Go! Princess Precure

Ah, Go! Princess Precure or hencefort GoPri for simplicity. Quite the popular and beloved season for some reason. Most fans say this is one of the if not the best reason. However, some of us believe this is quite the opposite and this is easily the WORST season from the franchise. Why? Just keep reading...

WARNING: This review has SPOILERS all over! Nothing extreme, but spoilers.

Story - 4

The story in GoPri is already one of its weak points. For starters the main structure is exactly the same than in DokiDoki, that aired two years ago. And before you go "But Zettai, every single season from Pretty ... Cure follows the same structure" note I don't mean one or two minor things like having the new Cure join midway. I mean like the whole thing!

To wit: The first episodes are the various Cures joining with the last one taking extra, then episode 11 has the first big fight with one villain that can transform and is vanquished with the shiny new combination attack, then another new villain fixated into the Pink Cure appears, then said villain eventually gets one big fight halfway, then the Red Cure joins, then we have another decisive battle by episode 30 won with another new combination attack, then we have some more stuff, and finally the finale with the last battle being just the Pink Cure against the final boss. See? They are the EXACT SAME THING. No other season was this bad, not even Smile the uncreative ripoff season.

On top of that the plot has other issues too, like the plotline being about following your dreams and then giving us one of the dumbest goals possible for the main character, who naturally never gets over this, or anything and everything involving the fourth perfume. Let's just say the series forgets Scarlet should not exist to begin with and therefore everything involving her just keeps causing giant gaping plotholes.

I mean, Pretty Cure is for little girls, but that doesn't mean the plot should be this lazy. Even the terrible DokiDoki was not that bad. At least that tried, which is more GoPri did.

Art - 6

The art is alright, and this season had few QUALITY episodes which is surprising. But there are still problems with it. For starters the 3D looks tacky and out of place, like it was bad when HapiCha did it and is bad now. Glad that Maho Girls got over that. Furthermore most battles are lazily animated, with very few punches and kicks and too much finisher and combination attack spam. Somehow these battles are highly praised among the fanbase, dunno why. Also many of the special attacks and finishers are really long, and the canned animation abuse makes the whole thing feel cheap. Though being fair most recent Cure seasons do this, not just GoPri.

Moving past the animation there are the character designs, and these have issues too. Most are alright, but two stand out as being horrible. I'm talking about Cure Flora and Cure Mermaid like many might have deducted. Flora looks ridiculous with her half-blonde half-pink hair without any rhyme or reason, with her bangs looking like she pasted colored putty on her forehead, while Mermaid has hair that doesn't look like hair AT ALL and just looks plain creepy. Everyone else looks fine, Dyspear's ridiculous cleavage keyhole notwithstanding.

There are also the costume variations. Not only we have Elegant Mode where the girls get longer skirts when using special attacks, presumably to tack on more canned animation, but also each Key meaning special attack gets its own variation on the costume. The problem is these variations all look identical save for one or two accessories and just feel like Toei trying hard to sell extra figurines and costumes, especially after HapiCha actually went and gave everyone two unique extra costumes plus the shared upgrade.

Sound - 7

The songs and everything else are fine. The only problems are the OP being slightly longer than usual for yet more resource saving and Haruka's annoying constant yelling.

Character - 2

And this is where everything fades and crumbles. The cast from this show is terrible, albeit mostly due to Haruka the worst Cure from the franchise.

Ah, Haruka... Remember when Mana was mocked and derided for being Mana Sue? Well, Haruka is like Mana but without Mana's few positive traits and made dumber. At least Mana was oddly competent for her Cure color and that made her stand out. Haruka is the generic dumb Pink lead except she can somehow excel at everything if she tries, to unrealistic levels. One early episode was about her making her own party dress AND still doing well in class AND saving the day during the monster of the week battle even though she was really tired. Like they could have made it so she didn't fight and the other two handled the monster themselves, or fight but only cause problems, but they had to show how Haruka is the greatest thing since sliced bread. There are far more problems but I don't want to drown this review in spoilers. I'll just mention like half the episodes revolve entirely or partially about Haruka in some way or another. And here I was thinking this franchise was about friendship and teamwork.

