Precure S03E26 -- Precure Baseball Girl

Splash Star Episode 26 is a fairly standard Precure episode, being a variant of a plotline that the series would return to again and again (haunted schools!)  It serves no crucial story role, and provides no striking insight into character motivates.  At the same time, it does a fantastic job giving us a view of the larger cast of the show, and how they relate to one another.

I only wish I could handle seeing this as well as Saki did.

The episode is set at a summer baseball camp, with the girls staying overnight at the school.  One of the plot threads involves teammates keeping a secret from Saki.  While it would turn out the topic was benign, this aspect of the episode felt a bit insensitive.  There are few things that bother us more than feeling like everyone is talking about us behind our back, and not being able to get anyone to tell you straight out about what.  Saki handled it better than most of us would have – seeing people whispering about something would turn me into an anxious wreck in no time.

Usagi's friendship with them was hard as iron, until someone better came along.

This episode spends a lot of time on Saki and her classmates – which emphasizes something rather unique about this season.  As the number of Cures has gone up in later seasons, the show will often have very little time for the heroine’s non-Cure classmates.   Suite was by far the worst offender in this regard – it created a fantastic set of supporting characters that it then left absolutely criminally underused.  We saw the same dynamic in Sailor Moon – some of Usagi’s friends faded away after the first few episodes.  Naru and Umino did somewhat better, but even they mostly existed to be attacked in the end.

Splash Star has managed to admirably develop the students as supporting characters, and not lose sight of them as the season goes on.  They’ve continued to play a supporting role throughout the series, and were a crucial part of Michiru and Kaoru’s own development.  The only change I wish Splash Star had made would be to give Mai some specific art-club friends, to round out her world.

As baseball practice ends, the episode centers around the old anime standby, a possibly haunted school.  In turn, the new mascot characters and Miss Shitataare harass Kenta in turn.  We have an opportunity to get a better glimpse of Shitataare’s M.O. here – unlike the other members of the Splash Star rogue’s gallery, she spends time messing with the Precure while in disguise, setting up a more favorable battleground, before moving in for the kill.  I thoroughly enjoy watching this, and it gives us a chance to see her hilarious functioning in the context of ordinary society.

Looking at the gender balance here, Kenta has a great thing going. Youko could do without him giving Saki this attention.

Inevitably, the girls have a nocturnal encounter with Shitataare and her plumbing themed monster of the week, and dispatch them both without unnecessary trouble.  Saki then finds out that the reason people were keeping secrets from her had to do with a surprise birthday party (I was completely unable to suspend my disbelief at the prospect of a 14 year-old forgetting their own birthday.)   This was a great opportunity to see the budding love square between Saki, Youko, Kenta, and Mai’s elder brother Kazuya.  The facial expressions in the gift giving scene do a fantastic job of conveying these feelings through minor detail, and I was quite impressed.

Kenta's expression here is priceless.

Of course, we all know that adolescent crushes are fleeting.  Soon Saki will grow up, and know that there’s only one for her.

Again, this was a very strong episode.  While the birthday secret was an annoying cliché, the party itself was a great moment for the show.  I very much miss having Michiru and Kaoru around, but it’s nice to see that the show is still working so well.