You can't accuse the Pretty Cure franchise of resting on its laurels. While there are distinct similarities between all iterations of the long-running Magical Girl franchise, recent years have done their best to maintain the tone while still innovating the individual series. Delicious Party Precure gave us Black Pepper, a Tuxedo Mask-like character who fought beside the girls, Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure introduced a transforming boy in Cure Wing, and now Wonderful Precure! gives us the first mascot character to become not just a Cure but the primary Cure. You could make an argument for Ha-chan/Cure Felice from Maho Girls Precure! as the actual first (and I'd certainly entertain that theory). Still, she's undeniably the mid-season Cure, where Cure Wonderful is the first magical girl we get, and for a short time, the only Cure. Perhaps the best way to think of it is that Cure Felice walked so that Cure Wonderful could pounce on things and run around enthusiastically.

And Cure Wonderful is nothing if not enthusiastic. As long-time viewers of the franchise will have noted, a more serious series is almost always followed by a lighter one; in terms of legal English-subbed releases, a good example is how the silly and bubbly Tropical-Rouge! Precure followed the dark Healin' Good Precure. Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure also dealt with some difficult topics, and in its first twelve episodes, Wonderful Precure! is distinctly fluffier. That's not just due to the presence of animals in the story but also how the characters interact with the monsters. Rather than fighting the Garugaru, which are gigantic, evil versions of their base animal, Cures Wonderful and Friendy instead play with them, chasing and ultimately hugging them once they've been worn down. Even when they get a more dramatic dual attack in the Friend Liberale, the effect is not to harm the Garugaru but to swaddle it so that it can't hurt the Cures when they go in for the hug. They fight with love, using the warmth and power of their affection to help the monsters return to their true selves.

This fits the Cures' backgrounds nicely and also explains the differences in how Cure Nyammy, who first appears in episode twelve, fights. Iroha's parents are both in the business of caring for animals; her mother is a veterinarian, and her father is an animal groomer. The family home also houses their practices, so Iroha has grown up around the idea that animals need kindness and gentleness when they're in trouble; the flashbacks to how her parents taught her to help Komugi when she initially found the abandoned pup help to drive this home. Komugi, a small, ornamental breed of dog classed as a "toy" spaniel, is bouncy and curious and emphatically not a hunting dog, although they're known as "gun dogs," meaning retrievers. That means her breed doesn't hunt but retrieves what has already been killed. Retrievers have what are known as "soft mouths," meaning that they can carry prey without damaging it, and that's carried over here in the way that Cure Wonderful doesn't want to hunt or hurt the Garugaru. It also feeds into common stereotypes of dogs versus cats, where cats are seen as playing with their prey in an entirely different sense, something we see when Cure Nyammy turns out to have much more violent (yet typical for magical girls) methods.

Appropriately for a series appearing shortly after the franchise's twentieth anniversary, Wonderful Precure! feels like a throwback to the days when a duo of magical girls was more common than a team. I mentioned Maho Girls Precure! earlier, and this follows that formula more than it does the four series that directly precede it: for most of this first course, there are only two Cures, even though the opening theme teases two more. Friendy and Wonderful are a tight-knit team, able to understand each other even when emotions like jealousy get in the way. Cure Nyammy and her very different approach to fighting feels like a throwback to the days of Sailor Moon when Uranus and Neptune first came in and proclaimed themselves uninterested in cooperating with the main team. It feels like the series may be setting up for two relatively separate teams, which would be an exciting angle, especially given the strong themes of friendship embraced by the Pretty Cure franchise. But it would also be appropriate, given that part of Iroha and Komugi's strength is their bond as human and dog, and we have seen how much Mayu depends on her cat Yuki as a way of coping with her crippling anxiety.

The other interesting piece is Satoru, a classmate and friend of Iroha and later Komugi. (A dog attending school goes just as well as expected.) Satoru and his pet rabbit, Daifuku, do have the potential to become Cures themselves later in the series, but even without that, Satoru plays an important role in these episodes. He's the brains of the operation, able to counteract Komugi's puppyish enthusiasm and help Iroha see things more clearly. His presence is reassuring to Mey Mey, the girls' main contact in the requisite magical land they're trying to save. Satoru's crush on Iroha may be completely under her radar, but he provides an oasis of calm in these episodes, even if Daifuku constantly has a look on his face as if he's contemplating how to pay his mortgage.

Wonderful Precure! could move too slowly for some viewers. It's taking its time revealing who the big bad pulling the strings is, and the second batch of Cures not being part of the story yet is unusual and could be annoying if you're more used to the faster pace of other franchise entries. But these episodes are full of unmitigated joy and the delight of a bond between a person and their pet, and there are some very nice visual details, such as how Iroha's father doesn't look traditionally masculine and the way that Cures Wonderful and Friendy wear each other's colors in their ribbons. It's a lighter break after Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure, and one that is honestly a delight to watch.