A CLOCKWORK VIOLET

Hugtto Pretty Cure - Episode 17
MY OWN REVIEW
A CLOCKWORK VIOLET
 
Things took quite a turn at the end of the previous episode of Hugtto! PreCure, and episode 17 shows us exactly what that means for all of those involved.

After Papple reported to Ristle about Lulu's betrayal, she began deleting all of Lulu's memories and reverting her back to her original program-Destroy the Precures.

The episode begins with Lulu back at Cryasse HQ, where they delete most of the data she had gathered whilst being withwhere they delete most of the data she had gathered whilst being with the others.

the others are eager to rescue Lulu

At Harry’s place, Hana is insistent that they should go and rescue Lulu. Harry is against the idea, though, as he had realised Lulu was actually an enemy.

Hana and Harry argue about it, but Hugtan soon brings their disagreement to an end.

In the end, Hana gets her way and they all head out to search for Lulu.

Ristle then suggested to use the new "Iron Maid" power suit on Lulu to take on the Precures. Lulu's memories of the girls were deleted as she remembered how she was created by the Cryasse Corporation from the future as a gynoid. When she finally recovered, Lulu took the power suit to battle the Precures.

Crying her eyes out because she isn’t used to this kind of pain triggered by emotions. She perceives it as a bug in her system, complicating her perfect world, free from errors, pain, and despair. In fact, that right there may have been a critical clue behind Cryasse’s motives of robbing the future. If they steal the future away to enable people to forget time and live in quiet lives, free from suffering, in their opinion, that could be what they perceive as a perfect world.

 

Lulu appears before the others

It doesn’t take long for them to find Lulu. Hana rushes right up to her, but Lulu smacks her hand away. Lulu has no intention of talking to them.

There is only a single objective that she wants to achieve: destroy PreCures.

7Gs, those Lulunator target eyes...

Lulu’s armour

She doesn’t even wait for the others to transform. With her new battle armour, she immediately goes on the offensive. Any attempts to talk with her are futile, so the girls are left with no other choice but to transform.

Lulu is a formidable opponent

Lulu appeared in front of the girls but she had forgotten them and wore the power suit. The girls has no choice but to fight with her. Papple appeared and told the girls that Lulu has no more memories of them but still has the battle data of the girls.

As the fight rages on, Papple arrives. She reveals that Lulu’s memories of the time she spent with PreCures have been deleted, but they kept the battle data.
Lulu is able to overwhelm every PreCure, but they prove to be a lot more tenacious than she expected. She uses the opportunity to grab Cure Étoile for more data analysis, which results in the supposedly deleted memories resurfacing.

 The girls were struggling against Lulu and she needed more data on them as such she grabbed Cure Étoile and started analyzing her. But she suddenly remembered the previous encounter with Homare at the playground and all her memories were slowly coming back to her.

Lulu’s memories start to resurface

Lulu’s armour appears to start to malfunctioning, as all the memories she made with the other girls come back to here. She tries to strike at her opponents, but Ange and Étoile unleash their special attacks.

Lulu’s armour shatters

It appears Lulu has returned to normal, but she is not quite out of the woods just yet. She clutches at her chest and starts screaming out in pain; the others are naturally concerned for her, but she tells them to stay away.

In the year 200X…

 Cure Ange and Cure Étoile used this chance and destroyed the power suit. The girls tried to get close to Lulu but her programs are conflicting her emotions and she started firing recklessly. 

Lulu does her best Megaman/Rockman impression and blasts PreCures away with an arm cannon (attached to her left arm: does that make Lulu a canon sinistral?). Ange and Étoile have to defend Harry and Hugtan from an oncoming attack. Lulu tries to tell the girls to stay away from her and whips up a whirlwind around herself, but Cure Yell has other ideas.

Cure Yell approaches Lulu with a little help from Ange and Étoile

Cure Yell makes it inside the vortex, and Lulu starts pummeling her. Cure Yell wants nothing more than to forgive Lulu, but Lulu can’t bring herself to accept that. However, Cure Yell says that she has a deep pain in her chest from having to fight Lulu.

‘It’s because I love (suki) you, Lulu!’

