Score: B+

This episode was a good excuse to take a breather after a lot happened the previous week. The cast kind of did need that. Even more so when one of the major characters is the girl that just saw her parents be put into magical comas. With Ellee’s continued growth her pain is becoming easier to communicate. The battleground has shifted back to Earth, but I suppose in a sense events will ease up in certain ways. It doesn’t seem likely that Battamonda will employ the same spam of enemies as he did in Skyland since the Precure will be fighting 100% of them this time. Though I suppose it says something about Earth that the Knights of Skyland could at least do something to weaker enemies, but there’s no sign that Sorashido City has any kind of police force…

This lady can do just about anything

If this show was likely to do anything with this, I’d really start to wonder about Yoyo’s resources. How the heck did she dig up information about a long forgotten (for some reason) between Skyland and the Undergu Empire? I know she did “research” but I’d love to know about her sources here. This woman is the get out of jail free card for the whole show. Can even come up with some magical concoction to cure Ellee’s parents from their curse. Anytime the story runs into a problem she seems able to resolve them. Just never in any quick manner.

With that the show is moving towards a fetch quest. There’s no way to really deal with the situation with the King and Queen in a quick manner. The end of the fight this week made it clear. We’re looking at more than a month of battles before the goal of healing the royal family is even an option. I’m not even sure Battamonda will still be the main antagonist at that point. It’s going to be a slow grind of beating up enemies and gathering resources from them. But for now, the immediate goal is clear. Just need to beat up some enemies and gather resources from purifying them until there’s enough to be used to heal the King and Queen.

Hard to always be cheerful

I kind of like that the girls (and Tsubasa) were a bit down after all that happened. Frankly Tsubasa should be feeling the worst here since he was completely useless last week. Though fair enough that Sora is still depressed over the fate of Shalala. Even for a girl like her that’s a tough situation to handle. Even with trying her best it still required a (mostly) self-sacrifice play to get the job done. If nothing else it is pretty on brand for the whole cast to end up looking depressed at the same time and that causing problems for the puppet show. It’s not wrong for them to feel bad over this, but if they let it stress out the little kid then that’s not going to help anyone. But it is pretty natural for that to happen. They are kids themselves at the end of the day. They’ll show weakness every now and then.

Not a bad way to cheer a kid up

Not much to say about the puppet show itself. It was a cute effort from Ageha to get everyone on board with that. I don’t think there is anything to take away from it. Even with Ellee learning to walk and talk a bit, I don’t think the show will end up turning her into a precure or anything. Just a cute little story to tell and a way to help cheer Ellee up a bit after going through so much.

Honestly, I am appreciating that they haven’t just locked Ellee into staying where she was at the start of the show. They are letting her be a developing child that has learned to walk a bit and is steadily mastering some words here and there. It’d be easy to just keep her as the child that only says “Elleee”, but they aren’t just keeping her simply in that position. Not that I expect to see her holding full conversations anytime soon. That would be a bit fast! But she is absolutely changing as the show goes along. If there’s an emotional farewell at the end of the show I think she’ll be able to hold a somewhat decent conversation by then.

A more serious threat than I expected

The fight this time was pretty darn good. I didn’t expect it to be like that after all the emotional punches of the previous episode. But they really wanted to hit home how hard it was to win this time. The cast needing to both step up and for Ellee to give them some emotional support. But I think it shows how the threat level hasn’t eased up at all. Battamonda is a scumbag bully, but he’s one that can throw serious threats at his enemies. Even with three Cures this guy isn’t proving easy to deal with. I wouldn’t be surprised either if his focus on attacking the Cures this week is simply because of how badly Sky scared him in the previous episode. Getting rid of what scares him could be more important to him than capturing Ellee for the time being.

I just liked this expression XD

For an episode that was mostly about taking a breath after a serious incident, this episode wasn’t a bad one. The main characters needed a chance to focus on what they need to be doing and they needed to keep poor Ellee in good spirits. That’s something even more important since this kid did just see her parents end up comatose. This isn’t a situation that will be resolved quickly so Ellee can’t be left depressed and crying the whole time. Same goes for Sora I suppose. She can’t be entirely focused on what happened to the Captain now. That can be saved for her likely showing up as a brainwashed enemy later! It’s a long road ahead and all of them will need to try and stay positive until they make some progress.