SPOT / STOP THE IMPOSTOR

Kirakira Precure à la Mode - Episode 41
My Own Review
SPOT/STOP THE IMPOSTOR

Few people are happy to see Giulio.

That deadpan of Bilberry's is precious.

Though his twin sister is elated!!

 No matter if Giulio is more of an introvert and Ciel's effusiveness makes him wince.

A sinister Giulio impersonator storms around Ichigozaka, stealing kirakiraru.

(You can tell it's the impostor because he wears black and Prussian blue, and conceals his face).

Ciel defends her fraternal twin Giulio, now the second garçon at the KiraPâti, from angry customers who accuse him of ruining their sweets.

With the people blaming Pikalio for ruining their sweets and accusing him of being the one responsible for summoning the monsters that have been attacking lately, Bilberry decides to make herself scarce. She’d rather not have anyone finding about what she did before.
She goes to the KiraPâti, where she tells them what has happened.

Akira and Yukari quickly figure out that something strange is going on

The KiraPâti girls manage to catch up to Ciel, and see her telling the people to give her a chance to talk to her brother. She does that, whilst the secondary-schoolers hase after her. Yukari and Akira realise something is up, and they decide to investigate.

After that we get more Giulio angst, as he goes on about how the trouble he caused in the past won’t just go away. He runs off somewhere, and Himari asks Pekorin to keep an eye on him.
After that, the girls go back to their KiraPâti, where the Elder encourages Ciel to make some Liège waffles. For auld lang syne.

Pekorin arrives after Ciel finishes making the waffles, and says that Pikalio is going to leave Ichigozaka.
Elsewhere, we see that Yukari and Akira’s investigation has turned up a lead.

Chocolat and Macaron catch up with the fake Pikalio

The Giulio/Pikalio that had been running around town stealing kirakiraru was actually a mook soldier.

A regular rank-and-file private mook. Coup de théâtre! I was actually expecting the impostor to be Elysio himself...

Elysio appears before the others. Ciel goes on ahead to catch up to Giulio, leaving the other three secondary-schoolers to confront him.

Elysio ready for battle

Whilst the other tweens fight Elysio, Ciel catches up to Pikalio. The two of them talk, leading to the resolution of their situation with some fluffy, heartwarming sibling bonding.

Awww...

The battle against Elysio doesn’t go so well, with the arrival of Macaron and Chocolat not really helping (to our bitter disappointment!). No, the battle’s tide can’t change until Ciel arrives.

Cure Parfait

The battle comes to an end fairly swiftly after the arrival of Cure Parfait, who utterly curbstomps the raven-armoured ikemen, and it is brought to a close with the new Finishing Move.

The episode ends with Pikalio/Giulio happier than he was before, and deciding to stay in Ichigozaka with his sister. The townspeople from earlier apologise, and Giulio makes waffles. Liège waffles. For auld lang syne.

MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:
Every Atoner needs a cupful of mulled wine for Christmas. Surprisingly, many of my favourite characters in anime are Atoners --Ken Ichijóji, Towa/ilight and Shut, Ellen Kurokawa...-- Now feel free to add Giulio to the list.
I also adore his queue. He wore his long hair untied with that Venetian mask (making him a Long-Haired Pretty Boy), but there's something about young men with queues (low ponytails tied with ribbons) that I completely adore. And there's this angst. There's Giulio, like Clinton, having this redemption arc full of angst and proving his innocence. Atoner+queue+this angst=yours truly feeling completely riveted.
This Clear My Name premise reminded me of Copycat, a villain of the week in Miraculous who impersonated Chat Noir and committed several felonies across Paris to try to frame Chat Noir. As in this episode, the impostor and the hero were identical... but hey, Copycat looks and dresses exactly like Chat Noir, and is a stark contrast from his (Copycat's) muggle self Théo (except for the oral fixation that serves as the impostor's ID tag!), while the Giulio impersonator wears dark clothing, in stark contrast to Giulio's coat-turn attire change to a lighter wardrobe.

Copycat. Notice the lolly.

Real vs. Fake. Notice they look EXACTLY like two peas in a pod.

The only ID tag is the lollypop in Copycat's mouth (see above), for Théo sucks lollypops.

Théo (Copycat's muggle self). Notice the lolly.

There's Elysio pulling out all the stops by donning the most radass armour ever worn by a Sissy Villain across anime (What will Elysio's backstory be? And Noir's?).

See what I mean? A kilt in style, tights, raven wings, and an impressive phallic spear! That's some impressive attire to kick derrière in, isn't it? Eat your heart out, Shut, or at least eat that Hufflepuff scarf of yours!


And there's my OTP in winter attire for the first time (I <3 both of their trenchcoats, but especially Akira's, our bifauxnen looking like a real Victorian gentleman in burgundy!). And being as savvy both on and off the battlefield as always.





