Star*Twinkle Pretty Cure - Episode 3
My Own Review
EN QUE TENJOU MENTORIZA A ELENA
After taking a break last week,
Star ☆ Twinkle returns
with an Elena-centric episode. She has an English (ESL) speech contest coming
up. Lucky for her, a new teacher shows up to prepare her for said event.
There’s some pretty great autumn outfits going on here
In this episode, Elena is nominated to participate in an inter-school
public speech contest in ESL. Tenjou takes the opportunity to disguise
herself as a teacher and get closer to Elena in an attempt to capture
Fuwa.
Tenjou disguises herself as a teacher called Jo Tengu (first name a nod to Jo March; surname a tad too much on the nose ;) tengu nose pun, get it?)
Tenjou’s human disguise is good – by which I mean I like it, and I guess it
does its job of fooling the students. Madoka seems a little suspicious
about this woman who just shows up out of nowhere (and is
surnamed Tengu, with pointy ears and a Cleopatra nose to reinforce that), but that ultimately
doesn’t go anywhere.
Elena seems quite taken with the new teacher
This episode sure makes it feel like Elena has a thing for her new
teacher. She eagerly introduces herself, and is very willing to show her
around the school as well. Can’t help but wonder if this episode might
result in some Elenjou fanart (and fics, and AMVs).
A glimpse of Tenjou’s past - this masked tengulescent with a crow-beak mask (recalling both masked actors playing tengu on the stage and corvid kurama tengu... maybe she had the Phantom-of-the-Opera kind of backstory of being shunned due to scars hidden beneath the mask, which correlates to her good counterpart/mentée as a victim of racist bullying?)
Much like Kappard and Ayewan recently, we gain some insight into Tenjou’s past
with this episode. Not much is given away, though it is plainly obvious
that Elena’s smile really brings up some unpleasant memories (hope this gets expanded upon quite soon!!).
Elena was keenly aware she was different from everybody else when she was young, already as a toddler
Tenjou’s plan results in us getting a flashback to a younger Elena,
who felt left out as a toddler because she was the only one that was physically and culturally different from her peers.
Fortunately, she came to realise she
is different; just like everyone else is diverse.
Madoka is giving off a proud girlfriend vibe in this episode
Its kind of a shame that they didn’t have all of Elena’s speech in
English as a Second Language; it transitioned to Japanese fairly near the start. Of course,
that makes sense when you take consideration the target audience of
PreCure franchise (middle-grade female). Regardless, it seems that Madoka was able to perfectly comprehend Elena’s speech, even if it was all in English. Of course a girl of her rank has to be multilingual... SOLUNA VS. ELENJOU WAR VIBES INTENSIFY... (maybe this will lead to a Tengu of the Opera AU with Madoka as Raoul, Sakurako as Carlotta...)
Headmaster changed into a Notray by Tenjou (also, he's grown a moustache - so Mihoshi Secondary Headmaster is a Mo Bro! #Movember)
Yeah, we’ve had some good stuff with both Elena and Jo AKA Tenjou in this
episode, but I have to take a moment to mention Yuni casually jumping
out of a nearby tree when the time for battle arrives.
Cure Soleil
You’d think that Elena would get to lead the transformation sequence
for this particular episode, but that’s not the case. Instead, we get
the normal sequence with all five Cure girls. Of course Tenjou has her own
thoughts on smiles connecting people – this happens to tie in with her
past. Again, we only get the bare minimum of information concerning
that; I’m going to go ahead and assume more will be revealed later on.
The episode wraps up after the battle, which plays out in pretty
typical fashion. Oh, there is one event that suggests things are going
to get interesting for a certain alien. That possibly might start as
soon as next week.
Its nice to have this series back after its break, and it
returns with a very good episode. I’m happy with what we got here, and I
suspect fans of Elena may feel the same way. There’s also a treat for
Tenjou fans, so there’s plenty of good stuff here.
MY OWN HUMBLE OPINION:
Our trilogy of focus episodes for our Terrible Trio of cadres has reached its closure with Elena and her evil counterpart that tengu baroness -now turned into her new teacher Jo (maybe a nod to Josephine March?)- identifying with one another.
Soluna vs. Elenjou: forget Jily vs. Snily... this may be the Jily/Snily shipping war of this decade! And knowing what we know about the backstory of all these characters, maybe this will lead to a Tengu of the Opera AU with Madoka as Raoul, Sakurako as Carlotta...
