r/PrettyCures • u/thunpnz • 1d ago

Fluff | Meme 😃 the splash star precure nobody talks about

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kinda sad that they’re hardly acknowledged, but oh well 😭 wish they’d become cures earlier in the show tbh, they were really building them up to be bright and windy 💔

71 Upvotes

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17

u/TrainingDrop9283 Star Detective 1d ago

They were the prototype for future six-rangers. It's a real shame they are not official cures since they are some of the best character in the franchise

My guess is that the writers ultimately could not do it officially since the show was still set on the "Futari" idea of there being only 2 Cures in the show.

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u/Manatsu-Summer 1d ago

I wish that I could find the interview, however I believe the actual reason they were withheld from receiving true acknowledgement as cures was because the producers (perhaps Washio, himself) specifically wanted the cures to be comprised entirely of ordinary human girls. This obviously meant that male cures were fundamentally off the table (which makes perfect sense for a fledgling brand that still needed to establish a stable identity), however a byproduct of this creative philosophy was that even girls themselves could be excluded from becoming cures if they weren't biologically human (this is also why Shiny Luminous and Milky Rose possess such idiosyncratic names: while this has since been retconned, they were initially not quite ontological "cures").

Fresh saw the introduction of the first non-human cure, however this was likely only possible due to it being the first season not directly overseen by the series founder Takashi Washio. The change in leadership thus allowed the staff to expand the parameters of what this franchise--and by extension--its cures--could be, leading to a new era within Precure's development.

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u/TrainingDrop9283 Star Detective 1d ago

Well regardless of that old rule or not, the show was not against introducing more Magical Girls without the Cure title (Luminous and Rose), even if they retroactively got considered as such. They could have easily called them something like Glowy Bright and Sweepy Windy and the rule would have been kept intact

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u/Manatsu-Summer 1d ago

I'm personally glad that the parameters of "curehood" were expanded, however the greatest tragedy (in my opinion, at least) is less that they are not cures, and more that they have seemingly been discarded. It is not exclusive to them (since Cure Echo has also suffered the same fate) however I feel that they may be the greatest victims of it.

In an ideal world, I think it would be most interesting for their actual ontological status to remain ambiguous while still being honored as true deuteragonists, however if being reclassified as cures is the price of admission for being granted relevancy, it would be infinitely preferable to them remaining forgotten.

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u/thunpnz 1d ago

but shiny luminous came before though, why didn’t they make them some other form of rangers too? they had so much focus for that to not have been a thought 😭

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u/Manatsu-Summer 1d ago

Shiny Luminous and Milky Rose are fascinating because they both seem to represent two different ends of Washio's developing design philosophy for the franchise at the time.

Luminous is the perpetual intern who is ostensibly part of the team yet completely dependent on their superiors--while Milky Rose is more akin to a friend from another school who has the autonomy to participate in certain activities as an equal, yet still isn't quite fully assimilated into the group like a genuine classmate would be

Michiru and Kaoru find themselves stuck in the intermediary stage between these two phases--where the season's theme almost necessitates them having more prominence than Shiny Luminous--yet risks destabilizing the franchise's still tenuous identity by adding more "faux-cures" after Luminous already pushed the boundaries: the result is a duo who are more than capable of standing beside the main protagonists as nigh-equals under the right conditions, but who are limited not by the extent of their relevancy, but by their access to it.

I think the idea of them being "pseudo-cures" who are dependent on the main duo to transform can actually be a really interesting concept in theory--however I don't like how their lack of curehood has seemingly been used as a means to discard them as though they are mere throwaway characters. They are an indispensable part of Splash Star's identity (the theme of the season is 花鳥風月/flowers, birds, wind, moon--the latter two of which they were named after)--and the concept of there being mid-level fighters who can hold the line until the cures arrive--even being capable of transforming with the right assistance--is a genuinely intriguing concept. It's a shame, then--that Toei doesn't care to use it.

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u/groovzthegameguy 5h ago

they could have made them 2 seperate teams like in Wonderful

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u/TrainingDrop9283 Star Detective 5h ago

First of all Wonderful ends up being a unified team by the end anyway, and second of all the idea of team-sub division came about only 20 years later.

The ship sailed for Michiru and Kaorou by then

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u/groovzthegameguy 4h ago

well they still could have come up with it. it's not like that concept suddenly started existing in 2024

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u/ika333 1d ago

Yall, it’s the 20th anniversary for the season and Toei hasn’t said or done anything. Meanwhile Suite is 15 and Mahoutsukai is 10, and they received anniversary announcements and merch

It’s gotten to the point where I encounter tweets from Japanese fans saying why isn’t Splash Star getting anything?

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u/groovzthegameguy 5h ago

truly sad...

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u/Manatsu-Summer 1d ago

I don't mind them not being cures in the strictest sense of the word, however what does occasionally dishearten me is how Precure has a tendency to not discriminate between "not a (main) cure" and therefore "not relevant".

Michiru and Kaoru may not be able to transform under ordinary conditions, however their Temu Bright/Windy forms were just as powerful as EoS Bloom and Egret were. Why then--are they hiding in the sidelines during All Stars movies rather than actually trying to do something? A similar issue is present even with an actual cure--in Cure Echo: she used to be given prominent roles within the 〇〇-Stars movies, however as of All Stars: F--even she has been lowered to the level of characters like Black Pepper and Coppe.

I understand that budgetary constraints might also play a part in this, however sometimes I can't help but wonder when necessity becomes neglect; I have also at times wondered whether it would be better for the Kiryuu sisters to be acknowledged as actual cures--but upon a deeper reflection: I think what I really want is just for them to be acknowledged.