Happiness Charge Precure!

Some time ago, the opening of a box known as the "Axia" set loose the previously sealed members of the Phantom Empire into the world. Rising to protect humanity from these spiteful villains are warriors known as the Precure, whose heroic feats have garnered them celebrity status on television screens across the globe.

Hime Shirayuki, princess of the kingdom where the Axia was originally held, is one such warrior who transforms into "Cure Princess" to battle monsters summoned by the Empire. However, Hime's timid personality often hampers her success in fending off the enemy. Frustrated with her hard luck and determined to find a Precure partner, Hime befriends Megumi Aino, a happy-go-lucky teenager. When a general of the Phantom Empire appears, Hime fails to do much in the face of his attacks. Intent on protecting her new friend, Megumi ignites her hidden potential—transforming into "Cure Lovely."

With their sights set on protecting the world, Megumi and Hime form a new Precure team known as the "Happiness Charge Precure" whilst embarking on a journey to discover true love.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Shirayuki, Hime Main

Han, Megumi Japanese

Aino, Megumi Main

Nakajima, Megumi Japanese

Hikawa, Iona Main

Tomatsu, Haruka Japanese

Oomori, Yuuko Main

Kitagawa, Rina Japanese

Ribbon Main

Matsui, Naoko Japanese

Glasan Main

Kobori, Miyuki Japanese

Mishou, Mai Supporting

Enomoto, Atsuko Japanese

Sagara, Seiji Supporting

Kanemoto, Ryousuke Japanese

Oresky Supporting

Koyasu, Takehito Japanese

Kaidou, Yuuya Supporting

Uchiyama, Kouki Japanese

Takahashi, Tomoko Producer

Nagamine, Tatsuya Director, Episode Director, Storyboard

Yamauchi, Shigeyasu Episode Director, Storyboard

Nakamura, Ryouta Episode Director, Storyboard

Reviews

Jan 26, 2015

TheAwesomeHannah

Recommended

Ah, Pretty Cure. It has never failed to make me amused. I'm always excited for a new episode to come out and I always enjoy it. Now that another season finished airing, it's the time for me to write my review.

Story: Young Megumi Aino, age 14, and Hime Shirayuki, age 14, bump into each other unintentionally. They become friends. Soon, Megumi meets Ribbon, her mascot. She is given a Pretty Change Mirror (PreChan Mirror) to transform into the tough Cure Lovely. Hime, who was already a Cure, transforms into Cure Princess. They fight the Saiarks and save the city from destruction.

Overall: 9/10

Art: This...style is extremely ... unique from other anime. The animation makes it look more cartoonish but with an anime feeling to it. Every episode, the art gets better and better. Never has it been a horrible style. Plus the CG was AMAZING. It was like the endings of Pretty Cure, but this time, it was inserted in the middle of the episode.

Overall: 10/10

Sound: The OST was so beautiful. Each episode had a different sound track and no sound track was the same. The opening and endings (Especially Pretty Cure Memory) are as catchy as burrito. The voice acting was SPLENDID. Back in the beginning of 2014 I was scared because Megumi might have a squeaky voice. NOPE! They made her be voiced by Megumi Nakajima, who was an idol girl.

Overall: 10/10

Character: Megumi Aino is a young girl who, like every other cure, is energetic and fun. Then there is Hime Shirayuki, a shy, timid princess girl. Then, there is Yuko Oomori, who is the sweetie bell of the season. Lastly, there is Iona Hikawa, the boyish of the season.

Overall: 9/10

Enjoyment: This was a WONDERFUL season and the second best season out of all. I give this a 10 out of 10! Which means, THAT WAS THE BEST THING I EVER SAW!!!!!!!!!1!!!!1!!!!!

Reviewer’s Rating: 10

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Jan 27, 2015

MahouS

Mixed Feelings

If I could use one word to describe Happiness Charge it would be consistent. It's pretty much always a fun and entertaining show at the least, while there are parts that are better and worse than others its highs and lows aren't particularly extreme ever. I could always count on each episode to be basely enjoyable when I watched it even if I didn't expect much else.

The characters are fun enough. They have good chemistry with each other and I Hime in particular is great, she's definitely the stand out Cure from this season to me. Something of a problem though is that the show ... doesn't really balance out what it does with each girl. Yuuko feels like a prop for the first 30 episodes of the show and in the second half Hime is just kind of there. Not every Cure needs to have some sort of important side plot or be directly related to the main story in some way like Hime but there is really nothing going on for Yuuko and Hime at large stretches of time. Not only that but Yuuko's character is hardly expanded upon at all in the first half. Not counting Cures we have Seiji, Megumi's childhood friend. He's a pretty good character in his own right, and he becomes a nice support for the group of girls later on.

