Anime / Suite Pretty Cure ♪

aka: Suite Precure

Clockwise from left to right: Cure Melody, Cure Rhythm, Cure Beat. In the front: Cure Muse.

"Playing the frantic rhythm, Cure Melody!"

"Playing the tranquil melody, Cure Rhythm!"

"Strumming the heart's beat, Cure Beat!"

"Singing the muse's tune, Cure Muse!"

Let our suite resound! Suite Pretty Cure!"

"Let the harmony of your heart echo!"

The eighth entry in the Pretty Cure franchise. It is preceded by HeartCatch Pretty Cure! and followed by Smile PreCure!.

In the musical world of Major Land, peace is protected by the "Legendary Score" and the Melody of Happiness contained within. On the annual performance of the Melody of Happiness, the Score is stolen by the jealous king of Minor Land, Mephisto, who turns it into a Melody of Sorrow. To stop Mephisto from sucking the happiness from Major Land right then and there, the queen of Major Land, Aphirodite, scatters the Notes of the Score and sends them to Earth. She then instructs Hummy, the Songstress chosen to sing the Melody of Happiness that year, to go to Earth and retrieve the Notes before Mephisto can.

Meanwhile, middle school sophomores and former childhood friends Hibiki Houjou and Kanade Minamino are recovering from yet another fight with each other when they encounter Siren, a former Songstress of Major Land who has defected to Mephisto's side. Siren attempts to take the G-Clefs within their hearts for the Melody of Sorrow, but accidentally triggers an amazing potential, causing the girls to transform into Major World's champions, Pretty Cure.

As Cure Melody and Cure Rhythm respectively, it's now up to Hibiki and Kanade to work with Hummy and gather the Notes of the Legendary Score. However, it's not so simple: the Pretty Cure power is fuelled by The Power of Friendship, and the two former-friends have many, many issues that they need to work out first.

The Pretty Cure Trio is later completed with the arrival of Cure Beat. Throughout the series, they also are joined by Aloof Ally Cure Muse, a mysterious masked fighter who helps out Pretty Cure but claims no affiliation with them.

There is a Time Skip sequel novel for Suite released on November 23, 2016 that happens a year after the show.

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Suite Pretty Cure has examples of:

