User blog:GlitterInformer/Follow-up on Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage

Two days ago, I uploaded a review of Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage: Mirai no Tomodachi that I wrote months ago. It can be found here. The review was positive, as I found that the flaws the movie had were minimal. Then, last night, I watched AzenZone's review of the movie. AzenZone is a YouTuber whom I watch frequently and highly respect. He does many reviews of the Pretty Cure franchise, from the series to the movies. His knowledge of other Toei franchises, such as Super Sentai and Kamen Rider, help flesh out his reviews. Of course I was going to watch the review soon after it came up.

How was the review? Let's just say that AzenZone did not like New Stage.

This is far from the first time that somebody has thoroughly criticized something I enjoyed. I have a tendency to overlook or not even notice flaws in books, shows, movies, and games. I see this as a good thing because it means I can get enjoyment out of things that other people can't. That's not to say that AzenZone didn't have a point to his criticisms, though. And as with most criticisms of things I like, after viewing them, I have to reevaluate my own opinion on the series.

To start, let's go over a list of AzenZone's complaints about New Stage:
 * Despite it being an Pretty Cure All Stars movie, the Pretty Cure teams hardly interact with each other, except for Houjou Hibiki from Suite Pretty Cure♪ (link contains major spoilers for the season) and Hoshizora Miyuki from Smile Pretty Cure!
 * None of the Cures from before Suite even appear until the final quarter of the movie.
 * This is due to it focusing on a new, movie-only character named Sakagami Ayumi. Ayumi is a shy new girl who has just moved to a new town and is having trouble making friends. This archetype can work, but Ayumi doesn't have much charm to her, which makes her a boring character.
 * In fact, Ayumi is a brat. After just a minute of trying and failing to make friends at her new school, Ayumi gives up and screams that she hates everything. When her mother turns off her gaming console because she's spent more than an hour on it, Ayumi snaps at her and runs out of the house.
 * Hibiki, Miyuki, and Ayumi meeting for the first time is incredibly contrived. Miyuki and Hibiki accidentally brush Ayumi's bracelet. So, what do they do? They chase Ayumi across the town, scaring her out of her mind, just so they can apologize for something so simple as brushing somebody.
 * Ayumi's companion, Fuu-chan, is equally unsympathetic. Fuu-chan is a fragment of the main villain, Fusion. It befriends Ayumi and destroys everything that Ayumi hates. Ayumi does nothing to stop this, and she coddles Fuu-chan even when it hurts other people. This continues until it absorbs her mother.
 * The epitome of Ayumi's coddling of Fuu-chan occurs when Fuu-chan attacks Smile Pretty Cure and they defend themselves by fighting back. When they do, Ayumi has the nerve to tell the Cures to "stop bullying" Fuu-chan, even though if anything, Fuu-chan was bullying them.
 * Speaking of this fight, the Smile Cures are complete idiots in it. Cure Sunny and Cure March use their finisher attacks on an enlarged Fuu-chan, but Fuu-chan merely absorbs them. So, do the other Cures try to use other methods instead? Nope! Everyone else just uses their finisher attacks, even though they should know they won't help anything.
 * The Miracle Lights are toy flashlights that are given to audience members in the movie theater to cheer on Pretty Cure when they're in a pinch. These are annoying and unnecessary, and worst of all, they'reused in almost every Pretty Cure movie. They're especially prevalent in this movie, where they're used a grand total of four times: once to call for the cast of Futari wa Pretty Cure Max Heart, once to call for the cast of Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash Star, once to call for the cast of Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo!, and once to create a rainbow bridge to help Ayumi reach Fuu-chan. This makes for two and a half minutes of Hummy from Suite Pretty Cure♪ screeching in her incredibly annoying voice for the kids to scream at the top of their lungs to support the Cures - support that isn't even needed, as they'll win anyway.
 * The epic fight at the beginning of the movie is interrupted by Tarte from Fresh Pretty Cure! intrusively breaking the fourth wall to teach the audience how to use the Miracle Lights.
 * In the climax of the film, Ayumi becomes a new Pretty Cure, Cure Echo, for no reason whatsoever. There is absolutely no in-universe catalyst for this transformation; it just comes out of nowhere. What's more, Cure Echo doesn't even do anything that Ayumi couldn't have done without transforming. Ayumi transforms into Cure Echo solely so she can get everything she ever wanted despite being a complete and utter brat.
 * What's more, the climactic fight scene isn't a beautiful free-for-all with every Cure ever, but just the Smile Cures and Fuu-chan putting up a magical rainbow barrier to destroy Fusion.
 * After this fight scene, Fusion's character is completely wrecked. Fusion didn't first appear in this movie, but rather Pretty Cure All Stars DX. In that movie, his goal was to absorb everyone and everything so that the world could be at peace instead of clashing and fighting due to everyone's differences. Here, the Cures claim that Fusion was good all along, and that Fuu-chan is what Fusion was meant to be.
 * The only good thing about the whole film was Aoyama Mitsuru's animation direction, as the fight scenes were excellent.

