Hirogaru Sky Precure is starting with a bang! The quality of this premiere was absolutely superb! Just the characters, the music (it was SO GOOD), the animation was freaking LIT, oh man, I don’t know about you, but watching this made me nostalgic. It was like a callback to various magical girl series classics I grew up with, and for that reason I am already smitten with what we have so far.
Starting from the Skyland Kingdom, our blue hero Sora Harewataru witnesses the baby Princess Elle being kidnapped for her powers by bad guy called Kabaton (poor kid, ripped right out of her father’s arms, on her birthday no less!). After she jumps into a dimensional portal to save her, she and the princess find themselves suddenly find themselves (quite literally) dropped into Sorashido City. There they almost crash into Mashiro, a girl who quickly finds herself entrusted the duty to take care of the princess while Sora tried to buy them time to escape.
First of all, I FREAKING LOVE SORA! Gosh she’s SO COOL. I love her athleticism, and how courageous she is despite being terrified herself, and yet she’s also has such an endearingly soft side– AHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! She’s totally my favourite. It was so cute how Mashiro was like “are you a hero?” and Sora wasn’t even sure how to answer that, which I actually love. It’s her dream, but she hasn’t considered herself to be a hero just yet. I also freaking love the fact she’s blue too! Finally a change of pace! (Though it can be said the same for some of the others like Tropical Rouge, but you get my point!)
Though please tell me I was not the only one who thought “Eh? What’s this? Vocaloid Miku LOL?!?” during her transformation sequence. As epic as it was, I mean it’s kinda hard NOT to think that when she got a freaking microphone (which was, the most surprising part considering her trinket was a pen…), and the disc base— but apart from that, everything else was freaking AWESOME, the CAPE!!! God I freaking love that thing on her, she looks absolutely amazing. I freaking love her knightly design!
Then we have Mashiro Nizigaoka, our peachy girl– and I absolutely love this shade they went with. She looks lovely! We didn’t actually get to learn much of anything about her this week, but to start we can see that she can be on the same wavelength as Sora with the way they both were adamant to believe their encounter was all just a dream– until of course Kabaton dropped in and summoned a freaking monster. I’m actually glad she was introduced and became a part of this whole thing right away since these two will be our main duo to start. I’m looking forward to learning more about her next week since she’s not about to leave Sora out on the streets.
As for our antagonist, man I can’t tell you how happy I was with the delivery. The grunt left a fantastic first impression! This is huge for me, because after the lacklustre showing from the grunts in Delicious Party Precure, I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to already see them striking what I consider an excellent balance between the silly for the comedy, the shrewdness for the (quite literally) dirty tactics (BRUH HE FREAKING FARTED IN HER FACE EWWWWWWW!), and best of all, making them cruel, such as ruthlessly ripping apart Sora’s precious journal with consists her dream.
I am also really glad we’re back to having the monsters directly impact their town. Sure that sounds absolutely terrible, but while I appreciated Delicious Party Precure’s pragmatic and refreshing approach of isolating the monsters by transporting it into another realm– truth to be told, it kind of became boring because I felt like there wasn’t enough at stake. It was pretty much the same stage for the entire duration of the series. Heck even the final battle didn’t spend a whole lot of time in the town when you think about it. So yeah, this was something that was good to see. On top of that, BOY, did the Ranborg beat the ever living crap out of Sora! The poor girl was barely left standing– heck she even collapsed before she pulled herself up again! What a trooper!
And finally, can’t forget the signature precure baby Princess Elle. She is the one who is bestowing the power of precure to the girls, which the reason why the bad guys kidnapped her in the first place. We don’t know what they want to use her power for though, and I’m curious to see what it will be this time round. Unclear at the moment whether she’s bound to grow up or not. Either way, it’s way too soon to say, haha!
