YMMV / Doki Doki! PreCure

• Accidental Innuendo: The “pixies babysit Dina at school” episode of Glitter Force Doki Doki has Kippie describe babysitters as a combination of daddies and mommies, and the portmanteau she uses to explain this? Dommies.
• Adorkable: Makoto's less-than-graceful but completely sincere attempts at fitting in as a normal teenage girl are very endearing.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Mana: Is she an eternal optimist, or just that good at stepfordism?
  • Rikka: A Psycho Lesbian, Ambiguously Bi, or a lonely girl who is desperately searching for a partner in life because her parents almost ignore her?
• Ass Pull:
  • With her backstory not being revealed until later episodes, it's hard not to see Cure Ace/Aguri as anything but this, since her existence was never foreshadowed.
  • In the Glitter Force dub, the Cures' new abilities that they use in the final episodes accidentally became a case of Dub-Induced Plot Hole, since the episodes where they were properly introduced were cut to save time and money.
  • The Non-Serial Movie constantly builds up Marsh as the main villain, leading the charge against the heroes, trapping them in their own memories, and has the most personal connection to Mana Aida specifically as he personally taunts her while her memory ends and loops... except he's not the main villain at all. It's his clarinet calling the shots. At no point prior did the movie made any attempt to show or even hint that his clarinet was even cognitive at all.
• Audience-Alienating Ending: The Non-Serial Movie is still divisive as the main show itself, but it's seen as a solid film that can be enjoyed as a decent side-story... but even those who enjoyed it agreed that the third act is the biggest issue holding the movie back, since the writers opted to have one Ass Pull after another back to back, with Marsh revealing himself to be Mana's dead dog revived as a time lord, the clarinet revealing itself to be the true Big Bad, the Insane Troll Logic required to have Mana travel to the future and justify the film's original Japanese title (Mana is Getting Married!!? The Dress of Hope that Connects to the Future), Mana getting an exclusive Engage Form power-up while further cementing the base show's growing issues of We Are "Team Cannon Fodder", and the last-second twist of Bebel being Mana's deceased grandmother all along. None of these plot elements were properly foreshadowed during the rest of the film's runtime and seems like a last-ditch attempt to end the movie while on a tight deadline.
• Awesome Music:
  • The transformation theme for this season is downright EPIC.
  • The song Makoto sings to Regina in Episode 40 is very memorable.
  • The Latin dub for the Glitter Force adaptation clearly took to heart the complaints from its predecessor's dub by making everyone speak with a neutral accent and keeping the English terms as they were.
  • Many people love the Glitter Force's rendition of ending song "Love Link".
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • People in the fandom either think Mana/Cure Heart is an overpowered protagonist who always gets away from actually learning anything because of her Plot Armor or think she's a strong, charismatic protagonist whose flaws are still there even if she manages to push through them every time. There's a reason she gets the John Cena treatment. There's another camp that agrees she gets too much screentime or she's a Mary Sue but still like her (or don't think she deserves the hate she gets).
  • Regina, early on. Some of the fans thought she was completely unlikable and that Makoto was right to reject her, others that she was cute and just needed help and that Mana was right to befriend her. This tapered off late in the series as both sides embraced Regina as someone the plot screwed over.
    • The Regina plot and the reveal of Cure Ace is either an ambitious subversion of the standard Dark Magical Girl plot or a poorly written Plot Twist. Or both.
  • Aguri/Cure Ace. Is she a really badass and awesome new addition to the team or a badly shoehorned-in character who makes no sense? Is her being noticeably older than the Cures when transformed and noticeably younger when not appealing or off-putting? Is she a cool Aloof Ally who just wants to help the girls to get stronger, however indirectly, or is she a smug and condescending girl who does nothing to help the Cures but takes the credit anyway? Fans seem to be rather split on this.
• Best Known for the Fanservice: Perhaps the only thing many fans liked about the otherwise-polarizing Cure Ace was her Transformation Sequence, especially the Sexy Silhouette.
• Better on DVD: Unlike other Pretty Cure seasons, which are more lax with their overall story arcs, DokiDoki demands your full attention as missing any episode can easily result in cases of Continuity Lock-Out. As such, it's easier to view the series when all episodes are easily available back-to-back just to keep better track of story beats.
• Broken Base:
  • Is the Non-Serial Movie canon, or not? While Cure Ace's inclusion is quite tacked on, and the future everyone visited is lacking some individuals (mainly Joe and Regina), it's still possible for it to happen within the series' canon. Word of God even went on to clarify some contradictions, and revealed that there was supposed to be a Foreshadowing to the movie in one of earlier episodes. There are also several Canon Immigrants from the movie in the last three episodes.
