Witchy Precure! -MIRAI DAYS-3

Surprise! Mirai Days is getting episode reviews, and no one is more excited about that than me. Not only is it the direct sequel to one of my favorite seasons, but the previous adult Precure title, Power of Hope: Precure Full Bloom was very good, making me hopeful that this can recapture some of that magic. Interestingly enough, it seems to be using a similar theme: time. That makes a certain amount of sense in a sequel ostensibly rooted in nostalgia, and even more when we consider that Liko and Mirai aged up a bit when they transformed into Cures Magical and Miracle in the original series.

But because they aged up, that would seem to argue against the need to have time be a major thematic element, which makes it particularly interesting that these first three episodes are leaning into it so hard. The original Witchy Precure! also has Ha-chan’s speedy growth (mirrored in new character Hi-chan here), as well as the age-defying headmaster of the magic school, but the way antagonist Ire is using his clock-based powers feels a little different. Rather than turning time backward, he’s focused on the future, predicting it and sending Mirai strange, prophetic dreams and visions about what will happen later which may indicate that he’s trying to guide or force the story down a specific path. Then in episode three, he begins commenting about various pasts, with the final image before the ending theme being a framed photograph of himself as a little boy with a woman who is undoubtedly his relative. Is he interested in driving the future because he can’t change the past?

That’s something that’s beginning to feel very possible, especially when you take these three episodes as a whole. Even if we barely take into account the scene with powerful adult Ha-chan as the heir of Mother Rapapa’s power regressing to her Cure Felice form (Mother Rapapa being a major figure from the story’s distant past), we can see that while Liko has been moving forward, the same isn’t strictly true of Mirai. When the two worlds were separated, Mirai lost what must have felt like so much more than Liko did – she lost Liko and Ha-chan, but she also for all intents and purposes lost Mofurun, the ability to transform, and magic altogether. That’s a lot for anyone to process, and for a young teen, it had to be a crushing weight to deal with.

We see the little ways Mirai tried to hold onto everything most clearly in this episode when we learn that she convinced her parents to leave Liko’s room untouched and began sleeping with her curtains open so that if Liko and Ha-chan came back, she’d be able to see them right away. She never let herself forget as that would mean giving up hope, something she couldn’t face. When the events of the Witchy Precure! finale came to pass, Mirai’s reaction to her reclaimed magic and the return of Mofurun is to become “Maho Girl,” a superheroine who can be reached with the social media tag #helpmewitch. She doesn’t just get cats out of trees, either – in episode one, she rescues an elderly woman from a burning building. Even more telling, Maho Girl’s costume is her old magic school uniform, giving Mirai the illusion of transforming once again. Taken together, it all speaks to Mirai’s deep sense of loss while the cameras were off, as well as the way she may still have felt at least a little abandoned when a return of the train service didn’t bring a return to the old days when she and Liko were always together.

I don’t doubt that Liko also felt the pain of their separation, but she’s the less emotive of the two and always has been. She’s happy to be spending time with Mirai again (and my, do those transformations make me hope they’ll become a couple); she just deals with things differently. To Ire, that may look like Mirai is the weaker of the two, which could be why he’s focusing on her. Like him, she has something he believes she might do anything to get back.

The idea of returning to the past, despite Ire’s focus on the future and even Mirai’s name (meaning “future”), is still in some ways stronger. The Cures’ first seasonal transformations take place in the same spots as the first time they gained new powers, and Ire’s monsters are all giant toys rather than amalgamations of random scenery. Hi-chan is mirroring Ha-chan in a lot of ways (and is named after a precious stone, jade). The costumes might be slightly different, but that pales in comparison to all of the tokens of days gone by that litter the scenes.

Maybe you really can’t go back. But maybe you have to try, in order to be able to move forward.

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Witchy Precure! -MIRAI DAYS- is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.