That's a lot of criticism. In fact, AzenZone said the movie was painful to get through. So, with his thoughts out of the way, what are my thoughts?
 * Even with all of the criticisms AzenZone gave, I can't deny that I enjoyed the movie when I first saw it. Because of this, I'm still going to give it a positive review at the end of the day; if I enjoyed it despite its many flaws, that means I'll be able to recommend it to others.
 * I actually did find Ayumi sympathetic. She acts bratty during the movie, but that's because she's stressed out due to moving to a new place. Everything she knows has been ripped out from under here, so she's definitely on edge. In fact, Ayumi is even more relatable because she isn't a moral paragon like the other Cures are. She's a normal person with normal reactions, even if they are negative.
 * Ayumi telling Smile Pretty Cure not to bully Fuu-chan was probably something she said on the spur of the moment when she found that they were hurting her friend. Sure, Fuu-chan struck first, but Ayumi really didn't want them killing her first friend she'd made since moving. She felt that Fuu-chan was confused and not truly evil. Ayumi didn't really see the Cures as monsters and bullies for fighting back in self-defense; she was just panicked and desparate for them not to kill Fuu-chan, so she said the first thing she could think of to stop them, even if it wasn't accurate.
 * Speaking of Fuu-chan, I found it sympathetic as well. Fuu-chan does commit evil actions along the way, but it's because it was just recently born. It doesn't know the difference between right and wrong yet; just that Ayumi is its friend. Because of that, it takes what it knows (Ayumi complaining about things she doesn't like) to form the best assumption it can (everything that Ayumi doesn't like is evil and must be destroyed). At the end of it all, Fuu-chan is not an unsympathetic brat; it's a tragic villain.
 * I found Ayumi and Fuu-chan's story to be interesting enough that I didn't really mind the Cures' decreased prominence in the story. It helped matters that I already knew beforehand that this movie was more of an Ayumi movie than a Pretty Cure movie, so I couldn't be disappointed.
 * I will concede to some of AzenZone's criticisms:
 * Now that I realize it, Miyuki and Hibiki chasing Ayumi down to apologize for bumping into her was stupid. I get that they're ditzy airheads sometimes, but that's just bone-headed, even for them.
 * The Smile Cures were complete idiots when dealing with Fusion. They refused to do anything other than the one tactic they knew wouldn't work.
 * The final fight was anti-climactic, but we'd have epic fights beforehand, so I didn't really mind.
 * There was no reason for Ayumi to become Cure Echo, and her becoming a Pretty Cure was completely pointless.
 * The Cures did wrongly analyze Fusion's personality at the end when they decided that Fuu-chan was what Fusion was meant to be. However, it's a small flaw that doesn't really matter.

Overall, I still like New Stage despite its flaws. It helped that I knew some of them before going in, so I couldn't be disappointed. Plus, I disagree with some of AzenZone's complaints about the movie. Ultimately, I recommend this movie. In fact, I recommend that you watch all of the Pretty Cure franchise if you can, even the series and movies you hear are bad. You never know what you're going to like or hate until you watch it.