Tropical-Rouge! Precure

Look, if you check my profile, you'll know I'm a sucker for Pretty Cure and all thing magical girl. But we're past half way, and I've found myself completely uninterested in continuing to watch it - which hasn't occurred since the travesty that was Happiness Charge.

STORY: 6

Precure rarely has much of an overarching story - instead, it typically relies on a few narrative goals, surrounded by character arcs, to drive itself along. Tropical Rouge is no different, except for the part where it lacks both goals and growth.

None of the characters' grow much, apart from the one that makes me want to bash my head ... through a wall, which obviously isn't saying much, Any time there's so much as a semblance of evolution, or a hint of past traumas, the show just brushes it under a rug to be adressed... never. At least, not yet. Which, for a show nearing the half-way mark, is deeply frustrating.

Besides that, the goals of the team are lax at the best of times, and just pure selfish stupidity at the worst, which seems like the last thing a children's show should be promoting.


CHARACTER: 6.5

We've already covered their complete lack of growth, but in addition, most of this season's cast feel like they've been hodge-podged together from previous series without much care for how they actually relate to each other, or even for their own depth of character.

Summer, our lead, is incredibly annoying, but at least has some self-awareness unlike some comparable past leads, and is uniquely the child of apparently separated parents. But that's as deep as that gets, given it goes unexplained and unexplored - much like every other facet of her character. She's as flat as her cardboard cut-outs.

Laura is the equally irritating mermaid who steals every scene, every time, from everyone, and for no apparent reason. Her entire motivation is bland, unexplored, and entirely selfish, which makes her both unlikeable and uninteresting, feeling at times like a dupe of Milky Rose but without the tragic backstory. Which is a shame, given her unique sassiness had so much potential.

Flamingo is Chocolat 2.0, only with no chemistry with the main cast whatsoever. Poor Coral is both underused and underdeveloped, having a pathetic power set and often shown - even on the poster art - to be an outsider within their friend group. Sango's mermaid nerdiness is a copy-paste of Custard, but with none of the lovable quirks.

Overall, I struggle to see how any of this cast could possibly improve by the end of the season, without first nuking their existing paper-thin personalities.


ART: 7.5

Look, Precure has at least learned a thing or two about action sequences over the years, along with character design, and what pretty shiny plastic things it can sell to children (along with obsessive completionism collector adults like myself.) So of course the designs are mostly fabulous.

The lack of a tanned character in an island-themed anime, and clearly a tropical one, is troubling and rather bizarre. It's particularly concerning given Precure has proven that absolutely can include dark-skinned PoC characters - yet in this, a canonically foreign setting where natives would likely be just that, there are none represented.

But - at least aesthetically - where it fails the most is the generic bad guys, who could very easily fit into any other water-themed anime with evil. Though, villain are not what sells, so I can hardly blame Toei for keeping them looking rather basic.


SOUND: 6

Look, I don't want to get into the cultural appropriation , but let's just say I was not impressed with some of their choices.

That said, the op and ed are both entirely appropriate for the series, and the sound effects are as charming and mildly camp, as per usual.

The voice acting is perhaps some of the weakest in recent seasons, likely due to the majority of the cast being less experienced. I won't mention the full details, but let's just say Toei usually divies the funds up a lot more evenly than they did this season.


OVERALL & ENJOYMENT : 6.5

Look, I've seen worse series, and even worse Precure seasons. If you're a completionist or just deeply love mermaid magical girls, you may very well get a better kick out of this one than I did. But, I won't be waiting anxiously by my laptop for the next episode.

After being away from Pretty Cure for a few years, I watched Healin Good Pretty Cure on a whim, and it wound up being the best decision I made. Seriously, I've made no secret of the fact that Healin Good Pretty Cure is one of my favorite seasons of Pretty Cure. Other than not utilizing all of its villains except for Daruizen enough and having to cut episodes due to delays from the pandemic, Healin Good Pretty Cure, I feel, did pretty much everything right in terms of what I feel a magical girl series should be, something I hadn't felt since Heartcatch or Go ... Princess. So when the series after that, Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure was announced, I decided to watch it. But something told me that it wasn't going to hold a candle to Healin Good in my eyes, but at the same time, I didn't want to be that person and just judge it solely because it wasn't Healin Good. But dear lord...even with my low expectations, Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure has to be one of the biggest disappointments and letdowns I've seen in a while.

