Hi, as the title implies, Magic Planet Anime is going to go on hiatus for a while. To put it bluntly: I have an ear condition that’s started to act up in a notably serious way after quite some time of not doing so. I’m not really in a position where I can even comfortably watch much anime (or anything that requires any significant attention), much less meaningfully comment on it. I’m probably going to be effectively bedridden for at minimum a few days and possibly as much as a few weeks to months depending on what can be done with regard to treatment.

I hope you’ll all continue to follow the blog so you can be notified when I resume activities. In the meantime, my usual support links are in the footer below. Now more than ever I could use the financial support. If you want more immediate moment-to-moment updates, my twitter link is also in the footer. Thank you all for your continued support.

-Jane

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Sorry for the short article. Some stuff has come up and to put it plain I’m going to be an episode behind for a while. Here’s a small writeup about episode 8 in the meantime.

The premise of episode 8 is extremely simple. Chiyu, who is her school’s star hi-jump athlete, suddenly has a case of the cantdoits and finds herself unable to perform to her usual standard. The episode is in most respects a brief study of the character. There’s lots of great moments showcasing the trio’s friendship here, too, but Chiyu is the main star. The best bit is when we learn why she took up jumping in the first place. A beachside trip as a child lead to a fascination with the sea and sky and how they can meld together into a seemingly infinite blue. (Which leads to our Shot of The Week for episode 8). This sort of visual poetry isn’t rare in Pretty Cure, but it’s worth appreciating when it happens.

There’s a fight scene in this episode too, of course. It’s quite short, but well-done and enjoyable. It’s perhaps predictable that Chiyu’s jumps end up also letting her finish off the Pathogerm, but predictable isn’t necessarily bad. Despite the abundance of terrific Hinata faces in this episode (and a good Chiyu face too!), that shot up there is the best of the lot.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

This is probably the weirdest circumstance I’ve ever started one of these posts under. As I type this it’s 1AM during week one of what is likely to be a weeks- to months-long lockdown of most places and people in my residential state of Illinois because of the COVID outbreak. I contemplated not updating the blog for a while given Healin’ Good Precure‘s subject matter. Yet, I ultimately thought that doing as much as I can to distract both myself and everyone else from the whole Thing going on outside is probably for the better.

That’s the last I’ve got to say on the subject. Let’s get to the mahous.

This is basically a “funny” episode, and the gag it runs on is a fairly simple one. We get introduced to a b-character here by the name of Masuko, the president and sole member of our heroines’ high school’s newspaper club. He introduces himself and slaps together some awful portmanteaus (yes, if you’re wondering, Chiyu does crack up at this)

He has, as it turns out, come to the exact wrong conclusion about Nodoka. That is to say, he accuses her of somehow being the person summoning the Megapathogerms.

Much of the episode details his antics tailing Nodoka and our heroines’ attempts to thwart him. He even hides in a painting at one point, which, this scene just begs the question of why exactly there’s a portrait of George Washington in a Japanese school, but perhaps some questions are riddles for future generations.

As far as distracting him; Chiyu casually breaks a prefectural high-jump record and Hinata calls his newspaper lame and tries to get him to turn it into a fashion magazine. Everyone makes great use of their talents, one could say.

Eventually he apologizes. Explaining his love for journalism with a cute little anecdote about spiderwebs after a fresh rain. It’s cute, and Nodoka is her soft and caring self as always.

Beyond that there’s not a ton else to this episode. Though our journalist boy up there does hilariously try to interview a Megapathogerm.

The fight at the end is fairly peripheral, if solid.

Amusingly, at the end of it all, while Masuko does see the Precures in action and acknowledges that he made a mistake in assuming Nodoka was connected to the Pathogerms, he doesn’t actually put 2 and 2 together to figure out that our three leads are the Precure themselves. On the one hand; of course he doesn’t, but it’s still very silly.

Our shot of the week is this, one of the episode’s last, and a veritable buffet of good faces.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.