I’m Watching “Futari wa Pretty Cure”, Episode 2

I imagine that, as I continue to blog, you’ll notice the entries are shorter than the first entry was, as that first one was largely set-up to introduce you to my own specific journey into PreCure. I don’t see myself discussing too much more today, as I’m largely giving my impressions of the second episode with little other content to go along with it.

Episode 2 — “Give Me a Break! The City Targeted by Darkness” — original airdate, February 8th, 2004

I think another reason why I may not have gotten on board the PreCure train earlier on is that the very first episode of this very first series aired just days after my 18th birthday. I think I would have given this one look at this show and felt I was already outside of the target demographic. But the interesting thing about growing up and time marching on is that you start to care significantly less and less about whether or not you’re the supposed “correct demographic” for a given show, and eventually you just enjoy it for what it is. It only took me almost another 20 years.

I took a couple of scratch notes while watching the subtitled version of this episode on Crunchyroll. Even though the quality of the audio and the video has improved over the years, the subtitles still leave a little something to be desired. Granted, they aren’t an ugly, permanent font anymore, but translations, punctuations, and spelling are sometimes just a little unnatural and makes me wonder if these weren’t done by someone who isn’t a native English speaker. They’ll most certainly get you by, of course, and to that extent I won’t say that the subtitles don’t provide a very basic service. But they still needed an English-speaking editor to comb over them and fix some mistakes. The translator has typed “than” when what they really meant was “then”, and messed up well-known phrases like “to begin with” and instead writing “to being with”. It’s little wonder we didn’t get much more localization after this when this is how they handled it the first time.

The episode starts with Nagisa reminiscing in class about the previous day when she and Honoka transformed into Pretty Cure. It serves as a pretty quick and standard recap. At the same time, Honoka is being elected by her classmates to serve as the class representative, further proving what a stellar and likable student she is.

Class moves forward, and Nagisa is instructed to read out of a book out loud to the class. She’s unfortunately interrupted by Mepple, strapped up in a magical cell phone case, demanding to be freed and causing a pretty severe class disruption.

After the opening credits sequence, we’re taken to an entirely new location to visit last episode’s enemy, Pisard, who has traveled to some unrecognizable, dark, and dusty-looking place to speak to the guy who appears to be above him — a huge, cloudy shadow guy being called Jyaku-King. Jyaku-King here is pretty mad at Pisard for not being able to nab Mepple and Mipple while he had the chance the other day. The two cell phone mascots seem to be carrying two precious Prism Stones. Jyaku-King already has five of them, but he still needs the final two in order to be immortal. I think. It’s a little simple and vague, but fine, that does answer a few more questions.

Back at school, Nagisa runs outside to try to get Mepple to shut up, since he won’t stop nagging her to feed him. It would seem that a bunch of the cards he provided to her include caretaker cards. Mepple’s personal caretakers have traveled with him to Earth in order to tend to him, but they have to be swiped through the phone’s e-Reader in order to do it. It sure seems like Mepple is turning into some kind of a virtual pet. I haven’t looked it up yet, but I’m starting to wonder if Bandai didn’t produce some kind of virtual pet Mepple toy as a tie-in product. Nagisa swipes the Omp card (which I guess is the name of the chef ready to serve Mepple his food).

Meanwhile, Pisard is hovering over Tokyo marveling at how many people there are in the city, and just how many emotions he could cultivate from them as a gift to Jyaku-King. It’s really giving Sailor Moon vibes from the human energy and emotion cultivation.

There’s a little bit more jumping back and forth between characters in this episode than I’d like. We’re already back at school, this time in the science lab, just to see Honoka do some cool science-ing, trying to make some kind of candy. Unfortunately, while she gets the result she wants, she blows up the lab in the process.

Anyway, Nagisa is there watching this happen, and Mepple jumps out demanding to see Mipple, only to find out that Mipple is currently sleeping. That’s when Honoka explains that if Nagisa wants Mepple to stop talking during class, she’s gonna have to make him go to sleep with the sleep card — a thing she didn’t realize she had. She thankfully finds it and successfully swipes it through Mepple’s phone e-Reader, sending him into a deep sleep.

The two girls have a conversation between themselves about whether or not they can truly protect the Earth as Pretty Cure, when suddenly a soccer ball comes soaring through the science lab window. And I don’t mean through an open window, I mean straight through the glass. Shattered glass just everywhere, man. It’s pretty gnarly.

Nagisa is pretty mad about the soccer ball, so she picks it up in a huff and goes outside to tear the soccer club a new one. What she doesn’t expect, however, is that the boy who kicked the ball through the glass would be some cute dude called Fuji-P (that’s gotta be a nickname, right?). Nagisa actually clams up and accepts his apology pretty quickly.

