EN QUE TENJOU MENTORIZA A ELENA

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...