This is the first Pretty Cure movie I’d actually consider good. It’s easily in the top 5, not counting All Stars, movies.
The movie opens up with these two little fairy creatures being ordered around by this effeminate guy called Shadow. He ordered the two of them to find Pretty Cure and the fairies produce a little mirror that has Nozomi’s image in it. He takes the mirror and uses it to create a clone of Nozomi, Dark Dream.
On Earth everyone decides to go to Princess Land. Some sort of amusement park festival thing where everyone gets to dress up as a Princess or Prince.
Even Coco and Nuts get to be dashing Princes’. I mean they’re already actual royalty but now for once they get to look the part.
Everyone has a lot of fun at the park, and Urara catches a Pinkie, and they end up going through a hall of mirrors. Inside here the two fairies from before grab Coco and Nuts and pull them into the mirrors and then take their place. They all mess around for a while longer but then the two impostors ask for the Dream Collet, but Nozomi knows something is up when “Coco and Nuts” are dismissive and rude.
The two make a Kowainaa and a fight breaks out. The fight and animation are well above average for Yes5. Which is pretty normal as far as Pretty Cure movies go but the action in Yes5’s movie is better than anything you’ll see in the actual season. It’s the only movie where the quality of the action exceeds anything you’ll find in the series. This doesn’t include GoGo though. Speaking of a Kowainaa appearing it must mean Shadow has some sort of relationship to Nightmare but because of his own goals with the Dream Collet he can’t be directly affiliated with them.
During the fight Dark Dream secretly watches them and uses a mirror to capture the forms of the other Cures unbeknownst to them. This allows Shadow to make clones of everyone else as well.
The girls beat the Kowainaa and the fairies return to their true forms. They say they didn’t want to fight Pretty Cure and tell them that Coco and Nuts are in the Mirror Kingdom. They say they need to use the Miracle Lights at 2 a.m. in front of a mirror to open up the portal so they wait till that night and go. Ah yes, Miracle Lights. First introduced here and forever kept as a staple of Pretty Cure movies. The fairies tell the girls how this evil dick Shadow took the important crystals of the Mirror Kingdom and put it in danger. So the fairies had to get the Dream Collet for him.
Shadow then comes and for some reason we get a second transformation scene. A full and really long one I might add. Like really, you couldn’t have just let them stay transformed after the first fight? Couldn’t they have spent this time in the movie better? No movie needs two transformation scenes.
Shadow then summons the Dark Cures and all of them get sent into one on one fights. The fights are great and last a really long time for Pretty Cure movie fights. The clones also give voice to some of the insecurities and problems the girls faced back in the mid-season climax. So the fighting ends up being very personal and emotional as well as being awesome. And none of the Dark Cures are really totally evil or anything, just lots of sadness and loneliness and girls who don’t know anything about friendship or good things.
Meanwhile Shadow takes the Dream Collet from Milk. He then uses his power over mirrors to find all the Pinkies needed to fill it. Also there’s some really good music in this movie.
As the fights against the Dark Cures rage on Dream resolves to never give up and get stronger and stronger. All of the others do the same and refuse to give up, saying how important their friends are and how much power and joy having friends brings them. They aren’t just fighting by and for themselves like the Dark Cures.
Dream gets to Dark Dream by talking about all the people she cares for, while Dark Dream has no one like that. The other girls defeat and kill their copies but Dream reconciles with Dark Dream by telling her she can learn things like happiness, love, and friendship. The two of them stop fighting and join the others to go fight Shadow.
Shadow makes his wish after gathering all the Pinkies but for some reason nothing happens. Oh yeah there’s still that Pinkie that Urara has. They never put it into the Dream Collet so Shadow didn’t have enough. Shadow then attacks them in a rage and even without his wish working he’s still really strong. Dark Dream sacrifices herself to save Dream and after a tearful few words between the two she fades away, happy with what she’s done. Dream then starts wailing on Shadow and momentarily beats him. The two fairies then use the Miracle Lights to free Coco and Nuts but Shadow then pulls out all of his power and becomes gigantic.
But the fairies use the Miracle Lights once again and give Pretty Cure their own powerup. They grow big shiny butterfly wings and their uniforms get frillier. More frills = more power. Always remember this for magical girls.
They use Pretty Cure 5 Explosion and finish Shadow off. 5 Explosion is kind of interesting in that unlike other big attacks it’s never defeated or overcome by any villain. When it’s used, in this move or in the season, it’s basically an assured victory.
With Shadow dead the girls return the crystals of the Mirror Kingdom to where they need to be and everything is returned to normal. Nozomi mourns the death of Dark Dream and the movie closes.
