Amane joins the team as Cure Finale!
Initially Amane had declined the opportunity to become a Precure, and she expanded on that bit more during the first ten minutes of the episode. But it was more or less what we already knew of: Amane felt incredibly guilty for the sins she had committed as Gentlu, and she didn’t feel like had the right to become one.
Truthfully, I thought we’d at least see a day or two pass, you know to see Amane process it a bit, but nope– almost imeaditely after saving the Fruit Punch Recipeppi, Narcistoru captured the Parfait Recipeppi from Amane’s family’s shop and cast into yet another battle. But because Parfait had been captured this time, you’d think Amane would become a victim of losing her memories, however as it turns out, Amane did not lose her memories connected to Parfait because the heart stone had was born out of her love for the Recipeppi when she was little. (And can I just sidetrack for a moment to say, smol Amane is so freaking adorable! And the fact she wanted to become a Parfait when she grew up– isn’t that the cutest thing ever?)
Anyways, Amane gets held hostage and all, but while Yui was trying to get her out, she shared with her some of her grandmother’s words of wisdom. Thanks to that Amane was able to speak truth to the feelings she held in her heart of wanting to be the one to make people smile, just like a parfait, and just like that, Cure Finale was born!
Last week I mentioned how abrupt it felt to suddenly see that Amane was about to become a precure, and after this episode, honestly I only feel even stronger about that now. I feel like this development happened way too fast (even more so since the incident all happened on the same day imeaditely after no less)! I also feel like we probably could have benefited some development time in-between instead of this situation where Amane is absent for a couple of episodes, and then the minute she’s back, BAM! Say hello to Cure Finale! In fact, I actually wonder if they actually ended up cutting some episodes (to make up for the lost time) that may have touched on Amane’s processing her grief and the offer because heck, (and maybe it’s just me), even the ED Theme feels as though she was shoehorned in there earlier than planned. Now I am very curious to see how the OP Theme will change next week since it would be a bit weird to if we don’t see her featured hanging out with the team at all, especially Takumi has yet to even join their circle is already doing so. So the timing of all of this really does strike me as a bit odd.
My gripes about how ‘rushed’ this felt aside, I must say I am a huge fan of Cure Finale’s design. It’s so lovely! In fact I’d probably go as far to say it’s now one of my favourite Precure designs to date. I absolutely love the details in her hair, and the parfait dress– it’s so cute!!!! And don’t even get me started on the transformation, that was freaking gorgeous too. It looks like similarly to Yui, Amane’s attacks seem to be focused on martial arts (as we know she already has experience of in last week’s episode), and we are already seeing her reap the benefits of its flexibility as she is able to come off as extremely graceful and have all sorts of badass moves at the same time. She also came with a buffed weapon as default (Creamy Fleuret) which is a really adorable design if I may add! It matches her elegant image more so than the blenders. However in hindsight, having yet another character with abilities that offer room to be creative really puts Yui in a bind. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, they really need to find a way to add some spice to Yui’s powers, because right now, this whole one-punch thing is quite frankly boring compared to the rest. It just feels like she’s getting the short end of the stick, and that makes me feel a sad for her character, but I digress.
Speaking of flashy combat, they really put in a lot of details in the fight this week! I’d even say more so than the mini boss battle that lead to their power up. And man, it was great to see because it was was well overdue considering how stale a lot of the fights have been in comparison to its predecessors. It was incredibly satisfying to see the monster have an edge over the girls for an exchange. The scorching attacks were pretty sick, and seeing the kind of damage they did certainly made you think, “YIKES!” you don’t want to get hit by one of those! The girls also found themselves having to be a bit more creative with the way they fought, which we got to see from Kokone in particular with cleverly sealed the pot with her shield powers. That bit actually made me giggle because it was fun to see Kokone have a smug moment like that. However one of the man reasons it made it increasingly more difficult for the girls to approach was because it had been holding Amane hostage and would throw her up front of their attacks, which they had to circumvent to avoid.
Overall, despite my gripes with how fast everything had happened, the fight made this episode quite fun to watch. Next time as expected, it’s time for some Amane focused episodes, so I suspect we’ll see about two or three if they are to continue the pattern we that have seen so far. And since Takumi went home to bring back the groceries, he ended up missing out on all the action that followed nearly right after he had left! Boy, is he going to be in for a surprise when he sees that Amane has officially joined the group!
