sábado, 30 de junio de 2018

SUBVERSION IN ANDERSEN'S SNOW QUEEN

Fairytale Subversion: Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”


By the time he sat down to pen “The Snow Queen” in the early 1840s, Hans Christian Andersen had already published two collections of fairy tales, along with several poems that had achieved critical recognition. Fame and fortune still eluded him, however, and would until his fairy tales began to be translated into other languages.
“The Snow Queen” was his most ambitious fairy tale yet, a novella-length work that rivaled some of the early French salon fairy tales for its intricacy. Andersen, inspired by the versions of The One Thousand and One Nights that he’d encountered, worked with their tale-within-a-tale format, carefully and delicately using images and metaphor to explore the contrasts between intellect and love, reality and dream; he also gently critiqued both stories. The result was to be lauded as one of Andersen’s masterpieces.
Its biggest inspiration was the Norwegian fairy tale East of the Sun, West of the Moon (more known in the Anglosphere as its British counterpart The Duke of Norroway). Andersen probably heard a Danish version from his grandmother; he may also have encountered one of the tale’s many written forms.
In it, a Polar Bear promises to make a family rich if he can marry their young daughter. The girl follows the Bear to his enchanted castle in the north. Each night, he joins her in bed, but in the darkness, she never sees him.
As in Beauty and the Beast, the girl misses her family and begs to return home. Her family, who, I might add, were just fine with the whole marry the bear thing, suddenly realize (especially her mother) that this situation might suck since if her husband won’t have the lights on at night, he must—he must!—be a troll! OR, YOU KNOW, THE BEAR YOU ORIGINALLY SENT HER AWAY WITH. I’m not convinced that a troll could be much worse. Anyway,  the girl decides to take a look in the light, waking him up. The good news is, because this is a fairy tale, he’s a handsome prince. The bad news is, since she tried to find this out, the bear prince now must marry a troll princess—unless the girl can journey to that enchanted land, and save him. To add insult to injury, he points out that if she had just endured the current situation for one year, all would have been well. Would it have killed you to tell her this in the first place, bear? Well, since this is a fairy tale, maybe, but still.
Basically, the theme of East of the Sun, West of the Moon/The Duke of Norroway is that life really, genuinely sucks and is extremely unfair: here, the result of obeying her parents (her mother tells her to use the light) and trying, you know, to find out what exactly is in bed with her leads to endless months of wandering around the cold, cold north, even if she does get help from three old women and the winds along the way.
Andersen took this story, with its themes of transformation, sacrifice, long journeys, and unfairness, and chose to twist several elements of it, adding themes of temptation and philosophy and intellect and Christian love and charity.
“The Snow Queen” is told in a series of seven stories. In the first, a troll (in some English translations, a “hobgoblin,” “demon,” or "sorcerer") creates a mirror that distorts beauty. The mirror breaks, sending fragments of its evil glass throughout the world, distorting people’s vision, making them only able to see the worst in everything. The troll laughs—
—and that’s pretty much the last we hear of the troll, setting up a pattern that continues throughout the novella: in this fairy tale, evil can and does go unpunished. It was, perhaps, a reflection of Andersen’s own experiences, and certainly a theme of many of his stories. By 1840, he had witnessed many people getting away with cruel and unkind behavior, and although he was certainly more than willing to punish his own protagonists, even overly punish his own protagonists, he often allowed the monsters of his stories to go unpunished. When they could even be classified as monsters.
The second story shifts to little Kai and Gerda, two young children living in cold attics, who do have a few joys in life: the roses and other flowers that they grow on the roofs of their houses, copper pennies that they can warm on a stove and put on their windows, melting the ice (a lovely touch), and the stories told by Kai’s grandmother. At least some of these details may have been pulled from Andersen’s own memories: he grew up poor, and spent hours listening to the stories told by his grandmother and aunts.
Kai sees the Snow Queen at the window, and shortly afterwards, fragments of the mirror enter his heart and eyes, transforming him from a little boy fascinated with roses and fairytales into a clever, heartless boy who likes to tease people. He abandons Gerda and the joy of listening to stories while huddled near a warm stove to go out and play with the older boys in the snow. He fastens his sled to a larger one that, it turns out, is driven by the Snow Queen. She pulls him into her sled and kisses him on the forehead. He forgets everything, and follows her to the north.
The text rather strongly hints that this is a bit more than your typical journey to visit the fjords. Not just because the Snow Queen is a magical creature of ice and snow, but because the language used to describe the scene suggests that Kai doesn’t just freeze, but freezes to death: he feels that he is sinking into a snow drift and falling to sleep, the exact sensations reported by people who almost froze to death, but were revived in time. Gerda, indeed, initially believes that little Kai must be dead. 19th century writers often used similar language and images to describe the deaths of children, and George MacDonald would later use similar imagery when writing At the Back of the North Wind.
On a metaphorical level, this is Andersen’s suggestion that abandoning love, or even just abandoning stories, is the equivalent of a spiritual death. On a plot level, it’s the first echo of East of the Sun, West of the Moon, where the prince is taken to an enchanted castle—or, if you prefer, to death. Only in this case, Kai is not a prince, but a common boy, and he is not enchanted because of anything that Gerda has done, but by his own actions.
In the third story, with Kai gone, Gerda starts to talk to the sunshine and songbirds (not exactly an indication of a stable mental state), who convince her that Kai is alive. As in East of the Sun, West of the Moon, she decides to follow him, with the slight issue that she has no real idea where to look. She begins by trying to sacrifice her red shoes to the river (Andersen appears to have had a personal problem with colorful shoes), stepping into a boat to do so. The boat soon floats down the river, taking Gerda with it. Given what happens next, it’s possible that Gerda, too, has died by drowning, but the language is rich with sunshine and life, so possibly not. Her first stop: the home of a lonely witch, who feeds Gerda enchanted food in hopes that the little girl will stay.
The witch also has a garden with rather talkative flowers, each of which wants to tell Gerda a story. Gerda’s response is classic: “BUT THAT DOESN’T TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT KAI!” giving the distinct impression that she’s at a cocktail party where everyone is boring her, in what seems to be an intentional mockery of intellectual parties that bored Andersen to pieces. Perhaps less intentionally, the scene also gives the impression that Gerda is both more than a bit self-centered and dim, not to mention not all that mentally stable—a good setup for what’s about to happen in the next two stories.
