As Long Runner series, almost each Pretty Cure season has at least one or two characters that either had interesting backgrounds, were beloved by fans, or both, and yet they ended up being underutilized. and while the mentioned below isn't the complete list, it has some significant examples of this case.
Main Series
Yes! Pretty Cure 5 (both the first season and GoGo!)
- Despite her prevalence and importance in several episodes during the first season, Masuko Mika is weirdly absent for the majority of Go Go!. Given her persistence in finding more about the Precures, it is strange that she isn't more involved with the main plot, especially since she got attacked by the villains more than one time and didn't have her memories altered or anything of the sort. She is just absent from the story altogether, save for a few cameos.
- In the first season, Urara is the only Cure to not have a series wide character arc. The other girls have various episodes of Character Development that culminate in each of them discovering what careers they want to pursue once they become adults, while on the contrary Urara starts with herself knee deep in stardom and ends at almost the exact same spot. GoGo! tries to remedy this a little by pairing her with Syrup for a Brooding Boy, Gentle Girl dynamic, but this still doesn't fix her lack of Character Development between each season.
- Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo! The Movie: Happy Birthday in the Land of Sweets has quite a couple as well:
- The villains as a whole lack backstories and two of them are Brainwashed and Crazy against their consent for the film's duration.
- Nuts gets it the worst. He is Demoted to Extra in every sense of the words and even his Super-Empowering ability he gained isn't relevant as Milky Rose is able to preform her Milky Rose: Metal Blizzard attack without his assistance.
- Milky Rose herself amounts to little more than a a One-Scene Wonder, in contrast to her prominence in the anime TV series.
Smile PreCure!
- Miyuki's grandmother, a woman who proves that she has Kaoruko-levels of awesomeness by standing up to a Bad End effect and not having her energy drained and doing so flanked by an army of forest animals. Nothing is mentioned of her ever again.
- Wolfrun/Ulric, Akaoni/Brute, and Majorina/Brooha inexplicably vanish after they're revealed to be Märchenland fairies and are only seen again in a page of the Pretty Cure's book.
Doki Doki! PreCure
- While everyone not named Mana Aida, Regina, and Cure Ace can easily be classified as this in Doki Doki! PreCure, Alice Yotsuba/Cure Rosetta gets this the worse out of all of them. Very early on, she rejects the offer of being a Cure simply because she had a very nasty temper as a child and was afraid of accidentally releasing her rage while on the field. However, aside from one episode where a Rich Bitch tried to exploit this to win a contest, this trait is never brought up ever again, and instead, Alice is regulated to whipping out the Rosetta Reflection and nothing else. Hell, even her Mid-Season Upgrade reflects this. While everyone else gets a badass new finisher, Cure Rosetta is stuck with a dinky little party balloon containing whatever was needed to save the day that was only used twice.note
- To further rub salt in the wound, one of the arcs in the season gave everyone on the team a Day in the Limelight episode in which everyone grows stronger after overcoming their personal issues... well, Rikka, Makoto and Mana does. Alice was put on the backburner in her own episode while her butler and one of the villains overtook the majority of plot.
- Lust and Goma, two deceased members of Jikochuu crew. Absolutely nothing tells what were they like, or even what did they look like.
HappinessCharge Pretty Cure!
- The international Cures in general are, for the most part, just there to advertise the fact that there are Cures all over the globe, with little else to make them noticeable. This is slightly justified by the fact that the Happiness Charge Cures are the main characters of the story, but when there are international Cures who show up for one scene and are never mentioned again, one has to wonder about the purpose of showing them in the first place. Maria Hikawa/Cure Tender also fell in this trope because she only appeared for a few episodes after freeing from being Brainwashed and Crazy and she got totally removed after the season ended. Because of this, she didn't appear in the Non-Serial Movie and the Crisis Crossover Pretty Cure All Stars movie series.
- Yuuko has little in the ways of a character arc compared to the other lead Cures besides her sparse moments with Phantom. As a result she comes off as a Flat Character compared to the other girls due to having not much of a personality outside her love for food and talent as a Supreme Chef.