• Actor Allusion:
  • Hummy is a cute white cat mascot with Sailor Moon's Seiyuu.
  • Megumi Toyoguchi played another character called Siren/Seiren in The Last Story.
• Aerith and Bob:
  • The names of the Major Land royal family... Aphrodite, Mephisto, and Ako. Though it's sometimes presumed that, when the last of these isn't hiding out on Earth with a name that wouldn't draw attention, it's normally written Aco, short for "acoustic".
  • For the cures, Hibiki, Kanade and Ako have traditional Japanese names and then there's Ellen who has an English sounding name.
• Badass Family:
  • In a musical sense. Hibiki's dad is completely immune to the Melody of Sorrow because he believes music should make people happy. Her mother goes a step beyond this and can actually counteract it with her violin. However, Hibiki's dad finally gave in a little against the Negatone in episode 41, though it can be justified that at that point, the Negatones have gotten more powerful for someone like him.
  • The royal family of Major Land. One's a Precure, one was a major villain, one essentially gives the Cures their powers, and the last one give the Big Bad of the series his first defeat.
• Big Damn Movie: Torimodose! Kokoro ga Tsunagu Kiseki no Melody! What happen if the Sole Survivor of Major Land points out the Big Good is the one who turned Major Land's citizens into Fate Worse than Death? And by contrast of most Precure movies, it explicitly deems canon by Word of God, placed between episode 36 and 37. And also serves as foreshadowing; Howling's action in the movie actually has the closest result as Noise's true goal, which then he does so himself in finale arc, than his other minions.
• Book Ends: Both the first and last episodes ends with Transformation sequences.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • The Noise of Evil does this to whoever is wearing the strange headphones. This includes Seiren and even Mephisto.
  • In the sequel novel, Hibiki gets brainwashed by Vanish after using her angst of losing Kanade to possess her and it caused a chain reaction of events that lead to the disappearances of people in Kanon Town.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Rhythm, Melody and Beat do this in episode 30, when they ask their quiz question to the Trio the Minor, Rhythm speaks to the viewer that they can also give the answer.
• Brown Note: Everytime a Negatone produces soundwaves, everyone within range falls into sadness.
• By the Power of Grayskull!: "Let's Play! Pretty Cure Modulation!!"
• Clock Tower: There's one located in the center of Kanon Town, which is used by Siren and Trio the Minor as their Home Base. It is eventually turned into a Negatone by Mephisto in episode 21.
• Covers Always Lie: The poster for The Movie shows both Cure Muse's true form and her masked form, the latter of which never appears once over the course of the film.
• Dancing Theme: They did it again.
• Darker and Edgier: The Suite sequel novel plays this straight. It deals with Hibiki's separation crisis as she plans to move to Germany to continue her music education who starts to feel lonely and unwanted from others (in her perspective at least) including Ako, Kanade and Ellen as they pursued their own dreams. Then we are introduced to a newer Big Bad, Vanish, a swirling black cloud who is much worse than Noise as it had a dark history in Major Land where it started an attack there and once plunged the country into chaos before it was banished for good. It is an entirely different beast of its own nature, since it is remotely unknown even to the Suite Cures and it is behind the mass-disappearances of Kanon's residents. If that is not enough, Hibiki's angst makes her a perfect candidate for Vanish's brainwashing when it uses her sadness. And unlike the prequel, Hibiki doesn't have her Cure powers that is until Pii-chan comes to the rescue to grant her and the rest of her team's powers again, turning the tables against Vanish.
• The Dark Side: The "Noise of Evil". Benefits include the ability to create Monsters Of The Week, a Hive Mind-esque ability to communicate with Mephisto, and a inflated sense of hamminess. Downsides include physical pain when you hear "happy" music, glowing red eyes and an all-round increase in self-absorbed jerkassness.
• Dem Bones: The Negatone monsters are demonic-looking skeletons combined with whatever object is important in a given episode.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • With all the talk of "true friends" and "we're breaking up", episode 8 seems more like a love triangle than it does a tale of someone getting between two friends.
  • The Cross Rods, which combines Melody and Rhythm's Belltiers after both of them became mentally closer.
• "Eureka!" Moment: Hibiki, of all people, has two of them.
  • The first is when she realizes that Mephisto is controlled by someone since he's wearing the same headphones that made Seiren evil.
  • The second is when she noticed that Pii-chan let go of a screw, making her realize that he tried to kill Otokichi and, by extension, that Pii-chan is Noise.
• "Everybody Laughs" Ending: "Cat Paw Mania" from #2, "Wasabi Cupcakes" from #6 and "My Best Friends are Sweets" from #8.
• Evolving Credits: After Cure Beat joins, the opening theme is also remixed to have more of a beat.
  • The opening and second ending adds Cure Muse in episode 38. For the latter, Hummy had been dancing in her place until then, and is relocated in the final product.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Siren being happy to have been called a friend by Hibiki when she transform into a student. Subtle indication about what she really wants.
  • In Episode 13, Mephisto pretty much brainwash Siren into becoming evil again with two headphones. A keen watcher can see that Mephisto wears them as well, signifying that he himself is brainwashed.
• Figure It Out Yourself: The teaching method Dan Houjou uses (even on his own EIGHT YEAR OLD daughter!).
• Food Porn: Anything anyone from the Pastry Club (Kanade in particular) bakes might very well leave your mouth watering. Heck, a Japanese fan tried making the black spider cake from episode 4 in real life, and it came out pretty accurate.
• For Halloween, I Am Going as Myself: Siren/Ellen's costume is a black cat Cat Girl. Not that she didn't already give up her true identity in class...
  • Also, Ako is dressed as a princess in a yellow dress.
• Gotta Catch 'Em All: The Notes of the Legendary Score.
• Gratuitous Italian: Several of the Pretty Cure attacks have this (Passionato Harmony, Musical Heart Arpeggio, Fantastic Piacere etc.). Since a lot of musical terms are in Italian, it actually makes sense.
• Halloween Episode: Episode 37, but it does have plot relevance. Besides it features Cure Muse's moves, there are also Bassdrum and Baritone's Forced Transformation and Falsetto unsealing Noise from the stone.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: [some sort of onomatopoeia] "Episode Name" ~nya!
