Plot: Lily’s mother is preparing for a big fashion show to display all of her amazing wedding dresses. Pluie senses the presence of a Saint Something Four within Lily’s mother’s collection of dresses and destroys them all to find it, to no avail. Lily is blamed for the destruction, devastating her, and causing a rift between her and her mother. The threat of Pluie and Jama-P still hangs in the background. Wedding Peach will need a new ally to take them out this time.
Breakdown: By far, the best episode yet.
Very, very minor irritation on the side of the girls bickering, good story, emotional connections made and I think Yuri will turn out to be my favorite character of the bunch.
Granted, I don’t much care for her wedding dress. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t give off much of a real wedding dress vibe. That’s pretty much made up for with her really cool transformation sequence, though.
Also, I totally get that there’s a suspension of disbelief aspect to these shows in regards to the characters getting their powers. In practically any magical girl show, the girls will get their powers, learn their attacks and accept their roles fairly quickly because they have to for the sake of getting the plot going.
….That being said, Yuri accepted her role WAY too easily. Even though characters do accept these things quickly, hardly ever do you see characters accepting that they’re magical girls with superpowers who are now destined to save the world without a single question or hesitation. The only instances I can think of where that happens is when you have the super bubbly girls who think all of that is the coolest thing ever. Yuri is not one of those girls.
The goddess of love appears in her glowing hands telling her all of this, leading her to transform with lipstick into a warrior wearing a wedding dress and later a warrior wearing a battle skirt who can make a rainbow ribbon/whip, and she doesn’t seem surprised in the slightest. She doesn’t even ask why or how Momoko is Wedding Peach – in a world where I don’t think Wedding Peach has been publicly discussed yet, either. It’s just ‘I’m a newbie at this, so please excuse me.’ Bear in mind, this isn’t an actual complaint about the episode. I just found this aspect to be really funny.
Story-wise, it was simple but very realistic and impacting. Yuri getting blamed for the dresses being destroyed and the shock and hurt on her face after her (possessed, but still) mother slapped her across the face – I felt that. The fact that her (possessed) mother is the enemy they have to defeat in the end is heartbreaking. Not only would that raise some latent fear from when her mother attacked her earlier, but she has to deal with fighting her own mother. Plus, her mother’s attacking her with a giant pair of scissors! Yikes.
I really loved how supportive Momoko and Hinagiku were after Yuri revealed what happened to them. Yuri just wants to leave it be and brushes off her mother’s slap by saying she was just tired and stressed, but Hinagiku and Momoko won’t take that sitting down. I finally felt like these three were actually close friends for a change.
They’re still bickering (especially Hinagiku….) and poking at each other over Yanagiba, but when the chips are down they’re really there for each other. You really need to establish a good friendship and group dynamic in order for teams to work. They can have their problems, of course, but I need to believe they’re actually friends who can set aside their differences when it counts at the very least, and they did that here. Kudos.
All in all, a really enjoyable episode and a great introduction to Angel Lily. I look forward to seeing her work with Momoko in future episodes.
With Angel Lily now in the ring, it only makes sense that Hinagiku gets her transformation episode next. From what I saw of the preview, this should be a fairly emotional episode, too, so hopefully we’ll keep this quality train going.
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The Anime Madhouse 