  • The announcement of another Saban Brands' Glitter Force dub series once more divided the fans before it came out. People who liked the Glitter Force version of Smile PreCure! were a lot more positive at having more of the show but people who already disliked it had no reason to believe it was going to improve on any of their existing complaints. Then it was revealed that a season that was extremely reliant on a complex plot with very little filler would have 19 episodes and the movie cut out. When the dub finally released, this base became a lot less broken. Fans of the previous Glitter Force did find the first half to be reasonably strong as most of the critical parts of the story were recut into new episodes, it was still easy enough to follow, and the voice cast was once again very strong. However even die-hard fans found the second half of the series where entire story arcs disappeared to be almost incomprehensible. Doki Doki is already a very heavily criticized season for over-focusing on its protagonist, having new characters pop up out of nowhere, and for the storyline being excessively convoluted... but Glitter Force's second half only made these problems worse since what little development there was for characters that aren't Mana was excised and the loss of origin stories and critical story arcs made the last half of the series feel like one Ass Pull after another. The loss of the movie in this adaptation made the character cameos just feel like even more unexplained new characters entering an already bloated cast. Then it came out that the season was just Saban fulfilling a contractual obligation and after how badly the first season of Glitter Force had gone, the production budget was slashed and only the absolute minimum number of episodes that Netflix would carry were dubbed. They allowed the license to expire before the show even aired, dooming it to failure even harder than the previous season.
  • For Latin American fans, news that the dub for that region will be still handled by the same voice acting studio who did the already much hated dub of the previous series caused this to flare up. However, the opinions about the dub became somewhat more positive this time. It helps a lot the dub was done in Colombia, compared with the previous series, which was dubbed in the U.S. in a Spanish-speaking studio in Miami, FL.
  • Whether Cure Rosetta/Glitter Clover is green or yellow cure is debated. There's another camp that says while she can pass as a yellow cure, she should be a green cure.
  • Name changes like "Cure Rosetta" to "Glitter Clover" and "Cure Sword" to "Glitter Spade" have been heavily debated. The ones who didn't like it say it should have been kept the same, while the ones who liked it say they're more in line with the card theme and that "Clover" and "Spade" make much better sense name-wise than "Sword" and "Rosetta".
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Cure Ace not being Regina turns out to be this when you realize that Regina's seiyuu Kumiko Watanabe then-age, 47, would have been a big fat statistical outlier with respect to the ages of the Cure seiyuu until then, which range between 18 and 41.
• Contested Sequel: Doki Doki! is one of the most polarizing seasons in the franchise thus far. Detractors are unhappy with this season due to perceived pacing problems as well as too much focus being given to Mana and Regina at the expense of the other characters, especially Rikka and Alice (albeit not quite to the extent the previous two seasons), while fans love the season for being Darker and Edgier and much more plot-heavy. And then there's the reveal of Cure Ace...
• Crossover Ship:
  • Mana is shipped with previous season's Miyuki, thanks to the All-Stars New Stage 2 movie. And as in All-Stars New Stage 3, Megumi joins the fray.
  • Makoto used to be shipped a lot with the other Cures, Marie-Ange, and even Davi in her manager form.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Joe was already unpopular with certain fans due to being both uncomfortably creepy around the teenage protagonists and a male who could be shipped with the girls. And then episode 17 revealed that he was Princess Marie-Ange's fiance. This makes him a canon obstacle to a yuri pairing (Ange/Makoto) in a franchise where canon het couples are usually all-but-nonexistent, leaving the girls free to be shipped with each other. The fans who weren't fond of this reveal really weren't fond of this reveal.
  • Regina is becoming this for certain Mana/Rikka shippers, some of whom have complained that the focus put on Regina and Mana's interactions necessitates Mana's devoted childhood friend Rikka, who was already getting shafted somewhat in favor of Makoto, getting pushed aside even more in order to give focus to Mana's growing relationship with Regina.
  • And after Episode 26, Ira is getting a lot of heat from Mana/Rikka shippers.
  • Nikaidou is the enemy, if not THE enemy for shippers of every Les Yay couples that involves Mana. The hate began when one of movie promotional opening shows him blushing when Mana gets too close on him. It got worse in the last two episodes, where he starts using First-Name Basis on Mana (which only her family, fellow Cures, and Regina do so) and spends most of his time talking about Mana. The real kicker? Most of his appearances in the series itself don't have anything to do with Mana.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Regina quickly became this for the fanbase. In hindsight, they were onto something with that.
