LOST LENORES AND DADDY ISSUES

Hugtto! Pretty Cure, Episode 40
My Own Review

LOST LENORES AND DADDY ISSUES

It’s hard to believe that we are already at episode forty of Hugtto!. The end is in sight, and I don’t want to see this show go. I guess the best thing to do for now is just focus on this episode, which sees Dr. Trauma trying to reconnect with his daughter.

Dr Trauma explained to the girls of how Cures led by the fair Cure Tomorrow tried to stop Crisis from taking over the world in the future and the Cures were empowered by the Goddess known as "Mother."

Cure Tomorrow

This episode starts with Dr. Trauma and Harry explaining what happened in the future. Harry was captured, but saved by Cure Tomorrow. 

Harry continued the story and explained that after his village was destroyed, he became a mindless creature only to serve Crisis until he meet Cure Tomorrow who promised him that the future can be changed. 

However, Tomorrow was captured shortly afterwards, but Harry found the resolve to save her. 

They escaped from Criasu, and used the last of Mother’s power to go back in time. Due to that, Cure Tomorrow transformed into a toddler – yes indeed, Hugtan and Cure Tomorrow are one and the same.

However Cure Tomorrow was captured by Crisis and her fellow cures were defeated. (Unsure if they were killed or frozen in time) Harry decided to bet on Cure Tomorrow and make a daring escape with her. Cure Tomorrow used the last of the Future Crystals to send them to the past but it resulted Cure Tomorrow to revert into a baby-Hug-tan. (It also showed that Emiru is the fourth person to hear Hug-Tan's cries in the first episode) 

EMIRU: Waaaa waaa waaa... what was that, a baby?

Knowing that Hugtan has now awakened the power of Mother, Trauma tells everyone that Criasu will be coming after Hugtan even more fervently than before.
Lulu wants to know why Trauma is only just telling all this now, but any answer he attempts to give is met with ‘does not compute’. It becomes too much for Lulu, and she runs off.


The girls then realised that Hug-tan is Cure Tomorrow which got Homare speechless. With the final Future Crystal revealed, the fabled White Crystal they were questing for, George ordered Gelos and Bishin to capture Hug-tan at all costs.


The Minna de Tomorrow also got additional scene with "Mother" actually hugging the purified theender before purifying it. (Which I was right in my previous review that "Mother" should hug the theenders like in the opening credits)


After explaining everything to the girls, Lulu was not convinced that Dr Trauma is her creator/single father and fled the shop. She was seen later snacking on takoyaki, ie octoballs non-stop. (which I guess that how Lulu handle her stress by eating herself like a glutton) 

Hugtan comforts Lulu

The other girls chase after Lulu in order to try and find her. It is Hugtan who contrives to catch up to her first, and Lulu is convinced she is experiencing a system error. However, she is told that it is actually her heart (kokoro), and Lulu believes that the pain she is feeling must be because of that.

Hug-tan found her and Ruru explained that she felt a sense of anxiety after meeting Dr Trauma but they explained it is her feelings that is doing that.


She was even told that Amour means "love" in French (even though they only mentioned ai, or unconditional love) which probably explained Dr Trauma's unconditional love for Lulu when she was first awakened. 

Lulu gets embarrassed when Trauma recounts her early days

The opportunity presents itself for Lulu to talk to Trauma, so she does – with a little encouragement on the side. Trauma tells Lulu what she was like when she was first activated – quite troublesome, as it were. However, there is also something that Trauma’s flashback alludes to, but he doesn’t explicitly say.

Dr Trauma arrived and he explained that her initial program was a failure since Lulu take orders literally and unable to understand human emotions. A little girl in his mind (his daughter by blood?) makes Dr Trauma regret creating Lulu and he immediately deleted her data and sent her to serve Crisis. (Which explained why she has no memory of him when they first met)

I presume that this was Trauma's biological daughter

It appears that the initial reason behind Trauma creating Lulu was an attempt to replace a daughter of flesh and blood he lost. Again, it’s not said explicitly, but the allusion is very much there.

 However, things didn’t turn out like Trauma expected, so he decided it would be best to distance himself from Lulu and deleted all of her data, then shipped her to Criasu.
In the present, Dr. Trauma can see that Lulu’s friends (nakama) treasure her as ‘Lulu Amour’, and nobody else.

I do believe that the little girl is probably Dr Trauma's biological daughter and something bad happened to her (and her mother) which resulted in him creating Lulu as a surrogate daughter. However Lulu did not live to his expectations and he now regretted for abandoning her. 

