YMMV / Yes! Pretty Cure 5

• Anti-Climax Boss: Desparaiah. Kawarino poses a lot more threat and stake than her, really. She attempts to break just Cure Dream, and when that backfires, she started freaking out and one befriending by Nozomi later, she pulls a Heel–Face Turn. And that's just half the final episode.
• Awesome Art: While tempered by the frenquent Off-Model, Yes was the first season to be produced in high-definition, so the artwork takes a much more vibrant look compared to previous seasons.
• Broken Base: Some fans who feel the franchise went downhill often blame this series in particular, due to what some perceive as a higher level of Merchandise-Driven items found throughout the series, as well as making a somewhat more traditional magical girl show with a core team of 5.
• Complete Monster: In this formidale two-year tale of butterflies and dreams, two of their foes go so far as to show off their stuff:
  • Season 1: Kawarino works for Despariah, but he ends up being much worse than she is. Kawarino enjoys manipulating people and crushing their dreams just because he can. The Nightmare organization may never have been a nice place, but Bloody, Kawarino's former superior, notes that Nightmare at least had teamwork before he took charge. Kawarino claims to be working for Despariah's immortality, but this seems to be just an excuse to spread despair. Kawarino mind rapes the Pretty Cure with his despair masks to turn them into Nightmare's slaves. Kawarino then starts giving his minions the black mask, which gives them a power-up at the cost of their minds. When Hadenya and Bloody refuse to wear it, he shoves it on them anyway. Kawarino blasts Bunbee off a building when he tries to leave Nightmare. It's revealed that Kawarino was the one who tricked Nuts into opening the gates to the Palmier Kingdom, meaning he was responsible for its destruction and all its citizens becoming brainwashed employees of Nightmare.
  • Yes! Precure 5 GO!GO!: The Director of Eternal collects treasures and valuables from all the worlds, keeping everything of value for himself only. His collection includes various living creatures frozen in stasis, precious objects stolen from people, and anything else he finds valuable. In particular, the Director wishes to acquire Flora from the Cure Rose Garden for her beauty. To the Director, anything that holds no value—and only he gets to decide what has value—must be destroyed, including humanity, friendship, love, and life itself. When the Director goes to Earth, he levels the Pretty Cure's school because he sees it as worthless. He kills two loyal minions, one of whom loves him, when he sees no more use for them. Upon arriving at the Cure Rose Garden, the Director starts to turn it into a wasteland, which severely damages Earth, the Palmier Kingdom, and the other kingdoms in the process. Flora tries to help him see the infinite possibilities of life with a flower seed, but he considers them worthless and continues his rampage until he is defeated.
• Contested Sequel: The season after the first, Yes Pretty Cure 5 GoGo!, while still having some fans, is met with a bit more criticism on the whole, with many feeling it was a needless sequel with not enough connections to the original season, as well as being even more Merchandise-Driven then the first season, and is often seen as a form of Seasonal Rot for this continuity. GoGo! had slightly higher merchandise sales, yet it tanked compared to the original series TV ratings so badly, Toei has never made a sequel season to any continuity of the franchise since then. In a way, Fresh Pretty Cure! was made because Toei noticed how people felt tired of the core team of 5, and wanted to refresh the series afterwards. This was also because the staff behind this series was getting tired of being with the series for 5 years straight and new blood was needed, and had Fresh Pretty Cure! failed financially, the franchise would have had its plug pulled then and there.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Bunbee, who started as a Card-Carrying Villain and the Nightmare Group's Dragon but became somewhat of a Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain after Kawarino was introduced. His popularity ensured his survival into the sequel — where he gets hired by Eternal, the new Big Bad organization- and his Promotion to Opening Titles.
  • Amongst the main team, for some reason Urara tends to be the most popular team member. She might have started the whole trend of 'Yellow Precures are probably going to be the most popular of the bunch'.
  • The Dark Pretty Cure 5, despite only appearing in one movie, remain beloved dark counterparts to this day, especially Dark Dream.
  • Masuko Mika the Intrepid Reporter became this thanks to her outgoing personality and her few episodes providing a fun change of pace.
• Fan Nickname: Most of these were more prevalent in earlier years of the fandom, but have been phased out.
  • Nozomi: Donut (for Cure Dream’s ring-shaped odangos)… that is, until they actually introduced a character called Donut.
  • Rin: Cure Rogue, Agunimon-chan. Crap. Now she’s going to hurt us.
  • Urara: Cream Horn (for Cure Lemonade’s hair), Cure Pine-Sol, Urarararara.
  • Karen: Babaa, Honoka Bitchy Edition.