More than any other season Happiness Charge has a big focus on romance and love. It's pretty refreshing seeing this as a theme for Precure after so long. But it's not exactly done the best. A lot of it just ends up being characters agonizing over feelings and there not being good resolution on most things. Hime's potentially burgeoning crush on Seiji is wrapped up in the most disappointing and anti-climactic way possible, and in the worst case a possible love interest for Iona comes out of nowhere to enable a power-up and disappears just as quickly. For a show where love is such a big deal it really drops the ball in a lot of places.

In general the show is very quick to finish one thing and then move on to the next. Mostly in the second half. It will do something interesting and shocking for one episode and then it's done, time to do something else. The "Unlovely" event, which could've been expanded on so much more, and the resolution of Cure Tender are treated this way and it's a bit anti-climactic once again. The show does have a bit of a bad habit of bringing up supposedly important things and then just forgetting about them or seemingly thinking that they never need to bring them up again.

For a season where there are many different teams of Cures fighting around the world this wasn't really utilized much, they travel once and that's it. It's just kind of a shame they didn't really get to know that many other Cures well.

And then there's the CGI stock footage transformations. It's probably the most unique thing about HapCha compared to other Precure seasons. The girls each get some form changes and when they use them we get CGI stock footage exactly like the ending songs. They're very disappointing. The attacks themselves are basically pointless in the first place, very rarely do they even have an affect on anything other than the small monsters the Cures will be fighting. It basically just amounts to a weird cut-scene, "Oh. That happened.", and then they get phased out as the show goes on and we never see them again, it's basically just a waste of an idea. This only applies to the form changes used for battle though. The regular civilian changes are good, the girls get a wide variety of different outfits like ninja gear. It's one of the better realized parts of the show as they're always transforming into something cute.

The action in the show is overall the best we've had in Precure since Heartcatch. There's a lot of energy and excitement in the fights and the Cures are always inventing random attacks and throwing energy blasts and stuff that make the fights more fun. There's not really a ton of exceptionally well animated fights though but the show makes up for it I feel.

The animation isn't the best to be sure but the characters are very expressive and I feel the style and atmosphere of the show balance this out. I never found myself caring much about the general animation outside of fight scenes because Hime's exaggerated motions and such kept me entertained.

The villains are quite varied. The minion trio, like we've had every season since Fresh, is not particularly good. They have their fun scenes and are kind of basely entertaining but there's nothing else to them. They just kind of get worn out after a while. It doesn't feel like they have much of a rivalry with the Cures or anything and they aren't given backstories or any real development until much later than necessary. This makes the inevitable final fights with them just feel hollow.

Phantom is a better villain but still bland for most of his run. He later gets some development and what we learn about him makes him quite interesting but he's still not particularly compelling or fun to watch as a villain. Mirage is also pretty good and interesting herself but she just doesn't do much. The fight with her is indeed quite great though.

Deep Mirror is easily the best villain of the show. He also ends up as just being one of the most thought out, complex, and well realized villains of the franchise.

The finale is good definitely. Relatively well built up, intense, awesome, good villains to deal with, shocking reveals, it pretty much has all you could want. However. Megumi is the only Cure to be even remotely relevant to anything going on in the last part of the show. She does everything important basically. I don't know if I should be angrier at Doki for starting this terrible trend or HapCha for blindly following it. At least HapCha doesn't go out of its way to make things revolve around Megumi when they shouldn't though. She just... happens to be the only important one at the end. It's honestly kind of annoying.

The show uses a victim of the week format at a very loose level, we don't really get to know the people made into Terribads for the most part and they don't have to be sad or having a problem of their own like in other seasons. It's just a quick way to create a victim and a monster for the show and it's kind of nice truthfully, it at least means they never half ass the victim of the weeks story and they can still have important people made into monsters.

The normal non-cgi stock footage in the show is pretty good. All the transformations are good, Lovely and Princesse's duo attack is awesome, and the final group attack... well it's certainly unique I can tell you that much.

With all this being said the last thing about HapCha I can say is that there's just a feeling of staleness to it. Watching it I can't shake that it just all comes off as kind of bland to me. Probably having to do with Megumi's character, as fun as she can be, being really typical herself. But it's other things too that I can't quite describe, just a feeling the show gives off. But perhaps this is only because it's been ten years of Precure.