In the fourth story, Gerda encounters a pair of crows (a wild male and a tame female), a prince, and a princess (both equally young, good looking, and especially intelligent). Convinced that the prince is Kai, Gerda enters the palace, and his darkened bedroom, to hold up a lamp and look at his face. And here, the fairy tale is twisted: the prince is not Gerda’s eventual husband, but rather a stranger. The story mostly serves to demonstrate again just how quickly Gerda can jump to conclusions—a lot of people wear squeaky boots, Gerda, it’s not exactly proof that any of them happen to be Kai!—but it’s also a neat reversal of the East of the Sun, West of the Moon in other ways: not only is the prince married to his true bride, not the false one, with the protagonist misidentifying the prince, but in this story, rather than abandoning the girl at the beginning of her quest, after letting her spend the night in the prince’s bed (platonically, we are assured, platonically!) the prince and princess help Gerda on her way, giving her a little sled, warm clothing and food for the journey.
Naturally, in the fifth tale she loses pretty much all of this, and the redshirt servants sent along with her, who die so rapidly I had to check to see if they were even there, when she encounters a band of robbers and a cheerful robber girl, who tells Gerda not to worry about the robbers killing her, since she—that is, the robber girl—will do it herself. It’s a rather horrifying encounter, what with the robber girl constantly threatening Gerda and a reindeer with a knife, and a number of mean animals that she keeps as pets, and the robber girl biting her mother (or grandmother, depending on the version), and then insisting that Gerda sleep with her—and that knife. Not to say that anything actually happens between Gerda and the girl, other than Gerda not getting any sleep, but it’s as kinky as this story gets, so let’s mention it.
The next day, the robber girl sends Gerda off to the sixth tale, where she encounters two more old women—for a total of three. All three tend to be considerably less helpful than the old women in East of the Sun, West of the Moon: in Andersen’s version, one woman wants to keep Gerda instead of helping her, one woman can’t help all that much, and the third sends the poor little girl off into the snow without her mittens. Anyway, arguably the best part of this tale is the little details Andersen adds about the way that one of the women, poverty-stricken, writes on dried fish, instead of paper, and the second woman, only a little less poverty-stricken, insists on eating the fish EVEN THOUGH IT HAS INK ON IT, like wow, Gerda thought that sleeping with the knife is bad.
This tale also has my favorite exchange of the entire story:
“….Cannot you give this little maiden something which will make her as strong as twelve men, to overcome the Snow Queen?”
“The strength of twelve men!” said the Finmark woman. “That would be of very little use.”
What does turn out to be of use: saying her prayers, which, in an amazing scene, converts Gerda’s frozen breath into little angels that manage to defeat the living snowflakes that guard the Snow Queen’s palace, arguably the most fantastically lovely metaphor of praying your way through terrible weather ever.
And then finally, in tale seven, Gerda has the chance to save Kai, with the power of her love, her tears, and her prayers finally breaking through the cold rationality that imprisons him, showing him the way to eternity at last. They return home, hand in hand, but not unchanged. Andersen is never clear on exactly how long the two were in the North, but it was long enough for them both to age into young adulthood, short enough that Kai’s grandmother is still alive.
Despite the happy ending, a sense of melancholy lingers over the story, perhaps because of all the constant cold, perhaps because of the ongoing references to death and dying, even in the last few paragraphs of the happy ending, perhaps because the story’s two major antagonists—the demon of the first tale, the Snow Queen of the last six tales—not only don’t die, they’re never even defeated. The Snow Queen—conveniently enough—happens to be away from her castle when Gerda arrives. To give her all due credit, since she does seem to have at least some concern for little Kai’s welfare—keeping him from completely freezing to death, giving him little maths puzzles to do, she might not even be all that displeased to find that Gerda saved him—especially since they leave her castle untouched.
The platonic ending also comes as a bit of a jolt. Given the tale’s constant references to “little Gerda” and “little Kai,” it’s perhaps just as well—a few sentences informing me that they’re adults isn’t really enough to convince me that they’re adults. But apart from the fact that Gerda spends an astonishing part of this story jumping in and out of people’s beds, making me wonder just how much the adult Gerda would hold back from this, “The Snow Queen” is also a fairy tale about the power of love, making it surprising that it doesn’t end in marriage, unlike so many of the fairy tales that helped inspire it.
But I think, for me, the larger issue is that, well, this defeat of reason, of intellectualism by love doesn’t quite manage to ring true. For one thing, several minor characters also motivated by love—some of the flowers, and the characters in their tales, plus the wild crow—end up dead, while the Snow Queen herself, admirer of mathematics and reason, is quite alive. For another thing, as much as Kai is trapped by reason and intellectualism as he studies a puzzle in a frozen palace, Gerda’s journey is filled with its own terrors and traps and disappointments, making it a little tricky for me to embrace Andersen’s message here. And for a third thing, that message is more than a bit mixed in other ways: on the one hand, Andersen wants to tell us that the bits from the mirror that help trap little Kai behind ice and puzzles prevent people from seeing the world clearly. On the other hand, again and again, innocent little Gerda—free of these little bits of glass—fails to see things for what they are. This complexity, of course, helps add weight and depth to the tale, but it also makes it a bit harder for the ending to ring true.
And reading this now, I’m aware that, however much Andersen hated his years at school, however much he resented the intellectuals who dismissed his work, however much he continued to work with the fairy tales of his youth, that education and intellectualism was what eventually brought him the financial stability and fame he craved. He had not, to be fair, gained either as he wrote “The Snow Queen,” which certainly accounts for the overt criticism of rationality, intellectualism, and, well, maths, and he was never to emotionally recover from the trauma of his education, and he had certainly found cruelty and mockery amongst the intellectuals he’d encountered, examples that helped shape his bitter description of Kai’s transformation from sweet, innocent child to cruel prankster and indifferent perfectionist. At the same time, that sophistication and education had helped transform his tales.
But for young readers, “The Snow Queen” does have one compelling factor: it depicts a powerless child triumphing over an adult. Oh, certainly, Gerda gets help along the way. But notably, quite a lot that help comes from marginalized people—a robber maiden, two witches, and two crows. It offers not just a powerful argument that love can and should overcome reason, but the hope that the powerless and the marginalized can triumph. That aspect, the triumph of the powerless, is undoubtedly why generations have continued to read the tale, and why Disney, after several missteps, transformed its core into a story of self-actualization.
...........................................................................................................................

