There is going to be so much merch.
The first episode of each new iteration of Pretty Cure tends to be fairly strong. However, even viewed through that lens, I’m especially positive about the Meitantei Precure! (Star Detective Precure!) premiere. It crammed in a lot of engaging material and character interactions that kept the episode lively. Admittedly, that tends to be typical of how Pretty Cure seasons start, but seeing this come after a long stretch of somewhat lackluster (frankly, boilerplate) Kimi to Idol Precure♪ (You and Idol Precure♪) episodes, I was glad to see Pretty Cure display so much verve again.
An actual combined transformation sequence!
I was also glad to see Meitantei Precure! sprinkle so many “show, don’t tell” clues to guide young viewers toward their own deductions. This is a detective show, after all, but it’s nice to see the characters act first upon grasping the situation before circling back to talk the audience through their reasoning. Unfortunately, some of the best clues in the first episode relate to something I (and presumably most people) already knew, since it’s part of the show’s description. If you know literally nothing about the Star Detective Precure! setting, I encourage you to watch the first episode before reading any further or learning anything else about it. I can’t claim this is an important spoiler, but I would have enjoyed discovering the following while watching the anime instead of simply reading about it weeks earlier.
Did you two just simultaneously Pretty Cure Shooting Star that thing?
Specifically, the first episode of Meitantei Precure! opens by revealing it takes place on January 24, 2027, Akechi Anna’s 14th birthday. After a series of mysterious magical events, Anna meets Kobayashi Mikuru, who aspires to join the CUREtto Detective Agency. It ends up being a pretty full day for the both of them from there, so I’m willing to give Anna a pass (despite her normally keen attention to detail) for not noticing how much the weather has changed. It turns out she’s traveled back in time to April 2, 1999. This immediately raises a whole lot of questions, but I’m eager to see how Star Detective Precure! intends to address (or outright ignore) them.
I, at least, appreciated all the Wink service.
Unfortunately, this sort of eagerness was absent most of the time as I watched Kimi to Idol Precure♪. Very early on, I described it as being “normal.” What that ended up meaning was that it stayed sort of perfunctory. I don’t want to seem too critical about You and Idol Precure♪, but that may be unavoidable. Even though I don’t think it’s “bad” the way Delicious Party♡Precure was Bad, I can still probably name 20 Pretty Cure seasons that liked more. Assuming my memory is not being overly generous towards the previous generations, this places You and Idol surprisingly low on the tier list considering how much potential I thought it had, but I suppose that’s the actual crux of the problem, alas.
Note 1: Star as in superstar. Meitantei is generally translated to mean “famously great detective” in the context of Meitantei Conan (Detective Conan, and localized as Case Closed).
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