Doki Doki! Precure

[Hiroshi Amearai]

The thing is, I love the characters in this show. I'm hyping for Happiness Charge but at the same time, I'll be sad and miss this show when it's over.

[Guido]

Next Sunday the finalé airs, and I'm just an episode behind.

When it comes to Doki Doki the characters reaching the villains with the voices of their hearts never feels cheap to me. The girls have struggled for real IMO and managed to get this far even to the point of appealing to the feelings of the Trump Kingdom's King inside King Jikochuu. We have Regina admitting out aloud her love for Mana, and her desire that she loves both Mana and her father.

In this situation there isn't a choice to choose between two sides rather a choice between choosing all or leave it forever.

Beautiful drama exchange between Mana and Regina, and most beautiful drama conveyed from all the girls to King Jikochuu. Let's see for myself what happens in the second last episode, but Bel is getting even more suspicious that I'm pretty sure they'll be using him for a twist in the final episode.

[elior]

and so doki doki precure is come to end the final battle at episode 49 was nothing to remember but the thing i loved in this episode was the epilouge

[serenade_beta]

Mm... The final boss(es) was too lame...

[darkchibi07]

Originally Posted by serenade_beta

Mm... The final boss(es) was too lame...

Anyone would when they face THE MANA!

[Kyral]

Yeah, he was not the best last boss around... the last two battles were't this serious to begin with... first we had Lance vs King Jikochuu and now Mana was talking with Proto about jaywalking.

The epiloge was interesting, with the human world interacting with the Trump Kingdom.

Oh well, let's see how the next series will turn out.

[justsomeguy]

Huh, I'm not quite sure how to feel about the series.
Thinking about it, there were things like having a Mary Sue main character (in general, Mana, Rikka, and Alice don't grow much while Makoto is overshadowed); characters like Joe being trusting enough to give away Loveads yet keeping his identity secret and being away for half the show; characters suddenly being introduced without buildup (Regina and Aguri); and a final battle that was pretty silly (giant Lance!) and had a one-sided wipeout by an OP character (Mana, once again).
On the other hand, there was a clear storyline and coherent themes, and exploration of the relationship between love and selfishness. The final episode gave endings to every major character, opened up a big new can of worms in terms of consequences (the portal is open! identities are public!), and dared not to resurrect Ange (she exists as three separate lives now, creating a fourth or recombining the three would cheapen the story).

Score: 7.5/10. When the show tried, it was pretty good; when it didn't, it was still watchable if average. Also, Rikka is the most beautiful Precure there is.

[Laevatein]

Very good series overall - not as good as Heartcatch, but close. 9/10

[Guido]

Well, the next Precure season began airing yesterday, which was Sunday in Japan, but I still just pending the finalé to conclude it, and I hope somebody else posts in this thread before it is relocated into the Older Series section.

Hmmh, I liked the kaibutsu Lance summoning by Rosetta. The giant Lance itself and its squeaky sounds were just so overwhelmingly cute.

I also liked the fact that they avoided the Deus-ex-Machina trope with the Cures reaching out the Trump King. He awoken on its own reaching for Regina, Aguri, and Ai. Him awakening from the dark slumber was the trigger for King Jikochuu getting inevitably purified and reduced to that pathetic, cell thingy which was consumed by Bel, at the end.

Originally, I thought that the writers would have gone the Splash*Star route with Bel betraying King Jikochuu and stealing the latter's core to become into an ultimate being of darkness.
They actually went with an alternate route to the Classic 1st PreCure series. The underling or baddie general did not publicly or in the open rebelled against its master but took advantage of his master's weakened form to consume it in order to turn into something nastier.

The last episode is all that's left for me to say good-bye to Doki Doki once and for all, and I'm feeling sad about it.

[Guido]

First of all, I apologize for the double post.

This is it for me. The end of the journey and the last milestone reached in time now that this thread is soon to be relocated into the older series section.


Today, I finished Doki Doki, but I got mixed feelings, and this is mostly due that the focus on Mana onscreen was too much overwhelming.