  • Komachi: Mama, Retasu
  • Chocola (from the second movie): Cure Chibi-Moon
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In North America, this part of the franchise is not wildly beloved like Futari wa Pretty Cure or HeartCatch Pretty Cure!, but in Italy, these seasons along with Fresh Pretty Cure! were a favorite among many fans, and scored some of the best ratings on RAI 2.
• Good Bad Translation: Karen's attack catchphrase can be translated as, "The rock-crushing power of a young girl's heavy flow." For obvious reasons the fansubbers went with something different, but the literal version survived long enough to undergo Memetic Mutation.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • So Coco, voiced by Takeshi Kusao, goes with the alias 'Kokoda Kouji'. Meanwhile, Kusao has played Ky Kiske who occasionally tend to yell "Koko da!". This makes Coco's choice of alter ego name a bit more hilarious.
  • The voice actor pair of Nozomi and Rin (and Rin acting like a caretaker for Nozomi's clumsiness) seemed normal in its airing date. That is, until the former got casted as the son of a ninja from a long-running mainstream show. Then the trope starts to take effect full time.
  • Episode 34's Pinky is named Cappy, who naturally wears a top hat.
• Ho Yay: Coco and Natsu.
  • Bunbee and Scorp. Then the latter dies, his last words are "Sayonara, Bunbee". Bunbee isn't even in the scene.
  • Female versions:
    • Karen and Milk/Kurumi.
    • Nozomi and Rin.
    • Urara and Nozomi.
    • Rin and Karen.
    • Karen and Komachi.
    • Komachi and Urara.
• Memetic Badass: Cure Mint, thanks to her battle against Hadenya.
• Memetic Mutation: Very much so, like the other seasons before it.
• Moral Event Horizon
  • Girinma crosses it when he turns Urara's memento of her deceased mom into a Kowaina. Considering the importance of dreams in this series, though, it's possible that he crossed it even earlier—in the very first episode, even!—by mocking Coco's dream in a most callous fashion.
  • The Director of Eternal crosses it when he calls life worthless.
  • Shadow crosses it by killing off The Dragon who's gaining her humanity and then calling her useless and dying like a dirty traitor.
  • Kawarino goes over the line when he backstabs his former superior Bloody just because he 'served his purpose' of seeing the Dream Collet completed and sends him to the depths of Hell. He gets his comeuppance when Bloody ends up dragging him down with him. You can also point to him forcing a black mask on Hadenya, knowing full well that it will kill her if she loses and despite her claiming she doesn’t need it.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Coco and Nuts might have their fans, but ask anyone about them and they'll most likely respond with "they're the guys that engaged in Interspecies Romances with the then-underaged Nozomi and Komachi". When it was confirmed that they, along with Syrup, would be returning for Otona Pretty Cure '23, many either blocked them out of their announcements and focus only on Syrup returning or wonder if they'll face comeuppance for their infamous romance phases in any capacity. Many wishing for the latter wound massively disappointed when not only did the narrative brought back the Coco and Nozomi romance, but doubled down on it when the two became married in the finale.
  • Despite all of her character development, it's difficult for people to see Milk and not think back to how much of a Jerkass to One she was to Nozomi in the first season. Any memetic depiction of the Yes! 5 team will always call back to her unnecessary cruelty in some capacity.
• Periphery Demographic: Adult males. Then again, given that there was a "marketing" paper that listed the "main target" as 4-to-12-year-old girls and 16-to-35-year-old men, this is an arguable subversion.
• Presumed Flop: Fresh Pretty Cure! saved the franchise from having its plug pulled, and for a long time the Western fandom extrapolated from this that GoGo! had poor sales and ratings that made it a near-Franchise Killer. While its viewership ratings fell short of its competitors and the concept of an Immediate Sequel Series would never again come to the main series, the season actually earned decent merchandise revenue and the whole Yes! series is popular enough in Japan to get both an appearance in the Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure movie and an adult-focused spinoff over a decade after ending. Fresh saved the franchise less in the sense that GoGo! was especially damaging to the brand and more in the sense that its success confirmed to Toei that Pretty Cure had the potential to be a profitable Long Runner like Super Sentai and Kamen Rider.
• Questionable Casting: Casting Takeshi Kusao, as a cute little fluffy animal fairy when it's painfully clear that he can't do a cute fairy voice.
• The Scrappy:
  • Some fans really dislike Milk for her heavy tsuntsun tendencies towards Nozomi and tendency to get underfoot and cause trouble for Pretty Cure, especially around the time of her debut.
  • Some fans also violently despise Coco's fairy form for his nails-on-a-chalkboard voice. Coco, as a whole, has also been blasted for his canon relationship with Nozomi, despite himself being an adult and Nozomi being a teenager.
