Miyuki Hoshizora and her friends Akane, Yayoi, Nao, and Reika have been enlisted as Pretty Cure to help Candy, the fairy from Marchenland, resurrect the Royal Queen who sacrificed herself to stop the evil Pierrot of the Bad End Kingdom from painting a bad end across the world. Pretty Cure must collect the various decor that hold the Queens power, while the other villains of the Bad End Kingdom seek to gather Bad Energy from people to revive Pierrot. Always spouting her catchphrase of "Ultra happy", Miyuki takes on the challenge with glee.
Smile is a simple show. It does away with a lot of the typical character drama present in other seasons and is much more comedy focused with lots of silly fun and wacky hijinks, a lot of your enjoyment of the show is going to depend on what you personally find funny and entertaining. The characters themselves are rather simple even for Pretty Cure and their relationships and bonds with each other, while they grow stronger, don't ever really change or develop. However this isn't really as bad as you might think. The characters are still plenty fun, cute, and likable. They all have their own brand of silliness that fits in perfectly in Smile. And although simple they aren't completely flat, their characters still get fleshed out and expanded upon over the course of the season and there is more to them than just what you see in their introductory episodes. The characters development just isn't that big of a priority in Smile. This isn't inherently bad it just means the show has a different way of handling its characters and what it's trying to do with them.
However, despite the lower focus on the characters and their development Smile still has character arcs that cover the entire season and all build up to big individual culminations of the girls characters, and also about them finding out what is truly important to them. The arcs just aren’t as explored or visible as in other seasons and until the end of the show usually don't impact episodes outside of the arcs. There’s also a heavy theme of friendship in the series and each girl realizing what the others mean to them. As well as a theme of the girls protecting and reaching towards the future and saving it from the Bad End the villains want to bring about.
Surprisingly the character whose development is a big priority and focus in Smile is the fairy, Candy. Candy starts off as a pretty typical fairy for Pretty Cure, but somewhat more useless and cowardly. She even manages to be rather detrimental to the Cures on occasion and largely is a bother, and can frankly just be annoying. However, when Candy starts to change she never looks back. The story of Smile is just as much her journey as it is Pretty Cure's. She develops into a capable fairy who no longer cowers and instead of trying her best and making things worse, she tries her best and succeeds. She becomes a much more active helper to Pretty Cure and is more integral to the plot, while still getting real development, than most other fairies.
As for the main plot of Smile the show essentially treats it like a joke. The villains actions are so nonsensical and often so hilariously over the top and stupid that it often seems like Smile is a parody of the typical Pretty Cure plot. The show gets serious at important moments but most of the episodes are played for comedy and are often highly energetic and loads of fun. The problem is that Smile doesn't have much in the area of over-arching subplots. Individual episodes will tie into the main plot but will have nothing more going on in them other than whatever random thing is happening in the episode. Because of that Smile is even more episodic than the average season of Pretty Cure. These individual episodes could be good or great but getting long stretches of them all at once can make the show kind of drag.
Because so much of the show is unabashedly silly the more serious moments can occasionally clash with the otherwise light-hearted nature of the show. However, Smile is surprisingly good at pulling off these serious moments. When it wants to be sweet it can be sweet, when it wants to be sad it can be sad, when it wants to be awesome it can be awesome and it somehow manages to excel at these things despite first and foremost being a rather silly series. The show is able to draw up a surprising amount of emotion from the characters that allow these serious moments and episodes to always be done nicely.
And then we have the villains in the show. Wolfrun, Akaoni, and Majorina make up the Bad End trio, the flunkies of the Kingdom essentially. At first they start off as pretty dull but as they interact with Pretty Cure and each other more they become much more entertaining villains. They are often hilarious and have great chemistry with each other, some of the best episodes are ones that have all of them interacting with Pretty Cure and each other at once. Over the course of the series they also develop personal vendettas against Pretty Cure, some of the battles end up being much more personal and have great impact.
And then there’s Joker. Joker is Pierrot’s right hand man and the second in command of the Bad End Kingdom, and is a very entertaining and more interesting villain than the others in the show. Although he initially appears with a carefree attitude and generally acting like a weirdo he is in actuality a very sadistic and evil villain. Especially by Smiles standards. Just downright creepy at times and even cruel to his comrades, whenever Joker appears before the Cures it signals something much more serious and dangerous than normal is about to happen, and unlike the others he often partakes in psychological games with the Cures, attempting to break their will to fight and crush them mentally. By the end of Smile Joker had become one of the more disturbing villains in the franchise.
