Precure All Stars Movie New Stage: Mirai no Tomodachi

I thought all the three other Pretty Cure All Star movies were the best movies I've ever watched. I just watched this one yesterday and I thought that this Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage wasn't all that good. Though, like always, the art of this movie is really good so I'll give it a 10, no mistakes or mess-ups. The story was alright. It was touching too so I'll give it a 7 because it's also kinda like too cliche. At least, for me. For sound, it was all right. Though I've heard things about the sound not matching the subs or was it because of thesite I was watching it from. I looked and it looked like it didn't match the characters speaking. So I'll have to give it a 6 at that. CHARACTER. This is the part that got me disappointed about this movie. It's good that Smile Precure made their appearance in this movie, but it was all about them as well as Suite Precure and Ayumi. The Veteran Precure made an appearance, but they didn't even get to meet the Smile Precure. All they pretty much were were cameos. Except Heartcatch and Fresh who met Smile and Ayumi, the main protagonist of the movie. Speaking of Ayumi, she turns into a Cure named Cure Echo which barely did anything. She didn't fight or anything, she just talked to her friend named Fu-chan (Fusion) then turned back to her normal form. I expected to see a lot of fighting scenes in this movie as well as all the Cures getting all together like the other All Star movies and turning to their Super forms from the cheering and unleash some huge attack. All of this is why I'll give it a 6. As for enjoyment, it was good movie. I'll give it an 8. Overall, I'll give this movie an 8. It has flaws in it, but it's very cute and very good!

This isn't another Precure movie where there's the usual looooooooong boring fight between all the girls and a random villain and then something happens that causes everyone to lose hope until kids wave a random plastic toy around and then a miracle happens and everyone's happy! No, this movie fortunately followed a different route: adds a new character, builds her up using the movie's plot and then introduces the Precure girls into it. This was fun to watch and so far it's the only movie I recommend. The visuals are definetely movie quality. By this I mean that there's a slight improvement comparing tothe anime standards. I also enjoyed the voice acting.