So what's the story? A chipper young girl, Manatsu, moves to mainland Japan to start middle school, as her home island doesn't have a middle school. While preparing for the trip, she meets a real life mermaid, named Laura, who had to flee to the surface because her underwater kingdom was attacked, and she's been tasked to find four warriors, Pretty Cure, who can defeat the evil witch that decimated her home. Manatsu is more than happy to accept the task, and three more girls, Sango, Minori, and Asuka, join them on their quest. Together, they must fight the witch's minions and stop them from stealing Motivation Power from their family, friends, and the rest of the townspeople...but they're not quite sure just what the Witch of Delays even wants with Motivation Power in the first place. And yes, the premise is exactly as stupid as it sounds. I'm not even kidding. This leads me to the first of Tropical Rouge's biggest issues: There's literally no stakes or conflict! All the villains ever do is turn people into monsters by sucking away their motivation, which doesn't even kill them BTW, and as a result, there's no palpable tension or sense of urgency, and the battles feel less like high stakes action and are about as boring as eating lunch. Plus, the three minions who serve the Witch of Delays are solely defined by being lazy, and never even fight the Pretty Cure themselves! Even Mahou Tsukai's villains, as bad and cliche as they were, did more than just lie around and steal energy from people.

But the lack of a compelling storyline and bland villains aren't the only thing wrong with Tropical Rouge. Secondly, the show's themes feel really bizarre: How exactly are motivation, procrastination, and cosmetics supposed to go together? How does makeup contribute to motivation? I know effort goes into applying it, or that in some cases it can boost your confidence, but...I don't know. The themes don't seem to mix very well here. Manatsu, the main character, says she uses makeup to deal with loneliness and uneasiness in a new place, but honestly, makeup and cosmetics feel really out of place in a situation like that unless you're deliberately trying to get people to notice you. It feels like TroPri just threw its themes together in a blender just for the sake of it without taking into account whether the contents would actually mix well enough or not. I know Pretty Cure is mainly a glorified toy commercial, and I have no problem with that, but there are lots of times when it felt like TroPri really wanted to hammer in the fact that they were selling toys to kids in the audience, even though they used more subtle methods of introducing them in previous iterations.

Plus, you'd think with 40-something episodes, Toei would use that time to flesh out the characters at every opportunity, build on their chemistry, and make the audience actually care about them, right? WRONG! Previous Pretty Cure seasons would flesh out their main characters early on, showing us their strengths, weaknesses, personalities, idiosyncracies, and reasons for becoming Pretty Cure. Heartcatch Pretty Cure welt full hog on this as early as episode 4. Healin Good had Nodoka's reasons for wanting to be a Pretty Cure established in episode 2. Smile Pretty Cure eschewed its narrative in favor of developing its main ensemble, and while it didn't always succeed, the creators' hearts were in the right place. Do you want to know how long it takes for Tropical Rouge to put the spotlight on any character that's not Manatsu or Laura? EPISODE 28, more than halfway into the series' run! The entire first half of the series is little more than comedic filler used to pad things out unnecessarily, and it often felt to me like the show actively refused to develop any of its main characters, or even flesh them out in ways that made them feel more like people and less like over-the-top stereotypes. Sango in particular is the biggest victim of this, because episode 3 established a character flaw she has, that she's a conformist who's afraid of going against the in-crowd, and Toei could have done a lot with that, since there's a lot of people who can relate to that. But instead, said flaw never comes up again, and she only ever gets a grand total of TWO focus episodes, both of which are extremely late into the series' run, and even then, they barely do anything with her, so she's literally nothing more than living background scenery taking up space! And I say this as someone who really likes Sango, and I wish she had gotten to do more! She deserves better! Minori and Asuka are more fleshed out, thankfully, and out of the five Cures, Asuka is actually the most well developed and three-dimensional, as she got the best material in the show.