I would never rate Happiness Charge as one of the best or worst seasons of Precure. It's fine. That's it. It never evoked feelings of love or hate. But I could watch it and enjoy it again one day.

Reviewer’s Rating: 6

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Sep 19, 2018

JuneNephthys

Not Recommended

Happiness Charge Precure is just an animated toy commercial―more or less. Despite it being the first Precure series that I watched, it is one of the weakest that I’ve seen in terms of narrative and visuals. The only character that was more than a one-dimensional archetype was Hime, who had to evolve from being a spoiled princess and accepts the guilt of disappointing members of her kingdom. It’s a kid’s show, so it didn’t dive much more into that; that and the series’ primary focus is on love, crushes, and advertising new toys.

• There are obnoxious, card-based transformations that revolve around dancing, so there might ... be an Aloha transformation when one of them is a hula dancer, or a ballet card, etc. In general, I don’t like it when cartoons incorporate a card-based system to a series like Precure, that doesn’t need cards, because it’s just an excuse to sell more things! To the creators: If you make a good enough series, with memorable designs, people will want to buy the trading cards! Having the characters use a transformation device that requires card input is an obvious marketing ploy! I felt that there were so many toys advertised in this series that it distracted from the actual plot!

• I know the Precure franchise didn’t become an enterprise without shilling and selling tons of toys, but when you make an entire series―Shill: The Animated Series, it’s going too far. It’s like the series didn’t want to pay for television advertisements, so they put them in the series as a means of subliminal messaging. It’s best to go the simplistic route, like the series that aired the following year, Go! Princess Precure, that just has a CG castle that the characters turn a lever on―that’s obviously supposed to be a marketable toy, or the weird Heartcatch Precure spinning wand where they scream to invoke its magical powers and because of the campiness, the scene blended so well with Heartcatch’s obscure, otaku atmosphere.

• For those who were fans of Heartcatch’s character designs, this series copies that and creates something with a similar art style, but far less quality. From beginning to end, this series is almost filled entirely with stock CG scenes and product placement. It wasn’t so bad at the beginning, but I can barely remember the plot towards the middle of the series because it was so much of a commercial!

• There’s an addition of “international Precure(s),” so I guess even if you’re a child living in the United States, you can still be a Precure? This Precure series commemorated Precure’s 10th anniversary, so if any of you are hardcore Precure fanatics, there are small vignettes before every episode with each of the old Precure(s) introducing themselves and sometimes saying something quirky, like Erika from Heartcatch. If you don’t want to watch Happiness Charge to see these anniversary specials, there’s a compilation of them online!

• In a nutshell, the characters in the show, other than Hime can be described as this: Megumi (main girl, tomboy), Yuuko (sweet girl who literally likes making sweets), and Iona (girl looking for revenge, rival with a soft side). If you haven’t seen all of those worn archetypes a million other times in anime, then perhaps, you will enjoy this series more than I did.

• Overall, some of the animation looked good, but the budget was noticeably frugal. If you want to see good animation in a Precure series, watch Go! Princess Precure or Heartcatch Precure. The romance arc between Megumi and Seiji is the only thing that the series really cares about in the end, though implied Hime and Iona is very close to being a canonical pairing. I thought Queen Mirage was a cool villain who was overshadowed by Phantom; her gothic aesthetic and powers reminded me of Queen Nehellenia from Sailor Moon SuperS, who I thought was one of the best Sailor Moon villains. This series isn’t really worth watching as a whole, there’s far too much filler. In the end, I give this corporate product a 4/10.

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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	Poll: Happiness Charge Precure! Episode 49 Discussion -Karoshi- - Jan 25, 2015	22 replies	by Hai_VN »» Jan 31, 1:33 PM
	Poll: Happiness Charge Precure! Episode 42 Discussion NV2301 - Dec 2, 2014	10 replies	by PrawnGuard »» Sep 16, 2023 3:01 PM
	Poll: Happiness Charge Precure! Episode 10 Discussion danz - Apr 5, 2014	30 replies	by PrawnGuard »» Sep 5, 2023 9:22 PM
	Poll: Happiness Charge Precure! Episode 36 Discussion SamyAino - Oct 12, 2014	9 replies	by Atsunome »» Jul 11, 2023 3:16 AM
	Poll: Happiness Charge Precure! Episode 24 Discussion cjkira99 - Jul 13, 2014	19 replies	by Atsunome »» Jul 6, 2023 9:14 AM

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