Yes! Precure 5

Nozomi Yumehara is a girl without a dream or goal for the future. She's clumsy and is good at neither sports nor academics. Until now she's just been drifting through her life without a care in the world. That all changes when she suddenly meets Coco, a fairy prince from the destroyed Palmier Kingdom, and now she decides that she will become Pretty Cure to fight evil and help revive the Palmier Kingdom.

Yes5 greatly changes the formula for the Pretty Cure franchise. It's the first season to give the individual Cure's the ability to transform without each other and have their own attacks for defeating ... the Monster's of the Week. Changing Pretty Cure from a duo to a five-person team also obviously increases the number of important characters and makes the team dynamic and character interactions for this season completely different from the previous two.

The basic plot for the show is very simple, the girls must find the 55 Pinkies and put them into the Dream Collet and they can then make whatever wish they want. Pretty Cure wishes to use the Dream Collet to revive the Palmier Kingdom while Nightmare, the evil organization of the season, want it to grant their leader Despariah's wish of eternal youth and immortality. However, the show treats gathering the Pinkies sort of as a side-plot, Yes5 is much more focused on it's characters and their development and interactions with each other. Something unfortunate is the actual designs and transformations of Pretty Cure. The outfits are pretty plain and the transformations equally so, probably the worst in the franchise.

Being the main focus of the show the Cure's in Yes5 have more development and personality than the Cure's from previous seasons. As do the fairies who can change into human forms. Nozomi, Cure Dream, starts out as a silly girl with her head in the clouds who doesn't know what she wants to do in life, over the course of the show she becomes a great leader and an inspiration to all of her friends. Rin, Cure Rouge, plays the straight-man of the group and is a typical "tomboy with a girly side to her" with Rin you see her developing friendship with Karen and the rest of the Cure's. Urara, Cure Lemonade, is the youngest of the group but already working as an idol and her cheerful demeanor belies the fact that she lost her mother at a young age. Komachi, Cure Mint, struggles to find passion in her life and to find her own voice. Karen, Cure Aqua, is a lonely girl who until becoming Pretty Cure never had a friend aside from Komachi. All of the girls also struggle with their dreams for the future, while unlike Nozomi they have their own passions and talents they're all still unsure of what they really want to to do with their lives.
The fairies in the show are Coco, who disguises himself as a teacher at the school the girls attend. Being a prince of the Palmier Kingdom Coco is constantly looking out for the happiness and safety of the girls. Nuts, the second prince, is tortured by the fact that he was tricked by Nightmare into allowing the Palmier Kingdom to be destroyed in the first place. He closes himself off to others and only gradually opens up more across the show.

Yes5, unlike pretty much every other season in the franchise, also has a much bigger focus on romance. Unlike most seasons where some Cure's would just have a little crush on some guy and it wouldn't go anywhere the romantic relationships in Yes5 actually develop and lead somewhere. Coco, despite his best efforts, falls for Nozomi but is tormented by the fact that when this is all over he'll have to return to the Palmier Kingdom and leave her. Nozomi more than reciprocates his feelings and has the same problems with their inevitable seperation. Komachi similarly falls in love with Nuts and agonizes much the way Nozomi does, unlike her though Komachi has a much harder time just telling Nuts about her feelings.

The two biggest themes in the show are "Hope vs. Despair" and finding ones dream for the future. With the Hope vs. Despair theme we see this throughout the story with the fairies and Pretty Cure never giving up hope that they can succeed and revive the Palmier Kingdom. The villains simply wish for them to accept their inevitable failure and drown in despair. Finding ones dream for the future also comes into play throughout the season as the girls individual character arcs develop and they eventually find out what they want to do with their lives.

