Healin’ Good Precure Episode 7

…Whelp, my theory last week with the General’s connection to the elements was quickly debunked when Guaiwaru surprised me with attacking a Rain Element. It was an unexpected change to the presumptive pattern but it might be better this way because it makes it less predictable. It will also be interesting to see if Daruizen will be a general who is exclusively plant-based, or he too will go after the light and water elements as well. But at this point, I think it is highly likely for the sake of increasing his weapon pool, it is unlikely that he and Shindoine will continue to draw power from specific Elements.

This also means that Shindoine and Guaiwaru have yet to be properly established as Chiyu and Hinata respective opponents just yet. I suspect it will only be a matter of time before they do, unless they surprise us by replacing them with stronger generals we have not met yet.

Today’s episode was a good breather episode. Poor Nodoka was being persistently stalked by a overly passionate member of the school’s newspaper club— pardon me, Michio of SakuMiddle Journal. Hinata and Chiyu found creative ways to try and get Michio off of Nodoka’s back after he accused her for being responsible for summoning the Pathogerms.

Michio definitely came off as an annoying egoistic character from the start, so when he suddenly snapped out of the “Journalrhythsm” (as he calls it), I was caught off guard by how polite he was. He didn’t stop at checking if she was alright, he showed us he can be a gentleman and apologized for not respecting her boundaries. Unfortunately it seems it’s a diehard habit of being overly passionate, but if he dials it back a bit as he did today when he and Nodoka spoke about inspired him to become a journalist, it’ll be better for him in general haha. He did manage to crack me up when instead of interviewing Guaiwaru, who you would think that’s the one he should interview since he was the one who summoned the monster, but nah, Michio wanted to interview the Mega Pathogerm instead. And since he lost his glasses after being attacked by it, he wasn’t able to see the girls transform into Precure– thank god for that.

Ah but if there was one thing that surprised me this week, it was the use of the Harvest Element Bottle. I wasn’t sure if it was something that was going to be used just yet, but when Nodoka took advantage of it today, I think it is fair to say its visuals was super underwhelming. It didn’t really show much of its power besides being a new long-range attack to hurl at the enemy.

Overall it was a solid episode for what it was. These type of episodes can be boring to the point they are a snooze-fest, so as cheesy as it was, it was still a nice one. But if there was one thing I really liked about it was the subtle opportunity to see how differently the girls all reacted to Michio’s so-called “Journalrhythsm”. Nodoka was mildly confused/didn’t think much of it, Hinata was openly amused by the concept and Chiyu was trying to stifle her laughter in the background. I thought it was a nice touch of detail from her expression to the way she had to turn away.

Next week will be a Chiyu focused episode! It seems she is suddenly having trouble with her high jumps for the track and field competition. This is actually a really clever follow-up since we had just seen Chiyu challenge breaking the record to draw Michio’s attention away from Nodoka! Looking forward to it!