YMMV / HuGtto! Pretty Cure

• Adorkable:
  • Hana's enthusiasm and Butt-Monkey moments make her possibly the most Adorkable lead Cure in the franchise's history.
  • Saaya has obscure interests that she's passionate about: power tools, kappa, practical special effects, aliens, giant mecha...
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: The show contains several scenes where the characters change diapers even when Hugtan didn't show signs she needed a change (most notably in episodes 9, 14 with Seitarou-kun instead of Hugtan and 22). They are actually partaking in an activity that is traditional in Japanese culture, especially in hoikuens. Babies' diapers are often changed every hour, even when they aren't soiled.
• Awesome Music:
  • Episode 22. When you hear "Dual Aurora Wave!" and immediately after, "DANZEN! Futari Wa Pretty Cure" kicks in over Black and White proceeding to transform, give their classic speech, and kick ass, just like in the old days... Many old-school fans screamed for joy.
  • And related to that, the amazing new remix of the same song that plays over the episode's end credits, which feature all 55 main Cures dancing together.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Emiru and Ruru once they became Cure Ma'Cherie and Cure Amour. Are they a well-written odd-couple that helps focuses on the good of an inter-generational friendship with the right amount of development given, or are they nothing but the Spotlight-Stealing Squad of the season taking away valuable screen time to characters that could've benefited from it like Saaya? The songs they sing are also a main factor in this, with some seeing them as nothing more than soundtrack fodder padding out run time.
  • George Cry falls under this regarding his motivation (which is mostly restricted to the supplementary materials people are more likely to not know about) especially in regards to how Hana forgives him at the end. Some think that it was important for her to treat him with the same kindness she showed everyone else, while others believe that George got off too easy for all of the crimes he committed. And then there's George’s… unhealthy obsession with present!Hana. Keep in mind that George is from the future, and the Hana of this timeline is not only much younger (13), but has no idea who George is at all.
• Broken Base:
  • No matter how you spin it, the crossover episodes and massive amount of Call Backs are a hot topic when it comes to discussing Hugtto. Some think the crossover episodes are much more involved and intriguing than the special Cure openings seen in HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!, being fun experiences filled with Fanservice galore, while others think they are unnecessary distractions from the main story by being Random Events Plots. It doesn't help that the crossover episodes play a hand in progressing the plot, such as Nagisa and Honoka repairing Emiru and Ruru's relationship (even if passively) and all of the Cures plus their Guest Star Party Members helping out in purifying Traum, allowing him to return in future episodes, meaning you couldn't skip these episodes even if you wanted to without getting Locked Out of the Loop.
  • Cure Echo being excluded from All-Star Memories. On one hand, some people understand why she wasn't featured, due to her first appearance being in New Stage 1 (which canonical placement is questionable at best), while others think is unfair to claim that the movie has every Cure when one is obviously missing from the lineup.
  • Cure Infini. While there were many who loved the reveal and episodes where he appeared, and especially the message he brought, there were just as many others who thought the gesture was a too-little-too-late apology to fans after the media buzz over Rio from the previous season^note The long and short of it being that his character arc made a lot of adult fans think he was going to become a Sixth Ranger and a male Cure, only to be disappointed that not only he wasn't, but also another character, namely Pekorin, has become a Cure out of a sudden in the second-to-last episode. and thought that two episodes weren't enough.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The fact Hugtan calls Hana "Mama" made the reveal that she's Hana's Kid from the Future not that all surprising.
• Continuity Lock-Out: The season really suffer from this, as they make many Call Backs to older seasons and even had straight up Crossovers in Episodes 21, 36, 37 and The Movie. However, unless you've been following the franchise in its entirety, most of these references can fly over your head, and the crossover episodes assumes you've seen the guests' main seasons before and moves on with the story it wants to tell, which can makes characters like Cure Black and Cure White lean a bit on the bland side to a first-time viewer.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Homare shows signs such as jumping causing her to remember her failed figure skating jump, her sadness, distancing herself from others and from figure skating, and a loss of interest in other activities (not going to school that often). Fans speculate that she has depression after her failed skating jump.