The company of Nightmare was a pretty different antagonist for Pretty Cure at the time. Being an evil business essentially they aren't as threatening and the scale isn't as big with them as it was with the Dark Zone or Dark Fall from previous seasons but because they were so different in their setup and goal it was refreshing.
The individual villains of Nightmare are kind of a mixed bag. There are some great ones, some okay ones, and some crap ones. Girinma, Arachnea, and Gamao, the three minions originally serving under Bunbee, are crap. Just boring villains and nothing to write home about.
Later on the stronger Hadenya and Bloody get introduced, they're both quite a bit better than the previous three. Hadenya has more flair and personality to her and her fights are generally a little better than others too. Bloody is even better, being a more serious and threatening villain the few episodes with him as the adversary are great.
But the actually great villains in the show are Kawarino and Bunbee. Bunbee initially seems like the boss of the organization but is essentially just "middle-management" and while remaining a credible threat to Pretty Cure throughout the show gets less and less respect from his colleagues as time goes on and becomes more of a comedy-relief villain. Kawarino is the opposite. Very evil and creepy, Kawarino is Despariah's right-hand man, he cares nothing for his comrades and has no qualms about sending them on suicide missions or transforming them into mindless monsters. As a sort of counterpart to the happier romance in Nozomi and Coco's lives he is also clearly and deeply in love with Despariah.
The main villain of the series is Despariah, the only female main villain from Pretty Cure. Like many main villains in Pretty Cure she is the exact opposite of the leader Nozomi, Nozomi is hope and Despariah is obviously despair. Whereas Pretty Cure seek to use the Dream Collet unselfishly to help the Palmier Kingdom Despariah only cares for herself and wants to be the only happy person in the world while everyone else is trapped in sadness and despair. The biggest problem with Despariah is that she doesn't have much presence in the show, barely appearing or doing anything herself until near the end. It makes the final fight with her feel like an almost unnecessary addendum and lacks the emotion and impact it should have.
The Monster's of the Week in Yes5 are the Kowaina. A dull concept and physical designs put them, in my opinion, as the worst from any season. Only Bloody uses them in an interesting way.
Another problem with the villains is that they never team-up even though there's no logical reason for them not to. They have good chemistry when talking and meeting together so it's kind of a letdown that we never see them fight together.

The action in Yes5, well to put it plainly it sucks. Like every season there are a couple of good fights but not as much as there should be. A combination of poor animation quality and a stiff art-style make a lot of fights just not look good even if the action is okay.

The music is great, Yes5 probably has one of the best soundtracks in Pretty Cure. The opening and endings however are just okay and nothing really special. Like Splash Star before it Yes5 uses some music from the previous seasons so every now and then you'll hear music from Futari Wa, Max Heart, and Splash Star playing.

The build-up to the finale is pretty poor. It just suddenly sort of starts and the episodes don't really flow well together. Once in the actual finale it's great though. The themes of the show are displayed excellently and it gets really emotional as Pretty Cure face their darkest hour. It's a really dramatic finale, as it should be. However the last episode is "uneven" so to speak. It sort of tries to do too much and despite having a lot of good points it and the fight with Despariah leave much to be desired. The ending is bittersweet, but much more sweet, and the epilogue is perfectly fitting for the show.

So Yes5 takes Pretty Cure in a new direction and still does some things that no other season has done making it a perfectly good and highly enjoyable show.

I've looked at the PreCure franchise quite a bit. With Futari wa, Max Heart, Splash Star and Doki Doki as well as three different films. This time around, we're going back to the first PreCure series to feature a team, Yes PreCure 5. This one ran from early '07 to early '08. The head writer was Narita Yoshimi, who also did series composition work on Splash Star. So, that's a pretty good sign. Let's delve back into the world of PreCure.

Story:

We open with our main heroine, Yumehara Nozomi, running late for school. Something we've never seen in any anime before besides ninety percent of them. ... On her way there she almost trips but gets caught by a very handsome older man. Being more than a little thick, she thinks of it as a fated encounter. Even when he turns out to be a gay squirrel. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. She's in the library, presumably for picture books, when she encounters the stranger again. The pair of them are attacked by a Mantis man and she transforms into Cure Dream. The squirrel introduces himself as Coco and tells her that they need to find the four other legendary warriors to wake up his boyfriend who's sleeping in the Dream Collet & the fifty five pinkies to revive the destroyed Palmier kingdom.

Let's start with my biggest problem with this series, namely, the attempts at romance. Unlike the other PreCure series we've looked at where the straight love interest is either absent or a largely ignored element, this one likes to push the idea that a couple of these fourteen, maybe fifteen year old girls should get together with these grown ass men, one of which is their teacher and both of which are actually squirrels.

So, it's the worst in the franchise in that regard so far. Say what you will about Soccer boy Senpai from Futari wa or Mai's elder brother in Splash Star, at least they were close in age to the girls who were interested in them and not in positions of power & the same species. Every single episode where they try to push the romance aspect in this series comes across as more than a bit grotty & really cringey.