The reason is because she loves (suki) Lulu. Lulu ends up collapsing after that, and the whirlwind dissipates.

Cure Yell tried to reason with Lulu but she refused to listen and admitted that she is a spy who brainwashed Mrs. Nono and the teachers, tricked the Precure friends (nakama) and did horrible things to them. 

 Lulu could not understand her reason and still blame herself. However Cure Yell told her that she likes (suki) Lulu and forgave her.

Just saying, but Hugtan is great

With the whirlwind gone, Hugtan is able to get over to Lulu remarkably quickly. Not that it matters much, because seeing her pat Lulu on the head is just adorable.

Lulu lets it all out

Lulu ends up just crying her heart out; the others tear up as well.

Papple, on the other hand, tries giving Lulu orders.

Lulu has no intention of listening to Papple any longer

LEAVE OR I'LL BLOW YOUR HEAD AWAY, YOU CRACKPOT BARONESS! 

Lulu fires a warning shot, and PreCures tell the Baroness/Vamp to leave unless she wants to be punished.

 Papple wisely decides that retreat is the best course of action.

Yes, Lulu; though you have not transformed yet, you are officially part of the group!

Lulu gets a well-deserved hug

With all the drama finished with, Hana welcomes Lulu back with a group hug.

And, for the first time in forever... WE SEE LULU SMILE!!

Also turns out that someone had witnessed most of what happened.

EMIRU: OMG... They are the PreCure girls after all...

Emiru saw something shocking

PreCures' fight against Lulu caught the attention of Emiru, and she just had to rush over to see what was happening. It’s not clear how much of it she saw, but she definitely seems surprised by what she did discover.
That brings this episode to an end, and what an episode it was. I was looking forward to it from last week’s preview, and it managed to surpass my expectations. The fight against Lulu was good, as too was the way in which it was resolved.
This entire arc revolving around Lulu has been some of the best that the entire PreCure franchise has to offer, and this episode continues to keep up that trend. I’m probably going to be repeating variations of that until the end of this arc, but it’s not something I would bring up if I didn’t think it was true.
All in all, an utterly brilliant episode. Next week looks like it will be another fun one as it focuses on Lulu and Emiru. Needless to say, I eagerly anticipate that one.
Finally, I just wanted to say that I really liked the end card for this episode:

MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:

It baffles my mind how Papple has been reverted to the lazy villain, who just let all of this happen in front of her, without even trying anything to stop it! This annoys me to no ends because we saw her be scary last week! WHERE IS THE PAPPLE WHO WON’T HANDLE BETRAYAL NICELY? She should have at least tried to interfere! Not to mention, their colleague who made the suggestion to switch Lulu’s program to a Battle Protocol made it clear that she would be responsible for whatever happens. For a crime of a member betraying their organization, I find it terribly hard to believe Papple would simply just stand there and passively watch things play-out when she is the one who is going to be held accountable for the outcome of this fight. And then there was also that little bit where we see her “soften up” by telling the guy she wasn’t planning on anything drastic— uh lady, do you not remember the terrible things you did to Charalit!? Not to mention, she freaking SNIPED Lulu last week, and always identified her as a doll. In what way would switching her program to Battle Protocol be too much? Please make up your mind!

So we learn now that she’s definitely a gynoid, but now she has formed a “heart” (kokoro). She was able to retain some of her memories, and eventually with the help of the girls, she was able to break free and is now officially aligned with the Precure team. During this fight the girls showed off some creative new tricks with their powers, Saaya and Homare combing the two to create a ride for Hana to reach Lulu when she was blocking them out. It was neat to see, but at the same time it felt like it came out of nowhere since they have never done such a thing in a past. It also didn’t particularly help how I found the fight to be incredibly dull. The only kicker I got from it was really Hana’s tone and stubbornness of adamantly refusing to believe Lulu betrayed them and was a spy. To some extent, hearing that helped relieve some of the guilt that was eating up away at Lulu’s newfound heart. But what ultimately “saved” her was despite her betrayals, Hana accepts her back, and even tells her that she loves her. (Happy Lulu is the cutest thing!)