• Esoteric Happy Ending: Not so much in regards of the main cast themselves, but for the characters who originated from the Bad Future timeline. Due to the Multiverse Theory being just as prevalent here as it is in Dragon Ball Z, that means that Charaleet, Papple, Daigan, Gelos, Traum, Bishin, Ristoru, Ruru, Harry and Hugtan are essentially still stuck in a hellish timeline with no mention as to whether or not they succeeded in fixing all of the (possibly irreversible) damage caused by George. Though it could be argued that the short cameo made by Harry and Cure Tomorrow in the Good Future timeline was included to alleviate this, and some encounters with former villains seem to suggest that they came back to a good future in 2043.
• Fan Nickname:
  • "Nanodeath" for Emiru, thanks to a certain fansub group. It fits because of her "-nano desu" Verbal Tic and her obsession with keeping people safe from ever-more-improbable disasters.
  • Cure Amulet Heart for Cure Yell, mostly due to their cheerleader-like design.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Episodes 36 and 37 reveal that all of the Precure seasons, as well as the All Stars movies, share the same universe, however, there are quite a few fans who refuse to accept that and believe that each season has its own universe and the crossover events of Hugtto happened only in Hugtto, saying that the reveal itself doesn't make sense as it screws up the canon in many ways.
• Fountain of Memes: Most image searches of Hana Nono are likely focused on the wide variety of facial expressions she makes throughout the series, potentially rivaling Erika Kurumi.
• Genius Bonus: There's a scene in Episode 16 where Hana encounters a strange man in a field of rhododendron flowers. In flower language, the rhododendron symbolizes caution and danger. On top of fighting a grueling battle with a Monster of the Week that was created by two of their classmates, the Cures find out about Ruru's true origins and end up having to fight her in the following episode.
  • There's also the fact that the man in that same scene is the Big Bad of the season.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Hinase, one of Hana’s classmates, is a lot more popular within English-speaking fandom due to them being off-put with George and Hana’s relationship and sympathizing with his hilariously unrequited crush on Hana instead. There are some disappointments expressed because he doesn’t show up when almost all of the supporting cast transform into a Cure.
  • Hugtto! itself has become a very popular season with animation fans, appreciated for its key animation and directing highlights as HeartCatch was.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • Episode 18 has Emiru bringing up the Pretty Cure offer to Ruru, who harshly turned it down this time due to the fact that her lack of (physical) heart from her android origins mean she might not even have the ability to be a Pretty Cure at all. A couple of confirmed leaks and two episodes later reveals that Ruru and Emiru both becomes Pretty Cures themselves, proving once and for all that yes, Ruru is just as human as anyone else.
  • Earlier seasons would sometimes show male characters who admired the heroines and wanted to be more like them (like Jun), with some even wanting to join the fight alongside them as fellow Cures (like Kenji). Henri's character arc affirms not only that those boys shouldn't be ashamed of their aspirations, but even they can become Cures too.
  • Crosses a bit with Tear Jerker, but in episode 29 the gang visits Hana's grandmother at her sweets shop with the theme of the episode being making delicious food and has a very heartwarming ending. A little under 4 years later an entire Pretty Cure series themed around food and cooking comes along, and unlike Hana and Tanpopo who is shown to be still living well in the future, although the grandma of Yui, the main pink cure is the complete opposite passing away before the start of her series, it’s nice to see Yui keeping her spirit alive and legacy going by reciting her sayings and helping her family restaurant.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • The English-dubbed variety of Pretty Cure, Glitter Force and its sequels, added dialogue to the transformations which annoyed some fans who thought of it as childish and unnecessary, in contrast to the original Japanese dubs where transformation sequences only had dialogue at the beginning and end. In this series, the Cures repeat "hug-gyuu" and "gyuu" throughout their transformation and the result is about as silly as it was in Glitter Force, if not more so as it's potentially more childish than even Glitter Lucky's "puff puff" throughout her sequence.
  • In Episode 26 of Doki Doki Pretty Cure, an amnesiac Ira said that Rikka, the blue Cure of that season, looked like an angel. Now we have a blue Cure centered around that very idea.
  • Ruru and Emiru are played by Yukari Tamura and Nao Tamura, who share the same last name but aren't related. Their characters end up sharing the same title when transformed, becoming the Pretty Cure of Love.