For the other Cures... Minami is basically Generic Blue Cure. If you saw one Blue Cure before and was not Erika then you saw Minami already. She is smart, leads the student council, has water and ice powers, affinity with water, fears ghosts, and is basically all the previous Blue Cures all together. Very lazy. Kirara is awesome and the only Cure that had some effort put into being unique, and thankfully she's most popular too. Towa is basically every former enemy turned heroine put together, again showing zero creativity.

The rest of the cast is alright, with Kanata being better than the previous bishounens but still being quite the pointless love interest. The villains are okay but you can tell Close was also the darling from the writers with all the attention he gets. Details would involve spoilers but let's just say he's basically Villain Haruka with all the love he gets.

Enjoyment - 6

GoPri is the worst Pretty Cure season. It's not horrible, but it has the weakest fights, the weakest cast, and the weakest plot. Many things feel recycled from previous seasons and the few exceptions aren't that great either. The fanbase constantly shiilling it while bashing and deriding the superior HapiCha didn't help matters either. I suppose it's fine if you have never seen another Cure season, but then you should start with something good like Fresh and not with this... thing. The franchise is unique because it focuses on tough girls, and the princess motif does not fit one bit with this.

Overall - 6

There were some enjoyable moments, Kirara was amazing, and it makes for good mocking material. You could do worse than GoPri, but considering this is the same franchise that had pearls like Splash Star this is quite the downgrade. Avoid unless you love princesses and stock animation battles, or wanna watch everything Pretty Cure for some reason.

This season takes some inspiration from Yes! Precure 5 in regards to the main theme. The focus is once again in people's dreams and what they hope to achieve in the future jobwise.

Visuals:
1) I don't think the character design feels very precure-ly
2) the animation is very inconsistent
3) there's way more monster design creativity compared to a few of the previous seasons


Audio:
1) once again and like most seasons, the cast is a mix between legendary, experienced and rookie seiyuus. Overall I think everyone did a solid performance, where that difference in experience wasn't noticeable
2) the soundtrack doesn't feel Precure-ly ... to me and I didn't like it


Story and characters:
1) if you're familiar with the Precure series, you know 90% of the cases, they recreate the same type of characters with minor differences. This season is yet another reflection of that with one major exception. Kirara was the only breath of fresh air in a formula that keeps repeating itself.
2) each girl's transformation happens simultaneously so there's more content each episode
3) most characters as I've said felt bland and one dimensional to me and the plot didn't engage me at all, probably because there's little effort to keep things new, fresh and interesting year after year. 50 episodes is too much of this.

For me it was a 5/10.

Well, now that I'm catching up again with this franchise, the only thing left to say is that each season I watch is a recycling of previous ones, but well, that's beside the point and I don't want to emphasize this since everyone will know where they take their opinions from. "references"

At first I wanted to give it a rating of 6 but for one reason I preferred not to since it is that case in which the plot does not catch you and does not stand out but it entertains you (for those who have seen several seasons will know what I am talking ... about.

Go! Princess Precure in summary tells the story of 4 girls who protect the dreams of the people around them. To tell the truth, the story may captivate you (in my case) but because it is an anime focused on children, it cannot develop a good plot and I think that is a weak point for the entire franchise

Finally, if I give this rating it was because the last chapters tried to develop and give emphasis to a problem that is present in our daily lives, which is "what I want to do in the future", developing a little more the maturity of each girl.

Well, to say that I recommend it to you, do it if you just want to make your list of anime bigger and if you are one of those who watches animes for their well-developed story and with adult touches, then it is better to pass by because this is not for you.

Greetings and thanks for reading