If you were wondering why this is the season that gets a sequel, episode forty-nine should give you an answer. While all Pretty Cure series have some elements that are darker and more depressing (albeit rarely as dark as Healin’ Good Pretty Cure got), Witchy Pretty Cure!‘s penultimate episode is an honest-to-goodness tearjerker. It’s remarkable in how it goes from showcasing the Cures’ true strengths and power to making it look like everything they built together was ultimately for naught – yes, they saved the worlds, but what does that matter if they don’t get to be together? Having a roughly five-year time skip shortly thereafter only compounds the tragedy of their final battle’s outcome. Yes, it was sad in Yes Pretty Cure 5 Go Go when Coco and Natts left, but that doesn’t hold a candle to the aftermath of Witchy Pretty Cure!‘s last battle. It’s mitigated somewhat by the end of the episode and the baton pass follow-up that is episode fifty, but part of what makes the episode so powerful is that it’s haunting – and while we got to skip ahead about five years, the Mirai and Liko had to live them.
It’s effective because the series as a whole works so hard to show us that Mirai and Liko are a team, if not slightly more than that. I do think it’s valid to read them as either best friends or potential girlfriends (and the two readings aren’t mutually exclusive), and their relationship with Ha-chan certainly supports that. In the first half of the series, Mirai, Liko, and Mofurun all refer to themselves as Ha-chan’s mothers, something she agrees with, as episode twenty-six clarifies. As the truth of Ha-chan’s identity becomes clear later on, we see that she, both as herself and as Cure Felice, is important because she is the physical manifestation of Mirai and Liko’s love. Her Cure name, Felice, means “happy” in Italian (and they do use the Italian pronunciation in the show), and she is only able to draw on her power because she knows what it means to be loved by people in both the Magic and Non-Magic worlds. That love also gives her the strength to protect both worlds, which is crucial to the finale. It’s easy to feel like Cure Felice/Ha-chan overshadows Cure Magical and Cure Miracle at times, but the truth is that she couldn’t be the person she needs to be if it wasn’t for their support. Every moment of her screentime is an ode to the girls who raised her.
This idea of bonds and family forms an important thread in the overall plot of the series’ second half. From the start, Mirai is close with her family (mother, father, grandmother, and Mofurun), but Liko has a more complex relationship with hers. In episode forty, Liko’s birthday, we see that this is a distance she’s created herself based on her perception that she’s less than Liz. Episode thirty shows how this has resulted in a difficult relationship with her father, but the truth is that they all love her; she’s just not good at letting them in. Since we saw this at the beginning of her relationship with Mirai as well, it’s part of Liko’s make up: she gets stuck on her need to be the best. Her attempt to run for student council at her Non-Magic school forms the halfway point of this arc; she wants the job because she thinks she’s the best and deserves it, but her opponent, Yuto, is running because he wants to help others. Liko’s concession is her acknowledgment of personal growth and change, a recognition that her ego doesn’t need to drive all of her actions.
Although we don’t see as much of it as the other relationships, it’s also important to acknowledge the principal’s feelings about his friend Kushi. Kushi was the villain of the first half of the series, as Dokuroxy, and he seems to vanish when the dark magic group is defeated. But he’s never truly gone from the principal’s thoughts, and in episode twenty-seven, it looks very much like he feels he failed his friend. As the series rolls on, we see that Kushi is still very present and that learning what happened to him hasn’t eased any of the principal’s pain – especially when he realizes that Kushi always cared about him, even if he couldn’t say it. There’s an implication that the principal’s feelings and patience are rewarded at the end if you want to see it, and that adds to the overall theme of nothing being able to separate people who truly care about each other.
This also gets some play in the other villains, although Kushi could be said to be less a villain and more a catalyst for them. Almost all of his followers, the swamp animal-themed Gamets, Yamoh, Sparda, and Batty, are able to affect some kind of reformation, and Orba’s fairy henchman, Chikurun, sums up their situation when he is revealed not to be evil so much as trapped in an untenable situation where he feels he has no choice but to do as Orba orders. This allows the girls and the viewers to think about issues from multiple angles. True villains are punished, but those who may have been misguided or forced into their evil are given another chance to prove that they’re more than their worst actions. It’s a good theme for a magical girl story in general because the true power of most magical girls is to keep going, even when it feels like there’s no more hope.
It’s always interesting to see how the Pretty Cure series influence each other; this is no exception. The truth about Cure Felice mirrors Cure Earth in Healin’ Good Pretty Cure in some interesting ways, and the Cinderella episode calls to mind the fairytale-themed villain of Yes Pretty Cure 5 and GoGo. Even more fun is an Easter egg that alludes to the time skip at the end of the series; in episode forty-six, we see what looks suspiciously like a little Ichika Usami, the pink Cure of Kira Kira Pretty Cure a la Mode, the series that follows this one. That said, Mirai and Liko feel like an unusually close pair, even if we consider other two-Cure teams, and that, along with the multiple transformations, helps Witchy Pretty Cure! to stand on its own among its sister series.
At the end of the day, the main triumph of the girls of Witchy Pretty Cure! is how they help each other to believe in themselves. Whether it’s their school friend needing to believe in witches, Liko realizing that she’s good enough all on her own, Ha-chan being supported until she can stand on her own two feet, or Mirai finding a future for herself, all of them learn to be better, happier people through their relationship with each other. The time skip is crucial because it shows that they can get by alone because of their time together. But the final episode reminds us that even then, they’re better together.
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