can’t give her straight answers about why they’re friends, she decides to further investigate. After school one day, she sees them leaving the school with Mr. Cocoda, but he disappears suddenly. She follows the group to Natts House, where Coco and Nuts are hanging out as fairies, so there appears to be nobody tending the store. She’s still suspicious as she leaves the shop, when she runs into Arachnea, believing her to be the shop owner. Arachnea kidnaps her due to her relationship with the girls, planning to use her as collateral to get the Dream Collet. They chase the villain into an empty department store, but the girls are afraid to transform in front of Mika and give away their identities. Undeterred, Mika tries to question Arachnea and get a picture of her.

Annoyed, Arachnea transforms the camera into a Kowaina. Mika finds an opening to escape her grip, and the girls transform when she’s not looking. She watches them fight and defeat the monster, rescuing her camera, and she tries to interview them afterwards but all they say is that they’re called Pretty Cure, and then they disappear. Mika heads back to Natts Shop, confident that something bizarre is going on and the five girls are involved, but she runs into Nuts in his human form. She asks if he saw the girls go by, and he responds simply that there are some things she shouldn’t know. Mika is taken aback by his attractiveness and quickly agrees.

The next day at school, the girls are nervously expecting a story about them in the newspaper, but instead, the headlining article and most of the front page are taken up with pictures of Nuts, described as a “super hottie”, with only a small, pictureless blurb about “five mysterious girls” at the very bottom of the page. Their secret is safe.... for now.

The Analysis

Since this episode is about Mika, my response to it pretty much reflects my thoughts on her. Masuko Mika is a fun character. Her desire to find out the truth is commendable, and she does ask some good questions, but her methods are a little misguided. She rides the line between investigative journalist and paparazzo, sneaking candid pictures of her targets in order to get a scoop. Unfortunately, these photos are mostly of our heroines engaging in such compromising activities as “having lunch” and “hanging out.” Even Otaka is like “Why don’t you find something else to write about?” She is a curious character. Snooping around Natts House gets her kidnapped by Arachnea but even then she tries to question the villain up until the moment she sees she’s in over her head. She is so committed to figuring out why Nozomi and the others are hanging out, and who Precure are, and then..... she sees Nuts. Nuts suggests she forget everything and so he becomes her muse, the subject of almost all her writing. Precure and the mysterious occurrences at the school are relegated to a small corner of the paper. It’s good for the team, but it doesn’t speak too highly of the paper’s journalistic quality or her diligence as the chief. (Honestly though, I don’t recall ever seeing any other members of the newspaper club in this show, it is entirely possible it’s just her running a glorified gossip rag.) Mika says that she writes about what the people want to know, and I guess that’s true: Nuts will prove to be a very popular figure at this all-girls school, but it’s funny/a little frustrating to see her so easily distracted. However, this will not be her last appearance, not by a long shot, and she’s fondly remembered.

I would be remiss to ignore, however, that Mika has a point. Nozomi has surrounded herself with an unlikely group of high-profile friends, but while Precure was certainly a big factor in them coming together, it wasn’t just that, and someone could probably spin a version of events while leaving out their secret identities. Nozomi and Rin were already friends before the show started and we know they go back to their youth. Nozomi became friends with Urara when she saw her sitting alone all the time and decided to talk to her. Karen and Komachi are a little more complicated, because they only began speaking when Nozomi decided they should become Precures, but nonetheless Nozomi took a genuine interest in Komachi’s writing and in Karen’s overall well-being. She supported and sympathized with them, and earned their respect and companionship as a result. Being Precures isn’t the only thing that brings them all together, they’re actually friends, and I’m glad the show spent the time that it did establishing this. Unfortunately, Nozomi’s people skills don’t put her in the same league of notoriety as the others, which results in Mika and many others wondering what these school superstars are doing with her. I don’t think outsiders ever fully recognize Nozomi’s strength of character throughout the series.

This episode is another worldbuilding episode, much like episode 7 was and like episode 10 will be. There isn’t much going on with Nightmare, just the usual threats that failure to get the Dream Collet will be met with some form of punishment. Since the bad guys only win on key episodes, and this isn’t the type of show where they make progress towards their goal whether they win or not, it’s starting to feel a little repetitive. It just serves to show how disorganized Nightmare really is, though. Later on, we’ll see how far they take the business concept, it isn’t always Bunbee smugly threatening his employees, while being smugly threatened himself by Kawarino, but that’s a lot of the early part of the show.

There is some truly bad art in this episode. Most times that the girls are shown in full body where they occupy about two-thirds of the frame height or less, they go wildly off model.

The faces get extremely sloppy, with their eyes usually being stretched vertically while their other features are minimized. Nozomi’s hair especially gets drawn as more prominent than it normally is. Their bodies seem kind of elongated, but aside from a lack of shading they’re otherwise fine. Also, there are shots where someone’s movement is just the cell sliding across the frame, not even being moved up or down to indicate the slight bob of walking. I’ll get some gifs to demonstrate shortly. It’s not awful overall, but there is definitely a hint that it’s a less important episode.

Last point of note, Pretty Cure Splash Subs, whose translations were the basis of both Splash Star and this series (the versions I’m using anyway), were a little notorious for sticking some modern jokes, references, and sayings into their scripts, such as “you mad bro” and “a cat is fine too.” Well, this episode gave us this:

I generally don’t like meme translations, because memes and internet jokes come and go pretty fast and they can date a show hardcore. That being said, if this saying was around at the time, it’s exactly the sort of thing a contemporary kid would say. I looked it up the history  of “POIDH” and it was just starting to spread at this point, so it’s arguably appropriate. (but I still hate it) Obviously this isn’t a criticism of the series itself, and I’m not going to let it impact my perception, but I do find it a bit annoying that this (and several examples yet to come) made it in at all.

Next time, we get to focus on someone a little closer to home, as Nuts discovers that running a shop is hard when you don’t have any customers. Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 Kettei!