Star Twinkle had the same lead writer as Maho Girls and yeah, I can kinda tell. They both have a unique premise that doesn't quite feel fleshed out enough, the overarching plot and pacing of that plot are rough, and the fight scenes aren't great. Star Twinkle does have stuff to like, but as a whole, it often feels like it takes the bare minimum route for pretty much everything.
Star Twinkle Precure has a potentially interesting plot that really suffers from its pacing issues. Three aliens named Lala, Prunce, and Fuwa in search of 12 Star Color Pens crash land on Earth. Lala meets some kids, they become Cures together, and they race to find all the pens before the evil Notraiders do or risk them dominating the entire universe, all the while traveling the universe and meeting all kinds of species. However, Star Twinkle is painfully slow-paced. The Cures don't actually go to space until Episode 7, Lala doesn't start attending high school and trying to live among humans until Episode 13, the Star Color Pens plot gets resolved after the first half leaving the second half with pretty much nothing in the way of plot, the summer vacation arc is 11 episodes long, and it takes a long time before the show makes explicit what the Notraiders are planning. A slow burn isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when I'm a fourth in and it still feels like the series just started, that's a problem. As for the villains, I don't find too many of them particularly memorable. The only one I really like is Aiwarn, who manages to perfectly toe the line between super goofy and hammy, and also having done some of the worst things any Precure villain has ever done.
Thematically, Star Twinkle Precure is one of the most ambitious seasons in the franchise, trying to tackle multiculturalism, racism, and tolerance. It's a tough feat and while StaTwi's heart is definitely in the right place, the execution is pretty rough. Let's start with the positives. Star Twinkle is definitely the most diverse Precure season to date, with Elena being the first darker-skinned Cure and both Lala and Yuni being aliens, on top of the variety of alien species the Cures encounter. As a matter of fact, the space episodes are easily the best parts of Star Twinkle because you get to see the culture clash between the Cures and the aliens they meet. The series' main message and mission statement is about how open and honest communication can help people overcome their differences, and that there's no reason to be ashamed of who you are. This is probably the thing StaTwi does the most right. Emphasizing the importance of honest communication and being receptive to new things is always an important message and a good way to help kids think more positively about those who are different from them.
However, Star Twinkle's biggest flaw is its utter refusal to engage with anything that could possibly involve some sort of moral shakiness. Hikaru is meant to have a character arc where she learns to treat Lala as a person and not just "that cool alien", but the show never develops that are. It feels like StaTwi is afraid of portraying its lead character in any sort of negative light. In theory, Yuni's arc is really cool because it tackles having to do something illegal for a valid reason, she's stealing from the people in power who ransacked her own race. Sadly, StaTwi just chalks it up to "stealing bad" and refuses to actually engage with the fact that maybe Yuni's in the right here? Even more offensive is when the show tries to make the claim that Yuni and the person who commited fantastical genocide on her entire race are the same. Speaking of which...
The worst thing that Star Twinkle does is that despite the Notraiders being racist planet raiders, the Cures forgive all of them. For the generals, fine whatever. Tenjo in particular got a good redemption because she gets to bond with Elena over their shared discrimination. Aiwarn is iffier since despite being the one responsible for the mass petrification of Yuni's species, she gets forgiven by the Cures pretty early on despite not doing anything to redeem herself until after being forgiven. But the main big bad Ophiuchus who tried to destroy the entire universe being let off with a slap on the wrist is too damn far. I get what the writers are trying to do with that ending, the show posits that racism comes from a lack of understanding of the other race. And while that's not inherently wrong, the implication that you can just get someone to stop being racist just by talking to them, and that it makes up for the stuff they did, is incredibly naive. Star Twinkle is taking a risk by even trying to tackle racism to begin with, but it refuses to go all the way with that theme and ends up coming across as underdeveloped. Precure may be a kid's show, but other seasons (Heartcatch and Go Princess being the best examples) were able to explore their themes to their fullest no matter how dark it may be.
But hey, even if the story is flawed, what really tends to elevate a Precure show for me are the characters. Sadly, Star Twinkle's cast is pretty hit or miss, and what really brings it down is that I don't like the pink Cure at all this time. Since the pink Cure is often the main protagonist and gets the bulk of the screentime, how good they are can play a big part in how good the show is. I like Doki Doki and GoPri in spite of their screentime distribution because of how much I like Mana and Haruka, but Hikaru is boring and gets way more focus than she deserves. As I said earlier, her character arc is incredibly weak and under-developed, so we end up with a dull and paper-thin Cure whose sole character trait is just that she likes aliens. Lala, on the other hand, is an awesome character. While it takes her a while to start actively engaging with humans, Lala struggling to live on Earth and her fear of coming across as weird or perhaps be outed as an alien is incredibly compelling. Hikaru doesn't deserve Lala, she's way better of a character.
Elena and Madoka are also potentially really great, with a fun friendship, but they suffer from a lack of screentime compared to Hikaru and Lala. Elena, as I mentioned, is the first Hispanic Cure, and the majority of her episodes are based around her culture, which is really cool. However, as an actual character, she mostly just falls in the Nao/Akira category of being "the family person who's got her life in order". Madoka is probably my favorite Cure since I'm a sucker for characters based on Princess Kaguya, and her issues dealing with high expectations with her father are compelling... but she gets even less focal episodes than Elena does! Yuni also feels kinda wasted, because she is really cool in concept. She's a fun Precure Robin Hood-esque thief with a uniquely radical worldview, but she rarely ever feels like a part of the group, the season rarely explores her moral ambiguity, and the show ends with her forgiving the people who turned her planet to stone. There's no sugarcoating it, Yuni got done incredibly dirty. I'm also really not huge on the fairies. Fuwa and Prunce are very much similar to Chiffon and Tarte respectively, but they feel like a poor man's version of both of them. Fuwa's voice is grating (especially in that episode where he clones himself), but Prince is especially annoying. He takes Tarte's slight neuroticism and amps it up to eleven and his constant commentating, yapping, and panicking gets immensely annoying.