With this new heart, Lulu to some extent has been reduced to a child-like mindset. Crying her eyes out because she isn’t used to this kind of pain triggered by emotions. She perceives it as a bug in her system, complicating her perfect world, free from errors, pain, and despair. In fact, that right there may have been a critical clue behind Cryasse’s motives of robbing the future. If they steal the future away to enable people to forget time and live in quiet lives, free from suffering, in their opinion, that could be what they perceive as a perfect world.

And while we are on the subject of the villains, there was a not so subtle hint in regards to Harry harbouring even bigger secrets than we may initially imagined. He knows about Cryasse not being a very forgiving group, who does not treat betrayals lightly. For him to know such details, I could imagine two possibilities: Either he served as an undercover agent for a period of time, or at some point in his life, he was affiliated with Cryasse. If it turns out to be the latter, it could be his betrayal was the key to ensuring Hugtan’s survival. Anyhow, he is certainly not ready to let the girls know of all his secrets just yet. However if he is a former member of Cryasse, a defector from decadence, I wonder if there is anyone would might recognize him, or else perhaps he changed his appearance.

At this point, I am convinced it is probably only a matter of time before both Emiru and Lulu become Precures. They are certainly set to become a duo as the two have a unique friendship in a way Lulu doesn’t have with the main trio. Not to mention, since Emiru had approached the battle scene, she was able to discover they have been right under her nose the entire time.

PS: Does Hugtan have like teleportation abilities or something? How the hell does she slip out of Harry’s arms like that?!

This is probably because of their effectiveness at being foils of one another.
SEVEN GODS... LULU CRYING? We see her sob, we see her frown, we see her gasp, we see her smile; we see her dreadpan façade shattering, falling apart.

ON BADASSES AND BABIES (A SPECIAL SHOT AT VALJEAN AND COSETTE)
A great way of claiming that a badass has a heart of their own in fiction is having them raise an unrelated orphan or foundling, preferently a very young child. Gender inverted versions and same-gendered version occur, but the male guardian/female ward dynamic is the most common (see Valjean and Cosette below). This is probably because of their effectiveness at being foils of one another; girls are generally expected to be physically weaker and "purer" than men (both for being female and underage), and, as a child, the vulnerability given off to the audience is enhanced Up to Eleven. This juxtaposed with the adult, physically strong man who is in some way broken by his dark past of terrible sins, is a potent contrast.

We have here a straight classic Valjean example of a badass-and-child in Hugtto! (Harry*Hugtan), and a subversion with an underage, female (and artificial-life!) guardian as well to balance that.

ON WELL-INTENTIONED EXTREMISTS: So we finally got to know the motivation of Cryasse: and it's a page ripped not only from Elysio's book, but from many other antagonists', including real-life dictators'.
LULU'S ARMOUR / LULUNATOR - FEMBOT THEORY CONFIRMED
NEW THEORY: HARRY THE DEFECTOR FROM DECADENCE?
We should also (we never had the chance while doing Kirakira à la Mode) talk about Japanese loves a little more: ai, koi, and suki/daisuki, and the nuances that differentiate these three terms; this time aligning them with C.S. Lewis's Four Loves:

• Hana's feelings for Lulu and Ciel's for sweetsmaking are (dai-)suki: intense liking or affection for something or someone. Both philia (towards friends) and storge (towards family members) correspond to suki/daisuki in the C.S. Lewis essay.
• The altruistic concern for her younger sister that Akira displays and represents as Cure Chocolat is ai: unconditional love or altruism. Both storge (towards family members) and agape (towards people in general) correspond to ai in the C.S. Lewis essay.
• A romantic relationship, such as that between Yukari and Akira, is koi: romantic love. Eros (does not have to be sexual; it simply implies romantic desire for a significant other) corresponds to koi in The Four Loves.

EMILU IN NEXT EPISODE
The two girls seem to get along quite nicely...
We'll quaff champagne if this arrangement clicks!
Emiru, Lulu, that's the point, precisely!
It's such an OTP they had to fix...


IN NEXT EPISODE (18):
EMILU!!!
And maybe a musical review as well...

 

 

Could this maybe be the next Master-and-Commander style duet? And does this mean Lulu has potential as a singer and/or lyricist?

"MELODY OF THE HEART"