According to the expert opinions of the kids next door, Frozenis not just the best Disney movie ever, but the best movie ever ever ever.
EVER.
Which is one reason why I hesitated to include it in this read-watch: that expert opinion has also led the kids next door to play the English and Spanish soundtracks from Frozen at high volume on a regular basis, and, far worse, sing along with both. By the fifth rendition of “Do You Wanna Build a Snowman/Hazme un muñeco de nieve” during a Florida August, I was ready to hunt down the songwriters and bury them in snowmen myself. Plus, I had the excuse that Frozen, despite a credit that reads “inspired by” Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, departs so far from that novella that the film is usually credited as a Disney original.
So skipping Frozen was the original plan—until, that is, I happened to reread The Snow Queen for other reasons, and realized that, in spirit, Frozen may be probably closer to its original source material than anything we’ve seen so far in this reread.
Really.
Disney animators had thought about adapting The Snow Queen as far back as 1937, when it was suggested, along with several other fairy tales, as a potential follow-up to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In many ways, the story—a small girl heads off to the north to try to save her young friend, Kai, captured by the Snow Queen after his heart was pierced by a shard of evil glass—seemed perfect for a Disney adaptation. The original story even had talking animals and flowers—Disney staples—a few witches, and a prince and princess. It virtually screams “adapt this, Disney.”
But those screams did little to help Disney adapt the story. Part of the problem—a huge problem—is that the original story arguably has too many villains: the demon who creates the original evil mirror, the witch who briefly enchants and imprisons little Gerda, the robbers, and, of course, the Snow Queen herself. But also arguably, the original story hardly has any villains at all, or at least satisfactory ones. The witch enchants Gerda out of loneliness, not malice; the robbers end up helping little Gerda; and the Snow Queen is less evil and more merely a force of nature. Indeed, at one point the Snow Queen even argues that she’s helping agriculture, and she—arguably—even helps to save Kai, by pulling him away from the dangerous sledding that almost kills him.
Granted, that’s from her viewpoint, and the text rather heavily implicates that the sledding and the snow might indeed have killed Kai, forcing Gerda to not just save Kai, but bring him back from death. But even in that reading, the Snow Queen lacks the malice Disney wanted from its villains. That left only the demon—who vanished at the beginning of the story. And although Disney had been willing to give audiences a glimpse of a Satanic demon in Fantasia (Chernabog), the company was not yet willing to feature a real demon as the main villain of a full length animated film.
Nor was anyone at Disney particularly interested in using ice as a metaphor for reason, much less focusing on the battle between Love and Reason in the late 1930s and early 1940s. They faced other, more urgent battles. The moment slipped by. By the 1950s, Disney lacked the financial resources to animate the delicate images of frost and snow fairies as they had to such great effect in Fantasia. With no script, and no ability to animate the script, even if they had one, the original concept art was quietly filed away.
Animators took another look at The Snow Queen during the Disney Renaissance of the 1990s, but once again, nobody knew quite what to do with it. Eventually Glen Keane, assigned to take another look at it, decided to focus on the more straightforward Tangled instead. That concept art, too, was filed away, and seen by very few.
Fortunately, one of those few just happened to be John Lasseter, who had become the Chief Creative Officer at Disney Animation in 2006. As he would later tell the media, he loved the original concept art, and ordered animators to take another look at it.
Initially, that look consisted only of the filmmakers finally managing to agree on one thing: the name “Gerda” should be replaced by “Anna.” That was still more progress than anyone had made on the concept for decades, and perhaps encouraged by this one small step—or simply convinced that if he ordered it, it would come—Lasseter ordered animators to continue. By 2011, he was optimistic enough to announce that Frozen would be released in 2013, even though, at that point, the planned film had no script and no solid character designs or background work.
With a looming deadline, animators, directors, and story writers scrambled, and finally, in 2012, cracked open the concept they needed to make The Snow Queen work. They simply wouldn’t do The Snow Queen. Instead, they would change the character of the Snow Queen from villain to victim, and in her own cold way, a hero. And instead of a story focused on rescuing a boy, this would be a story about sisters.