Meanwhile (again), Pisard is down amongst the people of Tokyo, and with no explanation is dressed like a slightly more modern and normal dude. I mean, for as normal as a guy with Visual Kei J-Rocker hair can look. He’s decided his newest plan will involve entering a home goods store, hypnotizing the employee selling vacuum cleaners, and then steal a vacuum cleaner for himself. (Wait, please stick around, I promise this is going somewhere.)

ALSO MEANWHILE, Nagisa has gone back home and is wondering why it is she suddenly fumbled her interaction with this Fuji-P guy. Mepple pops out asking if she’s thinking about food (she isn’t), then offers to tell her more about his backstory and where Mepple and Mipple actually came from. Oh, good! That’s actually useful information I’d like to know about.

Mepple and Mipple came from a world called the Field of Light. It was good and happy, until this giant evil Haunter-lookin’ ghost thing called Dotsuku Zone showed up and started swallowing everything. The royal family asked Mepple to protect their daughter, Mipple, the Princess of Hope, and together they escaped with two Prism Stones. (Oh, and for the record, Mipple is also having this exact same conversation at the exact same time with Honoka.)

BACK IN THE CITY, Pisard has summoned that ghostly cloud monster Zakenna again, and uses it to possess the vacuum cleaner he just stole, turning it into a giant vacuum cleaner monster, which allows him to… uh… suck up electricity from across the city? Sure, let’s go with that. Nagisa sees on the news that massive power outages and total chaos is happening across town. Nagisa and Honoka meet up in the middle of town to check it out.

Their two friends from school are in the middle of riding an elevator up a tall building, when the elevator gets stuck dozens of floors up. They very quickly find that Pisard and his vacuum cleaner monster are the cause of this, and transform into Cure White and Cure Black. Fighting ensues, though it’s kinda rough, having to deal with a vacuum cleaner monster’s suction power. The girls are thrown down the very elevator shaft where their friends are stuck, and unfortunately for all of them, Pisard cuts the elevator’s wires. Now all of the girls are plummeting down the elevator shaft, presumably to their deaths at the bottom.

This is when Nagisa and Honoka do possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen, and it’s insane that it works at all. They both tie one of the elevator’s cords around their waists, then plant their feet on the walls of the elevator shaft, then reach out to each other and hold hands, trying to physically brace an entire falling elevator in an attempt to at least slow its descent. And FOR SOME REASON, it actually kinda-sorta works. The elevator does still hit the bottom, and it lands harder than an elevator really should, but not so hard that it kills anyone in the process. But man, I guess this only works because they’re magical girls now? How else do you explain being able to carry the entire weight of an elevator on the waists of two middle school girls, or not having your feet completely rip off when you try to prop them against the rapidly-passing wall? Insane, man. Absolutely insane.

Well, now these middle school girls are pissed. So they head back outside and find the vacuum cleaner monster, do that thing they did last episode where they summoned lightning together to hit it with Pretty Cure Marble Screw, followed by Nagisa finishing him off with what I can only describe as a Rider Kick (see: Kamen Rider). The monster once again explodes into a million little stars and runs away, leaving only a normal home vacuum cleaner in its place. Pisard flees and ponders how he’s underestimated the Pretty Cure girls twice now, musing that it may be because of the “Power of Light.” Again, whatever that is.

So it’s the next day, and Nagisa and Honoka’s friends are telling them about how somebody outside the elevator saved them from splattering on the floor of the elevator shaft, not knowing that they’re talking to the very people who saved them. Electricity has returned to the city, and now the home goods salesman is trying to sell that same vacuum cleaner to someone else. But the episode ends on a close-up shot of the vacuum cleaner, on which you can see the imprint of the bottom of a very tiny shoe, indicating this is indeed the same monster that had grown to the size of a daikaiju and was Rider Kicked to sleep by Nagisa.

Nuts, man. Completely nuts. On one hand, I was kinda feeling whiplashed around by having the story jump around from place to place as much as it was. But on the other hand, two 14-year-old girls were able to slow the descent of an elevator by holding the weight of said elevator with their own waists, followed by a Rider Kick to a giant vacuum cleaner monster. Gotta admit, I do think I see the entertainment value here sometimes.

I did watch the dub back-to-back with this episode as well, though much like the first episode, there’s not much to write home about, and aside from the same old character name changes, there weren’t a lot of liberties taken to the plot of the show. Aside from the nitpick of the localization to character names, I could certainly just about see this dub being a fairly solid choice for consuming Pretty Cure, if that was your preference.

Let’s see if we can keep this up for another day. Thank you for reading, friends. Let’s meet here again soon.