(This review was originally written on April 6th, 2014, loooong before I watched All Stars F)

I normally don't watch/read crossovers. Not for any reason. They just never appealed to me. The only crossovers I've ever seen are the Fairly Oddparents and Jimmy Neutron crossovers called the Jimmy Timmy Power Hours. I have some memories of them, but I don't have any interest in watching them again. Speaking of crossovers, Toei LOVES to do these with the Pretty Cure franchise, and has been doing it since 2009, when Fresh Pretty Cure was first made. While it is fun to see characters from other related series interact, Toei's had a habit of making these movies more about milking it's cash cow, selling toys, and catering to children rather than making the crossovers actually mean something. I will admit, I haven't seen the All Star movies 1 through 3, though I hear they're pretty bad, so I won't watch them. However, my interest became piqued when I read about the story for a new series of Precure All Stars movies, the New Stage, the first movie having a completely movie original character as a main character, even moreso when I learned the girl is shy, moved to a new town, makes a new friend who happens to be the movie's villain, and other issues normal people like her can relate to. Out of curiosity, I downloaded the movie and watched it all the way through. I expected nothing but a really bad, choppy, cheesy story put together for the purpose of selling toys. What I got was...entirely different.

One day, a strange, gooey, Silver Surfer-esque dinosaur version of Godzilla called Fusion attacks the city. The Pretty Cure from all generations (from the first series to Smile. This movie was made in 2012, as Smile was airing) manage to defeat it, but because it's a liquid monster, it leaves spawns all over the place in order to regenerate when it has enough strength. A young girl, Ayumi Sakagami, sees the footage on the news and is inspired by the Pretty Cure, but she's new in town, shy, and unable to make friends. One day, she helps a little yellow blob on the street. It warms up to her and she names it Fu-chan. The grow extremely close and become the best of friends. But what Ayumi doesn't know is that Fu-chan is actually one of Fusion's spawns, and the girls from Smile and Suite Precure take notice when Fu-chan begins eating everything Ayumi claims to hate, including the entire city. When she finds out what Fu-chan has been doing, she's horrified and wants to tell Fu-chan to stop whatever he's doing. But she's just a normal girl with no powers like the Pretty Cure do.

Movies tend to typically have better animation than their respective TV series, and New Stage: Mirai no Tomodachi is no different. While the animation did look a little clunky at times, I think they did a rather good job at animating the fight choreography and hand-to-hand combat, and it remains fluid even during the normal, every day scenes. It does, however, lose points for reusing transformation sequences from the show, which most movies based on magical girl anime or giant robot anime tend to do anyway. The soundtrack, while nice, didn't really leave an impression on me except for the opening theme song, Eien no Tomodachi (Friends Forever or Eternal Friends) which is surprisingly good! It's very rock based and not overly saccharine or J-Poppy like other magical girl anime songs tend to be (like the G3 My Little Pony theme songs). It's the kind of song that makes you want to get up and go, and puts you in a very energetic mood. But other times the soundtrack reused tracks from other series during the transformation and final attack scenes (and from what I hear, Precure itself has a notorious reputation for reusing music pieces from other series for some reason).

The main problem with the Pretty Cure All Stars movies is that they always have to make EVERY SINGLE PRETTY CURE FROM EVERY SINGLE SERIES appear, often at the expense of making certain teams have absolutely no speaking lines or roles other than plain reinforcement or back up, which both wastes animation and serves no overall purpose than to move the plot forward. I learned in fiction writing class that you cannot create characters just for moving the plot forward. That's not a good way to treat characters. Not only that, the other problem with the All Stars movies are that there's just so many characters that they just aren't able to fully utilize them all, only focusing on certain characters (in this case, the Smile and Suite Precures). Sometimes a huge cast of characters can work, but other times it really drags a medium down if done wrong, especially in a movie, where character development is already limited by an hour and a half time duration, and you just cannot devote that kind of time to developing 28 Pretty Cures.

However, Mirai no Tomodachi does have some saving graces, though, and I think I'll get lynched when I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway: One of those saving graces is Ayumi. She's pretty much the main character in the movie, and I really like her, as I can relate to her situation quite a bit. She's moved to a new town because of her father's job, she's shy, and has trouble making friends. I'm pretty much in the same situation right now. I thought she had a lot of character and development in here, and I loved her chemistry with Fu-chan. While a little bit bland and nothing noteworthy, she's a fairly realistic character with down to earth problems people can relate to. Two more saving graces are the villain and the story. The story is simple this time around, and it's all the better for it. It's less about killing a bad guy, and much more about friendship, the benefits of just talking to someone instead of beating around the bush, and how important it is to clear up misunderstandings between friends. I really like a story like that, and I thought it was done really well here despite the occasional cheese. The villain is also very simple, but far from your typical cliche anime villain, though I would have liked to learn more about his past and why he attacked the city in the first place. This is a major step up from the previous All Star movies (granted, I haven't seen them, nor do I plan to).

Unfortunately, it's not a perfect movie, as it's still riddled with problems, the most egregious being a big, blatant Deus Ex Machina that comes absolutely out of nowhere for no reason other than to move the plot and make Ayumi "special." The explanation for it was rather flimsy, too. Honestly, I think the whole movie would be better off if it WASN'T a crossover movie featuring every single Pretty Cure out there. If you're going to use Pretty Cures just as plot moving devices and treat them as reinforcement, then I think the movie would be much better off if it just cut the rest of the Pretty Cures out completely except for the Smile Precures and spend MORE time on Ayumi. That way, the animators could use the budget and storytelling potential to improve on it and use whatever potential the movie didn't use in the end. Why bother throwing in Precures in the first place if you aren't even going to give them speaking lines or utilize them properly?! I've heard complaints about the movie, the most ridiculous being that Ayumi got too much screen time. In my opinion, the movie would have been a lot better had it been just about Ayumi, and not a massive crossover made to pander to children and sell toys. The creators could have made this into a very nice movie and developed Ayumi into a more interesting character.

But, for what it's worth, I do appreciate this movie for trying, and for actually trying to put in an effort to make this movie into more than just a giant toy commercial. It played it safe and it's riddled with problems, I admit, but I like it for what it is. It's nothing groundbreaking or anything, nor is it the best movie ever, but I like it's themes and message, and it actually does attempt to deal with some subdued, realistic drama rather than just killing another bad guy. I really wish people would give Ayumi some slack, though. You should all be happy she isn't really annoying like Chibiusa from Sailor Moon or Tagiru from Digimon Xros Wars: Time Traveling Hunter Boys!

All in all, while still a big cash grab, it's a cute movie that's good for a bit of light entertainment.