Mari Ness

miércoles, 27 de junio de 2018

ÉGAL AUX DIEUX (SAPPHO, FRAGMENT 31)

Sappho
Fragment 31

Égal aux Dieux, à mon avis,
est celui que peut vis-à-vis
ouïr tes gracieux devis
et ce doux rire,

qui le coeur hors du sein me tire,
que tout l'entendement me vire
dessus-dessous, tant il l'admire.

Soudainement je m'aperçois
que toute voix défault en moi,
que ma langue n'a plus en soi
rien de langage.

Une rougeur de feu volage
me court sur le cuir au visage.
Mes yeux n'ont plus de voir l'usage.
Je sens tinter

mes oreilles sans écouter,
froide sueur me dégoutter
de tous les membres, et suinter
d'humeur glacée.

Puis un tremblement conquassée
je demeure pâle, éffacée,
plus que l'herbe jaune passée.
Finalement

je me trouve en ce troublement.
À demi morte, ensemblement
ayant perdu tout mouvement,
pouls et haleine.

(Traduction de Jacques Amyot, 1575 - Réecriture orthographique de Sandra Dermark)

IN THE BACKROOM OF MEMORY

IN THE BACKROOM OF MEMORY
A Poem by Paz Díez-Taboada
Englished by Sandra Dermark, 
on the 19th of June MMXVIII