There's also the way the whole pinky thing is handled. It's very much an element the series brings up when it feels like it. Most of them are caught off screen & they barely do anything. There's an episode where one gets used to treat an illness and another one acts like a photocopier a few times. I think that's actually it.

But it's not all bad. The way the overall theme of hope against despair and the way dreams for the future factor into holding on to your hope is pretty well handled. The ending has some nuance to it and really doesn't unfold like you'd expect. So, that's appreciated.

Characters:

The biggest problem with the cast here is that they're very much a bog standard group. Nozomi is the super optimistic, good-natured, dumb as a brick variety of protagonist. Rin is the athletic one. Urara is the excitable, cheerful young one. Komachi is the calm older sister type & Karen is the smart one. And unlike, say, Doki Doki or Sailor Moon the characters never move beyond the most archetypical writing for those tropes in any significant way. The most interesting character in terms of writing is the main antagonist, Despariah. And that's only because of what happens with the ending.

I will credit the series with trying to juggle the characters and give them all a decent amount of focus. I'll also credit it with giving each of the main five their own little arc. Even if those arcs are trite. And the dynamics that aren't pushing the idea of romance between young girls and adult animals can be fun.

One issue with the writing is that the series doesn't know what to do with their underling antagonists. To the point where two of them exit the series in a really unsatisfying fashion. At least the others get big, final confrontations against the heroines. These two just kind of get unceremoniously axed.

Art:

The character designs are solid, especially for the villains. It also continues the proud series tradition of having very physical bouts and ending them with the big, magic attacks. The action scenes in general are nicely done. I especially like the horseback duel that Karen fights. The villain designs are quite good. The backgrounds are quite nice and, overall, the art just works well.

Sound:

The performances are well done. Nagano Ai, Ise Mariya, Maeda Ai, Takeuchi Junko, Sanpei Yuuko and the other various major actors are all good at what they do. Overall, I also did like the music. One issue I do have is that they get rid of their original ending theme tune partially through and just replace it with a remix of Splash Star's. It's like the Toei team responsible for making the series decided the tune they had wasn't good enough and they didn't have time to write something new, so they just modified something they already had. Granted, the theme tunes in this isn't as good as the other PreCure series we've looked at, but they're perfectly fine. 

Ho-yay:

There's a lot of it betwixt Coco & Nuts. There are also a few scenes with Komachi & Karen where they come across as more than friends. And there are some scenes where Urara seems to have a bit of a crush on Nozomi. (Notice her, Senpai.) This series does have significantly less ho-yay than the rest of the franchise we've looked at, however. 

Areas of Improvement:

Get rid of the attempts at romance. Seriously, you don't need romantic elements. In fact, they're downright detrimental when the main stuff you're pushing is gross in three different ways. 
Give your characters something to set them apart. I get it, this was the first time they had a team and they didn't really know how to juggle character development for five girls. But give us something that moves them beyond archetypes. 
Give the two villains with abrupt departures proper send offs. Again, I know why they handled it the way they did. They wanted to emphasise a particular antagonist's sadistic side with how he disposes of these two. But I feel like they could have done that and still had the send off. After all, they do with the villain who leaves before these two. 

Final Thoughts:

Yes PreCure 5 is not nearly the best the franchise has to offer. Honestly, it's kind of weak. While it has its enjoyable moments and a few interesting elements, it suffers from bland characterisation, the worst romance elements in the series thus far and some aspects that just aren't handled in engaging or interesting ways. In the end, the closest series I can compare it to is Max Heart. Like that series, it's very mediocre. I'll give it a 5/10. Maybe the follow up to it will redeem it somewhat when I eventually look at that, but given that it's the series that marked the end of direct sequel series in the franchise, I'm not all that optimistic. 

My long Precure journey continues and now it’s time to make a stop at Yes! Precure 5. Expanding from two to three to four(?) in "back-to-back-to-back" seasons, the most logical step for the Precure franchise was to broaden even more the number of members in this brand new instalment. Thus, we get to meet five new senshis with a promising story, which I’ll be reviewing down here.