Basically, Toei basically put off developing the other Cures in favor of shilling Manatsu and Laura to no end. Now, I want to say that I actually don't hate Laura as a character. I agree that she's become a bit of a spotlight hog since she became a Cure (That's not even a spoiler, BTW. She turns into a Cure in episode 17, which is really early by Precure standards), but I think she's fine, and I feel she earned the right to become a Cure. Plus, she doesn't annoy me NEARLY as much as, say, Haa-chan from Mahou Tsukai. But this isn't exactly an issue Toei is unfamiliar with, as their tendency to shill one character at the expense of others who really need more screentime has been prevalent as far back as Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart. Honestly, I think the biggest offender here is Manatsu, who's...just bland as hell. She's literally nothing more than a zany, loud, overly cheerful cipher who acts like she's high on sugar and is just there to shout "tropica-shine!!" every chance she gets. Now, I do admit I know I throw a lot of shade at Megumi from Happiness Charge Pretty Cure, and made it clear she's not my favorite character in Precure in general. But I am, however, going to give her credit for one thing: For as overly saccharine and annoying as Megumi could be, the staff on that show at least allowed her to show emotions other than over-the-top happiness and allowed her to have moments where she could be sad, vulnerable, jealous, angry, and insecure. Granted, other seasons did it better, but I am willing to give Happiness Charge credit where it due when it matters, because if you have a character behave one way all the time, the audience isn't going to connect with them. Manatsu doesn't get that. My problem with Manatsu is that, after 30-something episodes, she hasn't shown any emotions other than being over-the-top happy and zany, constantly shouting "Tropica-shine!" all the damn time, and the few times she acts anything but happy is played for laughs. There's literally nothing in-between! Manatsu is often way too happy for no reason whatsoever. Happiness should be spontaneous, not granted or forced. She's not allowed to be vulnerable or even act like a normal human being, which annoys the shit out of me, and the one episode that actually tried to address that issue shoots itself in the foot due to bad writing that made the characters seem needlessly dumb, and still played Manatsu's angst for laughs and not even trying to treat it like a genuinely serious situation! Furthermore, early in the show, Manatsu says she puts on makeup to deal with loneliness and uneasiness, but the show never actually SHOWS Manatsu being any of those things. 99% of the time, she's zany, loud, and acts like an overgrown five-year-old, and very rarely is she allowed to be vulnerable or realistically emotional in any way, so the anime kind of shoots itself in the foot when it can't even be bothered to develop any of its characters beyond their most basic personality trait.

Which leads me to the show's biggest problem: The fact that it's so laser-focused on comedy in favor of everything else. It always felt to me like Tropical Rouge has this mindset that if it can have characters act zany and make funny faces all the time, it won't lose the kids' attention, and considering how much it put off actually bothering to flesh out the story and the characters in favor of it, it comes off as patronizing and condescending at best. Here's the thing: I can understand Toei wanting to make a more lighthearted, comedic series after the more emotionally charged Healin Good, especially since we're still dealing with the COVID pandemic. Hell, the whole reason Smile Pretty Cure was created was so kids can be cheered up after the awful 2011 earthquake. But here's the thing: Smile also had a heavy focus on comedy, but it actually gave a shit about developing the characters and giving the audience reasons to care about them. Yes, it was very episodic and had a lot of filler, but Smile knew what to focus on and what to keep limited, keeping the comedic parts where it was appropriate, and allowing its characters to be vulnerable when it mattered. Smile didn't always succeed, but it at least tried. Smile didn't focus so much on comedy that it was at the expense of literally everything else, which is, unfortunately, what Tropical Rouge did. Most of the early episodes consist of Manatsu and Laura doing stuff that did nothing to progress the story, feeling more like they were just padding things out, and by the time the show remembered it needed to flesh out Sango, Minori, and Asuka, it was too little, too late, and I was no longer invested in the anime anymore. Seriously, Toei, your shows work better when you actually put effort into the writing and characters! Even Digimon Ghost Game, which is airing right now, understands this!

Alright, I think that's enough of the bad stuff. Let's talk about the good stuff. First: the animation. Everything is bright and colorful, with CGI being used when appropriate, the girls' Cure designs are actually pretty creative and fit the tropical theme the show is going for, and the actual character animation is fairly solid. The soundtrack is pretty good too, and, surprisingly enough, Toei actually held back on reusing BGM from Healin Good here. I only noticed two pieces of background music from Healin Good being used, though I could be wrong, so good on Toei for putting in some effort there. The songs are well sung too, with the opening being a total ear worm. I also liked a lot of the minor and side characters who appeared from time to time, like Manatsu's teacher Sakuragawa, Asuka's former friend-turned-rival Yuriko (the blue haired student council president), Sango's mom, that blue haired girl who loves astronomy, and so on. I also appreciate that Kururun isn't a living plot device or important to the story for once, as she's just a cute animal mascot, but still manages to be useful when the time calls for it. Also, I love that one episode that was just a bunch of vignettes done in different animation styles, and that was the absolute best justification to have the Heartcatch Pretty Cure girls make a cameo for a few scenes. The show does have some flashes of brilliance every now and again. Unfortunately, they're very few and far between, and not enough to save the show from being anything above aggressively mediocre.