Even the presentation is uneven. I love the art direction here, with soft and colorful pastels, dreamlike environments, and stars all over the place making the season feel like a Kirby game come to life. There's also a retro 80s vibe to a degree, most noticeable in the vaporwave backgrounds in the endings. I adore the overall aesthetic of Star Twinkle, but it's a real shame that the actual animation is some of the worst in the franchise. The characters are constantly off model, movement is often stiff, and the fight scenes are genuinely horrific. The fights in Star Twinkle are just stock footage paced together, you're literally watching the same thing every episode. The action in this season is so bad that I have way better respect for Maho Girls and especially Kira Kira. I don't care that there wasn't any punching anymore, that show at least has dynamic and creative action scenes with some really cool moments of sakuya every once in a while, which not even Star Twinkle could manage! Back to the positives though, at least the music's still pretty good. Once again, I'm not huge on Yuki Hayashi but he does deserve props for reusing his music way less than any of the other Precure composers, and having the Cures sing the transformation music themselves is absolutely genius.
Highlights:
Her Identity Is Exposed!? The Alien in Class 3, Year 2 (episode 40): Out of all the arcs in this season, Lala's was handled the best. I'm glad the show did go ahead with outing Lala as an alien to her classmates, and it was given the right amount of drama it really deserved. Also, screw Fuyuki.
Draw It Into The Universe! My Own Imagination (episode 49): Definitely one of the better finales as of late, though still not perfect. I think everyone got a pretty good sendoff but relegating Cure Grace's intro to a dream sequence is hilarious new levels of forced. At the very least, Nodoka actually got quite a bit of screentime this time around. These baton passes rarely ever did the best job at selling me on the new pink Cure but I'm pretty sold on Cure Grace already.
Dishonorable Mentions: Unlike most Precure shows, Star Twinkle has some episodes that genuinely angered me, so I wanted to highlight them here:
Blue Cat Returns! The Rainbow-Colored Heart (episode 36): This could've been one of the most fun episodes in the show. I love the thief vs cop dynamic, and Mary Ann is a really cute and fun character. However, the message is awful. Hikaru spends the episode pleading to Yuni that "stealing is bad", and Mary Ann's reasoning for her similar philosophy is "how sad do you think people would be if you stole from them". Despite being portrayed as strictly in the right, what Star Twinkle refuses to even touch on is the fact that Yuni is stealing from rich people (who don't even need anyone's defense) who stole from her own planet first. Yuni is in the right here. But yes, stealing is always bad and that's that. I hate Hikaru even more after this episode.
Shine! Yuni's Twinkle Imagination (episode 38): Aiwarn turned Yuni's planet to stone and ransacked it. By PG standards, this is basically genocide. That seems like it would make Aiwarn borderline irredeemable, or at the very least, she'd have to make a lot of amends to even come close to it. But nope, despite not having done anything to earn it, Yuni says in this very episode that she's willing to forgive Aiwarn because the Notraiders didn't have a planet of their own. TOEI! Like sure, that's a fine tragic backstory that could've been built upon in an interesting way, but having a tragic backstory alone doesn't redeem someone of something this horrific! Aiwarn needed to earn her redemption and that just didn't happen here. While the show does at least have Aiwarn play a big role in the final battle, this is too early and does Yuni's arc a big disservice.
Supri~se☆ Santa Is An Alien!? (episode 44): Okay, this is a lot sillier but it's still worth mentioning. The santa episode of Maho Girls was great because it was a fun twist on the christmas episode format and felt like a natural fit for that season's magical world. Hugtto did another santa episode and it felt a lot more bizarre since that show was a bit more grounded, Cures aside. Now it's the third time we get an episode where the Cures help out a santa and it's gotten really played out.
Overlapping Thoughts! The Star of Hope Shines Through The Darkness (episode 48): There are good moments in this final battle. Ophiuchus is a cool Sailor Moon-esque villain, the Cures singing their transformation theme was great, the final battle was pretty solid, and Lala's goodbye was pretty effective. However, it screws up just as much. The Cures forgiving Ophiuchus is really stupid despite her still being a preset threat. The Cures giving all their power to revive Fuwa is also really stupid, not just because Ophiuchus is still a threat, but because it undercuts Fuwa's sacrifice... and she still has to leave the Cures anyway so what's the point?! And of course, Yuni was done dirty again. I know Aiwarn ended up making an antidote, but the implication that Yuni's entire arc was to let go of her anger about her entire planet being petrified is aggressively awful. She deserved to be angry about that, she was technically the last of her kind for a while and the season never dug into this! How do you mess up a character this badly?
Like with its spiritual predecessor, Star Twinkle does do quite a bit right. Lala is an absolute treasure, the aesthetic is impeccable, and it has a pretty great message about communication and being yourself. However, its rough pacing, the poorly distributed screentime, the weak animation and action, the regressive handling of Yuni's arc, its unwillingness to challenge its own themes lead to a season that just feels like a waste of potential.
2/5 Stars
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