Dedicated to Ana Laviste Arner

They're still around here, playing ring-o'-roses;
blonde Mari Pepa and a chicken chick
who wistfully deceived his mother hen,
awaiting, eagerly, the fall of night,
for him to run away and see the Moon.
There was a dog as well, whose mournful tale
kept me awake for the long rainy nights.
Shaggy and mournful, he groaned for his life,
offered to craven master's clumsiness.
Soon, the stage was o'ertaken by Snow White,
the lovely princess sauntered on the boards.
With long white beard and doublet olive-green,
and pointy, floppy hat crowned with pompom,
I played Grumpy, the sternest of the dwarves.
¡The poor orphan was such a busy girl!
Yet my favourite was the looking-glass,
the wise mirror that kept in check the pride
of the vain Queen-Stepmother: sorceress
whose withered, knotty hand would offer death.
The one I loved the most was Little Red
Riding-Hood, with her cloak and honey-pot,
though I, sadly, did then not understand
that sometimes the bold huntsman did not come
to save the maiden from the Big Bad Wolf's
hairy clutches, that peeked beneath old Gran's
negligée sleeve-cuffs, lined with whitest lace.
Then, Cinderella opened both my eyes
to the worst of all evils: envious peers,
which force us to work hard for extra hours;
yet the Fairy Godmother wisely taught
us that in make-up lay power sublime,
in lovely dresses, and in fast escape,
although Prince Charming would insist too much.
Later came, pale and wan, her ashy blond
fair hair long to her ankles, Donkeyskin.
She staggers, on pale cover of a book,
wavering, slowly hunch-backed by the weight
of that huge donkey-head upon her back.
Then, 'twas my book again, Ali Baba,
that clever and good fellow, eyes as wide
as saucers as he watched the furious pace
of Forty Thieves storming into their den,
that dark cavern. Now, look and turn this page!
Upon the password, "Open, Sesame!",
the cavern filled with costly treasure hoard:
bracelets, tiaras, necklaces, and crowns,
chests that with dazzling diamonds overflow
clink, clink, clink; their straight edges say they are;
the spherical ones are pearls poom, poom, poom,
that pour out like a cataract of foam.
But most charming was Ricky of the Tuft,
with snoutlike nose and crooked doodle-back,
and those four strands of hair raised up like flames,
which opened the smiles of fair damosels...
In the end, wit and grace outshone the stance,
stupid and arrogant, of princes vain!
And one day came the hero, though so short,
so familiar and humble...! With high boots,
ceremonious and deft, he dropped the hat
with the cavalier brim airy and wide,
arched his lithe back, and answered, courteously,
to those covetous royals: Say, whose are
these lands in such full blossom, bounteous crops,
and castle once it was the ogre's keep...?
Everything is my master's, the Marquis's,
this lovely shire rightfully belongs to
my master, Lord Marquis of Calabash!
............................................................................
And thus, with childhood, they all marched away,
towards the backroom of my memory.
Yet Saturday and Sunday afternoons,
washed by the rain, when I clean all the house,
order the wardrobes, pick newspapers out,
and dust and shoo insistent moths away,
shake off the spiders of my everyday,
those old companions still parade once more,
and deftly stride forth, in tough Wellingtons,
Sir Thomas of the Thumb and Puss in Boots,
who, hat in paw, meows to me with a smile:
These flowering plants are my master's all.
Grandfather's portrait, the liquor flacon
that is so lovely, the books and LPs,
they're all forever, and they all belong
rightfully to my master and my lord,
my master, Lord Marquis of Calabash!

CALIGARI CARNIVAL HOUSE OF FREAKS

CALIGARI CARNIVAL HOUSE OF FREAKS
Traducción del inglés de Sandra Dermark
25 de junio, MMXVIII

Bienvenus, welcome
a nuestro barracón;
prepárense pa' ver más
de una gran malformación...
Así, sentaos
y relajaos;
no somos ná formales...
y cuando los veáis,
gracias daréis por ser normales...
Bienvenus, welcome
a nuestro barracón;
a escena las personas
más raras de la región...
Para el primero, espero
que algo de cariño os quepa:
sus hombros son normales
pero el pobre tiene chepa...



Fijaos bien. La chepa es una anomalía de la espina dorsal.
¡Espina!
¡Vístete, Hugo! 
¿A que es hilarante? ¡No puede ponerse el sobretodo! ¿Alguien quiere ayudarle?
Bienvenus, welcome
a nuestro barracón;
no hay gente más extraña
que ver fuera de este show;
Habéis visto uno, ahora
la siguiente de la lista:
la chica se retuerce,
dicen que es contorsionista...

 

Parece normal del todo.
Pero sólo a ojos inexpertos. Si con "inexperto" uno se refiere a que nunca ha visto a esta persona en particular hacer estas cosas en particular.
Uau. Si es verdad que ella...
Miradla. Imaginadla de compañera de yoga. ¡Qué humillante! ¡Para ella...!
Bienvenus, welcome
a nuestro barracón;
¿estáis asustados?
Pues subimos la tensión...
Se acerca algo chocante,
no estoy siendo nada absurdo:
el siguiente fenómeno
no es diestro ni es zurdo...

 

Es ambi...valente. 
¿Qué?
Ambi...guo.
(Ambidiestro.)
¡Ambi...diestro! Escribe tu nombre, Kenneth.
(Me llamo Kevin.)
Sí.
Señoras y señores, sus dos firmas son prácticamente idénticas.
Nunca hemos visto dos cosas tan idénticas como estas.
Eso sí que es una fricada. ¿O no? 
Ahora, alejad la mirada del escenario... si no tenéis estómago para ver cómo un hombre se afeita con las dos manos a la vez. 

Pido perdón si el espectáculo resulta demasiado fuerte y hiere la sensibilidad de los presentes.
Os van a encantar las rarezas siguientes. Pero primero, ¿qué tal un aplauso para el maestro de ceremonias?
Bienvenus, welcome
a nuestro barracón;
¡abrid vuestros ojos
y gozad de la visión!
Te acordarás de noche
en la cama de estas rarezas:
¡de esta criatura loba
y este ser de dos cabezas!





...AND I'LL TRY NOT TO SING OUT OF KEY

Hugtto Pretty Cure - Episode 21
My Own Review
 ...AND I'LL TRY NOT TO SING OUT OF KEY

With Cure Ma Chérie and Cure Amour joining the team, what ever could happen next?

Emiru and Lulu opened this week's episode!

 
With Lulu and Emiru joining the ranks as Cure Amour and Cure Ma Chérie respectively, they ask the other three what is most important for a PreCure.
Hana gives a typical Hana answer, "trust your feelings," and Saaya and Homare interpret that to mean fellowship (nakama).