Man, We just reach Pinocchio levels of dark. 

Emiru arrives to help Lulu – about thirty seconds too late

Emiru shows up with her and Lulu’s guitars, saying that music can express what words generally can’t; basically that tunes speak louder than words. However, she is too late – Lulu and Trauma have said what they needed to say to each other. Despite that, the pair play a song for Trauma.

Ma Chérie and Amour face a Wild Theender

After Emiru and Lulu’s performance, Gelos attacks with a Wild Theender. Of course, PreCures do their thing, but the enemy manages to get the upper hand. When Cure Amour is in danger, Trauma leaps to her defence. He is defending his daughter, after all.

It is no secret that Dr Trauma does care about Lulu and during the battle with Gelos, he shielded Cure Amour from the attack which of course Gelos branded him a traitor.  

Lulu is not keen on Trauma’s reaction after suggesting they should eat together sometime

After the battle, Trauma decides that it is time for him to leave. Before he does so, Lulu suggests that they should eat together some time. Trauma starts pushing his luck somewhat after that.
With things between Ruru and Trauma settled, she says that they will protect the future, and return Hugtan to said future as well. Of course, if Hugtan returns, that means Harry will need to as well.

Dr Trauma admitted that he envied the Cures of their kindness and power and it makes Lulu into a better person. Even human After the battle, Lulu decided to accept Dr Trauma however to take things one step at a time. Suddenly Emiru realised that Lulu is from the future which she will have to go back eventually to her own timeline and it got Emiru all in a frenzy...

Basically this episode is more of a exposition to get the final plot moving since we are probably left with ten more episodes. (Give and take) We now know that Hug-tan is Cure Tomorrow and is the key to defeating Crisis and restoring the future. It is interesting to know that Cure Tomorrow has her own team in the future and hopefully we do get to see them who they are if the girls were to success.





Dr Trauma's reason for creating Lulu is kinda of expected from a mad scientist character and it hit him personally that he created Ruru to replace his probably dead birth daughter however Lulu was regard as a failure until she met others who loved her, especially a little Titian-haired toff who cannot take the idea of losing her in stride...

Emiru is not keen on the idea of Lulu returning to the future

The episode ends with Emiru realising that Lulu will return to the future as well. She does not take that well.

MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:
We finally get all the information we needed to have confirmed, including theories just verified:

1. The Lost Lenore from Harry's past is named Cure Tomorrow (in PreCure form).
2. Hug-tan is actually Cure Tomorrow, who rejuvenated into toddlerhood (as our theory suggested).

Still, George's real motivations remain a riddle until January, as usual...

Dr. Trauma's relationship with Lulu and their quality time together -single dad having a talk with his gynoid girl, whom he abandoned-, that heart-to-heart conversation and solving their family issues, was a great catharsis. Also, "Lulu" is not her real name; her father named her Amour, making her full birth name, full of contradictions, Amour Trauma. Amour (Bloody) Trauma. Think of the implications of this...
And... the cats in the cradle and the silver spoon, Little Bo Peep and the Man in the Moon... Sorry, this musical review got so out of hand that I just had to add an encore of the main theme...
Emiru also got to play a song with those heart guitars at the end; meeting the in-law is always supposed to be an uncomfortable scenario -but now that both of Twin Love have met the in-laws, just like Marius and Cosette after his recovery...
PS. Dr. Trauma's voice actor also did Severus Snape in the Japanese dub - there is a parallel to both character arcs, isn't there? As well as to that very Snily word "always..."

The negative emotion of the week, gleaned by Gelos, was UNKNOWN. We can vaguely assume that it somehow relates to perfume.

This episode of Hugtto! was excellent. Of course, being an episode focused on Lulu pretty much always meant I was going to enjoy it, but it did bring along some revelations as well.
First up, Hugtan is Cure Tomorrow. I’m pretty sure there have been theories floating around since the beginning that Hugtan is actually a Cure, and now we have concrete evidence that that is indeed the case. Presumably she will regain her normal form in time for, or during, the final battle.

This episode also provided a bit of insight into Trauma. I already theorised that he built Lulu in an attempt to replace his deceased biological daughter (and wife?). Again, nothing is explicitly stated, but the pieces are all there for viewers to put together.
Of course, Lulu is very much her own person, and not the daughter that Trauma presumably lost.
Actually, now I think about it, Trauma has been a fun character whether he is good or evil. This episode also gave him a bit more depth, which was nice to see.

