#pcd242

The moment has arrived! Eternal’s Director finally steps out of his office and reveals himself to Nozomi and the Precures for the first time! Are they ready for this encounter? Let’s find out!

The Plot

Eternal’s Director dreams about his first visit to the Cure Rose Garden, where Flora rejected him and locked him out because he wanted to take control of it. Knowing that Flora has given Nozomi the access he was denied, he decides to finally see her for himself.

All the girls except for Nozomi are hanging out at Natts House, doing homework and studying for an upcoming exam. Nozomi has chosen to study at the library instead, so she doesn’t end up relying on her friends too much. She struggles and they miss her, but they let her do her thing.

When Nozomi finally leaves, she notices it’s very gusty outside. She stops to ponder a large tree, and is joined by Otaka the principal/lunch lady, who tells her it used to be small and weak, but it withstood and grew big and strong (this is a metaphor). Nozomi then realizes she forgot something and rushes back to the classroom, where she stops at the teacher’s desk and acts like she’s presenting a class. Coco shows up to give her some encouragement, but they keep getting interrupted by more wind. Suddenly they detect a powerful presence like they’ve never felt before, and rush outside.

In the school’s courtyard is none other than the Director of Eternal, in all his masked giant chair glory. He interrogates Nozomi, asking why she wants to go to the Cure Rose Garden, and she says it’s because Flora invited her to do so. Coco tries to defend her honor, but is attacked, and so Nozomi transforms into Cure Dream.

The Director uses shadows to blow holes underneath Dream and Coco. Dream attempts to punch him, but he blocks her with an energy field and strikes her with his shadowy wings. He makes a speech about how everything in the world can be classified as either something of value, or of no value, before destroying Otaka’s tree, and then the entire school and surrounding forest, leaving nothing but a giant crater in the ground.

Cure Dream is in shock, and the director declares her to have no value, but just then the other Cures and Milky Rose appear to back her up. The Director turns his shadow wings into five Hoshiina orbs that plant themselves in the shadows of everyone aside from Dream, spawning color-coded Hoshiinas shaped like demons. The girls use their special attacks, but the Hoshiinas absorb them, distort them, and return fire, leaving everyone strewn about. Dream steps forward, giving an inspirational speech that all the items and places he erased were things that could have grown to become much greater, and that he does not get to universally decide the worth of anything, especially them.

Coco gives them power and the Cures all perform Rainbow Rose Explosion on the Director. He turns the Hoshiinas into a dark rose to counter their attack, and it seems that he can repel the attack, but Mint turns to Dream and reminds her, via the metaphor of the tree, to hold to her beliefs so she can grow and support her friends and teammates. This is the encouragement she needs to push through the Director’s defense. He is overwhelmed, and moves out of the way of the attack. He stands up, weakly, but before he can try to attack again, Anacondy shows up and teleports him back to Eternal. As he reflects on what just happened, he thinks to himself that maybe the cures do have some value after all.

Over at Natts House, everyone is looking at the still sleeping King Montblanc and worried about the future….. Except Nozomi, who reiterates that she can grow and become unshakeable for the team, while eating a special pancake that everyone made for her earlier. Everyone is cheered up by her positivity and that ends the episode.

The Analysis

What I Liked

As we near the endgame, things are starting to escalate. The Precure have faced many formidable threats so far, but this first taste of the danger posed by the Director is different. His absolutist attitude towards things of value is fearsome and his only desire is to impose his will and control everything.This is of course why Flora denied him entry into the Cure Rose Garden, but he believes he has the strength to impose his will. While he doesn’t wipe the floor with the heroines like we’ve seen evil leaders do before, he is able to match their energy without great effort.

Feeding into his ideology, the Director fights mostly by erasing things and copying or reflecting things. He removes things he perceives to have no value, and doesn’t have the creativity or desire to use his own attacks so he just copies the cures’ abilities. He doesn’t even see them as having value enough to destroy, so he just wants to remove them as an obstacle.

I admire Nozomi’s drive. She recognizes she has been a bit lackadaisical in her studies previously, so now she’s overcorrecting by trying to do it alone. She struggles a lot with it, but dang it she’s trying. Otaka’s speech to her is also positive encouragement, and builds into the lesson of the episode: lay the foundation today so you can grow strong in the future. This is going to be the push that she needs to make it as a student and a future educator herself, and it’s enough to give her the confidence to overpower the Director during Rainbow Rose Explosion.

On a lighter note, there are several clever scene transitions in this episode, one that stands out is during the Rainbow Rose Explosion, the Director sees a vision of Flora, which turns into Cure Dream. There’s also a cute one where one of Syrup’s pancakes transitions into the sun.

What I Didn’t Like

Nothing.

Miscellaneous

I think I speculated earlier in the show that the mysterious relationship between Flora and the Director was romantic. This certainly seems to squash that theory. As I’ve said before, I did watch this show once before, but that was over a decade ago at this point and I binged it while working on a craft project so I clearly didn’t retain many of the finer details.

At first it looks like we’re getting a new Dark Precure 5, but it’s actually a group of Hoshiinas that absorb each cure’s abilities and warp and reflect them back. Interesting footnote on the list of copy and evil cures.

Milk does not appear in her fairy form in this episode.

King Montblanc is still asleep.

Conclusion

This is a thrilling episode, the transition point between the bulk of the show and the endgame (with a bit of a pause for the Christmas episode in between). We finally get our clearest look at the mindset of the Director and he makes himself known to the heroines. Unknown to him, they have been given the necessary tool and encouragement to overcome his destructive, isolating nature. The two sides will come to a head very shortly. But first…

Next time on Precure Daily: Santa Claus is coming to town! Look forward to it!