  • The buzz the internet went through about Rio, his character arc resembling that of a typical Dark Magical Girl's, and all the memes about him, whether jokingly or out of sympathy for the character, being the first male Cure in the franchise thanks to his "Cure Waffle" form turn eerily prophetic with Henri taking that milestone.
  • Way back when Pretty Cure All Stars New Stage was announced, a rumour hit the fandom that the new character, Cure Echo, was really the then-current season's leader's Kid from the Future, specifically from a Bad Future. Six seasons later, long after that theory-turned-rumour was cleared up and forgotten, that's exactly what happens with Hugtan and Hana.
  • The "Y" in Cure Yell's name is silent, making the pronunciation "Kyua Eru". Come Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure, we get Elle-chan with the Verbal Tic of "Eru".
  • Junna Tokura is one of the people who became a temporary Cure towards the end of the series. It looks like that wasn't just a one time thing; 6 years later, Junna's voice actress Maria Naganawa would be cast as Komugi Inukai/Cure Wonderful.
• Ho Yay: Here you go, folks. It's big enough to have this here page.
• I Knew It!:
  • Episode 25 confirmed fan theories that Harry was once part of Criasu, due to him letting slip a few times that he knew more than he let on, and that he fled after being experimented on.
  • Ditto with Hugtan being a baby version of Cure Tomorrow. The fans already knew it as soon as she showed up in Tomorrow With Everyone's first use.
  • Still others correctly predicted that George was actually the President of Criasu.
  • Fans were proven right again when Episode 49 revealed Hugtan to be Hana's Kid from the Future, due to Hugtan almost always referring to Hana as "Mama".
• Like You Would Really Do It: Despite episode 17 being called "Sound of Sorrow… Goodbye Ruru", Ruru survives. Then again, her status as the fourth Cure to join the group was Spoiled by the Merchandise, so it was assumed that she would find some way to survive regardless.
• Memetic Mutation: See this page for examples.
• Narm:
  • Despite the Cures' Transformation Sequences being beautifully animated, their habit of saying "hagyuu" and "gyuu" while transforming comes off as rather silly and can potentially ruin the experience.
  • The end of the final episode where Hana is shown giving birth isn't a bad thing on its own, but the fact that the cheerful and upbeat opening theme is playing while Hana is screaming in agony the whole time makes it awkward to watch.
• Obvious Crossover Method: While Pretty Cure crossovers are nothing new, Hugtto does stick out as it's the only Pretty Cure season to actively use Alternate Timelines as a major plot point, while also implying that a greater Multiverse is at play. Not only does the staff use this to justify bringing back every previous team for a special two-parter, but it gives the fans the perfect opportunity to crossover with other franchises as well. After all, what's stopping Chronoa and the Time Patrollers from helping the heroes defeat Crisis Corp...?
• Older Than They Think: Freezing time as an end goal for the main villain? George wasn’t the first to try it- the movie villain for Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash★Star, Sirloin, also wanted to do it.
• Questionable Casting: Some fans become confused at the announcement of Cure Etoile's VA, Yui Ogura, known more for her typecast Token Mini-Moe roles where Etoile's described as being more mature than the other Cures. In series, she does portray Homare with a deep voice. Averted with casting the usually perky-sounding Yukari Tamura as Ruru, since she has played an Emotionless Girl effectively before.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Henri, Homare’s childhood friend and fellow skater, was first met with a fair amount of derision due to being introduced as an obsessive jerk towards Hana and Saaya. However, his role in Episode 19, where he defends Emiru from her older brother and affirms against his sexist remarks that women can become heroes and men can become princesses, helped to portray him in a more positive light. He’s officially away from the Heap as of Episode 42 and his transformation into Cure Infini. On a related note, Masato’s own reception with the fans went from absolutely hated in his debut for his misogyny to beloved for his character development away from it and his relationship with Henri.
• Ships That Pass in the Night: Once it was revealed that Yukari Tamura would be playing a character, in this case, major villainess Ruru, quite a few people immediately decided to ship her with Cure Blossom thanks to the Lyrical Nanoha connection.
