Precure S03E27 -- Summer Splashing

Summer Festival episodes are a great and venerable anime tradition.  I approve of every chance we get to see characters in kimonos or yukata, so as far as I’m concerned, every series should have at least one.  On this score, Precure doesn’t disappoint, and often has one for each season.

This does not look like a healthy fish.

Splash Star episode 27 did a fine job of upholding this archetype, though it wasn’t a standout episode overall.  My experience was colored by the Smile Precure festival episode, which hit many of the same plot beats (including mascot characters are prizes!), which  isn’t remotely fair to Splash Star.  Precure’s primary audience isn’t mostly not going to be watching the series for multiple years on end, and with fifty episodes per year, this is entirely understandable.  By and large, the series does a good job of mixing it up each time.

Those sunglasses absolutely make the look.

By far my favorite part of the episode was seeing Miss Shitataare kick ass at carnival games.  Seeing her act in the human world has been a highlight of the last few episodes, and as far as I’m concerned, could anchor its own spin-off series.  Seeing Goyan follow along, entirely for the sake of harassing her, has given us some of his best moments too.

Of course, it could be that I’m just entranced by those gorgeous, gorgeous eyes. 

The other noteworthy part of this episode was Saki’s conversation with Mai’s elder brother (side note – several Precure have annoying younger brothers, but their elder brothers are always admirable.  My younger sisters might take umbrage at this.)  I was initially afraid that it would mostly focus on Saki’s schoolgirl crush on him (heterosexuality has never been a Precure highlight,) but it instead turned to how important Saki was to Mai.  Lines such as “her face lights up when she talks about you” made this one of the best moments in the show about their relationship, and makes me very excited for future episodes.

A line from Saki about this stood out from me – she mentions always talking about Mai at home.  To be honest, I don’t actually remember hearing her do this all that much.  To some extent, that makes me wonder a bit about the nature of their friendship – perhaps Saki plays a more primary role in Mai’s life than the reverse.  After all, Mai is a transfer student, and doesn’t really have her own social network – her friends are all people she has met through Saki.  No wonder she grasps so hard onto Saki.