(Though I was slightly disappointed when the impostor turned out to be a regular, expendable rank-and-file mook. I expected it to be Elysio himself in disguise... sigh... Another disappointment came during the battle against Elysio, in which neither Macaron nor Chocolat were able to get the upper hand. Anyway, this is a Ciel-centric/Parfait-centric episode, also focusing on her brother --no twincest, just regular sibling bonding--, which might explain the occurrence of the Worf effect in this episode.)

I also enjoyed Ciel and Giulio bonding over Liège waffles, for auld lang syne... after all, it had all begun with a sibling feud over that treat. I will never look at Liège waffles with the same eyes since these character arcs wrap up.





One last thing I relished: Giulio making two garçons (a bifauxnen and an ikemen) at the KiraPâti this winter!


Next up is an Aoi-centric episode featuring... THE DISBANDMENT OF WILD AZÜRE?! AOI RETURNING TO HIGH F-ING SOCIETY?! AT LEAST AN IDENTITY CRISIS, AND A MUSICAL REVIEW OF THIS EPISODE, IN WHICH MAYBE...

IN NEXT EPISODE (42):

THE SHOW MUST GO O-O-O-ON!!!

THE SHOW MUST GO O-O-O-ON!!!

She'll top the bill, she'll overkill, 

she'll have to find the will to carry O-O-O-ON...

...with the SHO-O-O-OW-W-W-W!!

The Show Must Go On!!!

FRÈRE CONTRE SOEUR

Kirakira Pretty Cure à la Mode - episode 22
My Own Review
FRÈRE CONTRE SOEUR

PREVIOUSLY ON Kirakira Pretty Cure à la Mode:

Right then, a stride among the flowers that makes them wilt, a stripling with eyes glowing ruby red, a sharper, blood-red dagger in his right hand...

GIULIO: You are all here. How convenient for me...

As he closes in, those glowing red orbs are revealed to be Empty Eyes, a tell-tale sign of mind control/brainwashing/emotional manipulation.

GIULIO!!!

Standing before Kirarin, he immediately makes her sixth sense tingle...

KIRARIN (in shock): This sensation... Could it be...?!

GIULIO: Everyone... I will defeat you all. Precures...

GIULIO: FIGHT ME!!!

Of course our Precures attack one by one, the secondary-schoolers first ... but I, as always, have decided to showcase the 'Zuka-inspired ones:


MACARON JULIENNE!!

CHOCOLAT AROMASE!!

However, as usual in arc finales, these attacks are a no sell to the enemy.

MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:

The middle part of this trilogy of the summer finale is still riveting, with both the action scenes and the revealing backstory flashbacks, and I am hanging on the edge of my seat as I eagerly await its conclusion in next week.
The relationship between Ciel/Kirarin and Pikalio/Giulio was so reminiscent of Gerda and Kai --only that here the two youngsters sharing practically everything, the male half of whom is corrupted, are siblings by blood rather than by friendship--, and the parallel mirrored (never better said) in the leitmotifs of their reflections in one another's eyes, is brilliant. The way they took and adapted this fairytale motif as the basis of their character arcs could never have been bettered.

Seriously, all this start of darkness (Giulio's) for taking some criticism too seriously? Well, then it is equally Ciel's and Giulio's fault: hers for being too proud and too much of a perfectionist; and his due to his sensitivity, defeatism, and inferiority complex... and Master Noir took advantage of that divide between the siblings. Think the Baratheon brother feud without its tragic closure, with Stannis and Renly realising that they were both too stubborn and that the other one could actually be right. Or the sibling rivalry in Frozen, in a certain sense. All that Pikalio/Giulio ever wanted was his overachieving older sister's approval. I love how this redemption and reconciliation were played out... but the story suddenly takes another cliffhanger U turn with Noir locking Ciel/Kirarin as his next target, and Pikalio as the one to save her. Kind of like the Kanata/Towa dynamics in Go!Princess; in both cases, the younger sibling was preyed upon by the dark side, and, after their heel-face turn, the enemy goes for the elder sibling, whom the younger has to save...

As for the new Finishing Move and the goddess in the opening credits appearing right out of the blue, I didn't expect that Spanish Inquisition, thinking of this Finishing Move change more as something for the third part of the finale. The shrine to the goddess/queen in the cave in Mt. Ichigo was kind of maybe the reason for a yousei community to exist there, and I think it will play a key part in next episode.

IN NEXT EPISODE (23):

Now, having lost Pikalio, Master Noir turns to his twin;

he's set his sights on Ciel's heart, and it appears he will win!

Those Empty Eyes show that now it's her brother's turn to save her,

while she will face her greatest trial, and Noir will regret to brave her!!

BILBERRY: And what about me?! Don't I get a say, or at least five minutes of screentime!?