Kibou no Chikara: Otona Precure '23

This review comes from a long-time Pretty Cure fan who barely watches the latest seasons (yes, if I recall correctly, the last series I watch is Healing Good). If you just want to relieve old memories and have a bit of nostalgia, you'll like this spin-off. Yes! Precure 5 and the GoGo series are some of my favorites among all franchises (followed by Futari wa and Max Heart a.k.a the OG). Seeing the girls (and boys) are all grown-ups really brings all the nostalgia. I actually like the idea of portraying several problems that might occur to someone when they reach adulthood. It really gives ... the feel that these girls have really grown up, still chasing their ultimate dreams with bumps on the road here and there. But for me, Syrup's glow-up is the cherry on top of this series (wink wink).

Do I have high expectations for this spin-off? Not really. This is just my honest opinion and preference, but early Precure seasons are much better plot-wise, which is why I don't expect any "good" plot for this. The plot is so-so, the basic Precure plotline but shortened. Don't expect all that fighting and battle plots for sure, but there are a decent amount of those. The animation is somewhat worse than the regular Precure series, especially the CGI. Precure has been improving their CGI and animation quality throughout the years and it's a bummer they kind of flop on this one.

One last thing is that I don't know why they left out Nagisa, Honoka, and Hikari's life as adults (I mean, they're the legendary OG first-ever Cures?! Should I make a petition for another spin-off for them...). This might be a bit biased but I was REALLY looking forward to seeing them as adults as much as the others.

Otona Precure is an interesting show in that it takes a formula normally geared at kids and performs minimal modifications to direct it at adults. Specifically, if you look at a decent amount of child-oriented daytime TV (original Precure included) many of a show's episodes are set up around addressing casual life experiences during the downtime, and personal struggles during the focus, using the action/fantasy element as a catalyst to get the discussion about the personal struggle moving. For kids and teens this means that you see them at school or in clubs, or going out and getting a snack or something with friends, before ... pivoting to a worry about teen romance, or grades, or family pressures, which play into how they handle some kind of monster attack. Otona is dealing with adult characters, so instead of school or clubs, they're at work. Instead of snacks, it's drinks. Instead of the list of things that worry a child, it's things like long-term romantic status, work/life satisfaction, comparison of how you're "doing" to others in your peer group, and so on. There are still monsters to fight, and the monsters still work as a catalyst for self-reevaluation, but Otona realizes that the adult audience knows this and places more of its time on exploring the adult experience than on the fights.

In that sense, if you've seen any Precure, you've already seen this Precure. Granted, this one is helped by a tighter, more focused writing due to having only 12 episodes to tell its story instead of 48 to make its point, but it's still vanilla Precure, so if you liked the original Yes 5, you'll probably also like this one too. If you're here for characters, you'll like this. If you're here only for fights, you won't--more on that in the art section below.

As a result, in an odd way, the question of whether this show will land is less to do with what the show is doing, and more to do with where in life you are. Younger anime fans may struggle to relate to the adult concerns being discussed, while older fans, especially those in their mid-late 20s, would experience a greater impact.

Outside of the writing, the art is visually competent but nothing spectacular. Some clips are recycled from the 2008 Yes 5 sequel, while others go further back to 2006's Splash Star, but the majority is modern animation and looks reasonably smooth and well-composited. The only bad animation that stands out are the CG low-tier baddies, but these are insignificant enough to character events that I never really found myself caring...but as a result the combat isn't really up to snuff compared to the hand-drawn prequels. This may change as the cast engages the final boss (who is hand-drawn) later in the story. Otherwise early combat, when it occurs, is clunky and goofy due to the very simple and manually rigged CG models.

Overall it's a decent, honest character drama about continued growth as an adult, and while as of E4 it hasn't done anything to leave me gobsmacked, it does well for what it does, and is a solid show I feel satisfied coming back to each week.

As of E4 - 7/10. Will update this review if something significant changes things in the second half of the show.

Initially when I heard about this spin-off, I was excited and optimistic. However, after watching, I feel disappointed. It quickly became clear that this was simply nostalgia-bait.
A good amount of the episodes followed the formula of "I'm doing my dream job but it isn't what I expected oh no" and then they transformed and became Cures again. There was so much reused and poorly upscaled animation for the transformations and finisher attacks along with flashbacks to the old seasons.
The Shadows were so ugly too, being jarringly 3d-animated. And the motivation of Bell made no sense. The show was clearly trying to do a ... message on climate change and how we all must do our parts to keep our Earth clean but it just fell flat. The negatives, visually and writing-wise, just aren't worth it for a handful of heartwarming character moments.