Story
Regarding the plot, there’s no innovation in the basic component of the story, as the precure fight in hopes of restoring the Palmier Kingdom, which has been destroyed by an evil organisation called Nightmare. The novelty, though, is ... that the senshis do not transform at the same time nor are they picked by the mascots, among other things. In fact, the first thing that struck me was that the leader (Nozomi) tries to recruit her best friend right away, telling her all the precure stuff and leaving behind all the secrecy that comes with it.

The first half dozen episodes are dedicated to the task of “choosing” the rest of the members. After all five senshis are chosen, the episodes usually unfold on the same note, with the girls slowly getting to know each other better and overcoming each one's problems together. In between that, the villains try to stop them with monsters called kowaina, which are possessed by a mask. All of them follow the typical beginning (exposition), middle (conflict) and end (resolution) structure that we are used to, so it’s nice to see that they tried to add a little bit of freshness in some of the battles. For example, when they fight inside Komachi’s story or when Karen duels a villain in a joust. Going back to the first episodes topic, they all build up to the mid-season climax nicely. That’s why I think the pacing is pretty good, at least for the first half. The second half is a bit weaker in terms of a build up to the ending, although most of the episodes are enjoyable with some of them deepening more into their relationships.

The main theme in Yes! Precure 5 is the clash between hope and despair. The succeeding battles test the protagonists to not fall into despair and always fight for hope and, ultimately, for their dreams. The two climax battles, the mid-season one and the ending one, depict very well this feeling.

One thing I left out that has an impact in the story are the pinkies. Catching these small magical creatures, 55 of them to be exact, is essential to restore the kingdom. The problem is that their importance is not displayed properly, catching most of them off screen and becoming kind of a side quest. They are pretty much ignored after collecting them, finding a use for only two of them (one of them as a copying machine, I’m not kidding). At least the heartiels from Max Heart talked in a funny way.

To wrap up the story related things, I think there’s overall more drama in each episode than in previous Precure entries. There’s definitely more romance which, if you let aside the fact that the crushes the two precure members have are some kind of alien squirrels in their original form, I think it works.

Characters
At first sight, the precure girls have the standard personalities you would expect just by looking at them. Nozomi, the optimistic leader; Rin, the sporty tomboy; Urara, the cheerful underclassman; Komachi, the shy and calm bookworm; and Karen, the smart seito kaichou. In the end, even though they don't move much past those archetypes, the different interactions between them are more than enough. There’s chemistry between them and it’s nice to see them working together to figure out their dreams.

I’m not going to talk much about the mascots cause I don’t particularly like them or hate them. They just serve their purpose, I don’t know. The only thing I can highlight is that Coco and Natts have human forms that make things more interesting.

The villain side being an evil organisation that resembles a private company was cool, and I liked watching them argue in some sort of a board meeting room. That being said, most of the underlings were pretty boring, especially the first three. Bunbee was the one I liked the most, having some funny moments. Kawarino’s role as Desparaiah’s “favourite” was well executed. The development of the latter at the end was nice to see, but other than that she didn’t have a lot of protagonism. One thing I didn’t quite like was the kowaina monsters. The majority of them were very uninspired and just a giant thing with a mask.

Finally, being five protagonists, there’s almost no room for side characters, unlike in Futari wa. Masuko is the only one worth mentioning, as she’s the only one with a character arc. Sad, because I really enjoyed the side characters in the past entries, but I understand the five protagonists needed more screen time.

Art
My biggest disappointment here is the action. There doesn’t seem to be much of it, mainly because they rely too much on their special attacks, which look almost the same to me. The action starts to pick up in the second half with some nice sequences, like one where Karen stops a punch from the chocobo-looking obasan with a flying kick. The battle outfits are okay, as well as the overall character designs. The western style town was nice too.

Sound
Not much to highlight here other than the soundtrack using recurring tracks from Futari wa. The OP and first ED follows the line of the previous ones and the second ED is a remix of the Splash Star one, which I liked, but I would have preferred a new one. Nice voice acting.

Conclusion
In short, apart from taking the Precure franchise in a new direction, Yes! Precure 5 tackles some interesting topics, like the hope vs. despair and the dream stuff, and has some great episodes. It’s not the exponent of the genre or the franchise, as it has some flaws here and there, but overall is an enjoyable show for any mahou shoujo and Precure fan.