Score: A-

It feels as if it’s been a while since I said “wow this Precure episode was great.” The Minoton era has honestly been the low point of the series. So, nothing made me happier than both the main villain remembering that she’s in this show and her dumping the idiot that was spending all his time working out…only to summon minions to fight for him! Thank goodness the plot decided it was allowed to get going again. There were bits of almost interesting stories mixed into the last several episodes, but there overall wasn’t much there. Now that the story has started moving again things might get interesting.

This guy brought so much life back to this show!

Thank you Skearhead! You are almost my favourite character in this show! It’s so refreshing to have a good villain in this show again. I want to give this guy a standing ovation. Which is awkward to say since he kidnapped a kid! This guy is awesome though! He actually fights his enemies directly (which may not last), has tactical awareness, and is competent! I can’t even blame the main characters for being blindsided. They’ve been up against idiots for most of the show. Even Kabaton (who I’d call their most legitimate threat so far) isn’t exactly a genius.

This guy is good! He wasted absolutely no time in getting Ellee and shipping her off. And he was ready to just leave after that. His biggest error was spending time talking to his enemies at all. He could have left without them realizing where he was or having time to transform. But honestly that’s a minor flaw all things considered. This guy was so far beyond them that you must wonder why it took over 30 episodes for the Empress to realize that he was the perfect choice here? His combat was just crisp and simple. The only thing he couldn’t handle was the classic mid-season overpowered Precure that dropped on him out of nowhere. More of this guy please!

This kind of defeats the point of capturing her!

The fact that Ellee is recovered in this episode frankly reflects poorly on the Empress. She literally had this girl in her clutches and wasted time with mocking and showing off the Precure getting knocked around. What was this woman waiting for? Doesn’t she have more than a handful of minions? Secure the Princess, start up whatever plan she’s been sitting on for all this time, and get the show on the road! Losing Ellee is all on her. She is after Ellee for some reason and presumably should know what she’s capable of. Why tempt fate and waste time when she was upset at Minoton for doing exactly that?

Thank goodness she’s an idiot of course. If she was anywhere near as competent as Skearhead then this show would already be over. Ellee was dropped into a dimension the Precure literally can’t reach. There was nothing stopping her besides being unable to control Ellee.

This was unexpected for them

No blame to the main cast for getting blindsided like this. I mean they’ve been dealing with idiots for most of the show. Sora had some extreme caution in the first few episodes because of how unknown everything was. But after this many battles and experiences it was fair to drop their caution a bit and presume their enemies were just incompetent.

It’s kind of funny how this episode started one way and ended another. The dress-up scene felt like another thing you’d see in a regular episode that didn’t do too much. It was even continuing the trend of Ellee having a very rocky childhood. This girl is going through a difficult phase. And I salute Sora for trying to steer her in the right direction and not encouraging bad behavior. But she just isn’t mentally strong enough to handle Ellee saying she hates her. It probably was for the best to just distract and do something silly to get everyone’s mood back up. And no question that setting up the whole “I love you Sora” thing did add to the emotional stakes later in the episode.

He deserved this

Nothing made me happier than seeing Minoton get zapped and dropped right out of this episode! I’m not sure how to read the management skills of the Undergu Empire. Kabaton got several warnings and quite a bit of oversight for his activities. He nearly died as well when he fell short. Then the next guy rolls in and gets absolutely nothing. The Empress is a complete non-existence for the entirety of Battamonda’s era. We still don’t know what happened to him. Maybe he was killed? Then Minoton just gets instantly zapped on the first check in. Maybe you could say the reason for that is his failure to even pretend that he cares about capturing Ellee.

The preview might say differently, but I’d be happy to never see this guy again. Skearhead is everything he should have been. If this guy is all about battle and training…then how about actually fighting!? Why is he summoning minions to fight for him? Why is he training like a maniac only to never actually show off the results of that training!? Sometimes Kabaton did get physically involved. And Battamonda was obviously not a combat type so you never expected him to step in directly. But Minoton just felt like a waste of time. I have many criticisms for the Empress, but I can at least respect her decision to dump this guy.

Welcome to the show!

I suppose we can actually talk about Cure Majesty XD. Having a competent villain (even if his boss isn’t competent) had me so hyped I almost forgot the new Cure! As always with this sort of thing I do wonder how balance will play out. I guess naturally they can ease up on Majesty’s power to make the gap less extreme. But they’ll probably have to go the route of powering up the other Cure. Either they need to get overtly more powerful with new power-ups or they just naturally need to build up their strength so that they don’t get completely overshadowed.

It seems a given that Majesty is Ellee. I don’t even need spoiler announcements or tweets to reveal that. She didn’t get back to the main cast by herself. They were being pretty overt with her dressing up as the various Precure and then her own unique outfit in the early part of the episode. Nothing too crazy either about having a kid “raised” by the Precure becoming one herself. The interesting thing is that she is still a child and returns to being one after. Does her mentality age up when she transforms? I guess we’ll see on that front. Majesty regardless made quite the powerful introduction. She was overwhelming and unstoppable. That could be an issue since Skearhead is easily more competent than his boss, but there’s always a chance for the Empress to bounce back. Her design is good and I’m curious to see more.

Good amount of fun here

Thank goodness this show can still bring some strong episodes. Since the end of the Battamonda era things have been weak for the series. Now we’ve got a pretty decent enemy that should strike some fear into the main cast. That guy was like a terminator! Majesty does change the power balance and will make capturing Ellee almost impossible! Hopefully the show takes what this episode did well and carries it on going forward. It was really refreshing to watch a Precure episode and think “hey this is great!”