Just A Random Thing

on the opposite team

As some of you might already have guessed, I’m a fan of Japanese girl idols. One of the many, many idol groups in existence today in Japan is NMB48, a Osaka-based spin-off group of the (in)famous AKB48. NMB has a weekly show that’s surprisingly entertaining as well as educational called NMB to Manabu-kun, in which the members of NMB and a few comedians listen to guest lectures by experts in various fields.

Back on May 15th, the theme of the episode was pataphysics/the science of sci-fi. One of the topics of the lecture held by university professor Yanagita Rikao was the age-old question of “WHY ARE MAGICAL GIRLS NEVER ATTACKED WHILE TRANSFORMING???”

This was his answer, based on the magical girl series Futari wa Pretty Cure.

Question: The transformation scenes in Pretty Cure are very long, so why don’t the bad guys attack the girls in the meantime?

“Even when I was little, I was thinking ‘Hey! Attack them now!’”

“I found this odd as well, so I watched the transformation scene many times. And what I noticed is, when the Pretty Cures yell ‘Dual Aurora Wave!’ and transform, a rainbow-colored column of light shoots up from the ground, going BOOM!”

“And then the Pretty Cures levitate, and go up into the air. Based on this, I believe the protagonists of Pretty Cure are being held up in the air by the power of light.”

“When we think of light, we usually think it heats up things or lights up things. But in reality, light has the power to hold up things as well.”

“When the sun is beating down on us in the summer, the human body is being pressed downwards by the sun beams with a force of 2/100,000g.”

“But this is only about a one-hundred of the weight of a mosquito, so no matter how hot it is, we don’t feel that sunlight is heavy.”

“So that means the light holding them up must be extremely strong. If we assume that the two Pretty Cures each weigh about 45kg and do some calculations…”

“It means the light during the transformation must have the energy of 2,100,000,000kW per 1m2.”

“While the entirety of power that Japan is capable of generating is only 100,000,000kW.”

“So they’re using 21 TIMES the amount of energy the whole of Japan can generate.”

“So what would happen if a bad guy jumped in to try to sabotage their transformation?”

“He would EVAPORATE INSTANTLY.”

“DEATH AWAITS ANYONE WHO DARES TO DISRUPT A PRETTY CURE TRANSFORMATION.”

“So this means the best thing to do would be to transform close to any bad guys.”

“Yes. They are the strongest while they transform, and are practically invincible.”