All of my reviews contain spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning. Some images in this review appear courtesy of The Pretty Cure Wiki 880https://i.ur.com/HQ2XDjd.png The 2010s were a weird time to be a magical girl. The decade would be marked as one where the genres general fortunes took a sharp downturn. Replaced in their home demographic by idol shows aimed at kids and stylistically supplanted by a number of grimngritty dark takes on the aesthetic that had little to do with the genre itself. Indeed HeartCatch Precure was for a few short days a seasonal contemporary of Puella Magi Madoka Magica. Its tempting to compare and contrast the twothe idealistic childrens show that rang a final bell for the great straight mahou shoujo shows versus its immediate successor the tarblack world story drama helmed by genre outsiders. However the truth of the matter is that the simultaneity is mostly a matter of circumstance as nothing is ever that simple and this oversimplified narrative would leave out the strong classic magical girl shows that have come out since. In fact very much unlike its eradefining chronological neighbor HeartCatch despite factually airing in 2010 and 11 often feels unstuck in time completely agnostic to the decade it helped ring in. Theres a couple reasons for this. For one thing theres the look. Yoshihiko Umakoshis character designs have a singular sensibility whose main peers outside of his own other work most famously on the Doremi franchise Saint Seya Omega and Casshern Sins are older shoujo art which contributes to this feeling of timelessness. 880https://i.ur.com/a4gQqFw.png It also gives us The Dark Precure who is just like honestly. Look at her. This design is so cool it should be illegal. Beyond just the visuals though HeartCatch Precure is a platonic ideal of a magical girl series. Everything generally associated with the magical warrior subgenre it pulls off nearperfectly. But while HeartCatch is certainly classic in feel it is by no means rote. While keeping the language of things firmly understandable to its young target audience HeartCatch often wrestles with some pretty big ideas. Its telling that even on a cursory surface read two of the three members of this installments villainous trio can be easily taken as manifestations of two of societys greatest ills from a young female point of view. Kobraja as the embodiment the pursuit of a cold heartless beauty with no warmth or passion. Kumojacky as the toxic mightmakesright philosophy given flesh chasing strength as an end unto itself without greater purpose. That hes something of a caricature of a shonen protagonist on top of that is a bit telling. 880https://i.ur.com/aLoS0WH.png HeartCatch also has a strong core theme of selfacceptance and pursuing forward emotional development even when its hard or scary. Late in the series when faced with the task of fighting embodiments of the darkness within their hearts what our girls face is not explicit malice but the embodiment of lingering doubts and personal flaws. The way they defeat these shades is not to conquer them in combat but to embrace them. Moonlights sadness Sunshines conflicted identity Marines envy Blossoms weakness. Flaws that are accepted reckoned with and ultimately embraced as part of the whole self not cast aside or disregarded as unimportant as they might be in a lesser series. Part of HeartCatchs core thesis is that it is not merely our best traits or our present selves who make us who we are. It is all of them and everyone weve ever been. Selfacceptance is not something that HeartCatch pays mere lip service to. The strong theming ties heavily into the character writing which is uniformly fantastic. Almost every recurring character from the Cures themselves to the villains even some minor backup characters have strong personalities. Often surprisingly complex ones too. Even just as far as the four Precures that make up this series core team. Theyre layered in a way that makes them feel real. TsubomiCure Blossomis the simplest. Insecure and cripplingly shy at the start of the series she blossoms haha into a more open person over its runtime as the root causes of her insecurity a childhood spent with parents who were often away on business chiefly are uncovered and addressed. She also goes from being the titled weakest Precure ever to one of the strongest and most confident. Its the simplest character arc of the four but no less a pleasure to watch. 