Basically, any girl with conviction to protect everybody's love on Earth can become a PreCure, and their power of love is enough to surpass the Big Bang, according to Joe.
So, basically, PreCure are far powerful beyond Athenas' Saints or any other super heroes made by TOEI, is that was the gist of that?

Mmmh, sorry to say this, but the universe is not that convenient.


Everything after the Proto-Jikochuu's defeat was bookended happily. In fact, even Princess Ange was as well bookended happily for her last farewell to Makoto and the others.
That, and the fact that the entire Earth knows about the existence of the PreCure and the gateway to the Trump Kingdom is completely accesible for trade and cultural exchange.

- The Trump Kingdom is modernizing to become a democratic Republic with Joe as its first President, and he has Ai to give him company.

- Makoto continues performing her songs as MakoPi and has Dabi to give her company.

- Regina is now attending classes together with Mana at their same school, so Mana has Regina to give her company.

- Aguri is trying hard at elementary school with both classes and making friends, so the Grandmother has Aguri to give her company.

- Rika is studying for college and has Raquel to give her company.

- Alice is visiting the Trump Kingdom as representative of the Yotsuba zaibatsu for trade negotiations and has both Sebastian and Lance to give her company.

- Lastly, the Trump King stepped down as monarch and went to live with Mana's family, and so he has the Aida family, Mana's grandfather, and Sharuru to give him company.

So, everything ended well for the people on both the Earth and the Trump Republic but feeling bad for the Jikochuu trio. Bel, at least survived but as a mouse-thingy, as well as Ira and Marmo, but they left to where they come from.


Honestly, it was a good season, if it wasn't for Aguri/Cure Ace whom almost ruined the show to me, but thanfully she was sooner tamed down by the 30's episodes.
I do understand that many of you whom watched this show felt dissapointed mostly because of the overwhelming focus on Mana and her too good to be true attitude. That, and that Rika's potential to be sort of Mana's wife was pretty much wasted, and let us not forget that Makoto for most of the show was lukewarm to the audience if not distant.
I guess Alice was cute in her PreCure form, but she even got her limitations on character growth.

Likely, my favorite episode for this season was the second one when it was just Cure Heart and Cure Sword, and Rika managed to save Cure Heart from a precarious situation.

Last Thoughts
I feel satisfied now that I have finished another PreCure season, and I feel that's the farthest I plan to reach. I do have the intention to conclude right now the sequel to YPC5! since I'm just 9 episodes to finish it. After that, again I will say good-bye to the PreCure franchise, but maybe I'll feel curious to try the Suite season.

[DGDCOne]

What's left now is Dokidoki Precure movie. I always remember each movies shown after the final episodes, let's what Dokidoki after looks like.
Yea I love the final episode.

[Liddo-kun]

Finished watching the final episode a few days ago.

Sad that this show is over. At least there's still the movie, so I could see Mana and the others there one more time.

It was an unexpected turn of events. I thought Bel would be the final boss, and then the real final boss shows up. Short, but I liked the action in the end. Hmm, and they didn't go with 100% happy end, Princess Ange didn't come back - she "died". And Ira didn't follow up on his relationship with Rikka.

Interesting epilogue - this is the first time that I've seen another world merge with the human world at the end of a precure series, and they did give some effort to show details on what happened afterwards. King resigns on being a king (logical thing to do since the people probably won't support him much after what he did), Jonathan becomes new leader of Trump, Mana and the rest of the precure keep living happy lives, and Regina stays with Mana at the school. Overall I didn enjoy this series. 9/10.

[Random Wanderer]

So I just finished watching this series.

I liked it. I liked how every episode in some way advanced the plot (first time I've ever seen that in any of the Precure series I've watched), I liked how I was led to strongly empathize with the girls, I liked the powerful bonds the girls all formed with each other, and I liked the strong focus on friendship and love (yes, I said I liked that. The power of friendship and the power of love are what I come to these series for, and I am most happy when they're pulled off well). While I do think some of the Cures could have used more focus than they got, I don't think the series suffered much from not having it.

