Wait, didn't I already review this back on my LiveJournal when it first aired? Yes I did. But after rewatching it and doing some thinking, I decided to lower its rating, because out of all the Pretty Cure seasons I've seen, I feel Happiness Charge is by far the weakest. But before I elaborate, I want to explain something: Some people I've talked to a few years ago have gotten the impression that I hate light hearted magical girl shows and only like stuff that's dark and gritty, but I'd like to clarify that that's not true. I like Madoka Magica, but not because it's dark. My favorite magical girl anime of all time is Fancy Lala, and some of my other favorites are the Pretty Sammy TV series, Cardcaptor Sakura, Yuki Yuna is a Hero, Nurse Angel Ririka SOS, and Princess Tutu. I watched the first episode of Magical Girl Site and I absolutely hated it because of how over-the-top dark and violent it tried to be, and it was clear it was only doing it for the sake of being as violent as possible and nothing else. I don't go anywhere near the Nanoha series because of its more fanservicey elements. The point I'm trying to make is that I like both happy and serious magical girl shows, but I also like my magical girl anime to have substance. I want magical girl anime, nay anime in general, to be more than just a sugar fest or a grimdark violence fest. Magical Girl Site is obviously the latter, but having watched Happiness Charge Precure in its entirety...I won't say it's the worst show I've seen, nor even the worst Precure series out there, but to put it plainly, Happiness Charge is trite, uninspired, hollow, and superfluous, encapsulating the overall franchise's worst problems.
The story is about Hime Shirayuki, a princess of the Blue Sky Kingdom. Her kingdom was attacked by the Phantom Empire, and despite becoming a Pretty Cure, she is utterly hopeless at fighting, and has to go to Earth for her own safety, accompanied by her friend Ribbon. Her rival--Cure Fortune--blames her for everything and Hime is at a loss as to what to do. She does, however, find a new friend in a young girl named Megumi Aino, a happy-go-lucky girl who is obsessed with love and making people happy. Megumi actually winds up becoming a Pretty Cure alongside Hime--Cure Lovely. Together, along with two new allies, the girls try to fight the Phantom Empire's minions, the Saiarks, and try to stop them from spreading despair. But there's a lot more to the Phantom Empire than meets the eye, and there are many secrets to be revealed.
The animation...fluctuates a LOT throughout the series. Some episodes, it's good, other episodes...are pretty badly animated, with kooky faces with parts out of place, movement being stilted, the animation style being really cloudy and too cartoony for my tastes (but I got used to it), etc. The budget for the episodes is clearly limited, but when they use it, boy do they use it! Hime's transformation is the most well animated and visually pleasing transformation in the entire series, and that's saying a lot. But other than that, the show's animation is sub-par. The music...I don't know what to say about this one. The opening theme is too bubblegummy for me, the ending themes more so. The actual soundtrack...ugh, to be honest, I can't tell if the show even has its own pieces at all, because since the show has the same composer as Doki Doki Precure before it, the anime reuses pieces from Doki Doki in EVERY SINGLE EPISODE! Now, if the show was a direct sequel to Doki Doki, I wouldn't have a problem if they're the same series taking place in the same universe, but HapiCha is an entity completely separate from Doki Doki, so the fact that they reuse music from Doki Doki makes the production team really come off as lazy and uninspired. I get that there are budget issues involved, and other series used music from other series too, but at least Suite made sure to not use Heartcatch and Fresh pieces in EVERY episode.
