Mai Mishou/Cure Egret/Cure Windy: "Oh light of spirits! Oh glimmer of life!"
Saki Hyuuga/Cure Bloom/Cure Bright: "Guide our two hearts towards hope!"
Futari wa Pretty Cure Splash☆Star is the third series in the Pretty Cure franchise. It is preceded by Futari wa Pretty Cure MaX Heart and followed by Yes! Pretty Cure 5.
Mai Mishou, a calm and sweet-hearted artist, is returning to her hometown after several years away. She goes to the large tree she used to visit as a child and runs into Saki Hyuuga, an outgoing softball player. Just as they both remember that they once met each other as children in this precise spot, two fairies called Flappy and Choppy come out of nowhere and attach themselves to the girls.
The fairies are fleeing from the forces of Dark Fall, an otherworldly group seeking to capture the seven World Fountains that feed the World Tree. The last World Fountain is located somewhere on Earth, and Dark Fall will stop at nothing to find it. To defend themselves from the monsters of Dark Fall, Saki and Mai agree to use the fairies' power and transform into Cure Bloom and Cure Egret: the Legendary Warriors, Pretty Cure.
Splash☆Star starts as a near-Expy of the original series, as Toei clearly wanted to continue the Pretty Cure franchise but were concerned about how fans would receive a series that did not include Nagisa and Honoka. Complaints from Moral Guardians had also caused many of the Seinen elements synonymous with Pretty Cure to be toned down: instead of the hard-hitting fisticuffs of Black and White, Bloom and Egret primarily used non-contact magical attacks, flinging bolts of energy around and flying all over the place.
However, after time the show finds its feet and develops its own identity. Mai and Saki grow to distinguish their personalities from their predecessors and lookalikes. Bloom and Egret develop unique fighting styles, with Bloom focusing on ground attacks and brute strength, while Egret specialises in agile aerial attacks. The show later adds two Dark Magical Girls as Foils, and a Mid-Season Upgrade that gives a Super Mode to Bloom and Egret, upgrading them to Cure Bright and Cure Windy respectively.
Saki and Mai are set to return in the Yes! Pretty Cure 5 sequel series Power of Hope ~PreCure Full Bloom~.
This anime provides examples of:
- Accidental Misnaming:
- Saki manages to misremember Ms. Shitataare's name almost every time.
- Many characters tend to call Karehan "Karepan", or "curry bread" in English.
- Alternate Continuity: The first one.
- And You Were There: Moop and Fuup.
- Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: Mai gets like this around some works of art.
- Battle Aura: Noticeable in the flashes of light, absent in earlier seasons, that appear whenever the Cures land from high heights or are thrown against solid objects. Could possibly be a Don't Try This at Home measure.
- Big Bad: Akudaikan is the one leading Dark Fall to plunge the world into ruin by finding the fountain of the sun.Come the end and it's revealed to be Gooyan who wants the entire universe destroyed.
- Bilingual Bonus: What would have been one for Japanese viewers. In episode 32, while being impersonated by Ms Shitataare, the English teacher, Shinohara-sensei, reads out what's ostensibly a literary passage to the class. In the original Japanese episode, what she actually says — in grammatically impeccable English — is a short summary of the episode's plot up to that point:A beautiful woman asked her gently,"How can I get to the Fountain of the Sun?"She answered firmly, "I don't know where it is.Even if I knew, I would never tell you. Never."
- Boke and Tsukkomi Routine: Kenta ostensibly forms a Manzai duo with class representative Miyasako, but it's more of an outlet for his own pun-based humor.
- Boss Rush: Gooyan brings back the five defeated minions in the 40s episodes. All are dispatched with more ease than before.
- Dual Boss: They attack in pairs. The order is Karehan and Moerumba, Karehan and Dorodoron, Moerumba and Kintolesky, Dorodoron and Shitataare, and Kintolesky and Shitataare. Note that each general gets two chances.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Saki's younger sister, Minori.
- By the Power of Grayskull!: "Dual Spiritual Power!"
- Clark Kenting: Inverted in that some of the villains adopt various disguises and aren't recognized until they reveal themselves. Meanwhile, the villains discover the Cures' true identities without much effort at all.
- Complexity Addiction: Gooyan could have won instantly by just blowing the worlds up in random order, instead of bothering with creating Akudaikahn, creating the Dark Fall, and sending minions.
