ET TU, HARRY? THEN FALL, RISTLE!

Hugtto! Pretty Cure - Episode 39
My Own Review
ET TU, HARRY? THEN FALL, RISTLE!

Hugtto! returns after taking a break last week. In this 39th episode, PreCures find themselves ending up in Harry’s home.

Dancing Hugtan

This episode starts of pleasantly enough, with the girls enjoying Hugtan dancing. Emiru and Lulu have also prepared some pancakes... but then there is an anomaly.

One moment, everyone is in Harry’s shop.

Even in the middle of an anomaly, its nice to see Emilu 

Then the anomaly happens, and they all find themselves in Harry’s hometown, the Harihari Township. 

They meet the Harihari Clan (don’t call them rats or rodents, or else...), but that is soon interrupted by the arrival of Ristle. The PreCures are sent elsewhere, leaving Ristle alone with Harry and Hugtan.

 the others are sent to the Infinite Labyrinth

The girls were relaxing at Harry's shop when they were all transported to a familiar place-Harry's home village in the future where many of Harry's Harihari friends welcome them. However something was not right and true enough it was Ristle who brought them here. He send all the girls into one of Dr Trauma's traps into another dimension leaving Harry and Hug-tan. Ristle was full of contempt over Harry and the two fought each other. Hug-tan used the Tambourine she was carrying to send a signal to the girls and they managed to escape Dr Trauma's dimensional trap. 

Our OTP Twin Love-Emilu chasing each other around an infinity loop...

With PreCures out of the way for now, Ristle tells Harry to stop defying the will of Criasu. He believes that resisting overwhelming power is ultimately meaningless. He is after the White Crystal.


Harry and Ristle fight in both harihari and human forms

Harry and Ristle fight, but Ristle is able to get the upper hand. He binds Harry, but Hugtan is able to call out to PreCures which allows them to escape the Infinite Labyrinth. 

With PreCures arrived, Ristle shows them the future of Hugkumi – their Tokyo borough (whose name was unknown up to ths date) is barren, having been frozen in time.

Risutol summons a Wild Theender, which is powered up by the abundance of toge-power. Thus, the others have a hard time fighting it. Whilst they are doing that, Ristle attempts to break Harry. 

the truth between Harry and Ristle...

During the battle, Ristle blamed Harry for betraying their friendship and made him recall a terrible incident. Their fellow Hariharis including Bishin were suddenly struck by a strange disease which Ristle suggested to get Crisis to help them. Harry agreed and did Crisis's bidding.

However the rest of the hariharis were killed in a fire that overran their village (which no one knew who did it) and Dr Trauma claimed this is how the future should be which trigger Harry's trauma. Ristle blamed Harry for everything and it was useless to try to change the future.

It seems some kind of disease swept through Harry’s hometown in the past – Criasu were the ones to offer to help

Harry is reminded of his past, and how he, Ristle, and Bishin lost their hometown. If it was possible to resist such overwhelming power, their home would still exist – or that’s how Ristle puts it, anyway.

When it seems that Harry is about to give in to despair, he is joined by the others, and Harry snaps out of it. With his support, they defeat the wild theender...
The monster of the week may be defeated, but Ristle doesn’t retreat. Instead, he takes Harry and Hugtan captive. 

The Cures fought Ristle after he took Harry and Hug-tan hostage.

Of course the Cures encouraged Harry not to give up as all of them have gone through setbacks and overcome all odds to create miracles.

This episode is probably one of the darkest episodes after all the team-up we had weeks ago since we are at the final quarter of the season. Harry blamed himself for the death of his fellow hariharis although I looked that Ristle was the one who suggested to get help from Crisis. So Ristle is also to be blamed but then he is blinded by Harry's betrayal since he choose the side of good with the mysterious Precure leader that is his Lost Lenore... 

Speaking of that Precure... it is probably no-brainer that Hug-tan's true identity is the mysterious blond Precure that appeared in front of them during their new Finishing Move. But what caused her to revert into a toddler, and how is she connected to the lady in yellow which we now know as "Mother." What is her connection to all these? 

The new power or Finishing Move-Minna de Tomorrow is a more flashier version of their Cheerful Style with wings and I was expecting "Mother" to give a big hug to Ristle like in the opening credits as a finisher. 

Ristle tells that the future the heroes are aiming for doesn’t exist, but they insists on fighting for it anyway; wanting a future where Hugtan can grow up. Hugtan loves (daisuki) the future, and those words are the catalyst for activating the White Crystal.

Hug-tan's feelings awaken the White Crystal and out came the lady in yellow appeared which Ristle referred to her as "Mother"...


The White Crystal brings forth what appears to be the same being that made both Emiru and Lulu into PreCures back in episode 20. Ristle calls her ‘Mother’, and she seems to bestow a new power upon PreCures.

The girls then added the White Crystal in the Future Clock, which granted them wings and the new Finishing Move-Minna de Tomorrow. It hit Ristle and somehow he felt a sense of regret over the things he has done. 