The characters...are arguably a mixed bag. However, before I get to the bad, I really need to talk about what I feel is THE best part of the entire show: Hime. She is by far the best main character in any anime I've seen. She's well developed, has plenty of flaws and weaknesses, good qualities and strengths, has the best executed character arc in the show, is proactive despite her royal upbringing and occasionally selfish personality, grows as a character throughout the series awesomely, and has more spotlight on her than the pink character. The show seems to be making her out to be the main character, even though it's sort of not the case. And seriously, why can't Hime be the main character? Because she's easily the best character in the entire show even though she's made of traits that people would absolutely hate if done wrong, and Hime's character is done so right it's not even funny. I'm glad the writers really pulled out all the stops when it came to Hime. Also, Glasan is awesome.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the other characters. Now don't get me wrong, they're not bad. They're all engagingly flawed...except for Yuuko. I'll get to that in a bit. One thing I like about the series is that the characters all come off as annoying at first, but when you least expect it, the writers realize it and completely redeem them for you. I used to hate Iona for being a straight up jerk to Hime for plot reasons, but she dropped the act and realized her own faults as well. The other characters all have engaging flaws...except for one: Yuuko. Sorry, guys. I hate to admit it, as I like her too, but there's no denying it: Yuuko is woefully underutilized, and because of this, she comes off as extremely perfect. She's unfailingly kind and friendly, loves food and rice to insane levels, doesn't make any mistakes, all of her potential flaws are presented as cute character quirks instead of realistic flaws, everything she does is praised by everyone, she's always in the right, nobody questions what she does (save for a few, but even they change their views later on), and she's loved by everyone. Her character writing is one of the show's low points, as a character like Yuuko just isn't very interesting, and her focus episodes were all poorly executed, especially the cheesy episode 31, with the fact that the entire episode implied she had a love interest that turned out to be something else entirely. Both her character and that episode could have been handled so much better. But I do appreciate that she contributes no more or less than any of the other characters, that her attacks aren't foolproof, and that she's still on the same level as the girls, so I can give kudos to the creators for that.
The villains are pretty much the same. Mirage and Phantom are the only good villains in the show, whereas the bumbling bad trio are the worst. They're never developed, their backstories aren't elaborated on, and they're very bland, one note characters who don't do much throughout the entire show. They were the biggest waste of characters ever. Also, I absolutely hate Hosshiwa. Her voice was annoying, her character was annoying, her personality was annoying, her evil laugh was annoying, God everytime she opened her mouth I just wanted to deck her! Another contender is the final villain. I won't spoil anything, but he is the whinest, most annoying, most pathetic villain I've ever seen. He constantly whines and moans about how love is bad every five minutes any time he's on screen! He doesn't even do anything really threatening, just brainwashing people and being annoying, and he REFUSES TO SHUT UP!!! Seriously, I can write a better villain character than him! And the thing is, the show constantly builds him up as being this really dangerous, threatening force, so when it turns out he's little more than a whiny simp, the show basically crapped on all of the build-up it used for him and made it all go to waste.
That said, the main heroine of this series, Megumi, is also one of the show's biggest detriments, especially compared to other leads in Precure shows. Now, Pretty Cure is notorious for being very clingy to its own formula, rehashing the same character archetypes, color schemes, and personalities all throughout their shows, with only a few changes every now and again. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but using the same character type over and over again gets boring. At times, Toei knows this, and one of the reasons seasons like Heartcatch and the original series are so popular is because they had stories and characters that were different from the typical klutzy, cheerful, always happy archetype. Nagisa was tomboyish and could be a brat. Tsubomi was shy and timid. Hana from Hugtto Precure, behind her cheerful facade, was deeply insecure and felt like she couldn't keep up with the other girls as a Precure. Even the current series, Healin Good, has Nodoka, who is nice and kind, but also down to earth and frail because of having been sick for most of her life. People love magical girl shows that take risks and give their characters flaws that they have to overcome in order to grow as people. Those make characters interesting and relatable when done well. Watching those particular seasons, you can tell right away there was more to the characters than just one basic trait. The problem with Megumi is that the creators were less concerned about making her interesting and three-dimensional, and more with making her as over-the-top cutesy and nice and sweet as humanly possible, having her say her catchphrase "Shiawase Happiness" every other episode and having her talk non-stop about love and kindness and how being nice is good just for the sake of it. Even during episodes where she's supposed to experience real character growth and mature as a person, the writers still insist on having her act extremely childish and nauseatingly idealistic, like they're convinced children can't handle human characters who don't spout cutesy catchphrases all the time. Think Charlie from Tim Burton's Willy Wonka movie level of overly idealistic. For example, when she finds out Hime is running away after finding out the truth about why the Phantom Empire attacked, what does she do? She magically puts on a cutesy wootsy dog costume and chases after her. She basically comes off as an overly saccharine five-year-old in a 14-year-old girl's body, almost a caricature, and kids don't like having over-the-top sweetness and sugar shoved down their throats. And no, the show being a giant toy commercial is no excuse, because there are plenty of toy-based shows that actually put in the effort to write nuanced characters when they want to. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and hell, even several of the early Precure shows, are great examples of this. And no, this also doesn't mean I hate cheerful, perky, happy characters. I just don't like it when writers go way over the top with it and have it be their only character trait, and amping it up to ridiculous levels. My point: Have the cheerful characters act like people, not like hyperactive five year olds who do nothing but spout cutesy catchphrases all the damn time! But I know there are people who like Megumi and the rest of the cast as characters, so if you like them, cool! More power to you. This is just how I feel about the cast as a whole, not me dissing anyone who likes them.