I normally don't watch/read crossovers. Not for any reason. They just never appealed to me. The only crossovers I've ever seen are the Fairly Oddparents and Jimmy Neutron crossovers called the Jimmy Timmy Power Hours. I have some memories of them, but I don't have any interest in watching them again. Speaking of crossovers, Toei LOVES to do these with the Pretty Cure franchise, and has been doing it since 2009, when Fresh Pretty Cure was first made. While it is fun to see characters from other related series interact, Toei's had a habit of making these movies more about milking it's cash cow, sellingtoys, and catering to children rather than making the crossovers actually mean something. I will admit, I haven't seen the All Star movies 1 through 3, though I hear they're pretty bad, so I won't watch them. However, my interest became piqued when I read about the story for a new series of Precure All Stars movies, the New Stage, the first movie having a completely movie original character as a main character, even moreso when I learned the girl is shy, moved to a new town, makes a new friend who happens to be the movie's villain, and other issues normal people like her can relate to. Out of curiosity, I downloaded the movie and watched it all the way through. I expected nothing but a really bad, choppy, cheesy story put together for the purpose of selling toys. What I got was...entirely different. One day, a strange, gooey, Silver Surfer-esque dinosaur version of Godzilla called Fusion attacks the city. The Pretty Cure from all generations (from the first series to Smile. This movie was made in 2012, as Smile was airing) manage to defeat it, but because it's a liquid monster, it leaves spawns all over the place in order to regenerate when it has enough strength. A young girl, Ayumi Sakagami, sees the footage on the news and is inspired by the Pretty Cure, but she's new in town, shy, and unable to make friends. One day, she helps a little yellow blob on the street. It warms up to her and she names it Fu-chan. The grow extremely close and become the best of friends. But what Ayumi doesn't know is that Fu-chan is actually one of Fusion's spawns, and the girls from Smile and Suite Precure take notice when Fu-chan begins eating everything Ayumi claims to hate, including the entire city. When she finds out what Fu-chan has been doing, she's horrified and wants to tell Fu-chan to stop whatever he's doing. But she's just a normal girl with no powers like the Pretty Cure do. Movies tend to typically have better animation than their respective TV series, and New Stage: Mirai no Tomodachi is no different. While the animation did look a little clunky at times, I think they did a rather good job at animating the fight choreography and hand-to-hand combat, and it remains fluid even during the normal, every day scenes. It does, however, lose points for reusing transformation sequences from the show, which most movies based on magical girl anime or giant robot anime tend to do anyway. The soundtrack, while nice, didn't really leave an impression on me except for the opening theme song, Eien no Tomodachi (Friends Forever or Eternal Friends) which is surprisingly good! It's very rock based and not overly saccharine or J-Poppy like other magical girl anime songs tend to be (like the G3 My Little Pony theme songs). It's the kind of song that makes you want to get up and go, and puts you in a very energetic mood. But other times the soundtrack reused tracks from other series during the transformation and final attack scenes (and from what I hear, Precure itself has a notorious reputation for reusing music pieces from other series for some reason). The main problem with the Pretty Cure All Stars movies is that they always have to make EVERY SINGLE PRETTY CURE FROM EVERY SINGLE SERIES appear, often at the expense of making certain teams have absolutely no speaking lines or roles other than plain reinforcement or back up, which both wastes animation and serves no overall purpose than to move the plot forward. I learned in fiction writing class that you cannot create characters just for moving the plot forward. That's not a good way to treat characters. Not only that, the other problem with the All Stars movies are that there's just so many characters that they just aren't able to fully utilize them all, only focusing on certain characters (in this case, the Smile and Suite Precures). Sometimes a huge cast of characters can work, but other times it really drags a medium down if done wrong, especially in a movie, where character development is already limited by an hour and a half time duration, and you just cannot devote that kind of time to developing 28 Pretty Cures. Really, Toei needs to quit with these crossovers, especially since lately they've been giving older characters the shaft in terms of screen time and attention, but then again, even if they did get more screen time, it still wouldn't save this movie. However, Mirai no Tomodachi does have some saving graces, though, and I think I'll get lynched when I say this, but I'm going to say it anyway: One of those saving graces is Ayumi. She's pretty much the main character in the movie, and I really like her, as I can relate to her situation quite a bit. She's moved to a new town because of her father's job, she's shy, and has trouble making friends. I'm pretty much in the same situation right now. I thought she had a lot of character and development in here, and I loved her chemistry with Fu-chan. While a little bit bland and nothing noteworthy, she's a fairly realistic character with down to earth problems people can relate to. Two more saving graces are the villain and the story. The story is simple this time around, and it's all the better for it. It's less about killing a bad guy, and much more about friendship, the benefits of just talking to someone instead of beating around the bush, and how important it is to clear up misunderstandings between friends. I really like a story like that, and I thought it was done really well here despite the occasional cheese. The villain is also very simple, but far from your typical cliche anime villain, though I would have liked to learn more about his past and why he attacked the city in the first place. This is a major step up from the previous All Star movies (granted, I haven't seen them, nor do I plan to). Unfortunately, it's not a perfect movie, as it's still riddled with problems, the most egregious being a big, blatant Deus Ex Machina that comes absolutely out of nowhere for no reason other than to move the plot and make Ayumi "special." The explanation for it was rather flimsy, too. Honestly, I think the whole movie would be better off if it WASN'T a crossover movie featuring every single Pretty Cure out there. If you're going to use Pretty Cures just as plot moving devices and treat them as reinforcement, then I think the movie would be much better off if it just cut the rest of the Pretty Cures out completely except for the Smile Precures and spend MORE time on Ayumi. That way, the animators could use the budget and storytelling potential to improve on it and use whatever potential the movie didn't use in the end. Why bother throwing in Precures in the first place if you aren't even going to give them speaking lines or utilize them properly?! I've heard complaints about the movie, the most ridiculous being that Ayumi got too much screen time. In my opinion, the movie would have been a lot better had it been just about Ayumi, and not a massive crossover made to pander to children and sell toys. The creators could have made this into a very nice movie and developed her into a more interesting character. But, for what it's worth, I do appreciate this movie for trying, and for actually trying to put in an effort to make this movie into more than just a giant toy commercial. It played it safe and it's riddled with problems, I admit, but I like it for what it is. It's nothing groundbreaking or anything, nor is it the best movie ever, but I like it's themes and message, and it actually does attempt to deal with some subdued, realistic drama rather than just killing another bad guy. I really wish people would give Ayumi some slack, though. You should all be happy she isn't really annoying like Chibiusa from Sailor Moon or Tagiru from Digimon Xros Wars: Time Traveling Hunter Boys! All in all, while still a big cash grab, it's a cute movie that's good for a bit of light entertainment.

