Forum - View topicPower of Hope: Precure Full Bloom (TV)
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Power of Hope: Precure Full Bloom Genres: magic Themes: growing up, magical girl Plot Summary: Nozomi Yumehara and her fellow Pretty Cures have grown up and are chasing their dreams, but sometimes they find they can’t solve problems as easily as they could as children. When a new villain threatens their town, the girls are called upon to become Pretty Cures once again, alongside the Splash Star Pretty Cures. A little surprised that I couldn't find an existing topic, and want to talk about it. |
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DuskyPredator
Posts: 15573 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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Episode 12 (finale)
Okay, starting off I will say that I was not familiar with the Precure series that this acted as a sequel to. I have so far watched one Precure series that kept my interest and stopped several episodes into another that failed to hook me. I obviously was going to miss out on a lot of references and character cameos so there was always going to miss out on connecting with a good amount of it. At the same time I was fascinated by a show that looks like it transcended past its young audience setting into its adult. The transition from a magical girl show for kids with kid characters, and into a magical girl show with an adult cast and for adults or at least older audiences was going to have a lot attached. Granted, there have been adult or mature magical girl shows before, this was one that felt like it kept the same tone to what I expect the original had, with it having maturity in the sense of characters can drink now rather than something more dark magical girl or lewd. The closest to my mind is that the Nanoha franchise had its titular character grow up in the third series, but I hardly think that series was really a shoujo. But to really jump ahead, I don't think show did as well as it could have done. What I do know quite a bit about is the magical girl genre in general, and it has a lot of attached theme, which I would say necessitate a shift when you transition your characters from young girls, and into women that I guess per the title are in full bloom. Perhaps many would say it is just tropes of a genre and not look to deeply, but I have read a lot of consensus on the trait of the young girls transforming into their alter egos, with these often in the genre has been accompanied with becoming or at least looking more mature or in some cases even older bodies. Even if just becoming more teenager, it has been some amount of a young girl being able to become more capable and such than they could in their normal bodies. So I think there is a good deal of missing the point that all the adult women in this show pretty much just turned into their younger teenager selves when they transformed. It feels like going backwards, where rather than telling a kid they will have more power when you mature you are telling adult women they are better as a bunch of teenagers. Which I would say really fights a lot of themes of this show in general, where they are supposed to be more able to change the world around them as adults. It kind of accidentally shores up its own opposing ideology of just letting the people of the future (children) solve the problem, rather than act now. Maybe it did have limits of what it was, needing to recycle assets or something, but I think that it should have given all of its magical girls instead a magical women, to grow into who they are now. I can even think it could have been cool if some started out trying in their old forms, but their bodies just can't take it, before getting their forms more reflective of adults. I think it would have gone further to feel empowering to adult characters and audience, without feeling like it is accidentally making some statement about the worth of women being tied to youth. And I think this has a big connection to important themes that I will mention a bit later. I won't even say that it failed at all aspects of the matureness it requires for older characters. The main character being a teacher and trying to do right by her students, but finding herself limited in what she can achieve, being stonewalled by a parent who does seem to be taking out some of their frustration, is actually really good. And another who was supposed to be entering a new part of her life married but found out what she wanted to do was study in Paris to be a better baker. These are some good things, and I would say works well with one of its themes which was about the apathy that often happens to people when they get older. As kids people can be starry eyed and think they will be able to bring positive change to the world, but enter adults and into it get told that they are naive, need to follow the line that is how things are, and have responsibilities. While I think there were some good work on the theme, even a don't just rely on the heroes now, that the other people can do something, I think it overall was kind of weak overall. Granted, a lot of good stuff goes for the last few minutes of the last episode, as a sort of epilogue of characters trying to bring change now, it kind of feels like an overreliance on these cuts. A vague posturing to cleaning up trash, asking to be mindful of resources, knowing what to do in a disaster, dangers of climate change, and I guess two characters going to the Amazon and Artic to save those worldwide environments, feels stuck in the same place as the for kids stuff. Perhaps it would be called too political and out of place for the franchise, but I think that really could not be that when it decided to make itself a mature show that would focus on dangers of things like climate change, and a lot of the apathy that people have about it not being their responsibility and such. I think that this sort of story requires that it goes into a bit more detail beyond just saying people need to do something. It needs to say something about people becoming apathetic, and what can be done as adults to learn to give a damn again. Something a bit more than a royal in a fairy land taking the big political leap of listening to vague ideas of what change the other fairies want. I would think something about these changes the show thinks are good should not be political, but there are people that make it so. But it kind of felt it was allergic to say anything that could come across as controversial. For a final rating, I would say Decent (6/10), I didn't lose my time, mostly for an interesting idea of transitioning its setting for youth to adulthood. But I do think it misses out a lot of what should be done with this sort of change. It totally could have just foregone all of these themes of climate change and the apathy of adults for the need of change. Might just been a more slice of life sort of deal of women that used to be magical girls but are now adults, and now incorporate their childhood hope with adult problems and adult abilities. But it decided to bite off more and not really chew these parts enough. |
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