Sing me a bawdy song, make me merry

Toei has released some info and pictures for their newest Precure installment: DokiDoki Precure! So now it's time for my yearly tradition of mocking the Precure staff's abject lack of imagination while lobbing popcorn at the screen.

First of all, I had to take a moment to hurl at the title. It's just a pet peeve of mine, but I absolutely loathe it when shows include the word "doki" in their title and/or episode titles because a) it's way overused, to the point that some of these characters should be suffering heart failure from all the doki-doki-ing their shows are doing, and b) shows with "doki" in the title are practically guaranteed to be nauseatingly sugary girls' shows or nauseatingly sugary moe garbage. We're not getting off to a good start here, Toei.

But let's talk about the characters. Just as Smile Precure's cast looked suspiciously similar to the Yes Precure Five cast, with Doki it appears that we're cribbing from Fresh, with a side order of Suite. Our heroine is a blonde who wears pink, and her posse is composed of a) the love child of Cure Pine and Cure Muse wearing Cure Sunshine's outfit, b) the love child of Cure Berry and Cure Beat, and c) the typical long-blue-haired chick descended from Cures White, Aqua, and Beauty. I'm also amused to note that the heroine has pink hair in her civilian form, but blonde hair in her magical form, though I guess both of those colors would look equally unrealistic to a Japanese person. However the biggest thing they copied from Fresh is the playing-card-suit motif (although Fresh probably ripped it from Shugo Chara). The heroine's theme is hearts (natch), and her blue friend's theme is diamonds, just like Cure Berry.

And of course their personality types match their appearances pretty neatly. Our heroine is headstrong and altruistic, although unusually she's actually good at schoolwork instead of being a complete airhead. Judging by her poses, the Pine/Muse lovechild is already looking to be the cutesy moe-appeal one just like Peace and, well, Muse. (And ugh, she's doing that awful pigeon-toed saggy-knee thing, save me!) The blue one is the sum of her predecessors, being the quiet, level-headed, brainy one who stands for intellect and is on the student council, though much to my surprise, she's not a lonely rich girl. And the purple side-ponytail one is, wait for it, "a cool and beautiful super idol and extremely popular fashionista" who "dislikes fighting alongside others, preferring to stand alone." Ding-ding-ding! You have just won the purple lottery! If there was a threeway between Angel Salvia, Mew Zakuro, and Cure Beat, this chick would be the result. Though I like how she has tomboy-short hair in her civilian form; usually the aloof onee-sama type has long hair.

Fortunately, the girls' names are significantly less stupid than last year's. I did have to laugh when I saw that the heroine's name is Cure Heart, because of course it is! Most MG shows can't stop banging on about the power of heart, so may as well just cut to the chase and name your protagonist "Heart." However Cure Diamond and Cure Rosetta are both lovely and reasonably dignified names, and Cure Sword is downright badass. There's never been a Cure named after a weapon before, and apparently her main attack is called "Holy Sword" which sounds awesome. Wait a sec, Cure Sword harbors guilt over a past failure and she's a foreigner on Earth who originally hails from the magic world? Okay we're definitely doing a throwback to Angel Salvia here. (That's not a complaint — I'm actually kind of charmed that Doki is taking notes from a property as old and forgotten as Wedding Peach.)

Bitching aside, I do quite like the character designs for Doki, especially the swirly style of the hairdos and the spiky white accents on the outfits and the asymmetry. The designs may be predictable but at least they're well-executed.

I have to say, I'm surprised that Toei revealed all the character designs right off the bat, seeing as how Heartcatch and Suite tried to keep us in suspense about who'd turn out to be a Cure. I wonder if there'll be any DMGs in this iteration. Probably not, since the playing-card motif only allows for four posse-members.