- Continuity Nod: Many. The show is actually very good at referencing past events and episodes.
- Crossover: With GoGo Sentai Boukenger in a radio play.
- Dancing Theme: "Ganbalance de Dance"
- Darker and Edgier: Is it ever....
- Notably, the main villain Gooyan is seen as THE darkest villain in the franchise, even in the face of the general more darker feel of the likes of Heartcatch.
- Dark Is Not Evil: Michiru and Kaoru, who continue using their powers as warriors of the Dark Fall, even after their Heel–Face Turn.
- Dark Magical Girl: Michiru and Kaoru.
- Demoted to Extra (Michiru and Kaoru. Despite being the first Dark Magical Girl duo in the Pretty Cure franchise and fighting alongside Bloom and Egret in their own Pretty Cure forms in the final battle, they are Brought Down to Normal in the Pretty Cure All Stars movies and relegated to waving Miracle Lights with the rest of the background characters.
- Diegetic Soundtrack Usage: In the Non-Serial Movie, the song that plays for Saki and Mai in the karaoke contest is the show's second credits theme - which is later played in full for the movie's credits.
- Disney Death: Michiru and Kaoru.
- Dramatic High Perching: Ms. Shitataare and Kintolesky menacingly stand on top of a higher ground such as on a roof or a rock before several battles. Michiru and Kaoru enjoy sitting on a rock that extends out of the ocean.
- Earth-Shattering Kaboom: When Gooyan blows up the Earth.
- Elemental Powers: The five minions, aside from Michiru and Kaoru, have powers based on the five elements of Eastern tradition. The Uzainaa that they summon are also based on these elements. This provides foreshadowing, seeing as that Kaoru is wind and Michiru is the moon, neither fitting in with the theme.
- Karehaan - plants/trees/wood
- Moerumba - fire
- Dorodoron - earth
- Ms. Shitataare - water
- Kintolesky: gold/metal
- Every single member of Dark Fall has darkness, referred to as "the power of destruction", as well.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: Michiru and Kaoru inherit their own Cure Bright and Cure Windy form.
- Emotionless Girl: Kaoru, at first. Michiru is friendlier from the beginning, but even she has her moments.
- The End of the World as We Know It: The goal of the antagonists is to create an eternal world of ruin. The show's actual Big Bad doesn't just intend to have Earth destroyed; he wants the universe to be gone.
- Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo: Saki and Mai start out as expies of Futari wa Pretty Cure's Nagisa and Honoka, but Saki is far more of a Genki Girl than Nagisa, without as many of the former's Deadpan Snarker and Determined Defeatist tendencies, and Mai is a sensitive artist.
- Evolving Credits: The opening changes to include Cure Bright and Cure Windy, as well as Moop and Fuup.
- Expy: To the point where the Italian dub of the show marketed it as a sequel to Futari wa Pretty Cure, starring the "older" forms of Nagisa and Honoka!
- Feud Episode: Occurs episode 8 and in the Non-Serial Movie.
- Final Boss Preview: The confrontation with Akudaikaan in episode 23. Akudaikaan No Sells the Cures' attacks, claims that he's not even showing half his power and beats the Cures while never getting up from his throne. While the Cures did fight him again, it turns out Akudaikaan wasn't the final villain...
- Frills of Justice: Just like Black, White and Luminous before them, the Cures' outfits sport frills which make them look beautiful while fighting off Uzainas and the Dark Fall's generals.
- Gratuitous Spanish: Moerumba litters Spanish into his dialogue such as "señorita".
- Heel–Face Turn: Michiru and Kaoru eventually join the Cures in stopping Dark Fall near the end.
- Heroic RRoD: You can make a drinking game from how many times our heroes collapse from exhaustion and strain in this particular series. And in the finale, given the exact source of power the side of good is fighting with, even the entire planet collapses trying to get at the Big Bad.
- Heterosexual Life-Partners: Saki and Mai once bonded at the Sky Tree, and they eventually do so again, especially since they got to know each other and bond closer when they become Pretty Cure.
- Hidden in Plain Sight: The sea is the Fountain of the Sun all along. Several battles are fought near or on it, while the information of the Fountain's location is violently protected from and interrogated on.
- In the Name of the Moon: The girls are baffled when they say their post-transformation announcements for the first time.
- Island Base: Gooyan has one of these, even shaped like himself. He mistakenly believes it to be secret. Lampshaded by Ms. Shitataare: "I mean, the architecture alone is a dead giveaway."