PreCures aren’t the only ones getting new additions to their team.
Gelos joins the management team at Cryasse. It is also made ever clearer that the president of the company is not exactly what he seems.

(IE. The Great and Powerful Kurai is actually a hologram projected by Listol)

Jenos introducing herself and it annoyed Papple especially she was forced to listen to Kurai's tantrums. Although Jenos still greeted Papple as her senior, it's obvious that Jenos will definitely overshadow her. Furthermore, Ristle pushed several buttons on his console and Kurai just happen to appear to get angry with Papple. (The plot thickens)

Emiru is ready to transform over the smallest thing


Moving on, Harry’s shop becomes quite busy and the girls help out. When a woman panics about losing her purse, Emiru misunderstands and thinks her bag is a threat. She almost transforms into Cure Ma Chérie, but Homare puts a halt to that.





 Harry asks Emiru to run an errand for him – he needs her to buy nappies, milk and various other things for Hugtan. Emiru isn’t too eager to go, until Harry tells her that she will be patrolling at the same time.


Emiru and Lulu on patrol

Much like before, Emiru is ready to transform into Cure Ma Chérie at the drop of a hat. However, any trouble they come across turns out to be totally inconsequential.


After Emiru and Lulu reintroduce themselves to the girls as the new Cures, the girls help around Harry's shop. But Emiru being Emiru, she overreacts to everything: like a customer misplacing her wallet, an elderly lady crossing the road even though she has the right of way, and even thinking that a wild theender appeared where it was just the sales promoter announcing the special offers. 


After getting the shopping, Lulu and Emiru go and take a break. Emiru has her guitar with her, but Lulu thinks that it sounds gloomy. Emiru feels like she has given her all, and not got anything she rightfully deserves in exchange... the reason why she is playing out of key are these doubts about her identity. She ends up running off, leaving Lulu to return to Harry’s shop alone.



Lulu felt anger towards Emiru

 Lulu talks to Hana and Saaya about Emiru. She reveals that she feels a little anger towards Emiru, and worries that she has become her enemy. However, they tell her that the frustration she feels is because she loves (dai/suki) Emiru. Lulu is worried about Emiru's frustrations. However, the others ensure her that as long as Lulu cares for Emiru, things will work out.


Homare and Harry find Emiru 

Homare and Harry (with Hug-tan in tow) end up finding Emiru sulking in a playground cave, and ask what happened. Emiru tells them she got angry and took it out on Lulu, and now she feels unfit to be a PreCure. However, after Emiru explained her frustrations, Homare asks which made and makes Emiru happier: becoming a PreCure per se, or becoming a PreCure together with Lulu. (That rhetorical question really hit the spot!) 




Emiru honestly replied that being together with Lulu is much happier. Harry even added that her giving up the sole Preheart to Lulu in the previous episode is a selfless act which makes Emiru worthy to be a Precure. (Emiru thanked Harry and called him "Ratty" -"Nezumi-san"-, which annoyed Harry off a bit)

I AM NOT A BLOODY RAT!!!


 Harry also says that Emiru is more than qualified to be a PreCure, and Hugtan agrees as well.


As Emiru joined them back, Harry questioned himself of why Hug-tan has not restored to normal despite all eight Future crystals having appeared...



Lulu and Emiru sing together


After that, Emiru goes back to Lulu to find her attempting to put together a song. It isn’t very good. No matter, as the two are back together and they enjoy singing together, though the results of this duet are far from stellar.

It’s time to fill that monster of the week quota once again, and Papple is the one who summons it from an angry park cleaner as the victim of the week.



 Lulu and Emiru are close to where the theender du jour appears, so they transform and take it on.



They have the upper hand at first, but then Papple powers up the theender when Gelos appears to belittle her.
 
Hey, I am the cadre of the week, you bitch. Stay out of this show. After all, this Standard Evil Organization Squad only has room for one Vamp/Baroness...

Cure Amour and Cure Ma Chérie
The fight continues, and Emiru’s guitar ends up getting caught in the battle. The theender breaks it when it tries to attack Amour, but Ma Chérie saves her in true diving-save style.

She can’t do the same for the guitar, though.


After Emiru and Lulu reconciled, Papple created a theender from a cleaner which forced the pair to transform. They were getting the upper hand when Papple increased the theender's power and the pair were caught off guard. (Jenos was watching from behind and came up with measures against the Cures).

Cure Amour tried to protect Emiru's Guitar from the theender's blows but Cure Ma Chérie pushed her away and the guitar was destroyed. The other three girls arrived to join the fight and finished off the theender together.


The others arrive, making this the first time that all five Cures have fought together. As you might expect, the theender doesn’t last much longer after that. 

 
Once it is defeated, both Gelos and Papple leave. Stage left, as usual.

Cure Amour blames herself for what happened to Emiru’s guitar





Amour feels that she is the one to blame for the guitar getting broken. However, Ma Chérie says that as long as she is able to protect Amour, that is all that really matters.



