I’m Watching “Futari wa Pretty Cure”, Episode 4

One thing I’ve not really touched much on, although I think about it every episode, is that the Pretty Cure opening has a sound about it that makes it sound a bit older than it actually is. While the show first aired a pretty long while back in 2004, the orchestration makes me think of much older Japanese shows from the ’70s. It sounds like a lot of ‘70s-era tokusatsu, or maybe even the original Cutie Honey opening. Big bombastic horns sections and booming drums. The ending theme, of course, is much more modern by 2004 standards, very pop, and very upbeat.

Episode 4 — “A Miracle!? The Art Museum Comes to Life” — original airdate, February 22nd, 2004

Episode four opens on our middle school class hopping on a bus for a field trip, but not without some internal narration from Nagisa to get us up to speed on what’s been happening the last few episodes and how we got here. The principal and his aide join the class on the bus as well.

You might remember that Nagisa and Honoka are both basically leading the field trip themselves. It’s a lot of responsibilities for middle school kids, and weird that their teacher isn’t leading them in the trip at all. Together, the two girls have basically had to make their own lesson plan about the art museum they’re headed to and all the art inside. Nagisa drew all the pictures, and they look just about as bad as you might imagine they would.

After giving the field trip run-down, another classmate named Mayu Kashiwada stands up and starts talking about just how excited she is to see some 100-year-old art by an Italian artist she really likes. Then everybody comments on how her hair looks very similar to Nagisa’s, and she confirms that she saw Nagisa’s hair and thinks very highly of her and wanted her hair done similarly, too. Nagisa is actually pretty gracious about this and tells Mayu it looks great on her.

Meanwhile, over in… wherever it is the bad guys hang out, Jyaku-King is starting to lose his cool with Pisard, and demands he bring back the Prism Stones or else Pisard will be dead. We’re also now at least visually introduced to three — maybe four? — other enemies, who all mock Pisard for being pretty bad at his job. It’s pretty remniscent of the progression in other magical girl shows, including Sailor Moon. It was pretty clear Pisard can’t last forever. Clearly mad about getting mocked, Pisard takes off.

The class exits the bus at the museum. Nagisa’s having to act as a tour guide, as if that should be either a teacher or a museum staff member’s job. All she really knows how to do is tell her classmates to follow the arrows placed around the museum, but can’t answer any important art questions.

As you might expect, Mepple is getting restless in his pouch on Nagisa’s side and starts screaming, as he’s apt to do, forcing Nagisa to go off to try to get him to shut up. Why she hasn’t used that sleeping card on him again, I don’t know. But now that she’s in a different room with Mepple and able to talk to him, he’s threatening to scream to get more attention if Nagisa doesn’t take him to see Mipple right now.

Thankfully, Honoka comes around the corner with Mipple in her pouch, and now Mipple and Mepple can pop out of their cell phone forms and start screaming and hugging each other again. Nagisa demands they calm down because everything in the room is fragile works of art. For some reason, Nagisa decides to make an example of a nearby statue, and ends up accidentally snapping a finger off. In her attempts to stick it back on, she pulls the whole arm off the statue, too. Though, in looking at it, it sort of seems like the arm is meant to pop back in like a mannequin. Thankfully, Nagisa gets it back on, though she’s put it on in such a way that the statue looks like its scratching its own butt. Ah, cute child humor.

In the same room, a fascinating painting hangs on another wall. It’s a portrait of a man looking up into the night sky to see a handful of beautiful shooting stars. The girls realize this is that Italian artist Mayu was going on about, as the painting is labeled as having been from 100 years ago. As she looks at the painting, Mipple realizes this piece of art is actually depicting the day she came to Earth. She remembers falling to Earth and seeing many sights around the world, but found that she’d eventually woken up inside of Honoka’s storage unit on her property. But that means she would have landed on Earth 100 years ago, right? But that’s not even the most confusing part. Mepple adds that he had gone to chase after Mipple when she ran away only a day after she’d left. And as you remember, Mepple basically only just got here. Weird, huh? Well, Mipple also says that she was told that once you travel to a different world that time passes differently. It doesn’t fully make sense, but Honoka acts like this is a studied scientific thing. I wondered if she was about to go into the Theory of Relativity or something (though I’m not actually certain that’s how the theory works), but she never does.