That said, I do want to note though, there was an interesting point that was dropped in this episode of how identifying Mashiro as a “Side Character”. This makes me wonder a bit more about the premise of their magical world, and Sora’s dream of becoming a Hero. But the most mysterious clue however was actually what was inside Sora’s notebook. It reads almost as though it’s bearing a prophecy, showing the start of Sora’s journey to becoming a hero. It included the detail of how she isn’t afraid of heights (the bird who was carrying her was shocked to see), and how she finds a baby (though it’s phrased as, “A hero never abandons a crying child.” so it’s more like a conviction) and then facing the monster, and thus becoming a hero. Either way, it’s most likely the case that she’s the one who wrote it herself, but I’m still curious to see what kind of role it may have in the future.
With that said, Hirogaru Sky is off to a fantastic start… though I also said that for the last few series also had a fairly solid or nice start… and well… err… you know how that turned out— for me anyways (it varies from person to person). So as excited and hopeful as I am for the direction this series will be going, I am going to drag that bar of hopes and dreams that just flew up from this episode, and try to keep it anchored down. Gotta give it a few episodes first, and then we’ll really see how the show will turn out once we get around to the half-way point. God I hope this series will be able to hold itself together and shine, because the last few series have had a rough showing. Hopefully everything will work out better this time! So despite how jaded I felt last week, yes I will definitely be giving this series a whirl to see where it goes.
For those who are new here, my general rule of the thumb for Precure is to give it 3 – 10 episodes to start. This is to get a feel of whether this is the type of series that I’ll be able to write about for the long haul. It really depends on what’s the focus is, between light-hearted comedy and story-driven. The former is more difficult to write about, where as the later is my bread and butter. I’m looking forward to seeing how this will turn out!
Before I wrap it up, I would like to note I typically like to go into every new precure series as blind as possible, but on Friday I did hear about a certain piece of news that had me go, “WAIT WHAT SERIOUSLY? IS THIS FOR REAL?! OH MY GOD!?!?” to the point I actually had to do a double-take. For those who don’t follow the news that drops tidbits about the casting and stuff, I will refrain from mentioning it until they reveal it, otherwise that’ll ruin the fun of it right? So for those who like to drop a comment: please take that into consideration for other readers, it would be much appreciated, thanks!
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Eva, I said the same exact thing about the pig general. It’s nice to have a general who is just downright cruel. From farting in Sora’s face, to ripping up the pages in her hero book and tossing it at her, to saying “I’ll beat you up” and “I need it for your grave”. He is just cruel but in the best way possible. Not to say I mind misunderstood or more comical, friendly villians but after the family generals in TRPC and last seasons lackluster generals (maybe except Narcistoru imo), it’s just nice to go back to the basics and make a villian start off un-redeemable. I feel that it not only raises the stakes but makes the series a lip more adult, or mature because you know these guys aren’t messing around and will hurt you and not think twice. So I’m definitely interested to see where it goes!
But as far as the 1st ep! I was blown away! Definitely way more hyped about Hirogaru Sky now than I ever was watching DPPC, lol. From the animation, to the dynamic between Sora and Mashiro, the transformation (omg, it was just sooo grandiose…it felt larger than life and I loved it!), the OST (a lot of trumpets and horns to give off the hero theme)…everything was fantastic and it felt refreshing to me after the past couple seasons.
I don’t want to give my hopes up so I’m trying to remain neutral just in case by ep 5, something gets stale or the animation, fights, plot and/or character development takes a nose dive, lol. I mean it’s obvious they would pull out all the stops for the first episode to draw ppl in, but I’m hoping they remain consistent…I’ll be watching!
Oh and one more thing. How is it that Mashiro has character development in 1 ep and she not even a Cure yet where as it took Yui over 40 eps to get a smidget of it? That’s wild! You can tell that Sora’s words (about doing the right thing until the very end because that’s a hero) really got to her right before Sora transformed. I wouldn’t be surprised if what Sora said lowkey is the catalyst for her transforming into Cure Prism 3 weeks from now but anyway, it was just something I noticed while watching.
The freaking beating Sora got just from this episode was no joke, so I’m actually wondering how far they are willing to take the heroes theme. Obviously *not super dark, but we have seen in past (noticeably the much older series) daring to put in the higher stakes of actual danger and risks involved.
