For those of us who have seen a Precure before that tagline is effectively TLDR. We know what to expect. But honestly there are very few of us for reasons beyond the scope of this document. This is aimed at the rest of humanity ... who for some reason haunt underutilized sections of this website. Pretty Cure is for better and for worse a merchandisedriven show. On the plus side it has steady returns that arent based on BD/DVD sales figures. This means that it has a level of polish and craftsmanship that isnt usually seen in TV anime. It also means that watching it involves being advertised to since the show itself is an advertisement of a sort. How noticeable this is varies a lot. Now having seen the whole season I would say it was very implicit this season with the notable exception of plugs for the tiein movies. Pretty Cure is also a single longrunning series in a way. The seasons ostensibly start from scratch each time but there are many similarities between and there are crossover movies that somehow attempt to make them coexist. This season did something strange by having such crossover events during the show itself. This entry in particular feels a lot like Go Princess Precure. Its hardly surprising to find then that a lot of the people who worked on that also came back for this installment. Some of these are relative newcomers in the anime world. Thats why its nice to see a veteran in the lineup. Namely Junichi Satou. It was Ojamajo Doremi another Toei magical girl show and thus a predecessor of sorts to Precure that really launched his career. He went on to work on other magical girl shows besides so this is both a homecoming and a return to form for him. To me the main difference in this season is a tonal one. The first installment of Precure was poorly planned and tried to laugh off all the issues stemming from this. This season is well thought out in a way I never expected from a Precure show. Plot developments have build up. Things flow naturally from what has come before. Theres no excessive rush to build the core cast like there was in GoPri Precure. Characters have definable traits but have room to grow. The villains have a theme but its one that you might not expect in a kids show. A young girl can hardly be expected to know about the corporate world yet it makes the motivations of our starter villains at least comprehensible to those of us in the know. Yet none of these unusual elements have sacrificed what makes Precure appealing to those of us who have watched it in the past. Its still fun. Theres a lot of animation. A lot of that is good and in different ways. Watch Homare ice skate Hana flail about humorously and all the Precures do battle. I think its significant to note that the fight direction is a lot better than Ive come to expect from this series. In early series it seemed like they were trying to avoid things like impact and clean lines of action for some reason I never understood. Even in Go Princess Precure it seemed like these principles were only observed sometimes. Notably those were the best episodes. Someone at Toei clearly noticed. Thus we arrive at the present year. Pretty Cure has experimented in a lot of ways and continues to do so but in this season it shows that it hasnt forgotten what its learned along the way. A big part of growing up is making mistakes and learning from them. Thats why I say that Pretty Cure is grown up. P.S. Due credit to r ThePedanticRomantic who is my source for some of this information. He really opened my eyes to how special this season is and why. Watch his video on it Its the one with the really hyperbolicsounding title. Youll know when you see it. Also thanks to UnderTheScope for considering this show in his best of 2018 awards as this series can use the exposure.