- Jokers Love Junk Food: Saki, the most fun-loving and goofy of the main characters, loves ice cream and chocolate.
- Joshikousei: Saki and Mai's school uniforms is eerily similar to a sailor's uniform.
- Kamehame Hadoken: Michiru and Kaoru fight with concentrated balls of the power of destruction pulled from their own bodies. Once they charge them up enough, the result is one of these.
- Kick the Dog: Pretty much every villain in this show, with the only exception of Kintolesky, does a very petty act of villainy for no reason at least once, such as Moerumba threatening two helpless fairies or Ms. Shitataare taunting Saki and Mai over the Kiryuu siblings' "deaths".
- Laughably Evil: The whole Quirky Miniboss Squad, Karehaan being the sole exception.
- Limited Wardrobe: In contrast to the variously-attired Nagisa and Honoka, Saki and Mai seem to have only two sets of regular street clothes apiece: one spring/summer outfit, and one fall/winter outfit. This is finally averted in the last couple of episodes, as well as in The Movie (with its higher budget).
- Magical Girl: The second in the franchise to feature school girls who transform to save the day.
- Meaningful Name: Pretty Cure and the Kiryuu sisters all have names relating to their Cure personas. All these relations are expressed in sequence near the end of episode 48.
- Theme Naming: "Flower, bird, wind, moon" is a Japanese idiom that refers to experiencing the beauties of nature and using it to learn about one's self.
- Mega Neko: Korone, Saki's lazy and overlarge cat who actually has an important role later on. He's not bigger than normal cats by any orders of magnitude, though.
- Midseason Upgrade: The Spiral Rings, and later the transformations into Cure Bright and Cure Windy.
- Minion Shipping: Karehaan and Moerumba, and Kintolesky and Shitataare.
- Morality Pet: Minori to Kaoru.
- Nature Spirit: The Cures draw their power from the various spirits.
- New Transfer Students: Kaoru and Michiru go over to Saki and Mai's school some time after their introduction... except it's to spy on the two heroines.
- Never Trust a Trailer: The final episode of Max Heart for the Italian dub gave the impression they were dubbing this series as a sequel to the previous. Luckily, it wasn't the case.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Poor Princess Filia. The first time she uses the Fairy Carafe Gooyan steals it while it still has the power of the Fountains, and the second time she uses it Gooyan knocks it into the water...which reveals that the oceans of Earth are the Fountain of the Sun.
- Non-Serial Movie: Subtitled Tick-Tock Crisis Hanging by a Thin Thread! While the events of the movie are never referenced in the show itself, nothing in it really contradicts canon.
- Not-So-Harmless Villain: The Man Behind the Man is Gooyan, the fat slacker minion that even the other villains make fun of. He also destroys the world.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Lord Akudaikahn. Also, Gooyan wants to destroy the universe... because lifeforms are too noisy and irritate him.
- The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Dorodoron, of all people, is on the brink of victory over Pretty Cure... until Michiru and Kaoru invoke this trope and intervene. Or at least, that's the excuse they give themselves.
- Pummel Duel: Gooyan gets into two of them, once during his fight with Cure Bloom/Bright and Cure Bright/Windy, and another when fighting Michiru and Kaoru.
- Pungeon Master: Kenta Hoshino drops in a couple of puns, most of them are kind of... not so funny.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: The Dark Fall generals each have some sort of comedic quirk to them, such as Ms. Shitataare having her name pronounced wrongly and Karehan being misnamed as "curry-pan".
- Sadistic Choice
- A subtle one; against Michiru and Kaoru, the battle is fought near the Sky Tree. Kaoru aims a blast to Cure Egret when she stands in front of the tree, which is a bad thing as Egret's shield is used more as evasion maneuver. You can see Egret's eyes flicker to her back before she decides to take the blast. Bloom ends up disengaging from Michiru and taking the attack with her own shield.
- Tired of the Cures always denying him of his honorable fight, Kintolesky threatens to take the battle to the town. The Cures who no longer have the option of Sheathe Your Sword against him finally gives him his fight, and by proxy his death.
- The final battle's decision is basically boiled down to destroying Dark Fall and watching Michiru and Kaoru expire along with it, or letting Dark Fall destroy the world. Our heroines are hoping the spirits' power is enough to get them through this like before. The Big Bad ends up destroying the world anyway and the Kiryuu sisters are dying twice because of Heroic RRoD from protecting Saki and Mai, and will permanently end that way if not for the fact they're right about the spirits.
