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So that's the end of Hugtto. Overall, I think it was pretty good. Hana and the main thrust of the plot mostly worked well, and Emiru+Lulu's arc was amazing with a lot of great highlights (though they did evil mind control at the last second AGAIN asoidjhiaushdi). The crossover stuff was very much appreciated and a beautiful tribute to the franchise. My favorite episode was the last crossover ep. A lot of Hugtto's strength comes from very good individual episodes like that.
Where its pitfalls come in for me are not the main ideas but the building blocks of the various plotlines - Homare, Harry, Saaya. Like half the villains...sometimes it felt like they just showed up to do stock footage and then in their last episodes were like "oh shit, we need to have a backstory so the cures can free us from Craias better use these last 5 minutes to say it". There's even a guy whose whole joke is that he's going to end things in 5 minutes, were they aware of this and poking fun at themselves? This is especially glaring because last year KiraKira worked so hard to build Bibury, Julio, and even Elisio's stories over so many episodes. It's fine if the villains don't have fleshed out arcs, but most of them weren't formidable opponents or funny or anything like that either, and they tried to have a whole thing at the end where they came back and had this big moment...and I just wasn't feeling it. Oh well. At least we have Dr. Traum.
In the end I think it's another fine entry into the franchise. I don't understand the massive praise for it, but I've been happy to see many people getting into Precure because of Hugtto and being moved by it so much. I can't be a grump about that. And I am still so touched by EmiLulu. That really was a cheap shop to end their arc on, you know that Toei? Do you want me to throw bird poo at your office? Huh? You can't do this. You will regret this.
Here's to another year of Precure
