So, the first anime that got me into anime was Sailor Moon.
I’ve heard that Sailor Moon basically started the magical girl anime genre. That was back in the early 90’s.
In the early 2000’s, a new series of magical girl shows began the Pretty Cure series. The first one was called “Futari wa puri kyua” or “We (two) are Pretty Cure”
I believe those two were named Cure Black and Cure White.
Ever since then, there’s been plenty of other Pretty Cure shows that come about about once a year (sometimes skipping a year maybe).
There’s also been crossover movies with all the precure characters in them:
Now, the precure series (precure is short for Pretty Cure) have a couple things going for them.
1) The girls are cute, earnest, and likeable
2) The girls have magical powers to fight evil in the world
3) The girls have adorable little animal helpers that are their friends and allies.
In some of the pictures above, you can see those cute little pet-like animal friends of theirs. Even the original series had them:
The animals are always adorable. They often have cutsey voices and a cute way of talking that denotes that they’re cute animal things and not actual people. Though of note, some of these pet things become precure themselves in certain series, I believe.
Anyway, I haven’t actually watched any of the previous series so I can’t vouch for them. But I have been watching the current series that is still ongoing in Japan.
It’s called Suite PreCure.
I love it for 3 really important reasons.
1) It’s music themed, which I think is awesome.
The precures use musical instruments as their weapons. The enemies are modeled after famous composers – they’re named Trio the Minor and their names are Bass Drum, Falsetto, and Baritone, and yes, they talk/sing like their names imply.
The main two precure girls are named Hibiki and Kanade. Hibiki comes from the verb hibiku which means to reverberate, and Kanade comes from the verb kanaderu, which means to play an instrument.
Their town is named Kannon Town, which means something like “lots of music.” The examples go on and on
2) Their little pet-helper is a most adorable white cat named Hummy, played by the voice actress who did Sailor Moon!
Sailor Moon’s voice actress is super famous. And super talented. And plays Hummy super well.
Plus Hummy is meant to be a very cute and loveable character. She’s earnest and somewhat naive in an endearing way, played in such a way that you come to respect Hummy instead of feeling sorry for her. She’s the backbone of the team.
3) They have extra little helpers in this series – the Fairy Tones!
What’s a fairy tone? Basically it’s a little jewel sprite. Hummy is actually holding them in the above picture.
There’s one for each music notes – do ray me fa so la ti do. In Japanese, the notes are do re mi fa so ra shi do, and by attaching -ri to the end of each, the fairy tones get their names: dori, reri, miri, fari, sori, rari, shiri, and dodori (to demarcate it from the lower dori).
Note: dodori is purple, and does not appear in this picture.
Those names sounds absolutely adorable in Japanese. And the fairy tones talk adorably and often say the first syllable in their name twice at the end of each sentence (a cutesy thing that talking creatures/animals sometimes do – not always saying their names, but maybe saying a certain syllable or reduplicated syllable after each sentence).
These fairy tones each have a bit of personality (some more than others), and often help the precure team in adorable ways. Dodori is by far the most awesome one – she’s not with the group at first, and comes in later in the series. Here she is:
The tones help the team to transform and power up – each girl gets two fairy tones to use. Since there’s 8 Fairy Tones, that means 4 main Precure characters. The series starts out with just 2, and slowly adds the remaining two over time. I don’t wanna give it away, so if you’re interested, try watching it yourself! Episodes are easily available online with English subtitles.
I’ll probably do another post in the future on some other anime I like – I have, in particular, two more shows I want to introduce. If you have any anime you like, please share your recommendations with me in the comments section!
Sporadic Happiness (in Japan!) 