After being away from Pretty Cure for a few years, I watched Healin Good Pretty Cure on a whim, and it wound up being the best decision I made. Seriously, I've made no secret of the fact that Healin Good Pretty Cure is one of my favorite seasons of Pretty Cure. Other than not utilizing all of its villains except for Daruizen enough and having to cut episodes due to delays from the pandemic, Healin Good Pretty Cure, I feel, did pretty much everything right in terms of what I feel a magical girl series should be, something I hadn't felt since Heartcatch or Go Princess. So when the series after that, Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure was announced, I decided to watch it. But something told me that it wasn't going to hold a candle to Healin Good in my eyes, but at the same time, I didn't want to be that person and just judge it solely because it wasn't Healin Good. But dear lord...even with my low expectations, Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure has to be one of the biggest disappointments and letdowns I've seen in a while.

So what's the story? A chipper young girl, Manatsu, moves to mainland Japan to start middle school, as her home island doesn't have a middle school. While preparing for the trip, she meets a real life mermaid, named Laura, who had to flee to the surface because her underwater kingdom was attacked, and she's been tasked to find four warriors, Pretty Cure, who can defeat the evil witch that decimated her home. Manatsu is more than happy to accept the task, and three more girls, Sango, Minori, and Asuka, join them on their quest. Together, they must fight the witch's minions and stop them from stealing Motivation Power from their family, friends, and the rest of the townspeople...but they're not quite sure just what the Witch of Delays even wants with Motivation Power in the first place. And yes, the premise is exactly as stupid as it sounds. I'm not even kidding. This leads me to the first of Tropical Rouge's biggest issues: There's literally no stakes or conflict! All the villains ever do is turn people into monsters by sucking away their motivation, which doesn't even kill them BTW, and as a result, there's no palpable tension or sense of urgency, and the battles feel less like high stakes action and are about as boring as eating lunch. Plus, the three minions who serve the Witch of Delays are solely defined by being lazy, and never even fight the Pretty Cure themselves! Even Mahou Tsukai's villains, as bad and cliche as they were, did more than just lie around and steal energy from people.

But the lack of a compelling storyline and bland villains aren't the only thing wrong with Tropical Rouge. Secondly, the show's themes feel really bizarre: How exactly are motivation, procrastination, and cosmetics supposed to go together? How does makeup contribute to motivation? I know effort goes into applying it, or that in some cases it can boost your confidence, but...I don't know. The themes don't seem to mix very well here. Manatsu, the main character, says she uses makeup to deal with loneliness and uneasiness in a new place, but honestly, makeup and cosmetics feel really out of place in a situation like that unless you're deliberately trying to get people to notice you. It feels like TroPri just threw its themes together in a blender just for the sake of it without taking into account whether the contents would actually mix well enough or not. I know Pretty Cure is mainly a glorified toy commercial, and I have no problem with that, but there are lots of times when it felt like TroPri really wanted to hammer in the fact that they were selling toys to kids in the audience, even though they used more subtle methods of introducing them in previous iterations.

Plus, you'd think with 40-something episodes, Toei would use that time to flesh out the characters at every opportunity, build on their chemistry, and make the audience actually care about them, right? WRONG! Previous Pretty Cure seasons would flesh out their main characters early on, showing us their strengths, weaknesses, personalities, idiosyncrasies, and reasons for becoming Pretty Cure. Heartcatch Pretty Cure welt full hog on this as early as episode 4. Healin Good had Nodoka's reasons for wanting to be a Pretty Cure established in episode 2. Smile Pretty Cure eschewed its narrative in favor of developing its main ensemble, and while it didn't always succeed, the creators' hearts were in the right place. Do you want to know how long it takes for Tropical Rouge to put the spotlight on any character that's not Manatsu or Laura? EPISODE 28, more than halfway into the series' run! The entire first half of the series is little more than comedic filler used to pad things out unnecessarily, and it often felt to me like the show actively refused to develop any of its main characters, or even flesh them out in ways that made them feel more like people and less like over-the-top stereotypes. Sango in particular is the biggest victim of this, because episode 3 established a character flaw she has, that she's a conformist who's afraid of going against the in-crowd, and Toei could have done a lot with that, since there's a lot of people who can relate to that. But instead, said flaw never comes up again, and she only ever gets a grand total of TWO focus episodes, both of which are extremely late into the series' run, and even then, they barely do anything with her, so she's literally nothing more than living background scenery taking up space! And I say this as someone who really likes Sango, and I wish she had gotten to do more! She deserves better! Minori and Asuka are more fleshed out, thankfully, and out of the five Cures, Asuka is actually the most well developed and three-dimensional, as she got the best material in the show.

