Dear lord Happiness Charge Pretty Cure. Out of all the Pretty Cure seasons Ive seen I feel Happiness Charge is by far the weakest. But before I elaborate I want to explain something: Some people Ive talked to a few years ago have gotten the impression that I hate light hearted magical girl shows and only like stuff thats dark and gritty but Id like to clarify that thats not true. I like Madoka Magica but not because its dark. My favorite magical girl anime of all time is Fancy Lala and some of my other favorites are the Pretty Sammy TV series Cardcaptor Sakura Yuki Yuna is a Hero Nurse Angel Ririka SOS and Princess Tutu. I watched the first episode of Magical Girl Site and I absolutely hated it because of how overthetop dark and violent it tried to be and it was clear it was only doing it for the sake of being as violent as possible and nothing else. I dont go anywhere near the Nanoha series because of its more fanservicey elements. The point Im trying to make is that I like both happy and serious magical girl shows but I also like my magical girl anime to have substance. I want magical girl anime nay anime in general to be more than just a sugar fest or a grimdark violence fest. Magical Girl Site is obviously the latter but having watched Happiness Charge Precure in its entirety...I wont say its the worst show Ive seen but to put it plainly Happiness Charge is trite uninspired hollow and superfluous encapsulating the overall franchises worst problems which is especially bad since this was made to celebrate the franchises 10th anniversary The story is about Hime Shirayuki a princess of the Blue Sky Kingdom. Her kingdom was attacked by the Phantom Empire and despite becoming a Pretty Cure she is utterly hopeless at fighting and has to go to Earth for her own safety accompanied by her friend Ribbon. Her rivalCure Fortuneblames her for everything and Hime is at a loss as to what to do. She does however find a new friend in a young girl named Megumi Aino a happygolucky girl who is obsessed with love and making people happy. Megumi actually winds up becoming a Pretty Cure alongside HimeCure Lovely. Together along with two new allies the girls try to fight the Phantom Empires minions the Saiarks and try to stop them from spreading despair. But theres a lot more to the Phantom Empire than meets the eye and there are many secrets to be revealed. The animation...fluctuates a LOT throughout the series. Some episodes its good other episodes...are pretty badly animated with kooky faces with parts out of place movement being stilted the animation style being really cloudy and too cartoony for my tastes but I got used to it etc. The budget for the episodes is clearly limited but when they use it boy do they use it Himes transformation is the most well animated and visually pleasing transformation in the entire series and thats saying a lot. But other than that the shows animation is subpar. The music...I dont know what to say about this one. The opening theme is too bubblegummy for me the ending themes more so. The actual soundtrack...ugh to be honest I cant tell if the show even has its own pieces at all because since the show has the same composer as Doki Doki Precure before it the anime reuses pieces from Doki Doki in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE Now if the show was a direct sequel to Doki Doki I wouldnt have a problem if theyre the same series taking place in the same universe but HapiCha is an entity completely separate from Doki Doki so the fact that they reuse music from Doki Doki makes the production team really come off as lazy and uninspired. I get that there are budget issues involved and other series used music from other series too but at least Suite made sure to not use Heartcatch and Fresh pieces in EVERY episode. The characters...are arguably a mixed bag. However before I get to the bad I really need to talk about what I feel is THE best part of the entire show: Hime. She is by far the best main character in any anime Ive seen. Shes well developed has plenty of flaws and weaknesses good qualities and strengths has the best executed character arc in the show is proactive despite her royal upbringing and occasionally selfish personality grows as a character throughout the series awesomely and has more spotlight on her than the pink character. The show seems to be making her out to be the main character even though its sort of not the case. And seriously why cant Hime be the main character? Because shes easily the best character in the entire show even though shes made of traits that people would absolutely hate if done wrong and Himes character is done so right its not even funny. Im glad the writers really pulled out all the stops when it came to Hime. Also Glasan is awesome. Unfortunately the same cant be said for the other characters. Now dont get me wrong theyre not bad. Theyre all engagingly flawed...except for Yuuko. Ill get to that in a bit. One thing I like about the series is that the characters all come off as annoying at first but when you least expect it the writers realize it and completely redeem them for you. I used to hate Iona for being a straight up jerk to Hime for plot reasons but she dropped the act and realized her own faults as well. The other characters all have engaging flaws...except for one: Yuuko. Sorry guys. I hate to admit it as I like her too but theres no denying it: Yuuko is woefully underutilized and because of this she comes off as extremely perfect. Shes unfailingly kind and friendly loves food and rice to insane levels doesnt make any mistakes all of her potential flaws are presented as cute character quirks instead of realistic flaws everything she does is praised by everyone shes always in the right nobody questions what she does save for a few but even they change their views later on and shes loved by everyone. Her character writing is one of the shows low points as a character like Yuuko just isnt very interesting and her focus episodes were all poorly executed especially the cheesy episode 31 with the fact that the entire episode implied she had a love interest that turned out to be something else entirely. Both her character and that episode could have been handled so much better. But I do appreciate that she contributes no more or less than any of the other characters that her attacks arent foolproof and that shes still on the same level as the girls so I can give kudos to the creators for that. The villains are pretty much the same. Mirage and Phantom are the only good villains in the show whereas the bumbling bad trio are the worst. Theyre never developed their backstories arent elaborated on and theyre very bland one note characters who dont do much throughout the entire show. They were the biggest waste of characters ever. Also I absolutely hate Hosshiwa. Her voice was annoying her character was annoying her personality was annoying her evil laugh was annoying God everytime she opened her mouth I just wanted to deck her Another contender is the final villain. I wont spoil anything but he is the whiniest most annoying most pathetic villain Ive ever seen. He constantly whines and moans about how love is bad every five minutes any time hes on screen He doesnt even do anything really threatening just brainwashing