Mirai no Tomodachi is done. And it's very weird and feels off for a few reasons. These reasons don't exact hurt the movie on their own, but when combined into a single period of just over an hour, they become problematic. For starters, the movie's main focus is not on any Cure strictly speaking, but rather a normal human named Ayumi takes center stage; add to this a somewhat blank personality and a bad moral, and it's not great. The movie's worst offense however, is that the entirety of the cast is placed in minor roles and, excluding a brief appearance at the beginning, almostthe entirety of the Cure teams are completely absent. A lot of them don't even get major speaking roles. The only Cure teams present with big roles are Suite's, Smile's, and Heartcatch for about half the movie. And this...isn't looking great. Let's get into it. To start the movie, Fusion (the main villain from the Precure All Stars DX movie, the wiki tells me; he's a combination of Zakenna, Uzaina, Hoshina, and Kowaina, the monsters of the day from the first four seasons) has somehow reformed and attacks the city, though the Precure, all standing as silhouettes on a ferris wheel for some reason, defeat him instantly, and rather cheaply, it's simply part of the opening theme animation. Anyway, they didn't do such a great job after all, and globby little Fusion-bits fall across the entire town, with one of them getting into a fairy tea party or something..? Anyway, Ayumi has moved into the neighborhood and is basically every "new kid in town ever;" she doesn't want to see her new school, she hates where she lives, she can't relate to anyone, she's lonely, she has no friends, blah blah blah. On her way home from school, she spots a Fusion bit and mistakes it for a bug squirming under a leaf and rescues it. To be honest, I find it hard to believe that ANYONE, let alone a 14-year-old girl, would see a yellow squishy blob under a leaf, and think to themselves: "Hmm, it's probably a bug that's stuck. I'll save it and let it crawl/slide onto my shoulder, name it Fuu, and make it my friend." But that's exactly what Ayumi does. ...If Ayumi was FIVE YEARS OLD and not a middle schooler (her friends said they're as old as the Precure roughly. That means Ayumi is about 14) this would be reasonable. Just to establish the plot, the Suite and Smile teams know Fusion survived for some reason and both run into Ayumi and literally chase her halfway across town to apologize for bumping into her. I get that they want the girls to look super generous and outgoing, but this is ridiculous. Hibiki and Miyuki come off as if they're stalking Ayumi, with her terrified reactions and attempts to flee. (Continued in new message) So Ayumi takes "Fuu-chan" home and these scenes aren't exactly in this order, but it's easier for me to put them like this in two separate storylines. Ayumi ends up needing to "teach" Fuu-chan stuff such as how small it is and how to get bigger by eating. Um....no comment, but it's pretty obvious even watching this for the first time that things are going to spiral out of control. Things reach a point when Ayumi's mom scolds her for playing her game too long, and Ayumi completely overreacts, running out the door crying that she hates her mom. Not only that, she claims that she wants the entire city to disappear. Ayumi acted so selfish and spoiled in this movie that it really pissed me off and I honestly hated her parts. With the Cures, all that really happens is Suite and Smile teams meet each other and fight Fusion. ...Horribly. Despite learning quickly in the fight that Fusion can not only combine with other Fusion globs, but that it can also directly absorb their attacks, they continue to attack regardless. Eventually the Cures confront Ayumi, who once again becomes dramatic, running away with Fuu-chan and refusing to let the Cures touch him. MORE AGGRAVATION. This thing TRIED TO KILL PEOPLE and wants to LEVEL THE ENTIRE CITY. How are we supposed to feel ANY SYMPATHY. He was even the main antagonist in a PREVIOUS MOVIE. Because of Ayumi's selfish desires, Fuu-chan becomes evil again and tries to destroy everything, like ya do. Ayumi realizes her mistake and decides to confess her open feelings to Fuu-cha-I'm going to call it Fusion. Along the way, the other Cures are finally bothered to show up, thanks to the summoning Miracle Lights. (was there really no better use for them?) They hold off the Fusion globs so Ayumi can get to plot-relevant Fusion blob. Oh no though, Ayumi is captured (YAY!) Although in the most aggravating part of the entire movie, she BECOMES A CURE (which she happened to have a desire to become earlier.) This particularly annoyed me because I don't think a selfish girl like her who's overdramatic about everything should be a Cure; it makes as much sense as letting Milk be a Cure. Anyway, now Cure Echo, she has a heart-to-heart with Fusion and they wanna protect each other I think. Oh and there was some part about Fusion launching a boat into the center of town that was stopped by all the Cures. Fusion agrees to step down, though the rest of the fusion globs apparently disagree...if that's possible..? Smile protects them with Fuu-chan's power aiding them and Cure Echo powers down back into Ayumi. And apparently all of the girls now go to Ayumi's school together. Idk if you can tell but I honestly had major issues with this movie and I'm not happy how they resolved it, nor am I happy with the limited screentime for...ANYONE. I mean we had BARELY even half the fairies here. I'm afraid this is the first All-Stars that I really hated. 3/10.

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