  • Ira, especially after episode 26 when he suffered a bout of Easy Amnesia and Took a Level in Kindness.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Makopi's manager, actually Davi in human form.
  • Alice's butler, Sebastian, is also quite well-liked. His stint as "Cure Batman" in episode 25 has definitely aided his popularity.
  • Mana's homeroom teacher Kido is surprisingly popular within Precure's Bara Genre fandom.
• Even Better Sequel: This season is considered to be much better then the previous two seasons by a number of fans.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Alice is (Cure) Batman, her well-fortified manor is Precure Cave, and her bright pink limousine is Precure Mobile. After episode 25, though, the title of Cure Batman seems to have shifted to her butler Sebastian.
  • Leva and Gula are "Double O". Their voice actors are NobuO Tobita and MasuO Amada.
  • Due to the movie, Cure Heart is now Wedding Heart.
  • Mana's Harem - The main cast plus Regina.
  • Prime Minister Aida Mana - "When I'm grown up, I want to be Prime Minister!" (Episode 26)
    • Alternatively, Prime MANAster.
  • Cure Ultraman - Cure Ace, due to her Minutes of Power.
  • Number Two - Nikaidou. It's in his name, and he's usually seen as Mana's "number two" to her harem's "number one".
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Mana/Regina has become a popular choice, hammered home in episode 22, where they're shown sharing a bed in a rather romantic-looking manner.
  • Ira/Rikka had become popular as well since episode 4, and became much more popular after episode 26.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Many people (especially in Japan) did not like (and still hate) Cure Ace because of her being revealed to be Aguri Madoka instead of being Regina like most predicted, which caused ratings and merchandise sales to decrease dramatically. However, among viewers of the Glitter Force Doki Doki dub, she's the most popular member of the Glitter Force.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The fact that this show was written in a way that should have prevented any potential dub cuts qualifies as this because the Saban dub wiped out not just episodes and the movie, but also historic moments like Makoto signing as a failed cure for Regina's brainwashing, non-Charle fairies getting the Humanity Ensues treatment, and Reina getting character development, but also an entire arc involving Blood Rings and a crying baby that powers up monsters!
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Eiichiro Oda considered a previous installment in the franchise, Fresh Pretty Cure!, as his rival to One Piece. Mayumi Tanaka plays both Luffy and Ira. As for the reason for the rivalry? His daughters love this show more than Oda's own manga.
  • Before Doki Doki, there were pretty much flurries of fanmade Cure Hearts and Cure Diamonds among the fandom.
  • Some fans have noticed that the spelling sequence of the Lovely Communes is just like the transformation scene for Kamen Rider Beast. Then he pretended to be an actual Magical Girl in a later episode. Artists have noticed this.
  • There is an infamous HeartCatch Pretty Cure! doujin out there◊ that has the characters modeled after Fist of the North Star. Come this season, the title of Episode 23 has the words Ai Wo Torimodose in it.
  • Aguri's body is set on fire when she transforms into Cure Ace. Portgas D. Ace had fire as his devil fruit powers. Cure Ace is voiced by Rie Kugimiya, who voiced Shana with the blazing eyes and flaming red hair - Cure Ace has these, too. Ace's weapon - no, not that Ace - is called "Love Kiss Rouge". The first red Cure was Cure Rouge, who had fire powers.
  • Alice has been drawing comparisons with Batman. Then in episode 25, her butler Sebastian makes a Batman-like Cure costume. And he was supposed to be the Alfred stand-in!
    • Even funnier, in episode 20, Sharuru says that Sebastian is better than Superman.
  • The Non-Serial Movie has "Mana's getting married" in its title. One year later, Mana's seiyuu Hitomi Nabatame gets married.
  • In the English dub, Aguri's name is changed to Natalie. Hey, wait a minute! Wasn't there another Cure whose name was also changed to Natalie?
• Ho Yay: Oh dear, there's lots of them...
• I Knew It!:
  • King Jikochuu is Marie-Ange's father.
  • Ai-chan is Marie-Ange. Well, sort of. But they're still the same person.
• Iron Woobie:
  • Makopi, whose Woobie-quotience is enough to break the Woobie-o-meter several times. She's a refugee from a magical kingdom which was destroyed down to the spiritual level. She's a questing-knight in search of her lost queen, who might have been dead all along. She's a Magical Girl Warrior fighting enemies made of the evil-defining aspect of humanity. And before she meet the other Cures, she's without allies except Davie.