The monsters of the week in Smile are the Akanbe. Clown monsters, as is fitting of Pierrot himself being an evil monstrous clown. While their designs can be lacking and are often just blocky there are a fair amount of nonstandard Akanbe that have special forms or gimmicks that you wouldn't see among the monsters from other seasons. There are multiple different types of Akanbe depending on the color of their nose and they all have a different color scheme, clothing, and facial expression to further differentiate the types. The Akanbe are also made from the decor Pretty Cure needs, so they have to defeat them in order to revive the Queen.
When it comes to the fighting in Smile there's actually quite a lot to talk about. The quality of the action is all over the place and the style of fighting quite varied. There's not a lot of the typical straight forward action in Smile, especially earlier on, and while there is some very good fast-paced hard-hitting action it is few and far in between and usually saved for the more serious episodes. A lot of the action in Smile is focused on gimmicks. There are a lot of Akanbe made around a certain gimmick that will also occasionally tie into the episode in some way, whether it be a lesson or some sort of physical object that 's important to the episode. We have one Akanbe that quizzes the girls on school subjects and if they answer incorrectly they get trapped in a big red X. There are multiple fights like this throughout the season and even some episodes with no actual fighting to speak of and the girls will defeat the Akanbe through other means. The sheer variety of the fights is unlike any other season and keeps the battles from ever becoming stale but if you're looking for more of the straight forward action typical of other seasons you may be disappointed. It also takes Smile a little while to really get into its groove when it comes to the action so the fighting in the earlier episodes is pretty bland and more about being silly and comedic. The fights in Smile in general have a more comedic and silly tone to them, partially because the Akanbe are clowns after all, so aside from the more serious episodes don't expect much seriousness in the other fights. Pretty Cure also all have their own elemental powers that they become better at using over the course of the show, they start out unable to really use them aside from their finishing attack but soon can do such things as powering up their punches with fire and using ice to debilitate the enemy. They become more intelligent and crafty with their elemental powers in short time.
What's more to the fights is that decor are also occasionally used to help the girls out in them. Each decor has it's own ability, whether giving the girls wings for flight, or just giving Candy some food to chow down on. Later on the show actually manages to tie the use of decor in the fights into Candy's character development. She starts to actively participate in the fights by using the decor to help Pretty Cure whenever she can and the decor begin to get used in the fights much more frequently. It's all a part of Candy and Pretty Cure combining their powers, Candy isn't satisfied just powering up their attacks so she starts to help them out whenever possible.
In the beginning of the show the girls start off as horrible fighters. By far the most incompetent team of Pretty Cure ever assembled. Weak and unable to use their attack more than once without getting tired, and sometimes failing to even get the attack to work in the first place. But over the course of the first half of the show you see them improve tremendously, their teamwork gets better, they become stronger, they gain more stamina, and they learn how to fight for real and eventually become a real team that can truly stand up to their opponents.
The music is pretty good but not too spectacular for the franchise. The ending themes are very nice and have several different versions that focus on different characters.
There are also just a lot of nice little things about Smile. The different endings, the fact that you can play Rock, Paper, Scissors with Yayoi every time she transforms, just nice little things added into the show to make it a little more fun.
Smile has a fairytale theme to it but it doesn’t really give a whole lot of attention to it. There are lots of little references to various fairy tale's scattered throughout the show but the fairytale theme mostly just hangs in the background. There’s always some fairytale aspects present in the show, such as Wolfrun, Akaoni and Majorina all being fairytale characters/creatures as well as some other things but these are never really focused on or given any thought outside of “These are fairytale references.” Despite a lot of general references Smile rarely takes the opportunity to do anything special with the fairytale theme. And it’s a big disappointment for the show. In the end instead of being an ever present theme like music in Suite or flowers in Heartcatch fairytale's in Smile are more like a recurring motif that's very important to some characters and helps set up and tie certain points of the story together.
While Smile's plot is really simple and linear by the time the show is coming to a close there are a surprising amount of elements coming to a head all at once. There ends up being quite a few things to be resolved and taken care of. The build up to the finale is pretty good, there's a nice flow into the final arc and the episodes are used to foreshadow some important events later on as well as give the characters their resolution that helps them face the eventual hardships. The finale itself gets pretty crazy but there are some unfortunate hiccups in it and several sudden revelations and plot events that aren't given the necessary time to really be focused on well enough and have as much impact as they should. However the final showdown is very intense and awesome, you see how far the girls have come in their journey and the themes of the show are displayed excellently. Despite some problems Smile manages to have a very emotional and sometimes heart-wrenching finale.
The epilogue is very sweet and manages to give us one last moment of silliness that perfectly fits the show.
Smile Precure is aptly named. It's cheerful, bright, energetic, and the whole show feels like it's just trying to make you ultra happy, laugh, and put a big smile on your face.