I would say my only real complaint about DokiDoki is that I feel the writers badly screwed up Aguri/Cure Ace's introductory episodes. I think, from the way they had the Cures react to her "lessons" that they wanted to play her off as a sort of more powerful mentor figure who would lead the girls into new realizations that would help them develop further. The problems in that were twofold. One, she didn't really have anything to teach them: everything she told them was stuff that, quite frankly, they already knew, and that they would have done on their own without her harping at them. And two, they made her come off as much colder and more self-righteous than she had any business being, or for that matter, than she ever was again after those episodes. Essentially, during her first four introduction episodes she came off as an arrogant bitch who unfairly condemned our girls, and snapped at them to learn stuff that they already knew, and to do stuff that they were already in the process of doing.

On the other hand, after those four episodes she becomes a much nicer, rounder, more likeable character. If I just pack her characterization from those episodes together and choose to ignore it under "the writers for this bit were being idiots," I have no problem liking her about as much as any other late-arriving Cure I've seen. It's probably easier for me to do that because I watched the series all at once, so I could get those episodes all out of the way and move on to ones where she was a good girl, rather than having to sit through several weeks of seeing the new girl be unlikeable before they started showing us that she was a good person.

Anyway, enough about that. This series is done. I liked it better than Smile. I'm not sure where to put it in comparison to Suite. And I have now run out of "modern" Precure series to watch (modern being post-Heartcatch). I may have to start going back in time now.

[pcj]

I like to think that Aguri's wild personality swings were intentional writing, and not sloppiness. She really was an arrogant bitch when she first arrived, and she mellowed out as a result of her interactions with the rest of the Cures. To me it seemed like the turning point was the episode where the others all met her grandmother and they had the tea party. In that episode she more or less exposed her vulnerabilities to them and they started acting more as equals rather than the mentor/pupil role they had for her first few episodes.

Her personality actually shifted a bit 5 times that I could count, and there was a noticeable shift each time.

1) When the had the tea party, as mentioned above. When she admitted to the others that she wasn't quite as perfect as she had been pretending to be. This was kind of the ice breaker to allow them to all become friends instead of just fellow Cures.

2) The birthday episode. When she learned how much the others had actually come to care about her. This sort of cemented their friendship and she really mellowed out a lot after this episode, was much more carefree around the others after this, not caring if she showed them her 10-year-old side anymore.

3) The parent visitation day episode, when she learned how much her Grandmother actually cared about her, that her Grandmother knew what she was and supported her in it, instead of fearing she would eventually have to leave. After this her confidence level shot way up, and she was much more... ethusiastic? I guess, about doing what she needed to as a Cure.

4) When she touched the crown and got all her memories back. Including her memories of the original plan of how the two sides of the Princess were supposed to resolve their split. In a way this caused a bit of a regression in her character - she became more arrogant, cold, and calculating, and more task-oriented again, sort of like she was in the beginning. Perhaps her original personality had to do with it having been less time since her memory loss, and now she reverted to that personality because of regaining her memories.

5) After Mana managed to convince her that there had to be another way to resolve things than killing Regina. Once she got that through her head, she reverted back to the personality she had after #3 above.

[Liddo-kun]

Originally Posted by Random Wanderer

So I just finished watching this series.

I liked it. I liked how every episode in some way advanced the plot (first time I've ever seen that in any of the Precure series I've watched)

I also liked Doki because of that. Thanks for pointing it out.

Well, the series has now ended. But we still have the Doki Movie. Can see Mana and the others in action one more time.

[Liddo-kun]

Hopefully, it's ok to double post now. Post before this one is from last year.

Watched the Dokidoki movie today.... really, this is the only precure movie that made me cry. Made me remember my grandma who passed away last 2013, and it also made me remember my favorite pet dog Tuting who passed away when I was in high school. So much feels ~_____~ watched it twice today.

Anyway, the action is good. The villains did put up some fight before being beaten. Hmm, and I thought Marsh is the main villain.. but he sacrificed himself to save Mana. Well, grandma will bring him to a good place..

Thank you Mana and friends for this movie. DokiDoki precure and Go Princess precure are my favorite pretty cure seasons.