Ma Chérie than asks the other Cures to hand over their Melody Swords so it will be easier for her to protect those precious to her.



The others aren’t giving up their Melody Swords, but it seems that Hugtan has something in mind.

She doesn’t produce new Melody Swords out of thin air; no, instead, she somehow warps in two girls that long time PreCure fans will be very familiar with.



Although Emiru's guitar was destroyed, Cure Ma Chérie asked if they could lend the Melody sword for the next battle but the others claimed it is quite impossible. Hug-tan suddenly used her power to create a portal and out came...Cure Black and Cure White!?


Cure Black and Cure White

This is exactly where the episode ends, so we’ll have to wait until next time to see what the OG Futari wa Cures have in store for us.
You know, every week I watch Hugtto! PreCure and think that it has peaked. Every week, this show manages to prove me wrong. It can’t keep getting better all the time, but for the moment that is definitely the case.
We got more Emilu goodness from this episode, and that makes me very happy. I don’t know what PreCure fans like myself have done to deserve this, but I certainly won’t complain.
Hugtto! PreCure is already a massively strong contender for my favourite anime of this year, and it hasn’t even hit the halfway point yet.
Lulu going after Emiru when she went out on patrol was absolutely adorable, and we have more of Lulu coming to terms with various emotions. Lulu’s story has been one of the strongest PreCure has ever offered, I reckon.
That brings us to what happened at the end of the episode – something that Toei seemingly managed to actually keep quiet about for once. Twitter, not so much…
Maybe Toei were making noise about it, and I just happened to completely avoid it. No matter what the case is, it is absolutely incredible to see the original generation PreCures show up – Nagisa Misumi and Honoka Yukishiro, AKA Cure Black and Cure White, of Futari wa fame.
They are their Max Heart incarnations – you can tell because Cure Black’s midriff is covered up.
I knew that Cure Black and Cure White would be appearing in the upcoming Hugtto! PreCure film, but didn’t expect to see them in the TV series. I hope that they bring their opening theme along as well, as it is one of my favourites from within the entire franchised – rivaled only by Splash Star‘s opening theme.
The current plot of Hugtto! PreCure has been impressive, and now the hype levels shoot up with the arrival of the two characters that started it all.


Let this series focus on our main cast okay, that’s our latest two additions: Emiru and Lulu.
One of the main reasons why I am already stressed out just by their appearance is because ever since Lulu’s and Emiru’s arc as begun, the original trio has had virtually no air time, no time to further develop their characters and worst of all, there has been a severe lack of interaction between the five of them as whole. Since Lulu and Emiru are now part of the team, I want to see the group interact altogether, as oppose to being divided into what Lulu and Emiru could be described as “Sub Unit” (or West Coast Team) at the moment. In fact, this episode was the first time the five of them as a group were there to fight, and it will take one more episode before Emiru and Lulu receive their own respective “Melody Swords”, which will be a Guitar for the two of them (since Emiru’s guitar has been destroyed during the fight).… and that yet another thing that is troubling to me.
See, the two of them just became precures… Like yesterday. Today was their second fight, and their third fight will be against Puapple’s “Unleashed Form” or One-Winged Angel form. So this fight will effectively provide Emiru and Lulu their editions of the Melody Swords and defeat the second boss, and to proceed to the next level, Gelos and the others… and I am not exactly a fan of that. Of course one could argue they are a group of five now, naturally they should be able to be stronger altogether, but considering Emiru and Lulu had only undergone two major fights, I find it a little too convenient for them to get it this soon… But I suppose there’s no other way, or else they really will remain as a Sub Unit/West Coast Team…
With Papple getting a taste of her own medicine, be it one she inflicted on herself in desperate attempt to save face, or someone else caused her to become this way, it looks like this will be Papple’s last stand. She will be effectively replaced by Gelos, George’s latest recruit. This is of course Round 2 of the fight they had against Charalit when he was buffed up into this kind of monster.
Speaking of the devils, it turns out my suspicions were right. The dude in blue (Listol), has completely duped both Charalit and Papple into thinking the big shadowy face of Kurai above them is the CEO talking. Think "Great and Powerful Wizard of Oz." The truth is, he is the one controlling this feed of him, delivering the script and pulling the strings. It is likely this man is serving as George’s figurehead, which only makes it even crazier, when you realize that Papple probably has no idea her so-called “boyfriend” is the head of the organization. When she does fall, it will be interesting to see if we see any reaction from George at all, and what will become of her afterwards. Charalit has been seen to be doing his own thing, but doesn’t appear to be affiliated with the company anymore, and we haven’t seen him interact with them since they kicked him out.
Going back to Hugtan, Harry revealed to (only) the audience one of the secrets he is concerned about, and that is Hugtan’s condition. They already have eight future crystals, and yet Hugtan has yet to return to her original form. She is clearly absorbing its power, but she is using it in different means other than for herself. What’s crazy is that, even in this form she is insanely powerful, first blocking off attacks and now she can summon Precures from another time/realm?! It actually makes me wonder, even though the crystals help restore her power, it might not necessarily  mean she will be able to recover her original form. The price she had to pay for them to get away, or a curse that may have been inflicted onto her, could be preventing her from doing so. As result this would mean she has no choice but to grow up naturally, as fast as any other muggle human baby would. If they were to go this direction, it would be quite a dramatic revelation, since more often than not, we have seen instances where the powers help them grow up faster, a fine example would be with Mahou Tsukai’s Precure Kotoha (Ha-chan), who started off as a baby and rapidly grew up into a form of a young girl. Or Hotaru Tomoe, for that matter.
On the side note: Hugtan imitating: “Be Serious” to Harry was the cutest darn thing!
Overall this episode wasn’t the most exciting, but we still got a lot of things things out of it.. It didn’t surprise me to see Emiru going overboard with the whole “precure duties” thing. She is incredibly enthusiastic about helping others, and has a selfless heart, and part of her character to overdo everything, which is why Lulu needed to go with her to do errands. I am not entirely sure if she realized it herself this episode, but she definitely needs to think carefully of when she should actually use her power.
I also expected Emiru to struggle with having confidence in her role as a precure, because she can be a clumsy girl, and sometimes instead of being helpful, she make things more complicated. But she’s not dumb either. She knew she messed up on countless occasions, and as result, she like she was failing to live up to what is expected of her as a Precure. Thankfully the others were there to support her, trying to give her other means and ways to contribute her part. I loved how Harry gave her the errand and told her she was in charge of patrolling around town, I thought it was adorable. I also found it sweet with how he explained to her selflessness of wanting to give up the Preheart to Lulu is the same quality that the prehearts are made out of, and she has already proved herself she is absolutely qualified to be a Precure.

