It has been a long time coming, but finally English-speaking anime fans are getting the chance to legally watch the unadulterated versions of some of the titles in the sprawling Pretty Cure franchise. Kirakira Precure a la Mode is the first since Futari wa Pretty Cure to be released in its entirety (and not as a Glitter Force title), and while parts of it don't work as well as they should, on the whole it is a delightful magical girl show in the classic vein.

The story follows a group of at first five, and later seven, magical girls known as “Pretty Cures.” In this iteration, the legendary first Precure was a pastry chef (patissière) named Lumiere, and so all of the girls' transformations are based around sweets – whipped cream, custard, ice cream, chocolate, macarons, and later parfaits and doughnuts. The costumes incorporate elements of each girl's signature dessert and, more inexplicably, an animal as well. It definitely feels like a throwback to Tokyo Mew Mew (which even had a sequel called Tokyo Mew Mew a la Mode with a rabbit heroine), but since the girls use the animals as a way of crafting new and adorable baked goods, it manages to not feel too strange.

Our main heroine is Ichika, who becomes the bunny-themed Cure Whip. Ichika lives with her karate-instructor father while her mother travels the world as a member of a medical organization. Ichika tries to act like this doesn't bother her, but the few times we see her cheery façade crumble are directly attributable to her mother's coming and going and Ichika's desire to make things perfect for her, implying that she's bothered by it more than she wants to let on. Ichika's attempts to put on a good face when she's hurting are a major thematic element of the series, particularly when it comes to family – Aoi (Cure Gelato) wants to go against her wealthy upper-class family's dictates and become a rock star, Akira (Cure Chocolat)'s younger sister Miku is hospitalized with a mysterious disease and Akira' herself been sent to live with her grandmother so her parents can be with Miku, and Ciel (Cure Parfait)'s relationship with her twin brother is the basis for the latter's opposition to the PreCures, as Ciel has allowed it to sour through her own actions and thus created part of the problem the girls exist to fight.

This is by far one of the more interesting components of the show as a whole. While the other girls' worries drive them as characters, Ciel's actions mark the need for change within the group. Unlike the others, who have to deal with very internal problems, Ciel's lack of consideration affects the entire fight, since her brother has, as a consequence of her thoughtlessness, gone over to Noir's side. This means that Ciel has to understand things on a higher level than the others, seeing a direct result of what she's done impact the group negatively, and she spends much of the latter half of the show trying to make up for it. While it certainly involves patching things up with her brother, it also puts Ciel on the frontlines of making an attempt to understand other people who have chosen Noir's side, seeking to defeat them not by fighting, but by being kind to them. It doesn't always feel like she fully gets it, but there's a marked evolution in Ciel as a character that we don't necessarily see with all of the other PreCures.

Himari, Cure Custard, is the other character who tries very hard to overcome her issues, although hers stem more from a lack of self-esteem than Ciel's overabundance of the same. Himari is hyper-focused on the idea of baking as involving chemistry, and this over the years has cost her socially in her peer group, with kids her age prior to Ichika seeing her as weird and just avoiding her. Himari's progression involves her feeling comfortable coming out of her shell, not because she's timid (as she describes herself), but because she's afraid of scaring people away with her self-acknowledged obsession. The series isn't always sure that it understands her; at times the narrative seems to treat her as “wrong” rather than “different,” but ultimately Himari, through the support of her friends, is able to be herself, and that's heartening to see. Likewise Yukari (Cure Macaron) grows warmer over the course of the show, losing some of her initial stand-offishness as she finds purpose in life, something she felt she was lacking when she first came in. Again, it's through her interactions with her friends that she's able to come to this, although in her case, it's as much from observing them and helping with their problems as actively working to change things for herself.

The team as a whole is cohesive, and while the two older PreCures – Akira and Yukari are in high school while the others are in middle school – do sometimes stick together, it's clear that everyone gets along and enjoys each others' company while still being distinct characters. There's also a lot of believable middle-and-high school behavior from the group, and while there are a couple of points where a romantic subplot could have been developed, the series opts not to go that route. This is particularly striking with Akira and Yukari, who at first appear to be being set up as a new MICHIRU and Haruka (from Sailor Moon), with Akira looking much more masculine and using a lot of Takarazuka imagery in her transformation. Interestingly enough, we see a few times in the show that Akira, unlike Haruka, does not like being mistaken for a boy or treated like one; she tends towards jeans in her casual clothes, but when the girls visit Yukari's family's teahouse, Akira expresses disappointment that she has a male outfit prepared for her while the others get female kimonos. In the other case where a romantic subplot could have developed, between Ichika and Rio, its absence is equally impacted by the fact that their friendship feels curtailed as well; given her experiences with her mother, Ichika is perfectly placed to understand Rio's issues with his sister, and that this isn't explored further (along with Rio as a character) does feel like a failing on the series' part.

While the overall theme of the series is happiness – which leads to a somewhat unusual ending for the group as a whole – it does also delve into some darker territory beyond a mere lack of happiness. The final battle with Noir hinges on his past with Lumiere (making their names basically “dark” and “light” in French), which strongly implies that Noir was once a soldier in WWI who had been traumatized by his experiences, tainting his heart (kira kiral). This leads to some imagery that comes straight out of WWII when it looks as if Noir is going to win, with the entire town of Ichigozaka wearing what look vaguely like unstriped concentration camp uniforms, villainous guards with stars in a crossed-out circle on their armbands, and a furnace to destroy evidence of the PreCures and kira kiral. While this may not be intentional – or something that the intended child audience of the show will grasp – it is striking and more than a little disturbing. In any case, the implication is that war is often at the root of unhappiness, something borne out by Ichika's mother's work in various wartorn regions of the world, which in turn influences Ichika's life goals as seen in the final episode.

From an aesthetic standpoint, there's a lot to enjoy here, even if the final episodes indulge in some creepier imagery. The girls all have distinct looks and likes when it comes to their casual clothes, and apart from the animal ears and tails, everyone's transformation also is uniquely theirs. Cure Custard absolutely wins the cuteness contest with her squirrel-and-flan theme, but there's a nice amount of variation in general, with Cures Whip and Parfait being the fussiest and Cure Chocolat's the most practical. Transformations are very reminiscent of the 2014 French magical girl show LoliRock in that the girls are all active participants in their costume change. (You can see the LoliRock transformations here.) While there's an odd focus on Whip's butt (presumably to show off her bunny tail), the animation is fluid and overall the show and its bright colors contrast very nicely with the designs of the villains and their actions in sucking the color out of pastry. The ending themes (there are two) are done in 3D motion capture with excellent rigging and feature surprisingly complex choreography that looks simple but would take time to really replicate. They have a moderately baffling reliance on the Charleston, which admittedly looks kind of weird when done while wearing crinolines – the exact opposite of what would have been worn when the dance was popular.

While all of this is good and helps make Kirakira Precure a la Mode an entertaining and highly enjoyable show, what really sells it – for all ages – is that at the end of the day it isn't preachy like so many family shows can be. Cure Whip never tells the villain that he's bad or that he needs to change; she just asks that he try. She doesn't believe that his feelings are so shallow that he'll just be magically healed with the power of whipped cream and chocolate, but rather that it's something he needs to want to do and to work at. At the end of the day, that's a much better message than “eat your peas” or “be a good person;” “try to do the right thing and to believe in happiness” is something that feels doable – and as the final episode shows, it's all right if your happiness isn't the same as your friends'.

And if that message doesn't work for you, you can at least take away the knowledge that challenging or underestimating a group of teenage girls in puffy dresses who believe in the powers of love and happiness almost never ends well.