880https://i.ur.com/QHsepXe.png Her compatriot Erika Cure Marine is arrogant and boisterous but that belies both a genuine love for her friends and family and on the other side of the coin envy for people more accomplished than her such as her older sister Momoka. Shes also surprisingly keen to the way the show works being to date the only Precure to come up with her Cure name before she was actually chosen to be one. 880https://i.ur.com/bIFfwDE.png Itsuki Cure Sunshine lives a dual existence as the heir to a dojo in lieu of her sickly brother and with a repressed desire to simply be girly. What might come across as an overdone plot point in other shows is given life here by the serious conflict it causes in her specific situation. When Itsuki actually becomes Cure Sunshine halfway through the series she doesnt just add a third member to the team shes able to live out her desire to be cute and feminine while still defending those she cares for. We do not HeartCatch again puts forward have to pick between different parts of our personality. 880https://i.ur.com/ALKRRzt.png Lastly the character of Yuri the former Cure Moonlight in particular is written with such an elemental bonedeep melancholy that the fact that its contained in what is indeed still a kids show just feels incredible. Over the series runtime Yuri deals with the bitter sting of loss of her partner fairy and her fathereven for this show pretty heavy subject matterand has to learn to open her heart again. When late in the series she finally returns to active duty as Cure Moonlight it feels wonderfully wellearned. It helps that Moonlight with her elegant appearance and edge in combat experience compared to the rest of the team is one of the coolest Precure ever no further qualifiers necessary. 880https://i.ur.com/1sy4m5N.png These are just the four main characters but they demonstrate nicely how HeartCatch in a genre often stereotyped as having simplistic or even nonsensical character writing lightly plays with expectations and more importantly is able to weave characters that ring true to its audience. The strength of the writing inspires empathy which makes the girls struggles feel like they matter instead of simply being iterations of genre convention. In case this sounds dour it must be noted that theres a fair bit of comedy too. Not all of it lands but a lot of it does. It doesnt matter how old or young you are some light slapstick with a heavy dose of funny facial expressions never gets old. 880https://i.ur.com/GVDMEDi.png 880https://i.ur.com/Z5AT4dX.png 880https://i.ur.com/SvobLGl.png On a more basic craft level the show looks great too. The unique visual style has already been mentioned but the animation in HeartCatch never dips below decent and often pulls out at least a few greatlooking shots per episode really ramping up in particular in the shows final quarter. That combined with the strong aesthetic makes for a show thats a visual treat. Now this must be tempered with the obviousPretty Cure on the whole is one of the most nakedly merchandisedriven anime ever made and as a consequence if you cant put up with outrageously toyetic magic wands jewelry boxes and so on you are going to be a touch frustrated. That though is less of a complaint about HeartCatch and more of a complaint about the capitalistic realities of forprofit childrens TV. Something well outside the scope of this review. 880https://i.ur.com/bkmqtuQ.png 880https://i.ur.com/WOwmt7q.png Dont forget to bug your parents for your very own Flower Tact So you can be just like Cure Blossom Theres also quite a lot of stock footage as is standard for the franchise but its woven well into the episodes and allows the nonstock sequences to stand out even more. A fair amount of filler is present too. However only about 5 or 6 of the shows 49 episodes feel genuinely inconsequential a batting average that most singlecour anime would envy. There are finally a few places where its themes falter eversoslightly. HeartCatch is sadly a straight magical girl show in more ways than one as Tsubomi has an early crush on Itsuki dashed by the knowledge that shes a girl. It wouldve been a lot to ask at the turn of the last decade but at least some token exploration of these feelings persisting wouldve been nice as a further iteration of the selfacceptance theme. Ultimately though these are all relatively minor qualms as opposed to major criticisms. The long and short of it is that if you want a magical girl series of this type youd be hardpressed to find a better one from the New 10s than HeartCatch. Ten years on it remains one of the franchises most popular seasons. It also hasnt aged a day since it concluded and if youre the sort who finds value in classic Good Vs. Evil narratives strong resonant messaging that hits as hard at 33 and 23 as it does at 13 or even just pretty transformation sequences theres a lot to love in HeartCatch. 880https://i.ur.com/axYwedD.png 880https://i.ur.com/18lqwTw.png And if you liked this review why not check out some of my others here on Anilist?https://anilist.co/user/planetJane/reviews