Go! Princess Precure Movie: Go! Go!! Gouka 3-bondate!!!

Perfectly fitting for the 31th of October (the day it started screening), the theme of this movie is pumpkins with a tone of... cute Halloween? As the title indicates, this movie is split into three parts, so let's get into each!

The first is a short animation in CGI where a small version of Cure Flora plays with some ghosts who fake like if they were a reflection of her, up to what I watched of Precure so far I will say that this was the most "fully kid oriented" moment of the series, and... damn it was cute!

The second part is the main bulk of ... this movie, with the Precures suddenly being transported into Pumpkin Kingdom, a place that definitely lived up to its name. I would say that while definitely enjoyable, this part was pretty average in comparison to how great the main series is, the villain didn't get more detail than "yes, he's bad" and is definitely forgettable and didn't leave much of an impression, and the side characters weren't anything special either, but it delivered as usual when it comes to enjoying whatever the main cast does and in the action scenes, not to mention that some of the pumpkin fairies were pretty funny.

Lastly, there is a part where the girls (once again) get transported to another place, but this time becoming CGI in the process, I will say that how this looks is pretty hit or miss depending on the viewer, but I personally got used to it from watching the 2nd ending of the series over and over of how good it is (and it's in this movie too!) so it ended up looking pretty nice. This part was funny (goofy Zetsuborgs being the MVPs) and the action with CGI animation looked pretty nice, the story was alright and tried to be a bit emotional which didn't work due to its short duration not giving time to feel attached to the situation.

Overall I would say that this was an enjoyable movie but definitely nothing special when it comes to the story or the characters featured in them. If you like Cure Flora as much as I do I can't recommend it enough because she gets a lot of spotlight, if you liked the TV series of Princess Precure it's well worth a try, and if not or you only feel interest on it if it has a good story... definitely skippable honestly.

Hm, it would have been much easier to give a score for if this wasn't - quite literally - 3 entirely separate parts. Oh well, might as well break them down.

Part 1 is a 5 minute silent 3D animation. You know, the type you'd see at the start of a Pixar movie. One that's clearly just meant to be an animation demonstration rather than trying to tell a story or anything. It's... well, it's certainly on par with big-budget 3D films, but there really isn't anything noteworthy about it.

Part 2 - the main bulk of the film - is 50 minutes long, and it's basically ... like a normal episode. ...No, it really is, up until the end (where things really started getting serious/flashy) it genuinely feels like it was just an extended normal episode, definitely not the kind of thing you'd expect from a movie. It's also... not good? The animation and such were pretty standard, but the story itself felt more like an excuse to have the protagonists doing girly stuff (dancing, cat-walking, cooking) than an attempt to tell an actual story. It wasn't particularly interested in setting up this new setting (so it looks very generic) or telling an emotional story (so the side-characters barely do anything and the main characters feel like they're waiting for something interesting to happen). Oh, and the scenes themselves are pretty boring. The only actually interesting thing about it - other than the ending, which was good enough I guess - is the whole "What has the bad guy got planned", but even that was ordinary and uncreative. Basically, this is a long-winded way of saying that the whole Part 2 felt like a big missed opportunity.

Part 3 is the actually worthwhile part though, and chances are, the only reason you're reading this review to begin with. It's a 20-minute 3D animation with a FANTASTIC style! I mean it genuinely might be the best I've ever seen in a 3D film. ...Okay, so maybe personal tastes might vary on that, but at the very least, it's certainly unique. The stylised 3D shading/outlines allows the show to use much more 'anime-style' shortcuts than regular 3D cartoons (which requires a lot of animation effort to look appealing) and doesn't have the same jarring effect that 3D-but-flat-so-it-looks-2D anime has. As in, it clearly DOESN'T have the same effort put into the animations as big-budget films (and it clearly has points where it could have improved on), or Part 1 of it's own movie, yet it still looks amazing! ...Oh yeah, and as for the thing itself: unlike Part 2, this one doesn't have a story beyond "We need to help this stranger beat up this bad guy" - which is actually nice, because it means more time for sweet action scenes, which is what 3D anime absolutely excels at.

I think you can see why I have trouble rating this. If it was just Part 3 alone, I would have given this a straight 9 out of 10, but Part 1 is nothing special and Part 2 felt like a big waste of time. Ho hum.

While I applaud Toei for trying something different (the three stories in one movie thing), I don’t think it really worked overall.

Story 1 (7/10) - This skit was cute enough, the animation was nice, and the story managed to get across even without words. I can’t rate it any higher since it didn’t have that much to do with Flora or this season specifically, and could really be have been done with any children’s anime character, but it was still sweet.

Story 2 (5/10) - Although taking up the majority of the screen time, this was definitely the weakest of the three, dragging down my overall ... rating quite significantly. The villain was quite plain, none of the the Pumpkin royal family members really stood out beyond being plot devices, and the “Princess Competition” (which is a reused plot point from the main series) really felt shoehorned in, casuing most of the cures to act wildly out of character (do you really expect me to believe Scarlet noticed something was off but not the highly perceptive Mermaid, seriously?).

Story 3 (7.5/10) - This is how I believe the entire movie should have been. If we had gotten more development on this particular plot line and its new characters, I feel as though I would have enjoyed the experience more overall. The animation was bold but not in a bad way, managing to add its own unique flare without making the characters unrecognisable like I’ve seen from some other 3D models.

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Overall, this movie was a rather disappointing 6/10 in my opinion, an entire point lower than the series from which it originated. While it was good of them to try, I don’t think this multi-movie thing really works for Precure, especially since they also have to find a way to incorporate the already somewhat contrived Miracle Lights into a much shorter time span. The whole premise isn’t “bad” per se, but if you do want to check it out, I suggest watching Story 1 and Story 3 without wasting 50 minutes on what is essentially a filler GoPri episode but worse.