#PCD194

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Precure Day 194

Episode: Yes! Precure 5 45 - “Nozomi and Coco’s Christmas Vow” Date watched: 13 June 2020 Original air date: 23 December 2007 Screenshots: https://imgur.com/a/YQ3pJKw Transformation Gallery: https://imgur.com/a/6k6SzS0 Project info and master list of posts: http://tinyurl.com/PCDabout

This is really the only picture worth putting as this episode’s thumbnail

Christmas is the time for lovers, but what happens when the lovers know their time together is limited? That’s the question this episode seeks to answer.

The Plot

While walking around, Rin and Nozomi find themselves at the chapel where Akimoto Miku’s friend got married in episode 32. They find and catch the forty-fourth Pinky, leaving only one remaining before the Dream Collet is filled and Coco, Nuts, and Milk can use its power to restore Palmier Kingdom. Everyone celebrates a little bit.

Later, at Natts House, everyone is building a snowman while Milk wonders out loud whether Coco or Nuts will become the king. Nuts says Coco should do it, because he’s good at listening to people and dispensing helpful advice, while Coco thinks Nuts is the better fit because he’s strong-willed and knows how to work behind the scenes to get things done. This goes back and forth for a minute until it comes out that, regardless of who takes the crown, once they return to Palmier, they probably won’t have the time to come back to visit the girls because they’ll be too busy running the country. All the girls are sad, but Nozomi is floored by this revelation, because she’d never really thought too hard about what would happen after they achieved their dream, and now the idea of losing Coco is hitting her like a ton of bricks.

Over in Nightmare, Kawarino muses over the loss of Hadenya, and Bloody starts to chew him out for his management style. The veteran employee accuses Kawarino of having ulterior motives, but he denies this and says he’s only acting in Despariah’s interests. Bloody leaves, huffing about doing things his own way, and Kawarino turns to Bunbee and remarks that Nightmare has no room for useless people. Very nice guy.

Back at Natts House, there’s a big Christmas sale going on and the shop is bustling. Nozomi is cashiering and hiding her sadness behind a facade of cheerfulness, but her friends can see through her. Coco and Nuts shovel snow off the roof as Nuts asks Coco if he’s really okay leaving things with her as they are now. When the sale is over, the girls all sit down to relax and eat a cake made by the fairies. Nozomi goes to make a toast but gets lost in her own thoughts, and admits that she feels uncertain about their future. Just then, Bloody interrupts the proceedings, turning Natts House into a Kowaina from the inside, so everyone runs outside to see the store come to life as a quadrupedal monster with arms coming out of it from every direction, the first and last time Bloody makes a somewhat traditional Kowaina.

The girls transform into Precure and prepare to fight it, but as they do, Bloody declares that in his observations he’s finally found the weakness in their alliance, so he finally transforms into his monster form of a giant bat and attacks Dream, forcibly separating her from the others while the Kowaina keeps them from rescuing her. He fights Dream one-on-one, managing to overpower her physically, but then he lays into her psyche. He taunts that she’s just going through the motions because her heart isn’t in this fight, and observes that her “dream is at odds with itself,” because she wants to restore Coco’s homeland but stay with him. He tells her that this internal conflict is what causes despair, and he knocks her over, preparing for the final blow. However before he can attack, the other four knock the Kowaina over and come rushing in to save Nozomi. They reinforce that it’s okay to be hesitant and unsure sometimes, and assure her that they’ll be there to support her always. Bloody taunts that she’s too weak to get up, but get up she does, and she thanks her friends for the show of support. Newly invigorated, she vows to make Coco’s dream come true, and performs Crystal Shoot to expel the Kowaina as Bloody flees.

In Nightmare, in Despariah’s office, Kawarino informs Despariah that there is only one pinky left to capture, and the Dream Collet will soon be usable.