It’s sad that Dark Dream only exists in this one movie and is never mentioned again but that’s just the way things go I suppose. If she was mentioned or remembered by Nozomi in the actual season I think it would’ve been a very good thing cause it would’ve given more perspective on how Nozomi reacts to Despariah in the finale. Still it’s a good self-contained Pretty Cure movie as well. Shadow is not a particularly good villain but the real draw of the movie has always been the parts with the Dark Cures and those parts are indeed the best.
Mahou-Shoujo 
Nice read.
This movie is good. Precure franchise has moments, where it becomes unexpectedly mature with nuanced execution, and portion of this movie belongs in that category – when the Cures deal with the Dark Cures, especially when the long melancholic song is playing, really hammering in the tragedy of the Dark team (the song is called Fight with the Shadows, btw).
Just a random thought, but – Cure Dream being the only one reconciling with her Dark counterpart could be considered a pink bias (technically Dark Mint was redeemed as well, but was not allowed to live through it). Personally I never found pink bias to be a problem or annoyance, not even in Suite or DokiDoki, and I believe it has its merits. In this case, it was probably a way to save time as movie is a lot more time-constrained, i.e., saving one Dark Cure was enough to deliver the point and avoid reiteration. But still. The moment other girls met Dark Dream was particularly awkward, with all them surprised that Cure Dream hadn’t defeated her. The entire moral issue has been ignored – Cure Dream showed they can do better and none of them felt any regret over their (even if unwilling) actions to fight, causing the loss of unnecessary lives.
Well, this actually is characteristic of the older Cure series (for Yes! rightfully so), where the boundaries between good and bad were more clearly defined, or rather – the philosophy of such things remained pushed back with Cures taking more pragmatic approach. Whether that is a merit or demerit probably is a matter of personal preference (I enjoy both talking the antagonists to death or the fists doing all the talk instead). In any way, defeating the antagonist is, a little bit, taking the simple way out. Cures advocate friendship and happiness and in a more general way peace and harmony, so defeating their enemies comes off a little hypocritical. Of course there is little to do when two truly incompatible philosophies clash and all, but in this particular case, there was a better solution.
Hey, I’m not complaining or blaming. Dark Dream has clearly been the representative of the Dark team and set up to be redeemed. The other Dark Cures didn’t have enough time needed for redemption to work (and then killing all 5 of them in a believable manner would be no small feat). Plus, all of the the individual fights/interactions were tackled masterfully, each with flavor and issue depending on the Cure, consistent with established personalities and circumstances from the series.
As always, singling the fights into pairs pairs works, because it can bring out the individuality of the characters. Unlike other series though, here it is used to its full potential. The Cure members were almost brought to life here, showing us their personalities beautifully. Cure Aqua asks Dark Aqua whether she has any friends with a smile on her face. There is something soothing about Cure Aqua’s humble contentment as she explains how one needs others to be able to mature. She can rely on her friends, doesn’t need to act tough to prove anything and finds an inner peace. Cure Lemonade gets angry when Dark Lemonade misuses a song as a weapon and shows personal investment in the matter, rather than simply exacting justice with a power of friendship. Dark Mint transforms all of her power into offensive form (touching on a sensitive matter of all shield-based Cures being often useless), yet loses against Cure Mint’s shield, because it is a shield to protect not just herself, but everyone else (expanding its power to protect accordingly). This not only acts as an answer to Dark Mint’s philosophy of everyone looking out for himself, but demonstrates again why it is Cure Mint that uses shield and that it isn’t for show. Her last words to Dark Mint about having wanted to protect her as well were a nice touch.
The interesting bit is that, in the franchise, Dark Cures normally highlight weaknesses for Cure’s to overcome and then get beaten by their newly found power as a testament of growth. Here, it is the Dark Cures who are revealed to lack something, which quickly deals with the problem of them not being fleshed out properly and being only tools for Cures to evolve. They are characters on their own. It also makes their fall believable.
Then there is Cure Dream’s speech about not being the same from day, hour or even minute ago due to constantly improving (due to growing bonds I presume), which ties in with her absolute conviction that she can not lose, which she then explains is due to her caring for everyone, bit which causes Dark Dream to realize her inherent flaw, doubt herself and ultimately be defeated. Cure Dream’s strength – her conviction, becomes Dark Dream’s weakness – doubt, because in contrast, she is alone. She starts regretting the fact and finally acts emotionally, overcomes her flaw and is redeemed.
The amount of detail during the Cure-Dark Cure team’s exchange is astonishing. Slow and intense music, lots of animation, especially rich on facial expressions displaying the slightest emotions in what feels like every single frame), cool artistic style, fight choreography, dialogues, voice acting (Dark Cures have unusually mature voices) and the Cure’s struggle to overcome everything in their way as well as Dark Cure’s tragic fate makes for one of the best offerings in the Precure franchise.
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Thanks for your comment! Yes that music used when they’re ending the fights with the Dark Cures is amazing, one of my favorite tracks ever. The one before it as well is great battle music too.
