#FWPCSS04

[precuredaily]

Precure Day 102

Episode: Futari wa Precure Splash Star 04 - “Are you Kidding!? The Scenery of Spring and the Cries of Cicadas” Date watched: 18 December 2018 Original air date: 26 February 2006 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/Gfaz8As Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

Mai is worried

I’m starting to remember why Splash Star has a lower reputation than some of the other shows: the beginning is kind of slow. Mai and Saki are still developing as friends but there isn’t really any intrigue to drive the show right now, the way that there was in early FWPC. It’s exploring their interests without really getting the audience to care about them. They’re nice and all that but I feel less interested in their personal lives than the show wants me to be, and I think that’s because there’s not as strong of a driving force for me to care. If I look back at FWPC, there was a lot of uncertainty about whether the girls wanted to be heroes and we got to see them work to learn more about each other and become friends. I know I commented earlier that I liked how they cut to the chase and declared themselves first-name friends so early but maybe it’s come at the cost of the plot. I’m having trouble putting my feelings into words but there seems to be something missing from this episode.

The plot focuses on Mai being scouted by the art club for her talents, and her struggle to decide whether she wants to join or just be free to do her own thing. Mainly she doesn’t like the idea of entering contests, because she draws for herself, but she agrees to enter this one in particular. The theme is “The scenery of spring” as the title implies, and Mai isn’t sure how to implement it. She asks Saki, her brother, and both of her parents for their thoughts and everybody gives her personal answers that she doesn’t really like. Eventually Saki suggests they go into the woods and just look around for inspiration. They find a cabbage patch at the edge of a farm and decide to settle down there. Saki gets distracted by the unusual sound of cicadas chirping out of season, and goes off to investigate, while Mai sees an old lady struggling to tend to the crops on her own and goes to lend a hand. However, splitting the girls up was Karehaan’s plan, and he attacks Saki on her own to try and get the spirits back. She manages to evade him and get back to Mai’s side so they can transform and fight back. This time Karehaan summons a cicada uzainaa, which Saki questions since she thought he only controlled tree and plant life. He retorts that cicadas eat the sap from the tree so it’s a close enough connection for him. (weird flex but okay)

It does give us that little exchange though, which is great. The dramatic music stops when Saki points this out and everything.

Anyway they transform and fight the uzainaa and it’s... not much of a fight. They kick it once, get knocked back, it blows them into the trees, they recover, the spirits force jump them at it which they turn into a grappling landing, and then they throw it away and finish it off with Twin Stream Splash. I’m barely skimping on the details here. I was surprised when I went back and rewatched just how short the actual fight is. Still, I think there were some FWPC fights where they barely actually did anything before throwing the Marble Screw so I guess that’s just how it goes sometimes.

The dust settles and the pair go to check up on the old lady Mai was helping, who got knocked out in the chaos. As they do this, the art club leader Ayano comes running up and it turns out the lady is her grandmother. This cuts to the exhibition the next week or so, Saki compliments everybody’s paintings and is a little surprised Mai didn’t win. Mai comments that the winner painted some lovely portraits of sakura trees, and her picture was deemed to be nice, but not really in tune with the theme. We pan over and it’s a painting of the grandmother.

Mai admits that although she was originally going to paint the cabbage patch, she was moved, and she wound up so enraptured by the woman’s face that she didn’t draw her holding up a cabbage like she meant to. Ultimately, only Ayano really appreciates the meaning of the piece and its relevance to the theme, and she welcomes Mai to the art club. As the pair walk home, Mai admits that she was persuaded by a comment Saki made earlier when they went scouting for a place to draw: “It’s more fun to be together than alone.” Mai decided that being able to draw with friends would be more fun than drawing on her own, and so she joined despite her initial reservations. And thus the episode concludes.

Oh also there was a scene with Flappi and Choppi I want to talk about, Flappi came out and started hinting really strongly to Choppi that he liked her and she didn’t pick up on it, and everybody else just kind of stared in disbelief at her obliviousness, but chose not to spell it out. This one-sided crush is different from the always lovey-dovey antics of Mepple and Mipple and.... well it leads to some nice gags, like this, but I don’t feel like the romance element was necessary. We’ll see where it goes.

Even though it advances Mai’s character, giving her an outlet for critique of her art skills, this episode still doesn’t feel very noteworthy. Maybe that’s an unfair thing to say about a 50 episode show, they can’t all be big episodes, but it’s this early into the series and we’ve had two episodes in a row that just didn’t quite do it for me like the premiere did. If I remember right, it’s partly because Karehaan is just kind of a boring villain, and the next one, Moerumba, is more fun. The Kiryuus are the highlight of the show and we’ll get to them in due time. (hopefully by mid-January) The next episode introduces Saki to Mai’s brother, and for some reason the episode title mentions Kenta despite there being zero indication of his involvement. Obviously this is because of his crush and the love triangle this creates, but still.... it’s a bit strange. Nonetheless, look forward to that review in hopefully less than a week, I’m really bad at this.

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 0 Zekkouchou Nari

Miracle Drop Count: 4