Episode 7
At long last, Mem-Mem and Ran finally join the party!
Meet Membernu Churuchurutto Kurukururin Glutamine Memdragon, AKA: Mem-Mem, the adorable Dragon who is very much on the same wave length as Ran. Both are a bundle of energy, and adorably so! Since Ran has always been able to see Recippipes (and isn’t shy about letting that be known), naturally because of that she wasn’t surprised to see a talking dragon. So Mem-Mem and Ran clicked right away, bringing us this delightful chaotic pair that will certainly bring loads of fun. It was also cool to actually see Mem-Mem use his power to defend Ran!
We also go to see Student Council President Amane Kansai (Gentlu) pulling the strings to set up a golden opportunity to capture a good handful of Recippipes. Since Ran has been pretty open about talking about the food spirits’ existence, Gentlu exploited that by dropping the recommendation that if her family restaurant were to do buy one get half off special, a flood of recippipies would come to the shop, filling the place with lots “Hoka-Hoka”, an energy manifested through the enjoyment and thankfulness of the food that is being eaten.
Similarly to Yui, Ran feels very strongly towards the Recippipes, she is very affectionate towards them and seeing them all gathered together in one play makes her very happy. So when Gentlu laughed in her face of how they were all captured thanks to her, it hurt Ran very much. The worst part was the impact it had on her family restaurant. Up until now, when the Recippipes were captured, we would hear the customers complain about the change in taste for the food, we never really saw them leave. Hearing the customers say they wouldn’t come back to her family’s restaurant, and watched them leaving made the whole ordeal a lot more personal and heartbreaking than the previous incidents.
Since Mem-Mem had chosen to go back to Ran’s side, she was able to have access to the alternative dimension after the two resonated in synergy together. I also must say it was so good to see Ran tell Gentlu off, by literally telling her to shut her mouth. Actually, we saw yet another similarly Ran and Yui share, and that is their fearlessness to charge head first into danger. I’m actually excited to see the kind of potential chaotic partnership between her and Yui. It’ll be interesting to see how her fighting style with synergize with Kokone’s as well.
And finally, I actually quite liked how Cure Yum-Yum’s transformation sequence was simple, and straight-forward! It was very cute! Her design is definitely my top favourite of the three!
Episode 8
After the incident with Gentlu exploiting her Curesta posts for Bendoru Gang’s gains, Ran decided for the sake of protecting the the recippipes and the restaurants of their communities, she would quit Curesta. I can understand why she did it, especially given how personally it affected her. But we saw how it was also difficult for her to refrain herself from doing her posts, as she is very passionate about what she does. Fortunately she was able to figure out a solution, which was to do take-outs and do the posts at home to try and conceal how popular the place actually is. I think this is a fair compromise given the circumstances at the moment.
And boy, watching the girls do their foodie walk made me miss doing my summer foodie “tours” as I’d call them. Before the pandemic, I had a tradition where once a year, I would go downtown and try out different restaurants and shops. I’m pretty determined to do it this year though! Hopefully the situation will improve to allow me to do so, but I digress!
I really liked how we got to see a more level-headed side of Ran this week. Last episode, she was a bundle of energy waiting to be unleashed, but this time she showed us she can actually be quite strategic. Speaking of which, I have to say Ran’s fighting style is probably my favourite at the moment. Not only her attacks are super cool, but compared to Yui’s and Kokone’s, I find Ran’s attacks have a lot more room to be played around with. Yui’s style is very much a one-punch melee staple, where Kokone has a tad bit more flexibility than her. On that note, I do hope that they explore diversifying those two’s move-sets so they don’t become boring.
The other thing that I really enjoyed about this episode was that we’re actually getting two separate outsider characters (Takumi and Gentlu/Amane) beginning their developments at the same time! especially given that these things can sometimes be dragged out till like around episode 25 or so!
It goes without saying, I was very excited to see Takumi after so long, but the poor guy got the cold shoulder right off the bat when he was trying to invite Yui out to eat at a hamburger diner. Ouch! While that didn’t work out for him, I was ecstatic to see he is finally starting to find himself at the right place at the right time when it comes to discovering Mari’s role, as well one step closer to finding out about Yui’s secret of being a Precure. The last time we saw Takumi, the way he reacted to Mari made me a bit suspicious, but this time, he gave me the impression that he is more concerned about how this isn’t the first time he has seen Mari present when a monster showed up. Unfortunately (and much to my frustration) we didn’t get to see his reaction after they returned from the dimension because it was skipped over entirely– SUCH A TEASE MAN!
As for Gentlu, I think, (and correct me if I’m forgetting any) the last time Precure had a member of the antagonist team getting this much attention early were Fresh, Suite and Kira Kira La Mode? What’s also very curious is how Gentlu’s head hurts when she thinks of Yui and Kokone. I don’t think it’s as far as being possessed so to speak, but it does appear that there might be some sort of potential manipulation going on. It’s sort of hard to tell right now, but I’m very interested in seeing which direction things are going to go now, especially with establishing these signs of inner turmoil so early on!
Next week, we’re getting another Ran episode, (which is great, I’m 100% for the time they are spending on actually letting us get to know the girls!), but we’re also going to meet a new enemy we haven’t met before! I am quite surprised to see is not Secretoru, as she was the one I figured would be the next one to join the fight. Instead we have a cute guy, probably the one shadowed out in the opening. Here’s to hoping he starts making things a little bit tougher, because while the fights have improved (such as this week’s episode), the monsters’ strength having been rather lacking. So since Bundoru Gang now understands they need to shift to prioritizing taking out the Precure, hopefully this means we’ll see them kick things up a notch– otherwise we’ll probably just have to wait until the usual first mini boss battle, which should take place pretty soon!
I’m really happy that DeliPre is actually taking the time to flesh out the girls and have the audience get to know them better, as this was the thing that Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure barely bothered to do until very late in the series, preferring to shill Laura and Manatsu without bothering to actually develop them beyond their archetypes and focus on pointless comedic filler, which just made me angry.
Absolutely, it’s so much better to flesh them out now, than to just wait until the middle/late game of the series! I never really understood why we would see that so often in some of the more recent precure series (not all, but some). We have seen time and time again how crucially important to do it early on because good grief, like you said, if they decide to favor certain characters that join the game later on, then the girls who joined the team from the very beginning ends up getting neglected or outright after-thought treatment!
And oof, that would have made me very frustrated too. I couldn’t get into Tropical Rouge, so luckily I was spared from experiencing that grief.
Yeah. Unfortunately that’s what happened to one of the main Cures in TroPri, Cure Coral/Sango. She only ever gets three focus episodes, two of which only happen long after the halfway point of the series, and she barely gets so much as an arc. Most of the time she’s relegated to living background space, and it sucks because she has such a cute design and a realistic character flaw that the series could have utilized wonderfully! But nope, gotta focus on the snotty mermaid and the overgrown five-year-old high on sugar whose only purpose is to scream a lot and shout an annoying catchphrase!
Good grief, that reminds me of the way Ruru and Emiru hijacked Huggto with that bloody song of theirs. That drove me absolutely bonkers.