That’s when Mayu runs in and finds them in this room. Mayu’s thrilled to see they’ve found her favorite artist’s work. She also approaches a self portrait he worked on, and then explains that she’s learned that on the night he painted the starry sky portrait, he’d seen the shooting stars and then got hit in the head with a rock that had fallen from the sky (which happened to be Mipple). And after that day, he’d painted successful pieces of artwork ever since. Something about that story has her really impressed, I guess.

After the commercial break, the class gets back on the bus, and I guess we’re just meant to assume they did the entirety of their field trip. Unfortunately, Mayu didn’t make it back on the bus. So before the bus can leave, Nagisa and Honoka run back inside the museum to try to track her down. Oh, and the principal and his aide are still inside, too.

As Honoka and Nagisa go back in, Pisard is back, and he’s very angry about his status about whether or not he remains alive. Without a word, he gets on the bus full of middle school kids, looking for his Pretty Cure enemies. They aren’t there. So just for the hell of it, he does this weird Medusa-like thing with his eyes and turns everyone on the bus to stone. Then he gets off the bus and goes into the museum.

While Nagisa and Honoka are running toward the room with that Italian painting, figuring that must be where Mayu is, Pisard is not far behind and is just turning everybody he sees into stone, including the principal and his teacher aide.

Actually, I’m trying to figure out how it is that Nagisa and Honoka don’t reach Mayu first. They were the first to go into the building. And yet all they see are a bunch of museum attendees turned to stone, as if Pisard got there first, and they don’t manage to reach Mayu in time before Pisard also does something with her. The order of operations doesn’t really make sense when you think about it.

Either way, everybody is eventually in the room with the Italian painting. Except suddenly Mayu’s not there. Not even as a stone statue. Pisard does his thing where he summons the ghostly Zakenna monster, and Zakenna starts haunting various parts of the museum. Suddenly it’s all Night at the Museum, and everything in it is coming to life. The characters in paintings are jumping out of them, pieces of armor are coming to life, and even elephants are running around trying to trample the girls. It’s a good thing some of the exhibits are very stupid and run face first into each other.

The girls now have the opportunity to transform into Pretty Cure. But stuff is getting weird, and some exhibit has come to life and is flooding the museum. Also there’s dragons in the water flooding the museum now? Just weird stuff happening all over the place, man.

In the confusion, Pisard starts a tornado inside the museum and sucks all the stone museum attendees into the tornado. Honoka and Nagisa aren’t certain they can save them. But Mipple and Mepple assure them that they can just close their eyes and concentrate on their usual Pretty Cure Marble Screw thing and it’ll be fine. And that’s basically what happens. I mean, they blow a hole in the roof of the museum in the process, but it works. At the same time, I’m telling you, I swore they ended up killing Pisard simply as a casualty of trying to save the museum guests. But I have to assume that’s not true, because the next episode preview coming up shortly after this shows he’s still alive in the next episode, and now I’m actually kind of disappointed.

Everyone who had been turned to stone is now back to normal again, but they’re still struggling to find Mayu where she was last seen near that Italian painting. But what’s weirder still is that that same painting now seems to have a picture of a girl in it who looks a whole lot like Mayu, sitting next to the artist in the same picture. …But then, no she isn’t! Because now she’s waking up off the museum floor saying she had a dream she was hanging out with the artist, and now suddenly her likeness isn’t in the picture at all! So, hey, what caused that to happen?

Ha ha, don’t ask questions, you won’t be getting any answers.

And finally, some museum staff members have stumbled across the statue that Nagisa had accidentally broken and put the arm back onto incorrectly, and actually they think it looks pretty cool.

That’s about it! I’d let the dub play in the background while I was getting some other work done, and there really weren’t any major enough differences worth noting. It’s kinda weird how it mostly remains a pretty competent dub, all things considered. What a shame this isn’t released on DVD anywhere!

See you guys next time!