And oh yeah, it’s definitely Pink bias. Most seasons and movies have this to some degree, especially in recent years where the Pink will get two super forms all to herself now. I wouldn’t say I really have much of a problem with this either. Even though Pretty Cure is supposed to be more about friendship and the group as a whole rather than just a leader and her teammates like Sailor Moon etc. are in the end the Pinks are still the main characters and them being more important, more focused on, and having more unique story lines or things happen to them isn’t something I can fault a season for.
But with Doki for me it’s different. My feelings on Doki and Cure Heart in particular are… “strong” we shall say. It will be a long time before I finally get to my major review on Doki where I can really elaborate and go into detail on this but Mana and the way the show treats her and certain other things about Doki are very different from the typical Pink bias that you see in Yes5, HapCha, etc.
You’re right about the older style of Pretty Cure where they weren’t as concerned about villains and killing them. Fresh really changed things around in this area. A lot of the time in the older seasons you’ll see the villains monologueing or something and the Cures will just say something along the lines of “We don’t get what you’re saying / We don’t care” and just kill the villain without ever really talking or understanding the villain. Even though they were pretty much all 100% evil anyways. You also bring up a point that I mention in my GoGo review, where although the girls advocate becoming friends and wanting things to end peacefully (like what happened with Despariah) they don’t hesitate to finish things violently when things are clearly not going to end with words (like with the Director). Something that can be aggravating.
Dark Cures are always a really good thing in any season, there’s just something about them. All three times we’ve gotten them they’ve been used in different ways and had different origins and personalities too, from tragic figures to completely evil monsters. All the individual fights in these movies do good to show how the girls have grown as well from their experiences as Pretty Cure and as friends with each other, like the part you brought up about Aqua. The fights highlight important parts of their characters that we’ve learned about as well and they’re just so well animated and awesome to boot. With of course the fight against Dark Dream being the best and even having some similarity to how Dream gets to Despariah in the finale. But even then the sword fight and Dark Lemonades scream attack were really great too.
Truly one of the best fights/moment in the franchise, yes.
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Yes, I concur. Yes! has good battle music – several tracks in fact. Although in general I find Yes! music to be one of the weakest of all seasons. There’s also the fact that it ‘steals’ music from Futari wa. This is something I’m personally sensitive about, not necessarily in a bad way, but… credit, where credit is due. Lots of seasons reuse music. The worst offenders being Yes!, Heartcatch and Happiness Charge and the most offended being Futari wa, Fresh and DokiDoki, which easily have the best and the most original Precure music.
I can understand your position towards DokiDoki. I also have very strong feelings on DokiDoki, though obviously (my nick…) a lot different from yours. Not a problem. I have read everything you wrote on this site (in like 1 sitting at that!) and I can tell you I agree with you on a lot of things, but DokiDoki would be an existential war between us. If you are into such things, I’ll happily provide.
Yeah the early franchise attitude towards villains was fun. Nagisa for example: every time her own business gets over her head, some bad guy shows up on top of that and she is so pissed it’s not even a matter of – good/bad. Its simply her and her punching bag. This reminds me the Kintolesky-Shitataare Santa ep in Splash, where Saki confuses them with a couple on a date and acts very irritated. That was funny. Although I prefer good old Black.
As for Dark Cures, yeah. I think a lot of potential often slips by (Smile), but it’s always something to look for. Somehow I find it very enjoyable to see Cures missing some kind of integral part that makes Cures Cures. I always wish Dark Cures would be part of the story, like redemption Cures, but it just never happens. Which is another big point for Fresh for having Setsuna actually live with Love and have effect on her surroundings (relationship with Love’s mom). That’s what I’m talking about.
Back to this movie. I think none of us mentioned that Yes! Dark Cures are voiced by different voice actors, which is very interesting (btw an awful lot of them had or went on to later get another Precure role (Futari wa, Smile, Doki)) and adds to them being a different entities, not just Cure clones. I think we can conclude Cure Dark in Heartcatch was inspired by Dark Cures in this movie – only marginal link with some Cure, not evil, sad past and no redemption.
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I actually really like Yes5’s music, but yeah the reuse of music is pretty prevalent. They use the stuff by the same composer in following seasons until they bring in a new composer and then the process repeats itself.
I’m kind of on a Precure break right now after finishing GoGo. Cause that’s the end of the first era and then Fresh starts the next so I decided to take some time off before starting it and watch some other shows. About Doki I will say there are some things I like about it but it will likely always remain my least favorite season for a multitude of reasons.
Having Dark Cures as a more major part of the show, like with an actual story arc, would be cool. And yeah it’s funny watching the movie and hearing Dark Dream and Lemonade and knowing they become Beauty and Ace.
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