After ages of deliberating, proroguing and a ton of effort, we present the first episode of our new secret super-duper project:
Thank you, thank you, you're too kind.
This is a project I've personally wanted to do for a while - a rarity in my case being a magical girl series I actually find enjoyable. It's got a great team dynamic, manages to be campy enough to be enjoyable above and beyond it's simplicity, and even manages to get a bit of manservice in. And really, what more do you need?
Special thanks go to Rephira, our translator from Twilight Revelations, who very graciously agreed to translate for us. Without him we wouldn't be here now, so a huge thanks to him for all his hard work and hopefully a lot more to come!
Of course, thanks also go to all the other staff - Lobster, my fellow miscreant of mirth and the real backbone of the project, ever dependant and always capable. AdamH and Rook, who've done a fantastic editing job above and beyond the call of duty to ensure everything is just so. Take, who gave us his blessing and has kept a guiding eye over us and made sure all goes well. And, of course, our wonderful QC staff who ensured that even once the ep was done there was still plenty more to do.
PC5 is a show that's been partially done before, but never completed. A few groups tried to resume where their predecessors left off, and I believe attempts are once again in the works to do, but we wanted to give this show our personal flavour and touch and get the whole thing done from start to finish (hopefully!)
So with that out the way, let's talk about the show and show off a few notes about the episode.
Episode Notes:
- Our protagonist's name, Yumehara Nozomi. Yumehara means 'a field of dreams', whilst Nozomi means 'wish' or 'hope'. The show is pretty blatant about it's names and it's pretty easy to tell who's going to be doing what from the name meanings. Hence I think I'll stagger them and give you the rest of the names as they become relevant. Maybe one an episode! How does that sound? Excellent.
The poster showing Urara early in the episode is a pun that, I thought, would only work in Japanese. Her name 'urara' is used in the adjective 'urarakana' meaning 'bright' or 'glorious'. Obviously, I thought, that would be pretty hard to replicate in English - but then I found the rather brilliant word 'auroral', a synonym for 'bright'. Hence, we combine the two and get 'auraral' - which, whilst having nothing to do with ears, does preserve both the meaning and the pun even if it does look a bit silly. XD
The script Urara is carrying, for 'Cure Heart 9', is attributed to a station called 'TV Yuuhi'. This is a pun on TV Asahi, the station that PreCure airs on.
A tanuki is a type of raccoon dog native to Japan. In folklore they were often considered to be possessive of human-like qualities, with some believing the shapeshifting tanuki was a tsukumogami - an average inanimate object that becomes sentient upon having existed for a hundred years. Yay folklore.
The pun Nozomi has calling Coco 'burned Cocoa' is based on his verbal tick. As he ends all his sentences with "-coco" anyway, when he says his name it becomes "Coco-coco" and Nozomi thinks he says "Koge-cocoa" - burned Cocoa. The more you know.
And aren't Lobster's effects for Dream's abilities absolutely gorgeous? Round of applause there I think.
Purely from a subbing standpoint, I hate that goddamn line about coconuts in the ED. It makes no goddamn sense, it's a poor metaphor even in Japanese and it just looks ridiculous in English yet it's so literal you can't do anything about it. *rages angrily!*