Night falls at Natts House, and since it’s cold, dark, and snowy, Karen agrees to have Jiiya drive the girls home. Nonetheless Nozomi gives a halfhearted goodbye to Coco and starts walking off on her own. Nuts urges Coco to walk with her, and gives him a coat, while Komachi helpfully provides an umbrella.

she knows exactly what she’s doing

And so Rin, Urara, Komachi, and Karen drive off while Nuts and Milk watch from the store window as Nozomi and Coco set off down the street. Just being with him cheers her up a little, and when they see an alleyway with fresh, undisturbed snow, they decide to be the first ones to walk down it. Nozomi gets sad again when she realizes that when the snow melts, their footprints will disappear and there will be no record that anything happened, much like their relationship. But Coco tells her that they’ll always have the memories, and he will never forget walking together like this. They continue their walk until they reach the chapel once again, and this time the tree is lit up. Seeing it causes Nozomi to cry a bit, even though she’s still smiling. She berates herself for this because she knows she should be happy, but she can’t ignore her own personal sadness either.

Coco tells her how much she inspires him with her smile, her affection, and her courage and she admits that she wants him to stay here forever. He says he wants the same thing, but they also both admit that they know it’s impossible. They wipe away their tears and agree to treasure the time that they still have together as they stare into each other's’ eyes.

The Analysis

I criticized Max Heart for not exploring the ramifications of their macguffin quest on Hikari’s existence throughout the course of the show, so I’m glad to see them do so more in this series. The writer for this episode in particular is Narita Yoshimi, who wrote for Precure the beginning through Go Princess, and was the head writer for most of Splash Star as well as both seasons of Precure 5 and later Happiness Charge. In reviewing her body of work for Precure, I saw she was mostly responsible for episodes that I thought were good, although there were a few duds in there. As far as Max Heart in particular, she often wrote episodes that featured the Heartiels deciding to enter the Queen Chairect, but rarely included commentary on Hikari’s looming identity crisis. Now that she’s in charge, she has made sure that the conflict between the fairies’ relationships and the results of achieving their goal is brought up throughout the series several times until it all comes out into the open here, which I appreciate, even if I still wish it had come up sooner than it did. Nonetheless, this is the third or fourth time the idea has come up in the last few episodes, thoroughly establishing to the audience that this is an important conflict which is intensifying as they approach the finale.

We’ve previously seen Coco, Nuts, and Komachi wrestle with this realization, but Nozomi’s struggle is particularly heartfelt, because she’s internalized this dream of reviving the Palmier Kingdom and made it her own, so with the realization of that dream very close at hand, she's feeling a heightened mix of emotions. On the one hand, her dream is close to fruition and she’s elated, but on the other, she’ll have to say goodbye to Coco forever and she’s devastated. The writer, directors, animators, and Nozomi’s actress Sanpei Yuko all work in harmony to fully realize her feelings as she works through this. She knows she should be happy, but she can’t stop her personal feelings from getting in the way, so she’s constantly choking back her tears or trying to hide her emotions because she feels bad about feeling bad. We get closeups of her face to emphasize this and it’s really moving.

See how torn she is?

Yuko’s voice acting sells this, as her voice cracks when she’s upset and trying to choke back her tears, and at other points it’s artificially high pitched because she’s faking her happiness. During the fight with Bloody, her voice falters a bit because she can’t fully refute his statements about her feelings, he can see right through her because that’s his talent. She’s at a low point and he’s trying to push her even lower, like he did with Mint and Nuts in his debut. Her despair feels tangible, and it’s a haunting look at what happens when someone so hopeful finds themselves internally conflicted. However, her true feelings shine through during her walk with Coco, and despite her voice cracking a bit more and tears in her eyes, she’s less tormented than it was before. She’s still sad, but it’s clear that she understands the situation and will eventually reach peace. The powerful emotions she carries and the way they’re expressed vocally and visually in this episode are just excellent.

Through the course of the episode you can see Nozomi go through some of the stages of grief before she finally accepts it at the end and tries to make the most of her time with Coco. The scene in the shop where she acts fine is denial, the battle with Bloody is depression, and then the walk with Coco is acceptance. Each of these emotions is given its due diligence in the script, and I described above how the performance really brings them out, but it’s a clever and intelligent concept to showcase in this show, and a good demonstration for the audience of how to work through your grief (minus the fighting a bat villain part, but you know, semantics). Nozomi and Coco coming to a mutual understanding that they should make the most of what they have while they can is beautiful and poetic. There’s no way to sugarcoat the sadness of knowing they’ll have to leave each other, and they don’t try to, but they’re done dwelling on it. For this reason, that ending scene of the two of them staring into each others’ eyes, laid over the Christmas Tree at the church, is possibly one of the best images that the Precure franchise has ever produced because of everything that it conveys.

