It feels obvious to say this, but Pretty Cure MaxHeart, the second series in the franchise and a direct sequel to the first, is still finding its way in the greater scheme of things. While direct sequels aren't unheard of in the franchise (and indeed the fifth season is a direct sequel to the fourth), this is a case where the overall Pretty Cure omnibus is trying to figure itself out. What that means for those who have been watching the later seasons as they've been legally released in English is that there are elements of Max Heart that simply aren't as polished as its younger sisters, and while these first twenty-five episodes are still good, they also feel like first drafts of some of the themes the franchise will explore later.

We can still, however, see where Pretty Cure has always shone, and in Max Heart, that's most evident in the new character Hikari. Well, sort of new character – technically speaking, we did meet a version of Hikari in the original Futari wa Pretty Cure: Hikari is part of the queen the Cures were helping to defend. More specifically, she's the “Queen's Life,” a physical embodiment of the central self of the Garden of Light's ruler. But separated from the rest of the queen, she's also just a lost middle school girl. These episodes at their strongest show Hikari struggling with finding who she is and who she wants to be, and while the frame narrative is about the fight between good and evil, Hikari's situation is one that's very relatable, especially if you remember your time as a twelve-or-thirteen-year-old.

Hikari feels a disconnect between her past and her present, something we first see clearly in episode thirteen. As she watches Nagisa's tense relationship with her mother and perhaps compares it to her own relationship with her “cousin” Akane, Hikari recognizes that she just wants to be Hikari, a regular girl. She wants the sort of everyday battles Nagisa throws herself into that involve human emotions and connections rather than transformations and magic. There's a sense that she sees herself as an outsider in her own life, just tagging along after Honoka and Nagisa, riding on their coattails. Episode fifteen shows her beginning to deal with this, as she finally begins to make friends of her own, which clearly grounds her and makes her feel more human, which kicks off a different struggle: how she relates to Nagisa and Honoka. She wants to feel like the older girls' actual friend, and while she makes headway on that front (specifically in episode nineteen), by episode twenty-five she's still feeling like a third wheel. It makes sense – Cures Black and White function as a unit, unable to attack or even transform without each other. As a standalone magical girl, Hikari/Shiny Luminous acts more as a booster for them, and that leaves Hikari feeling like an outsider, even when she powers the Cures up.

In many ways, this makes her the most human character in the series. Although Honoka and Nagisa do continue to grow, especially Nagisa, Hikari's trajectory is different and opens up a new path for the series to explore. It also parallels that of the little boy the remnants of the villains are raising. While we don't know much about him yet, we can see the obvious love and care they're putting into him, which in itself is an interesting statement on the supposed bad guys, making them more than one-dimensional. But if Hikari feels lost, by episode twenty-five we can see that the little boy feels trapped. He begins asking to leave the mansion where they're keeping him, and we watch him grow more and more dissatisfied with his toys and the indoor games his caretakers have been providing him. If Hikari doesn't have enough guidance, the little boy has too much, and scenes with Nagisa and her parents serve to highlight this. She may not always get along with her mother, but she still has that safety net while being allowed to do her own thing. Neither Hikari nor the boy have that balance, and it could be what's leading to their issues, something driven home by episode twenty-four, which shows the deleterious effects of stress on both Nagisa and a senpai who is having trouble transitioning to high school.

Of course, alongside all of this, Max Heart is still replete with monsters of the week and the Cures manifesting new attacks, although for most of this stretch that comes in the form of Shiny Luminous boosting their powers with her own. When they do get a bona fide new attack, it may look a little disappointing to those more familiar with later series; Marble Screw Max Spark does utilize new bracelets, but it still looks very much like Marble Screw Max, which looks nearly identical to the original Marble Screw. Some of the monsters (named zakennas) are genuine nightmare fuel of the Brave Little Toaster variety, and it's striking to compare the battles in this series to the currently-airing (as of this writing) Wonderful Precure!, because Cures Black and White's fights are much more violent. They're also interestingly graceless, another marked contrast to later series, with Cure White nearly falling backward in her post-transformation pose and Cure Black frequently being shown in a second-position plié, with bent knees and legs apart. The descent of Shiny Luminous' weapon is also an interesting choice because the solid “thunk” of it hitting her palm looks incredibly painful.

It's clear that Pretty Cure is still trying to figure out its unique approach to the magical girl genre in Max Heart's first half. That doesn't make it a bad viewing experience; far from it. Hikari's storyline is very rewarding as we see her grow into herself, and the little details we see, from the increasing amounts of marketable-as-toys items to the use of Honoka's grandmother as a person who puts things into perspective are fascinating to contextualize in the larger franchise framework. (Her role here and her role in Power of Hope: Precure Full Bloom are nearly identical, which is some excellent bookending.) And with the scene set, the second half of this series can now build on its foundation. It may be early days for Pretty Cure, but the bones of what has made it such an enduring franchise are there.