  • Anything that can be applied to Makopi can be applied to fellow Knight of Trump Jonathan Klondike, known on Earth as Joe Okada. The poor man doesn't even have a fairy.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The show received this even before it even aired, due to unwarranted assumptions that it would be exactly like Fresh Pretty Cure!.
• It Was His Sled: Regina becomes Brainwashed and Crazy and Cure Ace is revealed to be an entirely new character named Aguri Madoka. A startling reveal at first, but is now considered one of the "make it or break it" reasons people bring up whenever someone considers watching DokiDoki. The fact that Aguri soon became prominent in crossovers (as with all Sixth Rangers) also takes away the impact of the twist.
• Jerkass Woobie: Regina, big-time.
• Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Mana Aida is proving to be quite possibly the most shipped person in the series' history. Most of the girls that fans ship her with including Rikka, Alice, Makoto, Regina, and Aguri. And then there are jokes abound about how DokiDoki is a stealth Harem Series. Pixiv even has a tag specified for her harem (マナハーレム). And then she still gets shipped with at least five guys.
• Les Yay: So many examples that it was given its own page.
• Macekre: While either less documented or simply less severe, Saban once again took contentious liberties with their English dub.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Alice. Hell, there's even a tag on Pixiv called "Alice the War God". (武神ありす)
  • Her Butler, Sebastian, is also considered an in-universe Memetic Badass. He managed to create his own Cure lovead from scratch, too, if episode 25 is any indication.
  • Mana Aida herself qualifies, especially since she threw a freaking Jikochuu train in one episode.
• Memetic Molester: Quite a few fans find Joe to be quite creepy, given his flirtatious comments and how touchy-feely he tends to be.
• Memetic Mutation: See this page for examples.
• Moral Event Horizon: Regina's involvement in the destruction of Makopi's homeworld may not have been a MEH after all, but Bel is revealed in episode 46 to have unambiguously crossed the MEH when he tried to corrupt Marie-Ange, which ultimately caused her to split in two and become Madoka Aguri and Regina.
• Narm: When a Jikochuu is made from a Victim of the Week, the way the heart bursts out of the person's chest resembles the visual effect when a cartoon character is madly in love with someone. Their appearances are, as a rule, more stupid/cute than actually remotely scary at all.
• Never Live It Down: Despite her growing characterization making her more bearable as the season went on, some people will never see Madoka Aguri as more than a Drill Sergeant Nasty that lashes out against the Cures for making a slight and honest mistake while overtaking the fifth Cure slot from fan-favorite Regina.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The destruction of the Trump Kingdom and the fate of its citizens. The younger kids probably won't understand what it's like to lose your home and your folks, but it makes the older kids (and the older audience) cringe.
  • Bel's transformation into Proto-Jikochuu starts with a black mass enveloping his body and making him cry out in pain. He had it coming, but jeez...
• Older Than They Think: A Magical Girl who harbors guilt over a past failure, and who is a foreigner on Earth who originally hails from the Magic World? Now where have we heard that before?
• One-Scene Wonder: Alice's grandfather Ichirou is voiced by Mugihito, yet he only appears in one scene of one episode.
• One True Threesome: It is either Makoto/Mana/Rikka, Regina/Mana/Rikka, Regina/Mana/Makoto. Ira/Rikka/Raquel is slowly gaining popularity too.
• Replacement Scrappy: Aguri/Cure Ace was this for Regina fans. And there was a video of a girl crying when Ace is shown not to be Regina to fuel more hate. Thankfully, fans have mellowed down on her since she reveals more about herself.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Aguri, post-Character Development and after being revealed as a piece of Marie Ange.
• The Scrappy: Thanks to episode 36, Yashima gets a lot of hate for introducing her boyfriend in front of Raquel (who gets a Precocious Crush on her), all while thanking him.
• Ships That Pass in the Night:
  • Marie-Ange/Marmo is this somewhat, probably because Marmo was the only Selfish member who personally confronted her.
  • Rikka/Ira was this, with fans producing bucket-loads of fanart based solely off Marmo briefly teasing Ira about having a crush on Rikka in episode 4... and then episode 26 happened.
  • From the Ho Yay side, Juujou/Kido is this, for not being shown interacting with each other.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: The Mana/Regina shippers vs. Mana/everyone else shippers.
• Signature Scene:
  • Cure Ace's first appearance, mostly due to the discourse her existence caused.
