Delicious Party Precure

Episode 30

Of all of the things that happened in this episode, the one that caught me the most off guard is the fact that five years ago, Yui's grandmother was still alive. For some reason I thought that she had died when Yui was much younger, likely because of the way that Yui always talks about her. She has this sort of long-lost, otherworldly quality, something that's supported by the fact that she apparently has local legends about her. Clearly Yone was larger than life, and that's probably the most important thing about her, regardless of when she passed.

Among her many lingering traces is the fact that she apparently was something of a matchmaker, and quite possibly one who made legends up out of whole cloth in the service of getting people together. That becomes important this week, because two of the people she brought together are the reigning champions of the local food festival, and Mari is looking to steal their crown. (Fair and square, of course.) While I never really saw him as the spendthrift type, he's apparently been blowing all of his cash on the various delicacies available in Oishi-Na Town (who can blame him?), so when he learns that the prize is basically local coupons, he's ready to go. The problem? He and the girls settle on yakisoba as their dish, but the consistent winners are also yakisoba chefs, making Mari's victory feel a bit less likely.

In all fairness, it really shouldn't – the other couple specializes in seafood yakisoba while Mari is making a different variety. And lest we think otherwise, the two dishes have completely separate Recipeppi, which implies that the two stands aren't in quite as close confines as they seem to think they are. It's weird at first, but also ends up with a nice message about how we can all do the same thing in different ways and all of them are valid, and the joint win by the two disparate yakisoba styles at the end really drives it home. That Secretoru makes a single sauce bottle Gossori Ubau-zo out of the two yakisoba sprites is another interesting piece of the whole thing, because it helps to make the case for both dishes being worthwhile variants of the same basic dish. It also makes me wonder if different flavors of everything have their own Recipeppi – is there one for red velvet cake, one for German chocolate cake, and one for devil's food cake? They're all chocolate cakes, but like the two separate yakisobas, they're very different flavors.

That aside, this is otherwise a perfectly competent, if unremarkable, episode. It really feels like the basic introduction to what Secretoru can and will do as the primary antagonist, and her power is much more frightening than those wielded by Gentlu, Spiritoru, and Narcistoru, because she makes the food she captures completely vanish from existence, which has some very alarming implications. She's also more cunning, clearly thinking about what she did wrong this time and planning to use the lesson to do better next time, making her a good escalation of the basic threat the Cures have been dealing with all along. This also could be preparation for Narcistoru to come back reformed to help out, because while Black Pepper wasn't needed this time, Secretoru has firm plans to do better in her next outing. Hopefully the art is going to do a bit better next time, too, because there were some very odd-looking moments this week, although I did love seeing everyone with new hairstyles in their kimono.

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Delicious Party♡Precure is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.