Basically, Toei basically put off developing the other Cures in favor of shilling Manatsu and Laura to no end. Now, I want to say that I actually don't hate Laura as a character. I agree that she's become a bit of a spotlight hog since she became a Cure (That's not even a spoiler, BTW. She turns into a Cure in episode 17, which is really early by Precure standards), but I think she's fine, and I feel she earned the right to become a Cure. Plus, she doesn't annoy me NEARLY as much as, say, Haa-chan from Mahou Tsukai Pretty Cure. But this isn't exactly an issue Toei is unfamiliar with, as their tendency to shill one character at the expense of others who really need more screentime has been prevalent as far back as Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart. Honestly, I think the biggest offender here is Manatsu, who's...just bland as hell. She's literally nothing more than a zany, loud, overly cheerful cipher who acts like she's high on sugar and is just there to shout "tropica-shine!!" every chance she gets. Now, I do admit I know I throw a lot of shade at Megumi from Happiness Charge Pretty Cure, and made it clear she's not my favorite character in Precure in general. But I am, however, going to give her credit for one thing: For as overly saccharine and annoying as Megumi could be, the staff on that show at least allowed her to show emotions other than over-the-top happiness and allowed her to have moments where she could be sad, vulnerable, jealous, angry, and insecure. Granted, other seasons did it better, but I am willing to give Happiness Charge credit where it due when it matters, because if you have a character behave one way all the time, the audience isn't going to connect with them. Manatsu doesn't get that. My problem with Manatsu is that, after 30-something episodes, she hasn't shown any emotions other than being over-the-top happy and zany, constantly shouting "Tropica-shine!" all the damn time, and the few times she acts anything but happy is played for laughs. There's literally nothing in-between! Manatsu is often way too happy for no reason whatsoever. Happiness should be spontaneous, not granted or forced. She's not allowed to be vulnerable or even act like a normal human being, which annoys the shit out of me, and the one episode that actually tried to address that issue shoots itself in the foot due to bad writing that made the characters seem needlessly dumb, and still played Manatsu's angst for laughs and not even trying to treat it like a genuinely serious situation! Furthermore, early in the show, Manatsu says she puts on makeup to deal with loneliness and uneasiness, but the show never actually SHOWS Manatsu being any of those things. 99% of the time, she's zany, loud, and acts like an overgrown five-year-old, and very rarely is she allowed to be vulnerable or realistically emotional in any way, so the anime kind of shoots itself in the foot when it can't even be bothered to develop any of its characters beyond their most basic personality trait.

