I’m Watching “Futari wa Pretty Cure”, Episode 5
Some of you may be new here, and that's fine. Allow me to introduce myself once again. Hello, my name is Kaylyn, and two years ago I had started trying to write recaps of episodes of the anime series Futari wa Pretty Cure. It was a show I had been interested in for quite some time but had never spent much time with. In 2023, I started posting my episode recaps on Medium. Just yesterday, I imported those posts from Medium over to here on my own web site. I suggest at least reading the first entry, since it covers some background on why you might care about Pretty Cure/PreCure as a franchise. Unfortunately, not long after I had gotten started, I recalled I had started receiving a short burst of some fairly intense online harassment (don't worry, it was completely unrelated to PreCure), and I stopped writing recaps for a while, wholly intending to revisit it when things died down. Sadly, at the time I never went back to it. Well, now it feels like enough time has passed, and life has kind of leveled itself out enough that I am now able to come back to doing things I enjoy with much less worry. So I'm finally picking up where I had previously left off, and continuing onward through my first-time watch of Futari wa Pretty Cure.
To restate, I'm also taking a little bit of extra time to watch not only the legal streaming Japanese versions on Crunchyroll, but the Canadian English dub as well, just because it's such a fascinating piece of history for a lot of reasons. It aired in Canada, was supposed to air in the US but never did, and never got a home retail release. A good chunk of the dub thus far has been a pretty accurate adaptation of the original Japanese dialogue, but there are moments of whitewashing (such as changing the characters' names to North American stereotypical white names), localizing Japanese food items to be more recognizable North American food items, and occasionally erasing even the mere suggestion of homosexuality in the world. The storyline has otherwise remained mostly intact, so it's not the worst thing I've ever seen, but it does commit some of localization's most frowned-upon sins from time to time, and it's kind of wild to see it when it happens.
Anyway, enough of the backstory. Onwards to episode five!
Episode 5 — “Serious Trouble! A Desperate Pisard” — original airdate, February 29th, 2004
After a brief recap of the previous episode, we catch Nagisa (Natalie in English) sleeping in her bed, only to be awoken by her mascot alien cell phone named Mepple, demanding that she feed him. When Nagisa slides a card to feed him, Mepple demands he be served a bowl of kitsune udon. This moment is the first of our major localization changes in the English dub, wherein instead of udon, Mepple insists upon consuming a bowl of chicken noodle soup. Great start there.
After the opening sequence plays, Jyaku-King gives one final chance to Pisard to collect these stones he's after. Honestly, after five episodes, we're already on way too many chances. Hope that's not foreshadowing or anything. Anyway, all these other bad dudes we saw in the previous episodes are practically taking bets on whether or not Pisard will be successful this time, and whether or not that means one of them will have to step up and get the job done soon.
Back on Earth, Mepple has convinced Nagisa to leave the house and take him over to Honoka's (Hannah) so that he can visit with his alien cell phone girlfriend Mipple. Along the way, Nagisa runs into that upperclassmen boy from her school who had previously kicked a soccer ball through a window. Nagisa is still enamored with him, yet still has not bothered to ask him for his name. Mepple can tell Nagisa likes him, and he teases her about it, but it's quickly dropped yet again so that they can continue on to Honoka's house.
After meeting up with Honoka, the two girls and their alien cell phone friends go to a nearby park to talk. They all seem to be getting along pretty well and becoming fast friends. Nagisa is jealous of how popular Honoka is, and laments that she herself seems to only get love letters from other girls at school. The English dub has sadly erased the gay, however, as Natalie instead says that all she gets in her locker is fan mail from other girls who want to be like her, which is basically the same explanation they gave for all the love letters she received in episode one. During this conversation, both girls get harassed by two dudes in the park. In Japanese, the two guys are plainly aggressively hitting on the both of them before the girls decide they've had enough and just leave together. I'm not too sure I understand the logic behind the alteration that happened in the English dub, because suddenly now the two boys in the park are just being weirdly bullying and trying to kick the girls out, seemingly just for being girls. Like, the guys suck either way, but I'm not sure I understand why this needed to be changed at all in the first place.
Nagisa and Honoka take a walk around town and are starting to get hungry. To show how different the girls are from each other, each one makes several different kinds of food suggestions, all wildly different from each other. This is yet another localization moment for the English dub, wherein the localization team decided all of the food items needed to be more westernized. Taiyaki became cake. Yakisoba became spaghetti. I'm a little confused at why pasta became stroganoff, but maybe that's because they wrote themselves into a corner with spaghetti just seconds earlier. Okonomiyaki became stir-fry. Nabeyaki udon became pita wraps. That one was pretty damn bad, but the most egregious of all was the two of them walking up to a takoyaki stand owned and operated by a friend of Nagisa's, only to have the English dub make the wild claim that these were donuts. This is 4Kids Pokemon levels of rice-ball-to-donut localization here. In the first five episodes, it's easily the most eye-rolling localization choice, and it's the kind of decision that has made internet chuds mad about even the thought of localization ruining anime for over 20 years.
The girls are realizing throughout this episode that they're pretty different from each other, though they do both enjoy spending time together. Nagisa is worried that they're too different and that Honoka might not like it, though. They clash again when they go out shopping for clothes, and it turns out their taste in fashion is pretty different. Also, Mepple and Mipple are in a changing room practically making out with each other, which is pretty wild.
The girls go their separate ways, and while Nagisa is worried over what Honoka thinks of her, Honoka on her way home is suddenly attacked by Pisard. By the end of a long chase sequence, Pisard actually manages to knock Mipple out of Honoka's hands. At the same time, Honoka has realized that she has accidentally carried one of Honoka's handkerchiefs with her after they split up and tries to go to her house to return it, only to find that Honoka never made it home. She does finally stumble across Honoka being attacked by Pisard. Frankly, right at this moment, Pisard has won. He has Honoka's transformation device, and apparently, if one of them can't transform, neither of them can transform. He did it. He bested them. He won, hands down.
So why the hell did he suddenly return Mipple to Honoka? Just to have the thrill of winning in a real fight? Really? Bro, why even gamble on it? You already know that Jyaku-King is at the end of his damn rope with you. If you don't win this, you're probably gonna die.
Guess what? He lost. Bro really had it in the bag, and then he fumbled it right at the end. Whatever, I guess it's fine. We're only in episode five, anyway. Now, I haven't looked ahead and spoiled myself, but he might still come back. Mepple and Mipple say, "Oh, don't worry. He won't come back. ...In that form." Meaning, what? He might come back later looking like something else? Maybe something less harmful? I'm gonna guess that's what'll happen. For now, I kinda already get the formula. We've defeated one of the small army of bad guys, and now we have to move onto a new guy next week. I've seen media before, I know how this works.
Until then, though, we're teased by being shown that defeating Pisard rewarded them with him dropping a green Prism Stone in the shape of a heart. We're sure to see more of these in the future, so be on the lookout for that.
I'm glad to be watching this show again and doing things I enjoy doing for myself, while sharing that with the rest of you as well. And I'm happy to be experiencing the history of a long-running, well-loved franchise with such a big cult following by both children and adults alike. Hoping to catch up with episode six a little later this week as well.
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Special thanks to the following Phobos and Mars tier members: Scott Sandler, BetaRayILL, Andre, Mannekwin
Extra special thanks to the following Kasei Gumi members: Gomer
