Heartcatch Precure! Movie: Hana no Miyako de Fashion Show... desu ka!?

Fantastic and touching movie that only makes but improve the Heartcatch Precure series, as a warning, this has to be watched after at least episode 37 of the TV anime or you will be missing out in who are the Precures and the development they went through the series up to that point.

Our girls visit France in preparation for a fashion show organized by Erika's mother, and what is supposed to be just a fun time visiting Paris changes once Tsubomi meets Loup-garou, a boy who's being chased by enemies and proceeds to help him.

The story of this movie focuses on him and Salamander, a ... member of the Desert Apostles (the enemies on this series) and delivers very emotional moments when we get to know more about them and what they went through. The fantastic main cast of the series adds a lot to this movie via interactions (mainly with Loup-garou) where their personalities and own experiences during the story make for great scenes.

This movie delivers in terms of visuals, with very nice looking action scenes and fluid animation, the music is more or less the same of the TV series, with variations to the opening and second ending theme used with similar purpose here.

Overall that was a great movie and definitely a must watch if you like Heartcatch Precure, which I definitely recommend if you haven't watched yet.

Please note that while I have watched the main Heartcatch season and other movie in their entirety in the past, this was a review of a re-watch; therefore, it may not necessarily take into account other information present in the main series. Spoilers for the main aspect of Heartcatch may follow.

I believe that this movie tells a strong message of multiple factors: self-acceptance and bias, perhaps even leaning slightly into discrimination (depending on the lens it's viewed through) among many others. Moreover, this movie provides backstory that's crucial to understanding the story. Let's discuss. I believe it goes without saying that Loup-Garou/Olivier and Baron Salamander ... are both very interesting characters; Salamander has motives that are seemingly very obscure, yet become clear by the end of the film. Additionally, there's a fine line to be drawn at what point Baron's "raising" of Loup crosses from acceptance to manipulation. I believe that the line may have been intentionally blurred to convince Loup to foster a hatred of Earth, possibly so he may have been less opposed to Baron's intentions. While past Precure largely weren't overly elaborated on, here the conflict between them and the Desert Apostles is given more light. While the film does add much to the lore of the season, it also presents an interesting dynamic with the Cures suggesting Loup deny "his own nature", so to speak. I found it nice (if overly long) that each Cure got a scene to bond with Loup, though in my opinion Blossom's was handled the worst, making her look more like an obsessive stalker/mother-figure than she really was. One of the biggest problems I had with the ending of the movie was that the fairies revealed their existence to the world on a live broadcast and absolutely nothing apparently came out of that. It also felt like Tsubomi's grandmother was meant to have a larger role, though she barely appears. Overall, a 7/10. This is a good supplement to the main series.