Which leads me to the show's biggest problem: The fact that it's so laser-focused on comedy in favor of everything else. It always felt to me like Tropical Rouge has this mindset that if it can have characters act zany and make funny faces all the time, it won't lose the kids' attention, and considering how much it put off actually bothering to flesh out the story and the characters in favor of it, it comes off as patronizing and condescending at best. Here's the thing: I can understand Toei wanting to make a more lighthearted, comedic series after the more emotionally charged Healin Good, especially since we're still dealing with the COVID pandemic. Hell, the whole reason Smile Pretty Cure was created was so kids can be cheered up after the awful 2011 earthquake. But here's the thing: Smile also had a heavy focus on comedy, but it actually gave a shit about developing the characters and giving the audience reasons to care about them. Yes, it was very episodic and had a lot of filler, but Smile knew what to focus on and what to keep limited, keeping the comedic parts where it was appropriate, and allowing its characters to be vulnerable when it mattered. Smile didn't always succeed, but it at least tried. Smile didn't focus so much on comedy that it was at the expense of literally everything else, which is, unfortunately, what Tropical Rouge did. Most of the early episodes consist of Manatsu and Laura doing stuff that did nothing to progress the story, feeling more like they were just padding things out, and by the time the show remembered it needed to flesh out Sango, Minori, and Asuka, it was too little, too late, and I was no longer invested in the anime anymore. Seriously, Toei, your shows work better when you actually put effort into the writing and characters! Even Digimon Ghost Game, which is airing right now, understands this!

Alright, I think that's enough of the bad stuff. Let's talk about the good stuff. First: the animation. Everything is bright and colorful, with CGI being used when appropriate, the girls' Cure designs are actually pretty creative and fit the tropical theme the show is going for, and the actual character animation is fairly solid. The soundtrack is pretty good too, and, surprisingly enough, Toei actually held back on reusing BGM from Healin Good here. I only noticed two pieces of background music from Healin Good being used, though I could be wrong, so good on Toei for putting in some effort there. The songs are well sung too, with the opening being a total ear worm. I also liked a lot of the minor and side characters who appeared from time to time, like Manatsu's teacher Sakuragawa, Asuka's former friend-turned-rival Yuriko (the blue haired student council president), Sango's mom, that blue haired girl who loves astronomy, and so on. I also appreciate that Kururun isn't a living plot device or important to the story for once, as she's just a cute animal mascot, but still manages to be useful when the time calls for it. Also, I love that one episode that was just a bunch of vignettes done in different animation styles, and that was the absolute best justification to have the Heartcatch Pretty Cure girls make a cameo for a few scenes. The show does have some flashes of brilliance every now and again. Unfortunately, they're very few and far between, and not enough to save the show from being anything above aggressively mediocre.

Before anyone says anything, no, I don't expect children's shows to be on the level of Van Gogh-style masterpieces, nor am I one of those chuds who only like dark, edgy magical girl shows. Pretty Cure, at the end of the day, is a glorified toy commercial for little girls. But shows like My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Ojamajo Doremi, Card Captor Sakura, and even other seasons of Pretty Cure, have proven that you don't have to be completely soulless when making them. All I ask is that the people who make these shows actually care and put effort into making said shows for girls, not simply My Little Pony Newborn Cuties-style visual fodder to plop kids in front of the TV so they can be babysat for half an hour every day. Every Pretty Cure season has things they're good at and some things they aren't. Mahou Tsukai took great care to flesh out its setting, Suite Pretty Cure made great use of its music themes, Smile Pretty Cure could be genuinely funny when it tried, Heartcatch really ramped up the action scenes and developed its main ensemble, and so on. Other than improved animation, Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure doesn't really have anything that makes it stand out from the other Pretty Cure seasons, or anything that it's really good at. It's a shame, because had it done more with itself, it could have been amazing, had it not tried so hard to be solely driven by comedy, filler episodes, and unnecessary shilling of both Manatsu and Laura. Granted, I still think Happiness Charge Pretty Cure is worse due to trying too hard to emulate other seasons, ignoring plot points it established, bad writing decisions, and poorly executed characters, so for the few things Tropical Rouge did do right, I'm willing to give it some credit where its due.

That being said, if you want something to show your daughter or little sister so they, or you, can kill time or have a good laugh, feel free to watch Tropical Rouge Pretty Cure. But it is absolutely NOT one of the better Pretty Cure seasons by a country mile. It wastes its time on needless filler and is just a massive chore to watch. I really hope Delicious Party Pretty Cure turns out better, and if it's not, I'm just gonna rewatch Heartcatch. Don't expect anything extraordinary out of this one.