• Shocking Moments
  • Episode 21: Wait, what? CURE BLACK AND CURE WHITE SHOWED UP IN AN EPISODE!? You heard that right, folks- Cures from another series have actually entered the narrative during the story's progression. Granted, this happened before with Yell showing up at the end of last season, but that was just an Early-Bird Cameo. But this? This is a full-fledged crossover!
  • Episode 37: ALL 55 MAIN CURES appears in this episode to take the fight against Dr. Traum. And it's not only them: Michiru, Kaoru, Flower, Echo, Tender, Ohana, Olina, Soular, Westar, Otokichi, Candy, Regina, Yui, Kouchou, Rio, Bibury, Cure Pekorin, and Cure Mofurun all return to help the Cures purify Dr. Traum with the All For You! finishing attack.
  • Episode 42: "Cure Infini!" No, this is not a fakeout, Imagine Spot, Vigilante Man antics, or a Fan Nickname for a Cure-like outfit. With those two words, Henri Wakamiya temporarily becomes the first full fledged male Cure in this episode, with nary a joke or quip at his expense.
  • Episode 48: EVERYONE IN THE CAST BECOMES CURES TO HELP THE MAIN CAST DEFEAT GEORGE! Need we say more?
  • Episode 49: And the very tip of the iceberg? Hugtan is Hana's daughter.
• Spiritual Successor: To, of all things, The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day, since it involves time travel, a young girl who is destined to mother the Bad Future's last and greatest resistance fighter, an evil company dead-set on securing their position throughout time and space that they send agents to the past to try and kill the time travelers and make sure the Bad Future happens, as well as themes of Screw Destiny and learning how to live your own life. There's even an actual robot that starts evil before learning how to become human and rebel against their own creators after befriending a young child!
• Tear Jerker: Homare confessing her feelings to Harry. Unable to fully move on until she revealed her feelings, she confesses to him that she's in love with him. However, Harry rejects her feelings, telling her that he can't accept her until he admits his feelings to someone else. As Homare runs off to skate, she's confronted by the other Cures and she admits that "she got dumped", leading to her sobbing her heart out in Hana's arms.
  • Emiru does not take the revelation of having to say goodbye to Ruru well, to the point she loses her voice over the trauma.
  • The finale takes the heartbreaking separation in Ojamajo Doremi's second season finale and turns it up to eleven (not helped that Hugtan looks very similar to baby Hana-chan).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: It has its own page here.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • Pre-season, Hana helping Eri was the catalyst that lead to Hana getting bullied by her peers, so people were excited when Episode 31 revealed that she would be returning, waiting to see how her return would contribute to Hana's growth as a character beyond the standard Butt-Monkey (especially when the previews showed that the two are still on rocky terms with each other). Unfortunately, many felt let down by the episode, thinking that the writers did a half-hearted attempted to side step the issue presented (such as bullying and its long-term effects), rather than address it head on, thus further stunting Hana's development and providing no closure to the plot point.
  • Not only does Hana never learn of the fate of her Bad Future self, but we also never knew just how badly life was for the other Cures in George's timeline. While some could make the argument that Hugtto was pushing enough boundaries as it is without bringing in major character deaths and the like, it doesn't remove the loss of potential character development from having to see how broken their future selves are, and would've made their Screw Destiny declaration towards George and the good future epilogue more impactful.
• Tough Act to Follow: George is still a threatening villain in his own right and came dangerously close to stopping all of time, but it's hard to see him as powerful as he once was considering how Dr. Traum not only came close to destroying time, but required all 55 Cures as well as their Guest-Star Party Members to stop him.
• Trans Audience Interpretation: Henri Wakamiya is a young man who enjoys figure skating and wearing feminine clothing, including dresses. The intention of his character is to challenge gender roles; when Henri gets captured and wryly calls himself a "princess", Pink Heroine Cure Yell replies "boys can be princesses too!" Near the end of the series, he becomes Cure Infini, the first male Magical Girl Warrior in the franchise. Reviewers noted that he can also be interpreted as nonbinary or genderfluid. Describing himself, Henri says "Masculine... feminine... it matters not! This beauty transcends all!" He later expresses discomfort with his increasing height and deepening voice, akin to gender dysphoria.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Cure Black and Cure White were expected to appear in The Movie. Nobody expected them to also appear in series.
