#FWPCMH24

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 074

Episode: Futari wa Precure Max Heart 24 - “Full-Throttle Youth! Yuka-Sempai and Nagisa’s Ultimate Battle!!” Date watched: 7 October 2018 Original air date: 7 August 2005 (I don’t know why they went two weeks without an episode) Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/W9YpYpJ

Hey guess who’s making a surprise guest appearance this episode? It’s Odajima Yuka! You might remember her from a few episodes of Futari wa where she was referred to as the Madonna of Verone Academy. She was a third year, and in this show she’s now a first year high schooler, but she decides to join the middle school on their summer trip on a whim. You see, Yuka has been lacking a certain something in her life, even she’s not entirely sure what, but she wants to revisit her old teammates. Now you may remember from the first season that Yuka was mentioned as being in the science club, tennis club, volleyball club, tea ceremoney club, English club, and ballet club, as well as being a flutist, so she was certainly keeping busy. Yuriko even comments that they rarely actually saw her because she was so busy with all of this. Well, you’d think she came here to spend a little time with the members of her former club but she ends up gravitating towards the lacrosse training. A talk with Hikari reveals that Nagisa has confessed to really admiring her, because being around Yuka gets her fired up, and with this in mind she gets roped into playing with the lacrosse team. Turns out she’s good at this too, despite never having played, but she gets really into it. She goes toe to toe with Nagisa and it brings out the best in both of them. They never outright say this in the episode but the implication is that Yuka needed to be challenged. This was touched on in the sports festival episode last season when Yuka was adamant about not losing to Nagisa in particular, and here it really comes to fruition. Unfortunately their practice is cut short, not by the Dusk Zone as you might expect, but by Nagisa passing out from exhaustion. Turns out she’d been losing a lot of sleep preparing the schedule for this trip. Yuka, Honoka, and Hikari tend to her for a bit but of course, this is a superhero show so the villains had to show up eventually, and they do right when Nagisa wakes up. The dark aura causes everybody who’s not blessed with the power of light to pass out, and the trio runs outside to discover Uraganos, who demands to know what happened to Baldez. Nagisa and Honoka transform while Hikari stays back, and after fighting the zakenna he made from their bus, Cure Black threatens Uraganos with their new power. Unfortunately she’s not sure how to summon it.

not like that

With some help from Seekun, the pair wish deeply for help from the power of nature and the power to create all things, and this summons the Sparkle Braces. They immediately attack with the Marble Screw Max, which Uraganos tries to block, but they turn it into the Spark and he quickly flees because he can tell he’s overpowered. The next morning, Yuka and Nagisa are bickering about oversleeping and who should have woken whom up, but it’s a friendly squabble. Yuka decides to go back home, having had her fill of excitement. Honoka comments that she probably just came to see Nagisa, which Nagisa doesn’t believe, but this is confirmed by the final lines of the episode:

I’ll be honest, the first time I watched Max Heart I didn’t remember Yuka at all from when I had watched Futari wa a year or two prior. I firmly believe that she was underused in the first season, and she would have been delightful to see more than just three or four times. That being said, this episode is the perfect conclusion to her character arc. When we first met her in FW16 she felt burdened by her reputation as the Madonna, and although she scolded Nagisa and Honoka for being childish by dancing with the chalk erasers, there was a subtle sense that she wanted to let loose like that, which was manifested in her zakenna clones. In FW34, she develops a one-sided rivalry with Nagisa. She’s shown briefly in FW49 but not in any way that adds to her development. Finally, in this episode, we get the payoff to that rivalry as she puts aside her reputation and challenges Nagisa in order to get some fulfillment. She feeds off of Nagisa’s enthusiasm and Nagisa does the same for Yuka. They really complement each other and this is why I’d like it if Yuka appeared more in the show. I may be wrong (I was certainly wrong about this in the FW16 review) but I think this is her last appearance, being as she’s a high schooler now with few opportunities to interact with the middle school cast, and now more than ever I truly feel like that’s a missed opportunity.... but hey, missed opportunities are what Max Heart is all about.

Come back next time for the best grandma in the universe!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 1 Arienai

[pcd-status]

Big Oops

So uh, I goofed up on MH 24.

Literally everything about this date is wrong.

http://prettycure.wikia.com/wiki/FwPCMH24