Which also brings me to the show's biggest flaw. Now, let me say this: when it knows what it wants to do, Happiness Charge is great. But when it doesn't, it sinks. Hard. What do I mean? Well, some episodes are written well, while others are very poorly executed, like the writers were battling over what the moral of the episode should be and wind up making an episode that's a big mess. Unfortunately, Happiness Charge is pretty guilty of this. Episode 17 is one such example. To me it looked like the moral was going to be about Hime learning that it's okay to share your friends with other friends, but Megumi and Yuuko force Hime to support Seiji's karate tournament, and at one point Hime says "Curse you, Seiji!" for no reason at all, implying that she secretly hated him. I won't go into detail about other episodes, as it'd take waaaay too long. But yeah, it's like the show is at a fork in the road and it goes on one road, only to constantly zigzag between that road and the other, and in the end it finally decides on a road, only to still have doubts and regrets and the feeling of not having reached their destination. That's how Happiness Charge's filler episodes are to me. But different strokes for different blokes, I suppose. Plus, all the romance was really forced, and in a way, it didn't really need to be there. My mom often says "don't buy the car if you can't drive it." For this series? Don't try to write about something if you're going to write it badly...or in this case, indecisively. So lack of focus is Happiness Charge's biggest problem. But there are shows that did this far worse, and when the show knows what it wants to do, boy does it shine! I only wish it was this focused during its filler episodes, too.
That said, even its main plot suffers from lack of proper planning. For one, Happiness Charge establishes that certain items and plot points are important very early on, the PreCards being one of them...but then completely forgets about them by the show's end, never doing anything with them. I hear a lot of the show's problems are because it's meant to celebrate the franchise's 10th anniversary, and because the creators knew fans of the franchise love Heartcatch, they tried emulating it in a variety of ways. But that decision really hurt the show's quality, as Happiness Charge's lack of focus, tendency to forget important plot points or not mention anything until the last minute, uneven character writing, and shallow storytelling make it utterly unable to stand on its own two feet as a Precure series. Thankfully, the creators seem to have realized this, as the next season, Go Princess Precure, was a vast improvement over HapiCha in every way, even though it also reused Doki Doki's music at times. Plus, other magical girl shows, and other shows in general, tackled Happiness Charge's premise and did them better. Toei, if you really wanted to celebrate the franchise's tenth anniversary, this was NOT the way to do it.
I don't know if I would call this one the worst season, as I haven't seen every Precure season. But having seen a good chunk of them in their entirety, this one included, I really didn't enjoy Happiness Charge Precure at all. Not only is it overly saccharine and milquetoast compared to other magical girl shows, hell even compared to other seasons of its mother franchise, it simply tries too hard to be something its not. It's definitely not one of the better seasons, and I wouldn't recommend wasting time on it in any fashion. It's still better than Magical Girl Site, though!