- Save Both Worlds: The goal of the Cures.
- Screw Destiny: The Cures believe that you can fight fate and change it, unlike Michiru and Kaoru, who believed that You Can't Fight Fate.
- Shout-Out:
- During one of Flappi's failed attempts at confessing his feelings to Choppi, Moop offers the advice, "Never give up! Trust your instincts!" (This might be a case of a Spice Up the Subtitles, though).
- Kintolesky throws repeated punches at the defecting Kiryuu Sisters with a cry of "ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA ORA!"
- Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but doesn't Karehaan look a bit like Kain Highwind?
- Sir Not-Appearing-in-This-Trailer: Michiru and Kaoru were never shown in any promotional material for the season. Also Kintolesky, if you count the second ending video.
- Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Saki, though mostly later on. Not as bad as Nagisa, the girl she's an expy of, but it's there.
- Story Arc: The show mostly follows the format of "villain sends Monster of the Week after the Cures, Cures defeat all of the villain's monsters, Cures defeat villain, next villain appears, repeat", but there are two arcs of importance.
- Episode 14-23 introduces and develops the Kiryuu sisters, culminating in the mid-season finale. (This is despite Dorodoron being the designated villain for most of the arc.) Episode 24 acts as an epilogue, introducing the first Midseason Upgrade.
- Episodes 41-49 are the finale to the series.
- Taking You with Me: Gooyan channels the spirit of Andross in delivering a "taking you with me" line before his defeat. Not effective at all.
- Team Spirit: Most prominent in the movie where Saki and Mai are trapped in a maze by the movie's Big Bad and must work together to escape, though said spirit is threatened by an argument they had earlier.
- Third-Person Person: Minori Hyuuga.
- Title Drop: "Precure Spiral Star Splash" and "Precure Spiral Heart Splash Star".
- Tomboy and Girly Girl: Saki is the energetic tomboy and Mai is the calm girl.
- Transformation Sequence: The Non-Serial Movie has an interesting example which averts the usual Stock Footage. After they find each other in the maze, Mai and Saki grasp each other's hands, then stand back-to-back and have a heartfelt conversation. As they talk, they slowly transform into their Cure forms, the outfits simply appearing on them bit by bit as their hairstyles rearrange themselves. Though beautifully and fluidly animated, the normal poses, catch phrases, animation and visual effects are completely absent. Interestingly, the whole process actually takes about as long in real time as the Stock Footage version, so it also implicitly averts Transformation Is a Free Action.
- Unlucky Childhood Friend: Kenta's feelings for Saki are implied to go beyond friendship at a few points, but she only has eyes for Mai's brother, Kazuya. In the end of the series, she still hasn't noticed Kenta, and he seems to turn his affection to one of her teammates on the softball team (who was quite clearly crushing on him throughout the series).
- The Unreveal: Why Akudaikahn doesn't outright destroy Michiru and Kaoru when they have their Heel–Face Turn? Gooyan claims that he doesn't know why and suspects there's must be some kind of plan for that, but then the final arc comes and it left unanswered with how everyone hold no punches in final battle.
- Verbal Tic: As usual for Pretty Cure series, the mascot characters add some variant of their names. One of Saki and Mai's friends, Hitomi, injects "maji" (really/seriously) into most of her sentences, although the subs don't necessarily represent this. (Sorry.)
- Villains Out Shopping: All of the minions engage in some form of this. However, Kintolesky repeatedly buys bread at Saki's family's store, gives Saki drawing advice, gives Kazuya Mishou kicking lessons, and stops by the School Festival.
- Wham Line: See examples here.
- Wonder Twin Powers: Like Nagisa and Honoka before them Saki and Mai can't transform if they are not together, and their finisher attacks also require them to be together. Near the end of the series Michiru and Kaoru can use their full power only when together.
- World Tree: The seven fountains protect a version of the World Tree in the mythological sense. Meanwhile, in town, the Sky Tree is a World Tree more in the sense of this trope, and is the location for many key events. The final episode hints that the Sky Tree may actually be a seedling of the World Tree.
- Worthy Opponent: Kintolesky views the Cures as this.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Michiru and Kaoru believed making Akudaikhan happy is their set destiny since it'll also make them "happy" and the world's destruction is unavoidable and inevitable.