  • This gets topped with the return of Shiny Luminous, Cure Dream, Cure Peach and the KiraKira★Pretty Cure à la Mode and Maho Girls Pretty Cure! teams! The preview adds on to that by also including both teams' Weasel Mascots as well as bringing back Tarte and Chiffon! Then the episode itself brings back one last character: Bunbee!
  • It gets topped even more in the next episode: Not only do ALL of the main Cures return in this episode, but the Kiryuu sisters, Flower, Echo, Tender, Ohana, Olina, Soular, Westar, Otokichi, Candy, Regina, Yui, Kouchou, Rio, Bibury, Cure Mofurun, and Cure Pekorin all returned to help the Cures purify Dr. Traum with the All For You! finisher. Kaoru, the donut man from Fresh, also returned in this episode, his first appearance since the passing of his VA in 2016. The Kiryuu sisters were arguably more so than everyone listed here, since not only are they returning after being long missing after Splash Star ended its run, they returned in their Bright and Windy forms!
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Even discounting how creepy his obsession with the 13-year-old version of Hana is, George’s motivation of wanting to save her because of his relationship with her future counterpart feels much less noble that it tries to be when the rest of the season depicted him as a Bad Boss who apparently had no problem taking advantage of his position to enter relationships with his employees (i.e. dating Pupple only to cheat on her with Gelos and having No Sense of Personal Space with Listol and Bicine).
• Values Dissonance:
  • Some fans are uncomfortable with the Ship Tease between Homare and Harry, given that she's 13 and he's an adult.
  • Episode 30 had a brief clip of Hugtan doing the famous Marilyn Monroe pose, with Homare calling it "Sexy Adorbs." Naturally, many fans were uncomfortable with such imagery.
  • Episode 46 had George doing everything in his power to win over Hana in some strange attempt to save and woo her. Similarly to Homare and Harry, Hana is also 13 and George is clearly an adult.
  • The season's obsession with motherhood and childbirth could be seen as this to western viewers, with there being at least 2 or 3 episodes focusing on maternity care, one of which going out of its way to demystify any stigmas related to C-Section births. This is likely due to Japan's longtime struggles with falling birth rates.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Due to Bishin's androgynous appearance, masculine speech pattern and feminine voice, there was no general agreement whether Bishin was male, female, or androgynous. Settled when Word of God confirmed that he's male.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?:
  • Hugtto gets this as of Episode 10. The baby Hugtan goes comatose after overexerting herself to purify the Monster of the Week in Hana's place just before said monster was about to murder her. And if you thought a baby going comatose was bad enough, Episode 11 follows suit by having one of the employees of Criasu being forcefully turned into a monster. If it weren't for Cure Yell realizing this, she would have mercilessly killed him with the Melody Sword. In a franchise where previous villains were usually finished off by purifying them with energy, this is a notable difference.
  • Episode 16 ups the ante when Ruru gets put on the brink of death by Papuru via a giant energy beam and is promptly reprogrammed in the following episode to kill the Cures with no hesitation. The most horrifying thing about the scene is the way Ruru drops to the ground, completely robotic and limp, and the way Yell shudders when she sees this. It's honestly quite painful to watch.
  • Episode 22 goes even further by implying that George cheats on Papple with Geros after the former failed too many times. She's so heartbroken, she goes to the top of a tall skyscraper and stabs herself with a toge power crystal, turning her into an oshimaeda, with visuals similar to that of harakiri/seppuku. Basically, she committed suicide in her human body and ascended into an oshimaeda body as a result.
• Win Back the Crowd: After KiraKira☆Pretty Cure à la Mode was forced to heavily tone down the hand-to-hand combat that the Pretty Cure franchise is usually known for, the announcement that this season would bring back the Pretty Cure-style violent fight scenes was well-received. This was shown with the final episode of Kira Kira and Cure Yell's cameo, which many fans cheered on the more exciting and violent fight scenes.
• The Woobie: Hana. She was bullied out of her old school after she tried to defend another girl (who ended up siding with the bullies). She finds friends at her new school but continuously feels inferior to her fellow Cures, who all have specific talents that they are successful in. Heck, George's entire motivation is because of Hana and her woobie-ness. In the future that he came from, Hana killed herself because she couldn't handle the overwhelming Precure responsibilities anymore.

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