Before anyone says anything, no, I don't expect children's shows to be on the level of Van Gogh-style masterpieces, nor am I one of those chuds who only like dark, edgy magical girl shows. Pretty Cure, at the end of the day, is a glorified toy commercial for little girls. But shows like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Ojamajo Doremi, Card Captor Sakura, and even other seasons of Pretty Cure, have proven that you don't have to be completely soulless when making them. All I ask is that the people who make these shows actually care and put effort into making said shows for girls, not simply My Little Pony Newborn Cuties-style visual fodder to plop kids in front of the TV so they can be babysat for half an hour every day. Every Pretty Cure season has things they're good at and some things they aren't. Mahou Tsukai took great care to flesh out its setting, Suite Pretty Cure made great use of its music themes, Smile Pretty Cure could be genuinely funny when it tried, Heartcatch really ramped up the action scenes and developed its main ensemble, and so on. Other than improved animation, Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure doesn't really have anything that makes it stand out from the other Pretty Cure seasons, or anything that it's really good at. It's a shame, because had it done more with itself, it could have been amazing, had it not tried so hard to be solely driven by comedy, filler episodes, and unnecessary shilling of both Manatsu and Laura. Granted, I still think Happiness Charge Pretty Cure is worse due to trying too hard to emulate other seasons, ignoring plot points it established, bad writing decisions, and poorly executed characters, so for the few things Tropical Rouge did do right, I'm willing to give it some credit where its due.

That being said, if you want something to show your daughter or little sister so they, or you, can kill time or have a good laugh, feel free to watch Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure. But it is absolutely NOT one of the better Pretty Cure seasons by a country mile. It wastes its time on needless filler and is just a massive chore to watch. I really hope Delicious Party Pretty Cure turns out better, and if it's not, I'm just gonna rewatch Heartcatch. Don't expect anything extraordinary out of this one.

Tropical-Rouge PreCure is a good time if you're looking for a chill magical girl anime that doesn't take itself too seriously. It doesn't, however, hold a candle to some other PreCure series in terms of plot and character development.
The animation overall is decent, but the transformations and attacks alone are very colorful and unique. The soundtrack also complements the tropical aesthetic of the show really well.
I didn't expect much going into the series, so I was surprised by the bits of lore and ideas that could have been great if developed properly. Unfortunately, the ocean theme of the show is highly underutilized. Watching the girls ... try various things is fun but plot-related episodes are scarce. The monsters are quite weak and on the occasions that they are strong, the characters get magically saved.
The characters are usually all together and their friendship is well-established, but there is a lack of character focused episodes. They have some unique traits and battle techniques, though. While I liked that this PreCure season tried to do something different with the villains, they don't really challenge the heroines in any way since their whole shtick is being unmotivated.
Overall, Tropical-Rouge is enjoyable when it comes to slice-of-life, but not so much when it comes to magical battles. I wish it had done more with its themes of the ocean and motivation, but it works quite well as a comfort show.

Warning: Spoilers!


Ah, Tropical-Rouge. After Healin’ Good turned out… well, good, there was a sliver of hope for this franchise. It seemed like we were back to the glory days were all the Cures were likable, had fair screentime, and the villains were evil and gave us cool fights. Sadly Tropical-Rouge (With a hyphen for some reason. Like crap-hole.) doesn’t really do much of that. Let’s check out how!

First, there’s the story. Or rather, there isn’t. See, Tropical-Rouge was created to cheer up people after COVID, much like Smile after that huge earthquake. And much like Smile that means it barely has a plot. Actually, it’s ... even worse than Smile, since at least Smile loudly pretended to have a plot and progress. Tropical-Rouge… Doesn’t. For the first two thirds of the series or so (not exaggeration), the only “plot” we get beyond the Cures joining is a short arc for the mid-season Cure, who was the most obvious choice for one by the way. Like, I get this is a fun season, but that doesn’t mean it needs to have Max Heart levels of filler. It’s a bit hilarious how near the end of the season we get a recap episode and most of it is just recalling on how each Cure joined and showing their attacks once again. Yes, even the recap has padding. Wow. Seriously, why is this season the one to get a recap episode, when it doesn’t need it?

