After being away from Pretty Cure for a few years I watched Healin Good Pretty Cure on a whim and it wound up being the best decision I made. Seriously Ive made no secret of the fact that Healin Good Pretty Cure is one of my favorite seasons of Pretty Cure. Other than not utilizing all of its villains except for Daruizen enough and having to cut episodes due to delays from the pandemic Healin Good Pretty Cure I feel did pretty much everything right in terms of what I feel a magical girl series should be something I hadnt felt since Heartcatch or Go Princess. So when the series after that Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure was announced I decided to watch it. But something told me that it wasnt going to hold a candle to Healin Good in my eyes but at the same time I didnt want to be that person and just judge it solely because it wasnt Healin Good. But dear lord...even with my low expectations Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure has to be one of the biggest disappointments and letdowns Ive seen in a while. So whats the story? A chipper young girl Manatsu moves to mainland Japan to start middle school as her home island doesnt have a middle school. While preparing for the trip she meets a real life mermaid named Laura who had to flee to the surface because her underwater kingdom was attacked and shes been tasked to find four warriors Pretty Cure who can defeat the evil witch that decimated her home. Manatsu is more than happy to accept the task and three more girls Sango Minori and Asuka join them on their quest. Together they must fight the witchs minions and stop them from stealing Motivation Power from their family friends and the rest of the townspeople...but theyre not quite sure just what the Witch of Delays even wants with Motivation Power in the first place. And yes the premise is exactly as stupid as it sounds. Im not even kidding. This leads me to the first of Tropical Rouges biggest issues: Theres literally no stakes or conflict All the villains ever do is turn people into monsters by sucking away their motivation which doesnt even kill them BTW and as a result theres no palpable tension or sense of urgency and the battles feel less like high stakes action and are about as boring as eating lunch. Plus the three minions who serve the Witch of Delays are solely defined by being lazy and never even fight the Pretty Cure themselves Even Mahou Tsukais villains as bad and cliche as they were did more than just lie around and steal energy from people. But the lack of a compelling storyline and bland villains arent the only thing wrong with Tropical Rouge. Secondly the shows themes feel really bizarre: How exactly are motivation procrastination and cosmetics supposed to go together? How does makeup contribute to motivation? I know effort goes into applying it or that in some cases it can boost your confidence but...I dont know. The themes dont seem to mix very well here. Manatsu the main character says she uses makeup to deal with loneliness and uneasiness in a new place but honestly makeup and cosmetics feel really out of place in a situation like that unless youre deliberately trying to get people to notice you. It feels like TroPri just threw its themes together in a blender just for the sake of it without taking into account whether the contents would actually mix well enough or not. I know Pretty Cure is mainly a glorified toy commercial and I have no problem with that but there are lots of times when it felt like TroPri really wanted to hammer in the fact that they were selling toys to kids in the audience even though they used more subtle methods of introducing them in previous iterations. Plus youd think with 40something episodes Toei would use that time to flesh out the characters at every opportunity build on their chemistry and make the audience actually care about them right? WRONG Previous Pretty Cure seasons would flesh out their main characters early on showing us their strengths weaknesses personalities idiosyncrasies and reasons for becoming Pretty Cure. Heartcatch Pretty Cure welt full hog on this as early as episode 4. Healin Good had Nodokas reasons for wanting to be a Pretty Cure established in episode 2. Smile Pretty Cure eschewed its narrative in favor of developing its main ensemble and while it didnt always succeed the creators hearts were in the right place. Do you want to know how long it takes for Tropical Rouge to put the spotlight on any character thats not Manatsu or Laura? EPISODE 28 more than halfway into the series run The entire first half of the series is little more than comedic filler used to pad things out unnecessarily and it often felt to me like the show actively refused to develop any of its main characters or even flesh them out in ways that made them feel more like people and less like overthetop stereotypes. Sango in particular is the biggest victim of this because episode 3 established a character flaw she has that shes a conformist whos afraid of going against the incrowd and Toei could have done a lot with that since theres a lot of people who can relate to that. But instead said flaw never comes up again and she only ever gets a grand total of TWO focus episodes both of which are extremely late into the series run and even then they barely do anything with her so shes literally nothing more than living background scenery taking up space And I say this as someone who really likes Sango and I wish she had gotten to do more She deserves better Minori and Asuka are more fleshed out thankfully and out of the five Cures Asuka is actually the most well developed and threedimensional as she got the best material in the show. Basically Toei basically put off developing the other Cures in favor of shilling Manatsu and Laura to no end. Now I want to say that I actually dont hate Laura as a character. I agree that shes become a bit of a spotlight hog since she became a Cure Thats not even a spoiler BTW. She turns into a Cure in episode 17 which is really early by Precure standards but I think shes fine and I feel she earned the right to become a Cure. Plus she doesnt annoy me NEARLY as much as say Haachan from Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure. But this isnt exactly an issue Toei is unfamiliar with as their tendency to shill one character at the expense of others who really need more screentime has been prevalent as far back as Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart. Honestly I think the biggest offender here is Manatsu whos...just bland as hell. Shes literally nothing more than a zany loud overly cheerful cipher who acts like shes high on sugar and is just there to shout tropicashine every chance she gets. Now I do admit I know I throw a lot of shade at Megumi from Happiness Charge Pretty Cure and made it clear shes not my favorite character in Precure in general. But I am however going to give her credit for one thing: For as overly saccharine and annoying as Megumi could be the staff on that show at least allowed her to show emotions other than overthetop happiness and allowed her to have moments where she could be sad vulnerable