  • In the movie, Mana bleeding after willfully taking a brutal attack, due to it being the first and only time the Pretty Cure franchise has shown blood onscreen.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: It has its own page here.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • For a season about fighting selfish feelings and overcoming negative impulses, the main heroes have a surprisingly lack of Fatal Flaws to personally overcome, and even Makoto, who should be one PTSD episode away from a Heroic BSoD, suffers from a particularly bad case of Angst? What Angst? and Motive Decay, especially once she becomes part of the team. The closest the show gets with this concept is Alice and her Rage Breaking Point mentioned in her proper debut episode, but it gets quickly dropped and forgotten outside of one episode that one has to wonder what was even the point of bringing it up in the first place.
  • Episode 46 brings a rather interesting spin on the Selfish vs Selfless nature of the season, in that Marie-Ange's selfless love for her kingdom conflicts with her selfish love for her father and her need to save him, preventing her from doing what needs to be done to truly save everyone, something Bel takes advantage of and what leads to the creation of Aguri and Regina. Had this been introduced earlier, it could be a way of arguing that selfless love for the masses can be emptying, and selflish love isn't always the results of self-gain, but because this plotpoint was revealed in the last three episodes of the season, there was no way to properly expand on this. Thus, the story quickly rolled back to the earlier extremist message of "All forms of selfish feelings are wrong, no matter what". What doesn't help is that this can come across as a Broken Aesop to some, as Aguri weaponized that revelation as an excuse to try and kill Regina in a final showdown.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: Ai-chan just looks weird, being more humanoid-looking than other Pretty Cure fairies.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic: Aguri Madoka/Cure Ace, which is one of the reasons why she is considred the most divisive character in the entire season, if not the entire franchise. While her being treated as a Replacement Scrappy is one thing, the main problem stems from her condensending Holier Than Thou attitude she has towards the rest of the cast, especially in her Establishing Character Moment where she stripped Mana of her Precure powers, blatantly ignoring her Heroic BSoD, and her attempts to be a mentor falls flat since she uses Brutal Honesty to the greatest degree (even flat out telling Alice in one episode that she's weak), on top of threatening death towards an amnesiac Ira and even Rikka when she tried to defend his weakened state. Her backstory and explanations (such as her five minute transformation limit being the reason why she can't be with the team all the time) were seem as remedies, but to some, this comes as too-little, too-late, especially since her full backstory wasn't revealed until the last three episodes of the season... and even then, she uses her backstory as an excuse to engage in a 1-on-1 deathmatch with Regina, all while forcing Makoto and Joe to keep quiet about the whole thing. Despite everything she does, the rest of the heroes keep downplaying or ignoring her faults and still act buddy-buddy with her all because she is the light-half of Marie Ange, which in turn can make Regina come across as Unintentionally Sympathetic despite her supposed to be the dark-half of Marie Ange.
• Unexpected Character: The Movie features quite a few:
  • Takuya is Mana's real Designated Love Interest. Unlike Yashima who was revealed in the second trailer months before, he (and by extension Momota) wasn't confirmed to be in the movie until episode 37's opening, which was aired just a week before its premiere. And his scene in said opening? The Ship Tease scene with Mana.
  • Almost no one expected Chihiro to appear in the movie, much less being the one who found Mallow. She attends Mana's future wedding, too.
• The Un-Twist: For the Sixth Ranger Pretty Cure. In past seasons they were either recurring characters who were friends with the heroes or former villains. Regina was the latter and fans assume she become a Pretty Cure. She didn't and it was actually given to a never before seen character in Aguri. Though the reveal that Aguri and Regina are technically two halves of the same person means this speculation wasn't too far off.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Between the Gender Blender Names, typical cute mascot looks, and the fact that they're all voiced by women (at least in Japanese, in Glitter Force, Lance is much clearly played by a man), it's very easy to miss the fact that Raquel and Lance are male.
• Vindicated by History: Mana/Heart and Aguri/Ace were divisive during and after the show's run. However, they seem to get this as shown in in the 2015 Precure characters poll. Aguri was actually the top-ranking of the DokiDoki Cures, with Mana shortly following after her, and both rank in the top 10. This happens at least in the Japanese fandom as the two are still extremely polarizing characters in the West.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Aside from the series having relatively good animation throughout, Cure Ace's transformation takes this to a ridiculous level. It's almost near movie like when it comes to the animation quality and is considered to be the coolest looking transformation in the franchise to date. See it here in HD.

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