User blog:GlitterInformer/Smile Pretty Cure!/Glitter Force SDC: Smile Pretty Cure! novel (Chapter 5 Update)

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Ever since I ended the Smile Pretty Cure! sub/dub comparison, I’ve been hard at work on a new sub/dub comparison for ''Doki Doki! Pretty Cure''. It’s been so much fun that it’s led me to procrastinate on finishing my review of the Smile Pretty Cure! novel. Some of you have understandably thought that I’ve forgotten completely about the novel. However, I haven’t, and I owe it to you all to finish up the review.

Since I posted the incomplete review, chapter 5 has been completely translated and chapter 6 has been partially translated. I’m going to save my chapter 6 review for when the chapter is finished. For now, you can find chapters 1 through 5 here and the unfinished translation of chapter 6, along with the complete original Japanese text, here.

So far, the book has been surprisingly dark for what was mostly a light-hearted season. This is really cool because I’m personally a fan of stories that get dark. It’s the stories that really get into problems that have the most impact on our lives, I think. And this chapter keeps up that tone. Remember Joker, that insanely creepy villain who had so many dark moments in the show? He’s back.

Now, I could go into what exactly happens in chapter 5, but I don’t think I should recap it like I did with the other chapters. Most of my novel review so far has just been recapping, but I don’t want to continue the trend. My first draft of the review had a recap of the chapter. It’s 5 pages long. I don’t want to put you through that, so I’ll just skip to my opinions on the book and let you read the novel for yourself.

First of all, Joker is back! The novel really captures his personality perfectly, and his interactions with Reika in the chapter are just as creepy as they are in the show. He has an uncanny ability to see people’s deepest flaws and conflicts and use them to completely break them. Basically, he acted as a very memorable personification of Reika’s doubts about her ability to be a good teacher to her students.

And speaking of personality, Reika’s shone through as well. The novel, and by extension the translator, is very good at capturing the personalities of the five main characters. Reika’s is shown by formal language and big, loquacious words. This novel is better about showing the narrator’s personality than many other books. A lot of books just don’t completely capture the narrator’s emotions. The protagonist may tell you that “a sudden shock surged through his body”, but it’s hard to capture that emotion in the text itself instead of just saying it. That’s something I struggle with, which is why I mostly stick with writing reviews instead of my own fiction. It’s amazing how the book can capture the personality of not just one narrator, but five.

Oh yeah, and we had character death. Reika’s grandfather freaking died, you guys. That’s not territory that many shows will cover. Even in Pretty Cure, it’s extremely rare to see good guys die off permanently. Sure, the Royale Queen did in the show itself, but we barely got to know her personality. We did get to know Reika’s grandfather, though, and we saw firsthand the effect of his advice on his granddaughter. His sickness and eventual death were very emotional and kept up the dark pace of the book.

Speaking of the dark tone, let’s talk about the ending, where it’s revealed that all of the events of the book might just be an illusion created by Joker using the Ball of Neglect. It should make me kind of upset that everything I’ve been reading was just a dream, and all the dark areas the book went to were places we never really went, but the reveal still manages to keep the tone a nice, black color. It’s really creepy to think that everything Reika thought was real up until now never existed at all. How will Reika know what’s truly real and what isn’t? And how much control over reality does Joker have, really?

The only problem I had with the chapter was that I didn’t really understand the motivation behind Irie’s (the younger brother of former Student Council President Irie) actions. He’s tired of trying so hard to be as good as his brother and wants to just relax and be himself. He wants Reika to know about the problems he’s having. So, instead of going up to her and talking to her, he takes a very subtle and roundabout method to indirectly communicate them to her via a short story whose protagonist has lost his path and sees nothing but despair ahead of him. Then, he gets mad at Reika and blames her for not noticing the problems that he went out of his way to poorly communicate. Sure, he does apologize at the end, but I feel like this whole thing could have been averted had he just spoken his mind. Maybe he was too scared to speak to her directly, but it still seems stupid of him to get mad at Reika for not reading his mind.

Overall, though, this was yet another great chapter of the Smile Pretty Cure! novel! I’m very excited for the sixth and final chapter to be translated at last!