people and being annoying and he REFUSES TO SHUT UP Seriously I can write a better villain character than him And the thing is the show constantly builds him up as being this really dangerous threatening force so when it turns out hes little more than a whiny simp the show basically crapped on all of the buildup it used for him and made it all go to waste. That said the main heroine of this series Megumi is also one of the shows biggest detriments especially compared to other leads in Precure shows. Now Pretty Cure is notorious for being very clingy to its own formula rehashing the same character archetypes color schemes and personalities all throughout their shows with only a few changes every now and again. Theres nothing inherently wrong with that but using the same character type over and over again gets boring. At times Toei knows this and one of the reasons seasons like Heartcatch and the original series are so popular is because they had stories and characters that were different from the typical klutzy cheerful always happy archetype. Nagisa was tomboyish and could be a brat. Tsubomi was shy and timid. Hana from Hugtto Precure behind her cheerful facade was deeply insecure and felt like she couldnt keep up with the other girls as a Precure. Healin Good has Nodoka who is nice and kind but also down to earth and frail because of having been sick for most of her life. People love magical girl shows that take risks and give their characters flaws that they have to overcome in order to grow as people. Those make characters interesting and relatable when done well. Watching those particular seasons you can tell right away there was more to the characters than just one basic trait. The problem with Megumi is that the creators were less concerned about making her interesting and threedimensional and more with making her as overthetop cutesy and nice and sweet as humanly possible having her say her catchphrase Shiawase Happiness every other episode and having her talk nonstop about love and kindness and how being nice is good just for the sake of it. Even during episodes where shes supposed to experience real character growth and mature as a person the writers still insist on having her act extremely childish and nauseatingly idealistic like theyre convinced children cant handle human characters who dont spout cutesy catchphrases all the time. Think Charlie from Tim Burtons Willy Wonka movie level of overly idealistic. For example when she finds out Hime is running away after finding out the truth about why the Phantom Empire attacked what does she do? She magically puts on a cutesy wootsy dog costume and chases after her. She basically comes off as an overly saccharine fiveyearold in a 14yearold girls body almost a caricature and kids dont like having overthetop sweetness and sugar shoved down their throats. And no the show being a giant toy commercial is no excuse because there are plenty of toybased shows that actually put in the effort to write nuanced characters when they want to. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and hell even several of the early Precure shows are great examples of this. And no this also doesnt mean I hate cheerful perky happy characters. I just dont like it when writers go way over the top with it and have it be their only character trait and amping it up to ridiculous near saccharine levels. My point: Have the cheerful characters act like people not like hyperactive five year olds who do nothing but spout cutesy catchphrases all the damn time But I know there are people who like Megumi and the rest of the cast as characters so if you like them cool More power to you. This is just how I feel about the cast as a whole and Im not dissing anyone who likes them. But good lord if I have to hear Shiawase happiness one more time Im gonna riot. Which also brings me to the shows biggest flaw. Now let me say this: when it knows what it wants to do Happiness Charge is great. But when it doesnt it sinks. Hard. What do I mean? Well some episodes are written well while others are very poorly executed like the writers were battling over what the moral of the episode should be and wind up making an episode thats a big mess. Unfortunately Happiness Charge is pretty guilty of this. Episode 17 is one such example. To me it looked like the moral was going to be about Hime learning that its okay to share your friends with other friends but Megumi and Yuuko force Hime to support Seijis karate tournament and at one point Hime says Curse you Seiji for no reason at all implying that she secretly hated him. I wont go into detail about other episodes as itd take waaaay too long. But yeah its like the show is at a fork in the road and it goes on one road only to constantly zigzag between that road and the other and in the end it finally decides on a road only to still have doubts and regrets and the feeling of not having reached their destination. Thats how Happiness Charges filler episodes are to me. But different strokes for different blokes I suppose. Plus all the romance was really forced and in a way it didnt really need to be there. My mom often says dont buy the car if you cant drive it. For this series? Dont try to write about something if youre going to write it badly...or in this case indecisively. So lack of focus is Happiness Charges biggest problem. But there are shows that did this far worse and when the show knows what it wants to do boy does it shine I only wish it was this focused during its filler episodes too. That said even its main plot suffers from lack of proper planning. For one Happiness Charge establishes that certain items and plot points are important very early on the PreCards being one of them...but then completely forgets about them by the shows end never doing anything with them. I hear a lot of the shows problems are because its meant to celebrate the franchises 10th anniversary and because the creators knew fans of the franchise love Heartcatch they tried emulating it in a variety of ways. But that decision really hurt the shows quality as Happiness Charges lack of focus tendency to forget important plot points or not mention anything until the last minute uneven character writing and shallow storytelling make it utterly unable to stand on its own two feet as a Precure series. Thankfully the creators seem to have realized this as the next season Go Princess Precure was a vast improvement over HapiCha in every way even though it also reused Doki Dokis music at times. Plus other magical girl shows and other shows in general tackled Happiness Charges premise and did them better. Toei if you really wanted to celebrate the franchises tenth anniversary this was NOT the way to do it. I dont know if I would call this one the worst season as I havent seen every Precure season. But having seen a good chunk of them in their entirety this one included I really didnt enjoy Happiness Charge Precure at all. Not only is it overly saccharine and milquetoast compared to other magical girl shows hell even compared to other seasons of its mother franchise it simply tries too hard to be something its not. Its definitely not one of the better seasons and I wouldnt recommend wasting time on it in any fashion. Its still better than Magical Girl Site though