Tropical-Rouge! Precure is the 2021 installment of the long running Precure series. This times the villains are driven by procrastination and attempt to steal people’s motivation power. The Cures’ gimmick on the other hand is make-up, with the transformation sequence being based on applying make-up.
It all starts with Laura the mermaid being send to the human world to find “the legendary Precure” who are the only ones who can stop the Procrastination Witch from stealing everybody’s motivation powers, something she will get up to doing tomorrow. She ends up in Aozora City, coincidently the place Manatsu also ends up in after she moves from the small tropical island she lived with her father, to go to school in the city, living with her mother the aquarium director. She meets up with Laura just as the first monster attacks the city and it turns out that of course, Manatsu is one of the legendary Precure, Cure Summer. They’re joined in short order by the cosmetics loving Sango, Cure Coral, mermaid obssesed bookworm Minori who becomes Cure Papaya and finally Asuka, Cure Flamingo, a sporty third year at Manantsu’s school. Sango and Minori are fairly typical blue and yellow Cures respectively, but the tomboyish and somewhat hot tempered Asuka is more interesting. She turns out to have a bit of a hidden past with the school student president, going from best friends to enemies over a tennis match, though it’s clear both are still upset about their falling out. Of course it all gets resolved in the end.
As per usual with Precure, each week one of the Procrastionation Witch’s underlings comes to town, drains a convenient crowd of people of their motivation power, then uses it to create the monster of the week. The first is Chongire, a hermit crab who normally works as the chef in the Witch’s castle. Then there’s Numeri, the sexy sea slug doctor (Precure does like its sexy older woman villains) and Elda, a literal child (and also a prawn). None of those three is actually all that bothered about their jobs, prefering doing anything else, but their loyalty to the Witch compels them to follow through with it. There’s also the Butler, sort of the head underling who is the only one who really seems a villain. When in the best Precure tradition the series turns serious in its final part, the villains get their redemption and help the Precure fight the real evil. For Precure villains they’re very relatable in their bad attitudes to their jobs.
Best character in the show is Laura though, vain and egocentric gremlin that she is. She wants to become queen of Grand Ocean and if it takes becoming a Precure and defeating the Procrastination Witch to do so, she will. Though she learns to genuinely care about her friends, she’s still not above using them to get her way. She also brings out the best in the other Cures, especially Asuka, who just can’t with Laura’s general attitude to life. They also become pseudo rivals for Manatsu, though that never really leads anywhere. Laura’s so great she got her own Twitter meme account. Second best character is Kururun, the seal fairy mascot whose role in the series is to show up and go ‘kururun’ every episode. A very important role indeed.
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