As expected, Kokone is the soft and quiet type of character. She doesn’t mind being alone, nor does she care much about making friends, but of course that changed when she met Yui.
Thankfully Yui isn’t the pushy and loud type when it comes to trying to befriend others. Though I suppose you could say she was a tad nosy when it comes to looking around for her to get to know her, but she never overstepped her bounds. What helped them hit it off was when Yui noticed Kokone was trying to move a heavy mattress over so she could retrieve the school’s baby rabbit that had escaped its pen. Though to be accurate, it was Pam-Pam was the one who really solidified that bridge since she really wanted to see Kokone and showed up at school. This led to the girls hanging out together afterwards where Kokone who bath in the cuteness of Kome-Kome and Pam-Pam.
It also turns out Kokone is able to see Recipeppis too, so that common ability was something that gave another reason for her and Yui to become friends. It will be interesting to see if Ran is able to see them too. I suspect she does, but perhaps she isn’t totally aware of it herself, we will have to see.
Kokone joined the Precure party as Cure Spicy when she followed Yui and Mari into the other world. It’s unclear whether she would have been able to walk in like Yui had even if she hadn’t been holding Pam-Pam, but I imagine she probably could have considering she has the ability to see the Recipeppis.
This week Gentlu was ordered to retrieve a nice handful of Recipeppis, which in turn was supposed to make it stronger. I say ‘supposed to’ only because honestly, it didn’t feel like it was any stronger than the last one. They pretty much just said it was, and left it at that, which was why I was a bit disappointed they didn’t do more to show its increased strength. It would have been more convincing to see Yui struggle against it on her own, but unfortunately we really didn’t get much of that. Then as soon as they threw in Cure Spicy, it just made it an easy clean-up.
Speaking of Cure Spicy, I must admit, when I first learned Kokone’s Precure alias I was surprised they went with that. I get Yui’s Cure Precious, but I don’t quite see how ‘Spicy’ really matches Kokone’s character, and I was even more surprised they chose to use blue for her color theme. When I think of “spice”, the colors that come to mind are green, red, or orange. I do feel like it’s a bit of a missed opportunity to not make her ‘green’ in this case (BECAUSE GREEN IS ALMOST ALWAYS NEGLECTED IN PRECURE Q^Q, JUSTICE FOR GREEN MAN), but that’s just food for the thought.
But oh my gosh, freaking Pam-Pam’s sandwich form had me wheezing. She’s super cute, but she looks so funny!
Overall not too much went on, but it was still a nice episode. We’ll get to see Mari and Kokone interact a bit more next week, which is really a good thing because it’s always better to work on their group’s bonds sooner than later!
Before the episode, I thought that either Spicy’s name was chosen to deliberately subvert our expectations for the color, or it was a subtle reference to the fact that blue flames are hotter than orange flames. Now, I can understand the route they’re going for with the whole “friendship makes me feel warm inside” angle, but nothing to the point of “spicy” yet. Maybe as she becomes more outgoing, she’ll realize that variety is the spice of life and eventually leave the comfort of her isolation? I don’t know, Precure names usually carry some sort of meaning behind them if they’re not being totally obvious, so hopefully we’ll get some more development in store for Kokone.
Last week I wondered whether ‘spicy’ would be an indication for another side of her we have yet to see. Perhaps as you say, it will be something we see her grow into rather than who she is right now. And good point about the blue flames being hotter than orange, I didn’t think of it that way!
i liked that instead of being the normal shield cure her shields are actually also offensive