Go! Princess Pretty Cure
- A few people feel that, by the time Stop and Freeze come by, they take away the screentime that could be used to develop the other Dys Dark generals. Likewise, the two suddenly disappearing in the final episode with no real send-off or even a last mention can also be seen as an issue.
- While she is given more screentime and focus than is usually give to Pretty Cure Muggle Best Friends, some fans cannot help but feel that Nanase Yui was sorely underutilized. An argument can be made that the story would be a lot more interesting and unique had Yui been a Supporting Protagonist, with The Heroine Haruka’s story told from Yui’s POV à la Sherlock Holmes’s Dr. John H. Watson or Kamen Rider Hibiki’s Asumu. What makes this sting even more is that Yui’s dream is to become a children book writer. Not only does she succeed, she even adapts this series events into a book. It’s hard to believe that the writers missed such a great opportunity.
HuGtto! Pretty Cure
- Mother Heart, the golden spirit seen in the intro as well as when the Cures perform the Tomorrow With Everyone attack, never gets any mention to at all, remaining a Greater-Scope Paragon at best, and the only time she took direct action was so she could give both Emiru and Ruru the ability to transform by duplicating the PreHeart into two.
- Some feel that The Protagonist Hana Nono falls into this as well, as her Stepford Smiler, Master of None, and past bullying experiences as well as her Bad Future incarnation's death fueling the main motivation of the Big Bad could have resulted in her being one of the most complex lead Cures in the franchise's history. Unfortunately, Hugtto rarely ever touches upon these issues outside of a handful of episodes, and she never learns the fate of her future self either, thus dooming her to falling into the same ditzy-pink Cure role as others did before her.
- Hugtan is an adorable baby that gets plenty of focus and development and is beloved by many. Her true form Hagumi/Cure Tomorrow, is a walking enigma, as outside of very brief flashback scenes towards the end, we still know nothing about her other than she's the last living Pretty Cure of her timeline and Hana's future daughter. The fact that she never tries to revert out of her Hugtan form throughout the entire series despite retaining some of her cognitive senses also adds to her mystery.
- There are people who believe Emiru to be this. While she did get some development on a personal level, her relationship with the other Pretty Cure, outside Ruru, is considered not well-explored by some and at times she feels more like a Satellite Character to Ruru herself, as a lot of times she gets attention, it mostly ends up with a further exploration of her and Ruru's friendship. Considering that she becomes a Pretty Cure, this makes it even worse.
Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure
- Shindoine and Guaiwaru were Terabyogens just like Daruizen, but only Daruizen had an origin story on how he formed, with being the parasite that ruined Nodoka's life and made her sick. The closest thing we got to Shindoine was that when she was summoned by King Byo-gen, she admired him immediately shortly after being upset that she was summoned. Guaiwaru didn't even have an origin revealed to begin with. Some fans were a bit disappointed that they didn't really get too in-depth on them regarding their hosts.
- Batetemoda is introduced as a Sixth Ranger Dragon with an Agenda for the Byogens who clearly has his own plans which may interfere with that of the rest of the Byogens. Unfortunately we never get to see what exactly these plans are as he's swiftly Killed Off for Real by Cure Earth in her debut episode.
- Nebusoku and Kedary are two generals born from the villains' use of the Mega Parts who last a grand total of one episode each. They both have unique designs and personalities but may as well be no different from the rest of the Megabyogens due to how swiftly they're defeated. Kedary's case is particularly egregious due to him being born as a result of Dairuizen forcibly injecting a Mega Part into Nodoka's body and as a result looking like a younger version of him, so seeing him go down so fast is disappointing.
- Asumi, to some extent. While she does get some episodes to herself after she joins the team, she feels Out of Focus in the second half of the show while the rest of the girls get several episodes each devoted to Character Development. Compared to them, Asumi just feels like a background character without much personality aside from her devotion to Latte. It also doesn't help that some of the intended episodes cut due to COVID would have focused on her.
