I’m Watching “Futari wa Pretty Cure”, Episode 6
Episode 6 — “A New Darkness! The Bear in the Dangerous Forest” — original airdate, March 7th, 2004
What's pretty neat about this episode is that, actually, the English dub is not tremendously different from it's original Japanese counterpart. There's nothing about it that was so drastically off the mark that it would have made it worth noting in this entry. That makes it easier to just recap the episode without making a big diversion, and it's a good sign that the dub is genuinely worth checking out from time to time.
We start by seeing Nagisa and Honoka out in the mountains on a hike. But why did they get there? Well, the episode is basically gonna flash backwards to fill us in, and then catch up somewhere in the middle.
Sometime earlier, the girls and their cell phone alien partners are discussing the Prism Stone they just collected off Pisard's dead body (okay, his body wasn't actually there, it kinda just evaporated). Now that they have it, they need a safe place to put it. Mipple tells the girls that the stones are intended to be placed inside a case made specifically for them, called a Prism Hopish. I don't know what a "Hopish" is, but I'll assume it's an alien word for "licensed product all the kids are going to ask their moms to buy for them". Incidentally, Mepple was supposed to have carried the Prism Hopish down to Earth with him, so hypothetically, they should already have it right now. But they don't, because on his way through Earth's atmosphere, Mepple managed to drop it somewhere over the planet.
Everybody goes to the library and starts digging up books with world maps in them. They're lucky that Mepple seemingly dropped the Hopish somewhere over Japan. Honestly, when entering atmosphere, it really could have ended up anywhere. Thankfully, after some confusing map-digging, it looks like it got dropped somewhere around a lake that's thankfully somehow close enough to get to in a single day hike.
It's as I'm looking at this part of the episode that I'm wondering why the English dub even bothered to localize things like character names and foods and stuff like that. We've already been dealing with the fact that there's Japanese text all over the screen on signs and books and the like. Now we're looking at maps and all of the places we're looking at are clearly Japan. Why pretend these are North American kids at all? Just seems kinda pointless.
When Mepple realizes he's found the lake he dropped the Hopish over, we cut to Nagisa getting ready to go out on a hike. Her brother isn't particularly worried about her, but her mom is. Nagisa has never taken up an interest in hiking, and all she wants her daughter to do is come home before the sun comes down.
Meanwhile, back at wherever it is the bad guys hang out, all of Jyaku-King's minions are mocking Pisard's defeat at the hands of two middle school girls. Jyaku-King doesn't think it's very funny, though. He's pretty mad about it, especially because now those kids have one of the stones they'd originally stolen, and if they get all of them then they can't, uh, have all of evil in one place or keep being alive or whatever it is they're actually trying to accomplish. So now Jyaku-King has to assign a new bad guy to get the job done, and this week he's chosen Gekidrago—a large, hulking beast of a man who's better at grunting than he is talking. Honestly, if these guys were smart, they'd send all their baddies after the Pretty Cure girls at the same time. But if they did that, we wouldn't be able to fill an entire year's worth of episodes, I guess.
The girls and their alien friends begin their hike. Mepple isn't doing a very good job of sensing the Hopish right now. In fact, during their hike he even falls asleep for a little while. When he does weakly start sensing something, it turns out it's a bear cub trapped on a broken tree branch floating down a nearby river. Despite not being able to swim, Nagisa leaps into action to save this bear. She nearly gets herself drowned in the process, but somehow she manages to get the bear up onto some nearby rocks and out of harm's way. The bear cub is very happy and apparently thankful to Nagisa for her help. That's when the bear's mom shows up, big and lumbering. Any real world bear mom would be pissed that anyone at all was anywhere near her cubs, but this bear mom seems to be okay leaving well enough alone, seeing as her baby is safe.
Unfortunately, that bear mom and her cub are about to run into Gekidrago, who has just come to Earth for the first time looking for the Pretty Cure girls. In seeing the bear mom, he realizes that she can actually be pretty useful to him.
It's not long after this that the bear mom—now possessed by the spirit of Zakenna—turns herself back around and starts attacking the girls on their hike, with Gekidrago riding atop her. It takes a second to dodge out of the way of the bear, but that's when the girls finally get their opening to transform into Pretty Cure. A lot of the fight is largely just a defensive struggle. The bear is just so strong and dangerous. Honoka—Cure White—laments that she's not a particularly strong or athletic person, and yet she manages to judo throw Gekidrago away from her pretty deftly, probably thanks to the powers her transformation gives her.
It's when the bear cub runs up to the giant, berserked bear that the girls realize this was the cub's mom now possessed by Zakenna, meaning they have to save the cub all over again from the mom who now can no longer control what she's doing. This is when Mipple and Mepple explain that they can use another spell to release Zakenna's hold on the bear. They swipe the Pretty Cure Rainbow Therapy spell (which uses quite a lot of reused animation from Pretty Cure Marble Screw) and successfully remove Zakenna from her body.
Now the girls are mad at Gekidrago for trying to take advantage of a woodland creature, and they then use Pretty Cure Marble Screw to blow him back, defeating him for now. So we see that reused spell animation once again, as a result.
But also as a result, the blow has knocked loose from the environment the very thing we were out here looking for in the first place—the Prism Hopish! The Hopish looks kinda like a magical three-ringed binder or a Trapper Keeper, and upon opening the Hopish, a little magical dude pops up. He introduces himself as the Guardian of the Prism Stones, then gives the girls a bunch of new licensed property you're gonna have to go out and buy for your kids. First is a journal that is so secret and special that only the Pretty Girl kids can read what's written in it. Secondly, the Guardian turns himself and the Hopish into a card so that the girls can summon him and the device whenever they need. Now loaded up with all the latest toys from Bandai, the girls can return home safely from their conveniently-located hike.
To wrap the episode up, Nagisa is headed to school, waiting for her train at the train station, when she sees her boy crush—what's-his-face—standing at the same train platform. Her other friends tease her about being late for school while Nagisa laments all her muscles being sore, probably from doing all that hiking and being Cure Black or whatever. Honoka looks on from the background and giggles. It's cute and nice and stuff.
The show is formulaic at the moment, but it's still cute and fun. The fact that the English dub version of the episode is largely exactly the same shows that Pretty Cure has always had the potential for good localization in North America. It's a shame so little of it has been appropriately localized, even less of it dubbed. I genuinely look forward to watching more dub episodes of this season.
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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