jealous angry and insecure. Granted other seasons did it better but I am willing to give Happiness Charge credit where it due when it matters because if you have a character behave one way all the time the audience isnt going to connect with them. Manatsu doesnt get that. My problem with Manatsu is that after 30something episodes she hasnt shown any emotions other than being overthetop happy and zany constantly shouting Tropicashine all the damn time and the few times she acts anything but happy is played for laughs. Theres literally nothing inbetween Manatsu is often way too happy for no reason whatsoever. Happiness should be spontaneous not granted or forced. Shes not allowed to be vulnerable or even act like a normal human being which annoys the shit out of me and the one episode that actually tried to address that issue shoots itself in the foot due to bad writing that made the characters seem needlessly dumb and still played Manatsus angst for laughs and not even trying to treat it like a genuinely serious situation Furthermore early in the show Manatsu says she puts on makeup to deal with loneliness and uneasiness but the show never actually SHOWS Manatsu being any of those things. 99 of the time shes zany loud and acts like an overgrown fiveyearold and very rarely is she allowed to be vulnerable or realistically emotional in any way so the anime kind of shoots itself in the foot when it cant even be bothered to develop any of its characters beyond their most basic personality trait. Which leads me to the shows biggest problem: The fact that its so laserfocused on comedy in favor of everything else. It always felt to me like Tropical Rouge has this mindset that if it can have characters act zany and make funny faces all the time it wont lose the kids attention and considering how much it put off actually bothering to flesh out the story and the characters in favor of it it comes off as patronizing and condescending at best. Heres the thing: I can understand Toei wanting to make a more lighthearted comedic series after the more emotionally charged Healin Good especially since were still dealing with the COVID pandemic. Hell the whole reason Smile Pretty Cure was created was so kids can be cheered up after the awful 2011 earthquake. But heres the thing: Smile also had a heavy focus on comedy but it actually gave a shit about developing the characters and giving the audience reasons to care about them. Yes it was very episodic and had a lot of filler but Smile knew what to focus on and what to keep limited keeping the comedic parts where it was appropriate and allowing its characters to be vulnerable when it mattered. Smile didnt always succeed but it at least tried. Smile didnt focus so much on comedy that it was at the expense of literally everything else which is unfortunately what Tropical Rouge did. Most of the early episodes consist of Manatsu and Laura doing stuff that did nothing to progress the story feeling more like they were just padding things out and by the time the show remembered it needed to flesh out Sango Minori and Asuka it was too little too late and I was no longer invested in the anime anymore. Seriously Toei your shows work better when you actually put effort into the writing and characters Even Digimon Ghost Game which is airing right now understands this Alright I think thats enough of the bad stuff. Lets talk about the good stuff. First: the animation. Everything is bright and colorful with CGI being used when appropriate the girls Cure designs are actually pretty creative and fit the tropical theme the show is going for and the actual character animation is fairly solid. The soundtrack is pretty good too and surprisingly enough Toei actually held back on reusing BGM from Healin Good here. I only noticed two pieces of background music from Healin Good being used though I could be wrong so good on Toei for putting in some effort there. The songs are well sung too with the opening being a total ear worm. I also liked a lot of the minor and side characters who appeared from time to time like Manatsus teacher Sakuragawa Asukas former friendturnedrival Yuriko the blue haired student council president Sangos mom that blue haired girl who loves astronomy and so on. I also appreciate that Kururun isnt a living plot device or important to the story for once as shes just a cute animal mascot but still manages to be useful when the time calls for it. Also I love that one episode that was just a bunch of vignettes done in different animation styles and that was the absolute best justification to have the Heartcatch Pretty Cure girls make a cameo for a few scenes. The show does have some flashes of brilliance every now and again. Unfortunately theyre very few and far between and not enough to save the show from being anything above aggressively mediocre. Before anyone says anything no I dont expect childrens shows to be on the level of Van Goghstyle masterpieces nor am I one of those chuds who only like dark edgy magical girl shows. Pretty Cure at the end of the day is a glorified toy commercial for little girls. But shows like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic SheRa and the Princesses of Power Ojamajo Doremi Card Captor Sakura and even other seasons of Pretty Cure have proven that you dont have to be completely soulless when making them. All I ask is that the people who make these shows actually care and put effort into making said shows for girls not simply My Little Pony Newborn Cutiesstyle visual fodder to plop kids in front of the TV so they can be babysat for half an hour every day. Every Pretty Cure season has things theyre good at and some things they arent. Mahou Tsukai took great care to flesh out its setting Suite Pretty Cure made great use of its music themes Smile Pretty Cure could be genuinely funny when it tried Heartcatch really ramped up the action scenes and developed its main ensemble and so on. Other than improved animation Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure doesnt really have anything that makes it stand out from the other Pretty Cure seasons or anything that its really good at. Its a shame because had it done more with itself it could have been amazing had it not tried so hard to be solely driven by comedy filler episodes and unnecessary shilling of both Manatsu and Laura. Granted I still think Happiness Charge Pretty Cure is worse due to trying too hard to emulate other seasons ignoring plot points it established bad writing decisions and poorly executed characters so for the few things Tropical Rouge did do right Im willing to give it some credit where its due. That being said if you want something to show your daughter or little sister so they or you can kill time or have a good laugh feel free to watch Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure. But it is absolutely NOT one of the better Pretty Cure seasons by a country mile. It wastes its time on needless filler and is just a massive chore to watch. I really hope Delicious Party Pretty Cure turns out better and if its not Im just gonna rewatch Heartcatch. Dont expect anything extraordinary out of this one.