Delicious Party Precure

Episode 11

I had a suspicion that not hiding their identities from Gentlu would come back to bite the Cures, but I didn't expect it to take the form of a vicious and random multiple-choice test. It's a clever way to sideline Ran and Yui, though, because Amane/Gentlu isn't just acting on her own; she's got the adults at the school – teachers and the administration – on her side to police the girls' activities. While I have words for any school administration who would think that a pop school-wide exam was a perfectly okay thing to spring on unsuspecting students, I really can't deny the brilliance of the plan. Hopefully Amane doesn't have access to the girls' grades, but even if they were all at Kokone levels of brilliance, the test would very likely at least slow them down.

It also says a lot about Amane as a person. She's distressed by the thought that she has to hurt Recippepi in order to create more powerful monsters, so she decides to think outside the bento box and come up with a way that doesn't necessarily require stronger Ubauzo. After all, more Cures were needed when the monsters got stronger, so she has a better chance of defeating them if she delays them enough. Unfortunately for her, she did not take the Heart Juicy Mixers into account, and that's a major miscalculation because both Spicy and Yum-Yum are able to use their new attacks to defeat both Gentlu and the Ubauzo, which indicates just how much the mixers amplify their powers. Of course, given how Gentlu is wavering in her mission, we also have to consider the idea that maybe she was fully aware of how much stronger the Mixers make the Cures and this was her way of surrendering without appearing to. Amane and Gentlu may not necessarily know that they're the same person, as we see demonstrated when Narcistoru's hold on Amane is broken, but we're also aware that the small part of Amane that's cognizant of Gentlu's existence wants her to stop.

Not that Narcistoru is going to let his lovely puppet out of his grasp so easily. This makes me wonder if we're going to gain another fighter sooner rather than later, because even if Amane doesn't switch sides and become a new Cure, Takumi is definitely aware that something is going on just out of his sight. (And yeah, I think I was barking up the wrong tree before about Takumi and Narcistoru.) He's seen the monsters and thought it was weird that they didn't start rampaging around the town, he's noticed that Mari keeps vanishing into the Delicious Field, and he's tasted first-hand what happens when the Bundoru Gang comes to town and starts messing with the Recippepi. That puts him three-quarters of the way there with figuring out that Yui and her friends are the Pretty Cures, and Yui's sort of weird behavior stands to push him over the edge towards full realization. Whether that will give him the power to transform into the pseudo-Tuxedo Mask/Kaito Sinbad guy from the opening theme isn't certain, but he's so tantalizingly close to seeing the truth that something has to give sooner rather than later.

That makes sense, since we're coming up on the end of the first cour, episode-count wise. While we don't typically gain a new member to the team so quickly, the boy Cure has been in the opening theme from the start, so it's not that far-fetched an idea. Since Gentlu appears to be on her way out, the timing feels right. I do feel like the pacing has gotten abruptly faster after taking its time to assemble the main team of three, but it's not setting character development by the wayside, so while it's noticeable, it's also not bad. Ran having a dream about swimming in potato salad (which I admit made me gag a little) says a lot about her, as does the way she and Yui react to the utterly useless English phrase they're meant to learn, while Kokone not questioning the usefulness of knowing how to ask about your own pen in English likewise says a fair amount about her approach to school. Even when it's speeding up the plot, this is still a solid, engaging show, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the fight against Gentlu goes down next week.

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Delicious Party♡Precure is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.