Anyway, once we get to episode 29 Toei remembers plots are things and that stories are better with them, so they throw a massive infodump in that episode and from there onwards we get actual stuff happening until the end. And you won’t believe this, but despite what little plot this season have they STILL manage to make it a huge mess! For starters, the Witch of Delays (the main villainess) is made sympathetic and we’re told she wasn’t really evil the whole time. Except when the Cure who joined halfway was captured and the Witch tried to make her join her team. Guess she felt evil that day. Worse, when she captures the Cure she says her motivation is creating a world of lazy people. Why? Who cares! But then at the end she has forgotten her motivation, which is then given as something entirely different. It’s like the first half of the series and the second half were written by different people who didn’t check notes, or a higher-up forced a change halfway, consistency in storytelling and proper plot logic be damned. So to summarize, there’s almost no plot and what there is, is lazy and poorly written. Fantastic. And for a “comedy” it’s not very funny either. The ending, while cute, it’s also a clear example of Toei somehow wanting to have its cake and eat it too. It’s not a bad ending but it really feels too convenient. Still, it’s probably the least offensive part of the story.

Now some people will be saying “Eh, PreCure isn’t big on plot, the characters matter more.” and I agree with that. The problem is the cast is poorly used too! The main issue is Manatsu, the leader Cure. She doesn’t wear pink or has pink anywhere minus partially her hair when transformed, but she’s the “pink Cure” regardless. And boy, does she pink Cure the crap outta the series. Basically, remember Haruka “loud ugly hog” Haruno and Hikaru “loud cacophonic idiot” Hoshina, the GoPri and Star Twinkle pink Cures? Well, Manatsu is a mix of their worst traits, with more negative traits added on, and none of their few good bits. She’s easily the worst Cure in the franchise and is just plain awful. She has no hobbies and no special interests, and only really cares about having fun and doing fun things. Instead of Cure Summer she should be called Cure YOLO as that summarizes her character. Hell, there’s one episode where the other girls talk about their future jobs and the episode makes a big deal from what Manatsu will pick, but at the end she only says “I dunno lol, will think about it” which is a really lame copout. And the series treats this as a great reply! Oh yeah, did I mention she has more screentime than everyone else and is favored by plots consistently? Figured you would expect this. Plus her “Tropica-shine” catchphrase is spammed way too much all the time, and is dumb and ridiculous too. Manatsu is terrible. Oh, and ugly to boot, especially transformed. Why did Toei hire again the GoPri character designer, the world will never know!

Thankfully the other Cures are good! But only one has real spotlight and screentime: Laura, the mermaid who becomes a Cure one third into the series. She’s funny, amusing, has a decent arc for the series, a popular VA that fits her well, and is overall the best girl in the series (But not my favorite). Yeah, sometimes she’s ridiculously proud or overly ignorant of the surface, even lacking common sense, but she’s likable overall. Sadly the other three are often moving background and don’t get much screentime. Asuka actually gets a better-late-than-never plot involving Yuriko the student council president (a recurring character) and is not too bad, but shy fashionable Sango and kuudere bookworm Minori get scraps. Toei giving the introverted heroines crap for focus? That has never, ever happened before. Other characters ae the aforementioned Yuriko who is cool, family members, the token bumbling villain trio, and… Kururun. For some reason Kururun got stupid popular, which must probably be some sort of joke I’m not allowed to get, because Kururun SUCKS. They add nothing to the plot, do nothing important, and in fact don’t do anything period except causing trouble (which is the source of suffering for Manatsu for one episode, but of course Kururun is not punished) and being annoying. They also have no dialog beyond parroting their name. Kururun is the worst mascot in the franchise in spite of stiff competition, which says a lot.

Moving elsewhere, there’s the fights. After all, Toei was interviewed recently and they said again PreCure was about cool fights, so they must be good this time around, right? They, huh, aren’t. There’s ONE good fight (episode 29 again) and all the other fights are decent at best. Even the final battle is lame as hell, barely taking half the episode (if that) and being as generic as possible. I’m not expecting Splash Star levels of kickassery here, but at least like the previous season? Come on! Art and music stay good overall, aside from some ugly designs (Manatsu…) because as said the GoPri character designer should rethink their job. The ending song is still the “same” ending they’ve had since Fresh, so no comment there. The VAs are good, but I feel really bad hearing Ai Fairouz waste her voice yelling dumb things when she can do better, like she does with Jolyne for example. At least she’s happy with the job I guess.

Overall Tropical-Rouge is just bad. Not bad-bad, but definitely a Bottom 3 season (so far). It tries to be a comedy (and fails) but then it tries to be serious (and also fails), the worst character hogs the spotlight, and the fights are subpar. Avoid this season unless your age is a single digit. Hopefully Delicious Party will satiate my hunger for a good season!