• Iris Out: This happens in Episode 2 when Kanade shakes Hummy's paw for the first time.
• Lampshade Hanging: Siren comments on how easily Kanade and Hibiki make up in Episode 2.
• Lighter and Softer: Compared to its predecessor, the stakes of the plot are much less lower than a straight up apocalypse. So is the death toll. Its sequel novel, on the other hand, is the complete opposite as it deals with Hibiki's separation angst that makes her an easy candidate for Vanish's brainwashing.
• Magic Skirt: In episode 2, the girls were hanged upside-down from the tree, yet their Precure and school uniform's skirts stayed as if they were standing on the ground.
  • Subverted with the Precure outfit, where their skirts are displaying Magic Skirt physics but their petticoats are actually some kind of puffy shorts.
• Meaningful Name / Theme Naming: The first character in Hibiki and Kanade's surnames are the characters for North and South respectively, while Waon and Seika's have the characters for, respectively, West and East, which led to many fans guessing that they would become Cures later on (see Lying Creator on the Trivia page).
  • Hibiki and Kanade's first names are also significant and fit with the musical theme of the series. The term "hibiki" means a sound, a ring, or an echo. Used as a verb, it can mean to resound/resonate. The term "kanade" means to play or perform, such as with a musical instrument.
  • Ellen and Ako are named after Electric and Acoustic (as in, string instruments) respectively.
• Mid-Season Upgrade: Taken to Lensman Arms Race levels. Melody and Rhythm gain three upgrades over the course of ten episodes: the Belltiers, Belltier Seperation, and Belltier Cross Rods. Then five episodes later Cure Beat joins, essentially acting as a fourth upgrade by joining in with their previous attacks.
  • Trio the Minor get a villainous Mid-Season Upgrade in episode 26.
  • Also subverted when the girls obtain the Healing Chest. Melody tries to use the Crescendo Tone's offered power-up but fails miserably at first because she can't handle it.
  • And then a fourth Cure, to no one's surprise, is added, and Mephisto gets an "upgrade", followed by Falsetto once he's defeated. Lensman Arms Race indeed.
• Monsters of the Week: Negatone, created by corrupting the Notes and turning things in those said monsters.
• Mythology Gag: Has its' own page.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Cure Melody's speech for Noise is basically pointing him that they're fueled by the same source of power: happiness.
• One-Woman Wail: The Melody of Happiness/Sorrow.
• "On the Next Episode of..." Catch-Phrase: "Let the harmony of your heart echo!"
• Pink Means Feminine: The initial flyer for the series went out of its way to point out that both mains wore pink in their Cure outfits, putting "girls' favourite color on full display".
• Poor Communication Kills: Two at the same time in episode 6 — while Hibiki's trying to stand up for Kanade's brother Souta on what he was doing, both she and Kanade ignore Hummy who has found a Note and is trying to tell them about it.
  • This is also the reason we don't see Hibiki and Kanade get along in the first two episodes even though they are childhood friends. Hummy asks Hibiki why that is; and the latter responds that when they began middle school, Kanade was supposed to meet her at the third sakura tree from the school's entrance and never came. The misunderstanding came from the fact that the school has two entrances lined up with sakura trees. Both Hibiki and Kanade were waiting for each other at each entrance unaware of this fact. When they figure it out, they instantly forgive each other. Siren responds to this with the Lampshade Hanging above.
• Pun-Based Title: Suite means "a group of related pieces of music or movements played in sequence." It sounds like sweet, and as it happens, Kanade is in her school's pastry club and her family owns a pastry shop.
• Remember the New Guy?: Kanade's crush, Ouji, is part of a group known as the Aria Academy Princes. During the first few episodes, we're led to believe the group is a quartet, only for a fifth member to come out of nowhere in episode 11. Lampshaded, as even Hibiki is confused.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: Hummy, the Fairy Tones, and the notes from the Legendary Score are cute fairies who help the Cures.
• Ship Tease: Episode 38 is absolutely loaded with Souta/Ako ship tease, although there's been small hints here and there beforehand like the previous episode..
• Shout-Out: Siren's feathery neon-colored outfit in episode 5 is one to the Brazilian carnival. Maybe done on purpose, since the Brazilian carnival was being celebrated in the week the episode aired. The "butterfly-like ribbon" on her chest is also a Mythology Gag to Yes! Pretty Cure 5.
  • Episode 30 has one to Satarakura Jr.'s game show dimension from episode 26 of Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger.
    • And speaking of Gokaiger, when Hibiki dressed up as a pirate in episode 37, one too many Captain Marvelous jokes were made around the fandom.
  • Melody's Precure Music Rondo takes tons of note from Sailor Moon's Moon Tiara Action & Moon Healing Escalation.
  • The show's theme is music and sound. The main character is called Hibiki. You can see where this is going...
  • The 3 rings formed from the Combination of Melody, Rhythm, and Beat's Precure Music Rondo are the same color and in the same order as the rings formed from the Scanning Charge of the default form of a certain Kamen Rider.
  • And Hibiki/Cure Melody isn't the first Toei character to have said name, have music-related powers, and can dual wield, too...
  • Symphogear has taken many names from this series: Hibiki, Kanade, Shirabe, Noise, Maria.
  • Ako Shirabe's design and first name come from Ako Ooza of Thriller Restaurant
• Stealth Pun: Hummy and Siren, the fairies that can sing the Melody of Happiness (or Sorrow), are cats. Typically, caterwauling is defined as particularly awful singing.
• Talking the Monster to Death: Muse did it twice to Mephisto in episode 36. The Cures attempted this to Baritone and Bassdrum in episode 42, but failed as Falsetto quickly re-brainwashed them. And finally the Cures defeated Noise in this way, all while launching every single finishers they have.
• Theme Naming: Musical Theme Naming is all over the place, combined with Location Theme Naming for Hibiki, Kanade, Waon and Seika.
• Transformation Sequence: In addition to the expected ones for the Cures, Trio the Minor get one when they upgrade in episode 26.
• Transformation Trinket: This season's trinket is the Cure Modules, which is activated when a Cure puts a Fairy Tone in its slot.
• Transformation Is a Free Action: Backed up in episode 19 where Siren and the gang watch a video of the Cures transforming.

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