Next time, Lulu is indeed planning on returning to the future. It seems like Emiru will be struggling to cope.

This week’s episode was hands down, the strongest one to date. There’s no question about it. I was so pleasantly surprised to see Dr. Trauma be used in a way I wasn’t expecting him to. I definitely felt like this episode did it’s job of giving us an explanation as to why Dr. Trauma was such a lousy villain. It turns out it’s because the guy was never truly loyal to George or Criasu in the first place.

We got some clarification that last week’s trip to the future (if I understood this correctly, honestly I’m still not entirely sure myself) was Dr. Trauma’s doing (not Ristle's, who most likely just took advantage of it). He did as a test, to see if it were successful and if it were, he wanted to talk with the girls and Harry about the future’s tragedies. Along this, they finally gave us the full story of Hugtan’s and Harry’s backstory, and the future.

Now this had to be my favourite part of the episode, because YES! FINALLY! I WAITED 40 EPISODES FOR THIS!
Here’s the gist of it. While we know Criasu’s goal is to eliminate the future, that is in fact only one of his three objectives. His other two goals are to find “Mother”, the goddess whose love embraces the future, and erase Cure Tomorrow, who bears Mother’s power.

He was very close to succeeding when he had managed to capture Cure Tomorrow, but she is saved by Harry who was previously saved by her, after he had gone berserk and was confined by Criasu because of his overwhelming despair. It was at that moment I realized, “SHIT JUST GOT REAL!” While Harry was able to break her out, Hugtan used the last of Mother’s power to transfer them to this timeline, but as result, Cure Tomorrow lost her form and rejuvenated into a toddler.

It was quite hysterical how Hugtan shows despite her infant body and lack of ability to speak, she still retains her sense of awareness and understanding of her role as a precure, and potentially most, if not all of her memories.

Now that George knows what’s up, Hugtan is the prime target, sending Gelo and Bishin to capture her. And frankly, after hearing George them the order, I was convinced Bishin was going to target her while Gelos distracted the others. Unfortunately, that didn’t play out, but I guess it’s still a tad too early for that, as nine episodes remain. It won’t be long before shit hits the fan though. I expect next week to be a key the stepping stone towards Criasu’s final push.

Along with Harry’s and Hugtan’s backstory, they also covered Dr. Trauma’s and Lulu’s. This was something I actually didn’t think they were ever going to address. At that point I had lost all hope in this series, and decided I wasn’t going to set myself up for further disappointment, and I might as well go in with no expectations at all! And while I am thrilled that they actually did, I really wished they were willing to dig deeper into his past though. Like the three hamsters, Dr. Trauma was influenced to work with Criasu because of his own tragic loss. While he never outright said it, through his memories, it’s clear that he created Lulu in attempt to ‘recreate’ his (most likely) deceased biological daughter. We could see how emotional he was, and how desperately he wanted to make it so Lulu could develop a heart, and it frustrated to some extent that the precures were able to do what he couldn’t, but he was grateful for it. It was an unexpectedly bittersweet backstory between the two of them to say the least.

And everything was going absolutely fantastic, until Emiru shows up with their guitars: CUE TO THE GOD DAMN SONG ALL OVER AGAIN!!!!

Another important event that was addressed today, was the objective to return to the others to their world. When the conversation first came up, once again I found myself so surprised by how mature and level-headed Hana was when she talked about their mission to send Harry and Hugtan back to (a better) future. She understands her responsibility, and is prepared to carry it out. Meanwhile, when Homare realizes this, she can’t help but feel glum about it, and the only one who is noticing her despair is Saaya, (who is also the only one who knows about her crush on Harry). I am really curious to see if George will try to exploit Homare’s despair. While she has fought through it before when she faced Bishin, it is something that has been eating away at her heart, especially since it’s something she has been trying to keep a secret from everyone. I would certainly love to see Saaya help her open up about it, so she could have the chance to release the pain she has been bottling up inside.

As for Emiru, well it’s no surprise to see her completely devastated about the idea of Lulu returning to the future with Dr. Trauma. The girl was the last one to realize this because she wasn’t there when the group first formed. We will be seeing her cope this fact next week, all while having to deal with what appears to be the loss of her voice. It will be Bishin who strikes this time.

The fact that Lulu's days in this timeline are numbered leaves a gynoid-shaped hole in Emiru's heart...

What will make her snap out of this shattering depression?