- The cast of Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo! return for The Movie! Except they only show up for the first fight of the movie before getting captured by the Big Bad and are out of commission until the final battle. The GoGo! Cures don't even show up in their civilian clothes until one of the very last scenes of the movie and neither do they show up at all during the end credits or the Dance Party Ending with the Tropical-Rouge Cures.
Tropical-Rouge! Pretty Cure
- To sum it up, anyone not named Laura are basically treated as afterthoughts by the show, and while Asuka and Manatsu do get some focus episodes, some feel it's not enough to make them stand out, and many agree that Sango and Minori were done dirty as they feel the most one-note out of the entire team.
Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure
- Spiritoru. A Sixth Ranger for the villains introduced in episode 25, he plays an active role until episode 27, a mere two episodes after his debut where he gets Demoted to Extra until the final arc of the show. The same can be said about the Mini Spiritorus he creates, which show up in the Evolving Credits and seem to be another obstacle for the Cures to overcome, only for them to also do nearly nothing until the show's endgame.
- Secretoru. She had a relatively weak backstory which was only partially revealed, to the point where many people considered her apex was interacting with Fuwa Hatsuko (which doubled as a Ship Tease) after her final defeat.
- Godatz is considered to have a lot of wasted potential as a villain. The only real backstory for him is the fact he (Fennel) was envious his master Ginger didn't choose him as a successor, driving him into stealing the Recipe-bon and framing Cinnamon for it. With the season building up Godatz as a feline-themed villain with his lair and hologram being plastered with cat-like elements, his initial form has none of that, instead looking like a generic dark knight (his One-Winged Angel form however has catlike elements). There's also no explanation on how he formed the Bunduru Gang, encountered his subordinates (Secretoru and Narcistoru) and corrupted Amane into Gentlu.
Spinoffs
Pretty Cure All Stars
- Ayumi Sakagami/Cure Echo is seen as the poster child for the most underutilized Cure in the franchise's history, due to being restricted to an 11th-Hour Ranger in New Stage 1 and 3, doing something minor to help the other Cures out, before quickly being Demoted to Extra. What doesn't help is Toei's insistence to keep her out of other potential crossover events (like the defunct Connect Puzzlun game for mobile devices) and Milestone Celebrations, lacking any new merchandise since her first appearance (with her only major one of note being an action figure from S.H. FiguArts) and being barred to appear even as a cameo in future Stars films (the most infamous being All-Star Memories, which claims to have every Cure returning save for Echo). Many fear that Toei would only continue this trend for the announced All-Stars F (which announced its own Canon Foreigner with Cure Supreme), but with the recent announcements of Maho Girls 2 and Power of Hope, fans are holding out for the day they announce a limited series to give Ayumi A Day in the Limelight.
- The Miracle Leap movie shafted anyone who wasn't named Nodoka hard, as the movie focused a lot on the "Groundhog Day" Loop portion, repeating the same day several times. Due to this, there aren't any real unique interactions with the HUGtto! or Star Twinkle cast, with their same events and interactions being repeated. Even Chiyu and Hinata are overshadowed as well.
- All Stars F for most of the movie, chops 78 characters down to just over a dozen, with a set of teams headed up by the four Hirogaru Sky! Pretty Cure members, with the advertising focused on those teams, only featuring the other 60-odd in the big battle scenes, with Word of God saying that they physically can't do anything like they did with All Stars Memories since the Cast Herd is too big.
Power of Hope ~PreCure Full Bloom~
- Saki's fiancé and Mai's boyfriend. While the Precure 5 has established love interests (save for Rin), Saki’s crush on Kazuya never went anywhere and Mai had none of the sort, thus them having love interests caught fans by surprise. Furthermore, both men are portrayed as The Ghost, existing to serve as off-screen plot devices and sources of problems for our girls.
- Nagisa and Honoka are used purely as 11th-Hour Rangers for the Final Battle and only make brief appearances as adults in episode 11, with any hope of other onscreen interactions with them after said Final Battle is done being crushed since the focus quickly changes to Nozomi falling into her coma.
