#PCD043

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Precure Day 043

Episode: Futari wa Precure 43 - “Extremely Shaken Up! The Heartfelt Note to Fujipi” Date watched: 25 May 2018 Original air date: 12 December 2004 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/ak24W8q

This scene is a perfect metaphor for the entire episode: it goes nowhere and accomplishes nothing.

Maybe that caption was a little mean, because while it doesn’t advance the plot (which really needs to get going, we’re near the end of the series), it’s a great episode for Nagisa and fleshes out the Seeds a tiny bit as well. In this episode, Juna and Regine continue to ponder their own existence because Belzei won’t just tell them that they’ve developed as beings separate from the Dark King even though they’re made from him. Meanwhile, Nagisa tries to finally confess her feelings to Fujipi on his birthday, but sacrifices her own shot at him for the sake of a friend who also has a crush on him.

The fandom often accuses Nagisa of being selfish and a bad leader because she whines about not wanting to fight bad guys, but I present this as a counterexample. Nagisa may wish for a normal life but she never once shies away from her duty as a protector of light and she is extremely selfless for her friends. Here she is, helping a girl we’ve only met once (she’s the previously unnamed classmate seen with Seiko from ep 39) to confess to the boy she herself likes. It tears her up inside to do so but she can’t help but to help her friends.

This girl’s name is Morioka Yui, by the way. She’s eager and that’s about her only defining character trait. She doesn’t know that Nagisa likes Fujipi, and when the pair go to Honoka to discuss present options, Honoka gives Nagisa a quick glance, which Nagisa averts, before answering the question. Ouch. Anyway, while Yui plans a gift for Fujipi, settling on a handmade charm to help him recover from an injury he sustained, Nagisa sits on a hillside and mourns her situation. Fujipi himself comes by and tries to talk to her, but she brushes him off gently. He leaves his scarf with her so she doesn’t get cold and this motivates her to try to find a way to confess her feelings as well. She goes home and starts to write a letter to him that she’ll give when she returns the scarf. She stays up all night trying to get it right, and ultimately all she comes up with is: “Dear Fujimura-sempai. Congratulations on your birthday! In your final Junior High School soccer game, please do your best. I’ll be cheering you on. -Misumi Nagisa” Between me and you, that doesn’t even read like a love confession. Maybe there’s some nuance in the Japanese wording that I’m not aware of that would make it a little more clear to the recipient that she doesn’t only mean she’ll support him as a friend or a fan. Since this line is reused later in the episode, that might be the case. Nonetheless, I have to call the translated dialog out for being vague if it’s the translation, or the original script if I’m wrong about the nuanced meaning. Whoever’s at fault, it doesn’t seem to come across strongly enough. Also I could rag on Nagisa for spending all night to right that little. I know writing is hard (my backlog is evidence of that) and confessing your love for someone else is also difficult but you could surely have come up with something better than that. Ah well.

Nagisa goes to support Yui as she presents Fujipi with the charm, and also to return his scarf with her own letter in the bag. As she hands him the charm, Yui tells Fujipi "In your final Junior High soccer game, please do your best. I’ll be cheering you on!” Yes, verbatim what Nagisa wrote.

top 10 anime betrayals

Nagisa has kept her feelings and intentions close to her chest, so she’s very torn up by this because now she’s afraid she’ll just be seen as a copycat if she gives him the letter. She runs away distraught as Yui attempts to continue her confession alone. Nagisa returns to the hillside and rips up the letter. As she wallows in her sadness, Regine shows up demanding to know what Belzei means about the Seeds no longer being their former selves. Nagisa tries to dodge Regine’s attacks, begging her to go away because she really isn’t in the mood for this today. A valiant effort, but it doesn’t work. Fortunately Honoka shows up and rescues Nagisa from her own angst. After they transform, Cure Black tries to fight but her heart isn’t in it, and Regine calls her out on it. Honoka, who has spent the background of the episode trying to figure out how to support Nagisa during all of this in return for Nagisa’s support with Kiriya and everything else, steps up and declares herself as Regine’s opponent, even blocking an attack directed at her partner.

White seems seriously hurt and Regine rubs salt into both of their wounds by calling Black a useless person who needs to be protected by her partner. This motivates Black into action, angry at the assault on her friend, and she lays into Regine. Regine blocks easily because Black is using a repetitive one-two punch attack but she surprises her with a punch to the gut. From afar, Porun senses the danger and unleashes the Rainbow Braces, and the girls perform Rainbow Storm, sending Regine flying and for some reason there’s a quick shot of Juna being overwhelmed by the blast as well. It might be recycled footage from a previous episode, because he didn’t appear in this fight at all.

After the smoke clears, Nagisa sincerely thanks Honoka for her support through this endeavor and Honoka invites Nagisa back to her place for some hot stew, with an implied side dish of talking it out.

The emotion and sentiment in this episode is very strong. You can feel Nagisa’s pain as she’s torn between her romantic feelings and her strong desire to help her friend. The strength it takes to help someone confess to a person you yourself love is tremendous and I can’t fault her for buckling under the pressure when her own words were used against her. I don’t mean to suggest that Yui somehow saw Nagisa’s letter, there’s nothing to indicate as such. She knows nothing of Nagisa’s own feelings for Fujipi or she probably wouldn’t have sought her help. It’s an unfortunate coincidence, but the sting of that experience is real. Also I want to salute Honoka for trying really hard to cheer Nagisa up, even without knowing everything she was up to. Actually that feels kind of like a plot hole, her efforts towards Nagisa when the only contact they had was near the beginning when she and Yui first approached Honoka to ask about Fujipi’s interests, I would have liked a little more focus on Honoka in this episode to show her side of things. As-is it comes across as: Honoka finds out Nagisa is helping Yui confess, asks Nagisa if this is okay and learns that Nagisa wants to help her friends before herself. At night she writes in the diary about giving Nagisa strength and the next day she’s running around school looking for Nagisa until Mipple takes her to the fight, and afterward she invites Nagisa home for stew. It feels like it’s missing some communication between the two.

Alright, time for some small observations. The seeds outright lie to the Dark King about not knowing where the power of light is, as they figured it out in a previous episode. It seems to me now that their plan is to take that power for themselves so that they might become immune to the consuming power of darkness and leave the Dark King to rot, but that hasn’t been explicitly spelled out. Also there’s a sequence involving the butler zakenna in the mansion that is entirely pointless and goes nowhere, it’s just a few minutes of gag comedy to fill time. Know what might have filled that time better? More Honoka.

Also they drop a tidbit about the Sakura class going to represent the school at the Regional Junior High Choir Contest, a setup for episode 45, and I’m always appreciative of these little moments of continuity and establishing things before the episode in which they really become relevant.

Oh yes, also, this is a soft toy-plugging episode. You saw the invisible diary above, and there’s also a quick scene of Mepple and Porun using the Prism Love Checker to prove that they’re not compatible.

Hey kids, remember this thing that we only showed briefly in episode 17? Go buy it.

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 0. There hasn’t been an Arienai in a while now, what gives?

Next time, a Christmas party!