Together Into Tomorrow

Ristle is blasted with the attack. After they use it, someone appears in front of them and asks the Cures to save the future.

Presumably Hugtan’s older self

Ristle returns to Criasu, where he reports to George about the White Crystal turning into the Mother Heart. He also tells George that he detests him.

Did anyone notice that George is trolling with Ristle at the beginning and the end of the episode? Ristle gave George a blanket before leaving to deal with the girls and he swore his loyalty to George but after the battle, Ristle immediately curses George for ruining his life which George took it calmly and gave the blanket back to him. It's like George knew that this is going to happen and with the last Crystal appearing, it is now a matter of time before George makes his move again on the girls!

PreCures, Hugtan, and Harry return to Harry’s shop, where Harry has something that he wants to tell everyone. However, he is interrupted by an unexpected arrival.

Doctor Trauma shows up out of nowhere

Trauma has come to see his daughter, Lulu. She is not so eager about the situation. We’ll have to wait until the next episode to see what will happen, though, as this is where this one ends.

Before Harry could tell the girls what is going on, Dr Trauma appeared in front of them. (I am surprised he is still alive after being vaporised by the powers of every Cures and Cameos two episodes ago) He told Lulu that he is her father, to which Lulu reacted by knocking him down. 

Literally- to the ground!

As the next episode preview will reveal Dr Trauma's secret about Lulu... but will she accept him after what he has done to them before? Until then, see you in the next post!






MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:
Whoa whoa whoa whoa - at least we get some exposition for the backstory of Harry's Species, ie the Harihari Clan (official name, oui!), in general and Ristle and Bishin in particular... and the canonical confirmation of our theory that Harry's nakamatachi ARE the Criasu/Cryasse cadres...

This was a fantastic episode of Hugtto!, and well worth the break we had to endure. Harry’s past is very dark – presumably those of the Harihari Clan that Criasu didn’t help died off. If not by the disease that they seemed to be suffering, then definitely in that fire…
Or maybe I’m wrong and they are just hiding. I don’t know.
My respect for Harry has gone up a bit. After all, not many mascot characters are capable of holding their own in a fight, besides those who end up becoming PreCures later.

Than there’s the matter of the Mother Heart. Presumably there is some connection with Hugtan, and I am curious as to why Ristle called that golden deity thing mother. Is she a deity? She clearly has some kind of power.

A truly excellent episode of Hugtto!. With the next one focusing on Lulu and her single father, I am very much looking forward to seeing it.

This marks George’s first appearance since the crossover episode, and boy did it leave me feeling confused. It is terribly unfortunate how they didn’t just create a special villain that wasn’t tied to Criasu for the special. By dragging Criasu, like Dr. Trauma and George into this mess, it created this inconsistency where we have one guy, Dr. Trauma was ‘cleansed’, and George was shown to have been affected as well (to some extent, considering he “acknowledged” their time cannot be stopped). I had to remind myself to pretend that special didn’t happen. Anyhow, what the episode did do however, was solidify George’s position the dominant villain. We saw this play out with how the White Crystal evolved into “the Mother Heart”.

But aside from that, we were treated with some great story content in this episode!

Harry’s, Bishin’s and Ristle’s past about their home-village really surprised me. I never expected them to take it as far as they did, considering the trio’s past was nothing short of a tragedy. The three joined because their Harihari Clan (and Bishin) were sick from something, and I guess you could say they were all dying of the same illness (because it sure looked like it). Criasu promised to help them by providing them a cure which would give them the ability to turn into humans. However regardless of doing everything Criasu had asked them to do, eventually their village fell into ruins. The weird part about this however, was according to Dr. Trauma, their little hometown falling into ruins was just part of their future. Criasu didn’t have to or do anything to instigate it, but even so, I am still taking this with a grain of salt. This is why Ristle hates ‘tomorrows’, because all he sees waiting at the end of the day is more and more despair, and he wants nothing of the sorts. Stopping time is a way of preventing that.

Ristle also tried to persuade Harry to join Criasu once more because according to him, the grim future of the girls’ hometown being robbed of its future was already set in stone. And it is important to note, how Ristle is projecting his own insecurities onto others. He believes if he shows the others how their efforts are futile, as they are “fated” to lose to Criasu. This is because  Ristle had long given up on the future altogether. He feels powerless against tomorrow, and he doesn’t want to deal with it. However for the others, despite the grim projection, they still want to fight for the future because there are still things they want to do and accomplish. They haven’t given up because they still feel the little things they want to enjoy in life are worth fighting for, and one of them are seeing Hugtan grow up. In that aspect, I feel the point they were trying to convey was: No matter what’s in store for our futures, both the highs and the lows, try to embrace tomorrow instead of being afraid of it. We have a choice, of either allowing despair to consume our lives, or let that go and focus on the good things to come or what we’re working towards.

The fight scene between against Ristle was really cool to watch. It is a real shame that we didn’t actually get to see Ristle fight until now. I love the overall design and weapon choices they used for him. He really does make a cool villain, especially in combat.