YES, THE OST FREAKING SLAPS. They absolutely nailed it!
And oh my gosh, lmfaoooo RIP YUI!!! Q v Q||||
Recent seasons have made me temper my expectations despite having such consistently strong opening episodes, so I’m definitely with you when I say I’m being cautiously optimistic for the future of the season.
But man, I’m just happy to see Precure in action again. This season is making it a mission to shatter all expectations right out of the gate and it revitalizes the series with a level of energy and action that hasn’t been seen in what feels like forever (even though the finale of Delicious Party was just a few weeks ago). Speaking of, I actually like that they appear to be carrying over Delicious Party’s format of introducing the Cures as characters a few episodes before their first transformation (excluding the lead) so we can get to know them better. This also means that Sora be flying solo for a while, but since she’s the series’ first lead to not hail from Earth, I’m okay with that.
And also, there’s that one shot in the opening where Cure Prism is pulling Cure Sky from the ground that clearly evokes the famous scene from the original Futari Wa Precure where Cure Black does the same for Cure White. If that wasn’t enough to convince you that this season is shaping up to be something special, I don’t know what will.
Yeah I’m definitely okay with the whole breaking in a character before they become a Precure. It gives the first one a chance to shine and fight individually for a bit before they gotta group up. It’s been harder to see them fight solo after that lately, so hopefully they’ll actually let us see them fight solo a bit more as well in this one.
Ooh that scene in the OP stood out to me too, I couldn’t put on finger on what it reminded me of, thanks for jogging the memory! I’m really excited, it’s gonna be hard to anchor down the hype, but this episode really hit me with all sorts of nostalgia!
Mannnnn I’ve been a ghost reader on here for years but I can’t help but comment this week.
My jaw was dropped the whole episode. Like the opening???? Went absolutely crazy???????? I’m not sure if you caught it but the op showed hints to the other two cures civilian identities which I think is a refreshing change over telling us everything.
I too was like MIKU when I saw the transformation, and it was so fresh and exciting. Plus the fact that she was ready to just fight that monster hit crazy.
I hope the don’t do stupid stuff like the fart joke tooo often. It was just gross to me- I didn’t think it was funny. I DID this that having the power to manipulate stuff with that crystal like when he put smoke in her face will be nice to see in terms of fighting moving forward.
Def agree on the delicious field. They could’ve made it cool like making it not work and then the town has to fix the mess themselves to raise the stakes or smth. But oh well – no need to dwell on another mid season.
Although I’m trying to keep it in, I’m really excited for this season. I hope we finally get back to what I loved about precure so many years ago 😭.
Looking forward to your reviews as always Eva!!!
<3 Aww thanks! That really makes me happy to hear! <3
Oh my gosh the opening was so freaking GOOOOOOOOOD. The quality was just stunning, I loved it. Like the song felt so refreshing, I went back to listen to it on repeat several times, hahahaha!
I wouldn’t be too surprised if they dial back on the fart joke since it might lead to some complaints. I think they had to changing to whole “shitting the seeds” thing in Heartcatch. But I totally get what you mean, it was really gross!!! The smoke screen though, yesssss more of that! The grunts don’t need to be standing around just watching their monsters do the work, these kinds of small interference from the sideline makes a great addition.
Hopefully they can hit this one out of the park! Lets freaking goooooo!!!!
the first episode definitely left a good impression !!! It is a little different than what we re used to while still maintaining the classic precure bike. Although I noticed we re back to mahou tsukai gimmick where the word precure isn’t mentioned in the attack. and Sora wants to be a hero not a precure, hopefully there is some lore fir precures. She is a nice lead and after so many seasons where the alien blue cure stole the spotlight from the main lead it was natural to officially have one as the main lead. Although to me it might have the opposite effect and the ordinary earthling Mashiro might end up become the favourite and more relatable of the two at least to littke children.
Overall a really good start , I like all the new breakthrough stuff they are trying with the season but hopefully they won’t forget the essence of precure in their effort to overcorrect last season.