Now I’m going to talk about Nightmare for a bit. Bloody is on top of his game once again, but I’ll come back to that in a moment. First I want to bring up the tension between Bloody and Kawarino. Bloody is now Nightmare’s last remaining executive, other than Bunbee, who is treated as insignificant and useless. Bloody is extremely upset that Kawarino has been getting rid of Nightmare’s other employees with the black masks, and accuses him of having ulterior motives ever since he became Despariah’s right hand. This would be an excellent setup for a plot twist where Kawarino betrays Despariah, but unfortunately, that’s not where the series goes. I’ll discuss that in episode 49. So, Bloody himself has a good plan, proving once again that he’s really earned his reputation as Nightmare’s elite. Isolating a particularly vulnerable member of the team and trying to wear them down emotionally and physically is his forte, and this time he’s targeted Nozomi. He knows exactly what to say to manipulate her into despairing and it almost works.

Bloody’s skill at reading people and wearing them down might be unparalleled in this franchise, and I wish we saw him more, because the only way to fight him is as a team, which is a great reinforcement of the message of the show. Since Bloody’s weapon of choice is words rather than fists, it takes a show of moral support to overpower his verbal assault. Friends supporting and helping each other, making each other stronger, lifting each other up when they’re down, that’s what this series is about and they do it excellently here.

This episode also marks two firsts for Bloody: the first time he’s used a traditional Kowaina, and the first time he transforms into his monster form and fights directly. He’s a man-bat (but he’s no Kirk Langstrom) and finally all the pieces of his identity and appearance make sense. His style of dress as a human evokes a vampire, and vampire bats are so-named because of their blood sucking habits (though greatly exaggerated by the media), hence the name Bloody. It’s impressive that it took 15 episodes from his first appearance to actually transform, as most other villains do so on their first episode, and I think that’s a further testament to the effectiveness of his generally non-confrontational fighting style.

I think I talk about pacing a lot.... and I’m not going to stop now. Once again, the action takes up a little less of the episode than it might normally, because the fight represents the middle of the story’s conflict, not the resolution to it. While I might have liked for Nozomi and Bloody’s fight to go on a little longer, I’m satisfied with how it played out. He pushed Nozomi further into her depression, and her friends pulled her out. The real resolution to the conflict comes when she talks to Coco on the walk home, and they put all their feelings out in the open. I really appreciate this approach, because it’s more thought out and heartfelt than some other episodes. Sometimes a 2 minute epilogue will suffice, but in this episode they needed 7 minutes (out of 21 minutes of narrative content) after the fight to clear the air, and that’s where they take the time to finally openly address their shared sentiment that they care deeply for each other, and understand the road that lies ahead which will eventually separate them. The moment when the choose to walk down the alley prompts a great analogy about memories.

One element of this episode and its passage of time that I think is notable is that it all takes place in one day, and specifically on December 23rd, which is when it aired. Normally it can be hard to pin down exactly how much time passes but in this episode it’s clear that when they’re making a snowman outside Natts House, that’s prep, the sale occurs the same day, the party that Bloody crashes is after the completion of the sale, and then Coco walks Nozomi home that night. I always enjoy a good nighttime scene, and at Christmas time it’s especially beautiful. I wrote about this a little in my Christmas special a few years ago, but the lights and joy that come from a good Christmas episode really are hard to match. At the beginning, Nozomi is dancing with Milk because their quest is almost over and it’s a joyous time of year. Then at the end, they show that Christmas tree all lit up, which is beautiful.

Also this provides a nice contrast both to the earlier scene where we saw the tree in the daytime, and the setting in general is a callback to episode 32, when the girls were at this chapel for Miku’s friend’s wedding.

By the way I think I’ve talked about this before, but a couple sharing an umbrella is a romantic symbol in Japanese culture.

And then a small note, Coco and Nuts each arguing that the other one should be the king because they’ve got the best leadership qualities is wholesome. They see the best in each other and have imposter syndrome about their own worthiness to lead. Look forward to seeing how this resolves in a few more episodes!

Overall this is a really moving and heartfelt episode. The animation is great, the story is weighty and it has an uplifting ending tinged with sadness. It finally resolves a longstanding concern of the characters and clears the air in preparation for the finale.

Next time, the final pinky is caught! Look forward to it!

Pink Precure Catchphrase Count: 0 kettei!