Ask John: Will American’s Appreciate Pretty Cure Max Heart?

Question:
Hello, John. I am a Japanese Pretty Cure fan. I am interested in asking you about “Futari wa Precure Max Heart” & Kujo Hikari. What do you think of the second series “Max Heart”, specifically compared to the first Pretty Cure? My favorite character in Pretty Cure is Hikari. She is very different from Nagisa & Honoka. So her joining them makes Precure refresh drastically. But I guess that it is quite difficult for American people to understand her personality and attitude because she is a typical Japanese woman; she is very shy; she doesn’t speak so much; she seldom expresses her feeling clearly and strongly, although her face and hair color looks Anglo-Saxon.

Anyway, I guess,”Max Heart” focuses on the Japanese ordinary part much more than the first Pretty Cure, because of Kujo Hikari, typical Japanese shy girl’s joining. Foreign fans can understand the martial scenes easily. However, I am worried whether the American people can understand the Max Heart’s ordinary scene and Kujo Hikari’s character.

I would be very happy, if you would answer my question.

Answer:
I enjoy discussing Pretty Cure because I like the show a lot, and because I appreciate the opportunity to bring more attention to it among English speaking anime fans. Unfortunately, I can’t provide a thorough summation of the American fan reaction to Hikari Kujo because very few American fans have watched Pretty Cure max Heart. By rough estimation based on the average number of people that seem to download Pretty Cure episodes that turn up online, I’d say that there are only a few hundred viewers in America at most who have watched episodes of Pretty Cure Max Heart. The typical mainstream American anime fan has probably never even heard Pretty Cure, and the average hardcore American anime fan might recognize Hikari as a Pretty Cure character, but probably knows nothing about her.

All 49 episodes of Futari wa Precure have been fan translated into English, but episodes 13-49 are available to fans with English subtitles thanks to the efforts of basically just one individual fan translator. If not for that one American Pretty Cure fan, three quarters of the first Pretty Cure series would not be available translated in America at all. None of the Futari wa Precure Max Heart TV series has ever been translated into English. In fact, the only anime that includes Hikari which is available to American fans with an English translation is Futari wa Precure Max Heart movie 1. Because so few Americans have watched Max Heart, there’s not very much discussion of her character or personality among American fans.

I agree that Hikari is very different from Nagisa and Honoka. Beside the fact that she’s younger, she’s much more shy, reserved, and because of her devotion to Akane, she seems a bit more responsible than either Nagisa or Honoka. I must admit that Hikari’s introduction does change the dynamic of Pretty Cure, but I never before recognized her as a representation of a “typical Japanese woman.” Hikari grounds the Max Heart series by giving it more weight; she literally anchors the series in the mundane world because she doesn’t so much join Cure Black and Cure White as they revolve around her. Hikari adds an interesting new aspect to Pretty Cure because she’s entirely defensive. She fights through passive resistance, which is the total opposite of Cure Black & Cure White’s aggressive offense. So adding Hikari to Pretty Cure adds a new dimension to the team, and the show.

My understanding is that Hikari is a very popular character among Japanese fans. I think that average American viewers may have a tendency to see her as meek or less interesting than the energetic, outgoing and vibrant Nagisa and Honoka. Actually, your question may be timed very well, because it may prepare American viewers in advance to expect something different from Hikari. However, it’s also possible that most American viewers will simply never develop any opinion about Hikari because most American viewers may never watch Pretty Cure Max Heart. Although I talk about the show frequently, Pretty Cure is relatively very little known in America. Even though Ojamajo Doremi is currently airing on American TV and Tokyo Mew Mew recently aired on American TV, no magical girl series has been a major hit among American anime fans since Sailor Moon. I’d like to see Pretty Cure become America’s next big magical girl anime hit, but right now there’s just very little interest in the series among American viewers and anime fans.