SmPC10

"Hot-blooded! Akane's okonomiyaki life!!" (熱血！あかねのお好み焼き人生！！) is the 10th episode of Smile Pretty Cure!, and also the 399th episode of the Pretty Cure all series. In this episode, Akane stands in as restaurant owner of her family's okonomiyaki restaurant while her father recovers in the hospital.

Synopsis
One night, as Daigo was closing up shop, he strained his back while trying to lift a crate of cabbages. Having been sent to the hospital, the Hino family was worrying about what to do about the mayor's visit to their restaurant this weekend, when Akane volunteered to stand in for her father as a temporary restaurant owner.

At Bad End Kingdom, Wolfurun was starving when he noticed Majorina cooking a new medicine. Majorina threw a magazine at him, telling him to read while she finished the medicine before cooking for him. However, Wolfurun spotted a photo of an okonomiyaki in the book, and immediately flew to the human world to look for food.

In school, the girls heard about Akane's temporary role as restaurant owner and were excited as the restaurant was known to serve great food. Akane then told the others about the mayor's visit on Sunday, and Reika added that the mayor was a known lover of gourmet food. The mayor had once praised Daigo's okonomiyaki to be the best he had ever eaten, and Akane was determined not to disappoint him this time. With all this talk, Miyuki exclaimed that she was getting hungry, and Candy also expressed her wish to eat some okonomiyaki. With that, Akane invited everyone to the restaurant after school.

At the restaurant, the girls were amazed at Akane's skill at cooking and her delicious okonomiyaki. Just then, Genki returned home from school, and Akane introduced him to the girls. Seeing Akane's cooking, Genki took a bite and said that it tasted of Akane's style, quite different from Daigo's. Akane grew upset at this, as she felt that her okonomiyaki was not up to standard and would disappoint the mayor. Genki then remembered Daigo once telling him about a secret ingredient, and Akane was determined to find out that ingredient and replicate Daigo's okonomiyaki. The girls gladly volunteered to help out.

Reika first volunteered the idea of mixing sweet and spicy ingredients together, a cooking tip recommended by her grandfather. Nao added that she also used the same tip when cooking for her family. Hearing this, Miyuki, Yayoi and Candy decided to add a sweet pudding to the spicy okonomiyaki sauce, and used the pudding Cure Decor to create a giant pudding. The girls then tried making the okonomiyaki with various ingredients, including fresh cream, oranges and honey. However, they could not get the okonomiyaki to taste like Daigo's.

The girls were afraid that Akane would be upset, but she remained cheerful and even more determined to find the secret ingredient. Akane told the girls that she really respected Daigo. The okonomiyaki he makes always brought smiles to people's faces, no matter how dejected they looked, just like magic. She always thought that he was the only person who could make okonomiyaki like that, and so it was understandable why she could not replicate his style. Akane then decided to just ask Daigo about the secret ingredient.

At the hospital, Daigo reprimanded Akane for not truly observing what he had been doing all this while, and told her she was not living up to the restaurant's name as owner. Angered, Akane vowed to find the secret ingredient on her own. Having just 2 more days before the mayor's visit, the girls continued to search for the secret ingredient, while Akane worked late into the night trying to replicate Daigo's okonomiyaki, but to no success.

Seeing her dejected expression, Hino Masako asked if Akane remembered the first okonomiyaki she ever made. Akane's first okonomiyaki was made for her sick mother, in hopes of her getting well again, and Masako commented that it was delicious for her, even though it was badly burnt. Not getting the meaning behind her words, Akane continued to wish to replicate Daigo's okonomiyaki.

During the weekend, the girls helped out at the okonomiyaki food stand at a food fair held in the downtown area. Meanwhile, Wolfurun's search for food was highly unsuccessful. Mistaken for dressing in weird costume, he was thrown out of restaurants and so did not eat for three days. Catching the aroma of good food coming from the food fair, he spotted people eating okonomiyaki, and created a Bad End alternate reality to steal everyone's happiness and their food.

The girls transformed into Pretty Cure to fight. Wolfurun created an okonomiyaki sauce pot Akanbe, capable to firing sauce that harden upon contact, effectively trapping all the Cures except for Beauty. Spotting the bags of okonomiyaki, Wolfurun happily devoured everything, and with renewed energy, the Akanbe got stronger as well. Wolfurun commented that the okonomiyaki was delicious, and when he learnt that Sunny was the one who made them, he brushed her off by saying that all food tasted the same, no matter who made it, and called her a failure for not being able to replicate her father's okonomiyaki. The Cures grew angry at his words, and Happy shouted that Akane's okonomiyaki tasted delicious no matter what, because she had put her true feelings into making it.

Hearing that, Sunny recalled Daigo and Masako's words, and finally understood that her feelings were the secret ingredient which made the okonomiyaki delicious. With renewed determination, she called for Beauty to fire Beauty Blizzard at her, which she melted with her power of fire to create rain to wash away the hardened sauce. She then delivered a fiery punch to the Akanbe, before purifying it with Sunny Fire, earning the Cures their tenth Cure Decor piece, the Umbrella.

On Sunday, the mayor was impressed by Akane's okonomiyaki. Having returned home, Daigo was also impressed that Akane had found out his secret ingredient, though Akane decided to keep it a secret, refusing to tell him what it was.

Trivia

 * This episode's eyecatch is different from the others. The second eyecatch, which normally shows Candy, showed an Akanbe this episode instead, scaring the girls in the process. This also happened on episode 17, episode 28 episode 33 and 39 of Smile, due to those episodes' themes (comedy, ghosts, a movie about yokai, and the villians in control of everyone except for Miyuki.). There was a rumor that one affiliate showed said eyecatch on episode 9, due to it being April Fools', but the reason it was on Episode 10 on all affiliates except for this one is possibly a celebration of the 10th episode, or the villians venturing to the human world for food as a subplot. It is well worth noting that the commercial that aired before said eyecatch was for Tanoshi Yōchen magazine on all episodes featuring it, except for episode 39, which featured two SunStar products-Color Wonder and Secret Jewelry Box.
 * Akane is the second Smile! Cure to have her parents and siblings shown.
 * Sunny's fire elemental power is shown in combat for the first time. She is also the first Smile! Cure to utilize the powers of her element, first using fire to melt Beauty's Beauty Blizzard to create rain to wash away the hardened sauce holding her down, and then releasing another burst of fire to dry the rain off of herself.
 * The ingredients of Majorina's new medicine includes lizard's tail, pig's drool and frog's fart.
 * The Hino family's restaurant was named after Akane, as the shop was first opened when Akane was born, and her parents hoped to love the shop as much as they love their daughter.
 * Akane uses her trademark children's counting rhyme ("chuu chuu tako kai na") when flipping the okonomiyaki.
 * Wolfurun going out to the Human world to look for food is similar to how Westar from Fresh Pretty Cure! was starving and went out to find some food.

Cures

 * Hoshizora Miyuki / Cure Happy
 * Hino Akane / Cure Sunny
 * Kise Yayoi / Cure Peace
 * Midorikawa Nao / Cure March
 * Aoki Reika / Cure Beauty

Mascots

 * Candy

Villains

 * Wolfurun
 * Majorina
 * Akanbe
 * Hino Daigo
 * Hino Masako
 * Hino Genki