Before we get to what happened at the end, I felt this episode is a typical "Sixth Ranger introduction" scenario. What I mean is that when a new member joined halfway through the team, the new member will have doubts or worries if he or she could become part of the team.

Both Emiru and Lulu were wondering their purposes and reasons of becoming Precures and again it is repeating the same things in the previous episode in which the three senior Cures giving pep talk and encouragement for the pair to believe each other.

The battle was all right at least Cure Ma Chérie and Cure Amour didn't have to sing when they went to battle and their combination attacks are still spot on since they worked as one unit.

Harry's worries is also concerned since he did mentioned before that all eight Future Crystals are needed for Hug-tan to grow back to normal but nothing has happened which I am suspecting that there is probably one missing element that it was not hinted to Harry. (If Hug-tan is restored back to normal then the story will have end faster)

Jenos was a bit of a snob when she appeared in front of the generals and Papple is defintely desperate as she is worried that Jenos might replace her and seeing how Papple becomes a One-Winged Angel like Charalit did before in the next episode, this could be the end of Papple. Furthermore, Ristle's actions seem like he is controlling their leader, Kurai, but for what purpose? Perhaps is to keep the organization afloat until the real Kurai returns?

Of course, the big surpise which no one see this coming was Cure Black and Cure White's appearance! Hug-tan is probably one of the most amazing characters in Precure History as she was able to bring the two Legendary Cures into the present. It probably explain how the Hugtto Team will meet their Seniors Cures in the upcoming crossover movie this October with Hug-tan's powers.

I have a feeling that Cure Black and Cure White were pulled out from their timeline which explained why they looked the same fifteen years ago (ie each and every continuity is set in a different timeline --more or less, considering the existence of Ranko and Ranze Ichijo--). It also make sense to guest star as the two Senior Cures will be able to give advice to Cure Ma Chérie and Cure Amour who are paying homages to them. (But seriously, Toei, I want the senior Cures to grow up otherwise it doesn't make sense if they looked the same in their own series all these years)

But I am really happy to see Cure Black and Cure White again although where is Shining Luminous? She might not have combat abilities but she is also a part of the Max Heart team. (Maybe Rie Tanaka is busy with her married life?)

This is probably the first time when a senior Precure team guest star in a current Precure series aside from the movies' team-up.
 




MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:
Emiru's identity crisis - Breakup and makeup

The Emilu moments
The negative emotion of the week was the anger of a stressed park cleaner. Trust me, I am typing this after an exam that put a lot of pressure on me, with a pretty harsh lecturer who subtracts points for every single error, and this week I could not have been more tense.
Papple on the last leg - Papple vs. Gelos / The upcoming last stand
Renewed Shall Be the Strings that Were Broken / Emiru and Towa / When was the last time a red Precure had her signature string instrument, which meant the world to her, crushed by the enemy?



IN NEXT EPISODE (21):


 Hug-tan just summoned the original Futari wa Precures...
 
 A one-winged baroness rises...

 The vital space of legends is invaded by a fangirl...

A battle couple of lustrums ago passes the swords to their successors...

 RENEWED SHALL BE THE STRINGS THAT WERE BROKEN.