• Shipping
  • Die for Our Ship: Coco and Nuts, just for being male, and before Nuts had an implied relationship with anyone; also, Crepe, once she was announced to be betrothed to Coco and thus get in the way of both the canon ship and the yaoi fangirls' favourite ship.
  • Fan-Preferred Couple: Coco and Natsu was so popular at the time that the Sayonara, Zetsubou-Sensei anime had featured a parody of it. It was the first notable sign of a male slash fandom in the franchise.
  • Foe Yay Shipping: Milky Rose and Anacondy, for a scene where Milky tries to engage her in combat, but Anacondy grabs her wrist and pulls her to be only a few centimeters from her face.
  • Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Fans have, in all seriousness, paired Nozomi with just about every character in the show and more.
  • Portmanteau Couple Name: CocoNozo, Coconuts, NutsKoma, and ShiroUra are the most commonly used ones.
  • Screw Yourself: There's support out there for Nozomi/Dark Dream. In-universe, while the others' inner selves berate them, Urara's Enemy Within flirts with her.
  • Ship Mates: Virtually any pairing!
  • Toy Ship: Since the actual children play a very small role in both seasons, the closest thing to this you can find in the main cast is Syrup and Urara.
• Shocking Moments: Meta example. The sudden announcement that Yes! 5 would be getting a second sequel, this time bringing the Cures into adulthood, was something that caught the entire community off guard, due to Toei never exploring sequels since (ironically) Yes 5! GoGo!, as well as the studio never entertaining the idea of spin-offs in order to focus on the latest season currently airing, and how the Cures are simple Not Allowed to Grow Up in every future appearance they make. The fact that this was announced alongside a sequel to Maho Girls Pretty Cure! makes this a shared sentiment among fans of that season as well.
  • In the final trailer, there's one considering Pretty Cure's habit of only using lesbian subtext. In one scene, Kurumi is shown looking up at Karen with her head in her lap, neither of them with a care in the world, both of them on a bed, strongly implying that, as adults, Milk and Kurumi are a couple.
• Squick: While Coco/Nozomi is portrayed as a good deal healthier than teacher/student relationships would be in real life — the teacher-to-student and Precure-to-fairy power imbalances arguably even each other out, and there's a clear foundation of mutual respect there that's hard to find in most canon shoujo relationships even between peers — a lot of people still despise the ship and Coco himself because of the squick factor.
• Tear Jerker: Shining Cure Dream and Mushiban's goodbye in the Yes! Pretty Cure 5 GoGo! Movie.
  • Dark Dream's death in the first movie.
• The Un-Twist: Milk is Milky Rose! Shock!
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: It has its own page here
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Go Go!'s opening has a whole section dedicated to the Cures being highlighted in newspapers, videos circling around the internet, cellphones and even subway train's screens and adverts, culminating in a shot of the entire group (minus Milk Rose) standing atop of a building in a brightly lit city at night. One would be forgiven for believing the Cures would be discoevered by the public at large and the writing would take a turn after their big reveal. Instead, that section is only a foreshadow for a single episode that has no ramifications whatsoever in the overall narrative.
  • Another wasted opportunity with that segment is, once again, Masuko Mika's absence. The segment has several shots of faceless school girls wearing the same uniform as our protagonists, with the very first shot of them being in front of a computer with a camera by its side, implying there is a journalist group investigating the appearance of the Cures. Now, who would that description fit perfectly? Unfortunately, not only is said episode an inconsequential filler, Masuko isn't even present when it takes place!
  • Another addition to make is that the girls, upon seeing the giant Hoshiina that Bunbee created was attacking the city, decide to, instead of finding a seclude place to transform before confronting the monstrosity, rush to the monster in their civilians form and only then transform while loads of cameras and witness can see them. Despite this, no one knows who they are by the end, and Urara even does her live coverage of the event the episode was about without a hitch.
  • To add salt to the injury, the second ending shows Masuko getting close to Cure Lemonade for a photo before the other Cures join in on the frame with all seven of them smiling together.
  • They didn't waste a perfect good plot, they wasted SEVERAL, given the ramifications this episode could have had!
• Values Dissonance: The Teacher/Student Romance in this series raises many eyebrows in the Western fandom, not unlike the situation with Cardcaptor Sakura.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Shadow from The Movie is a Creepy Crossdresser, but no one's quite sure what he's crossdressing as. From a brief overview of the fandom, the women tend to believe he's a man, and the men tend to believe he's a woman. To wit, the voice behind Shadow is Romi Park, they act and dresses flamboyantly and even kisses the Dream Collet, but has well-toned muscles and no boobs whatsoever. Confused yet?

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