Heartcatch Precure Review

Intro

Heartcatch was the first Precure season that I watched to completion! I started with this season because I heard that it was a fan favorite, and it's easy to see why. The unique art style of this season along with Cure Moonlight's arc around dealing with loss and grief cement it as a memorable season. This is my first time reviewing like, anything ever so sorry if it's cringy orz.

Visuals

This season features an angular art style with lots of thick lines that sets it apart from other Precure seasons. The cure designs themselves are all visually appealing and cohesive with each other. Cure Moonlight's costume stands out somewhat from the other three cures, but it isn't too egregious, especially by midseason cure standards. The transformations are well animated and fun to watch, especially Blossom and Marine's duo transformation. The fight scenes and finisher attacks are also well choreographed. The villains in this season are also well designed; the scorpion tail effect of Sasorina's hair was a very clever design touch. While the other two villains look fine, I think I would have preferred if they had more visual cues towards the animal they're meant to represent.

Soundtrack

The first opening is extremely catchy and memorable. It has a very chill vibe to it, which I feel is reflective of whole season's somewhat serious tone(as serious as a children's show can take itself, anyways). The transformation music is also well written and fits the animation well. As for the endings, the first one is a hit, the second one is a huge miss. She wasn't even in the ballpark. Why is it gospel? Truly one of the worst Precure endings I've seen so far. Like even past my prejudice towards gospel music in anime it's just objectively bad by gospel standards. 

Characters/Story

All four cures this season had wonderful personality and development. Cure Moonlight gets a lot of attention for her arc around recovering from the loss of her fairy, but the other three cures also grow so much throughout the season. I loved watching Tsubomi become more confident and outspoken, and watching Erika overcome her jealousy and pursue her dream of becoming a fashion designer. My personal favorite arc was Itsuki coming to terms with her femininity. As a nonbinary person, I appreciate seeing a character who doesn't strictly adhere to gender norms 100% of the time. The villains in this season are fun members of the cast, but are somewhat one-dimensional. They have little personality past their respective gimmicks. Still, it was satisfying to see their redemption at the end of the series.

Overall Score

9/10

would be 10/10 were it not for the ugly gospel tbh. also more villain development would have been nice but maybe im just a sucker for villain -> midseason cure pipeline