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Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I figured we’d check back in with Hana and the gang, as our brave Precures charge towards the conclusion of their grand adventure. Over the past forty-some episodes, our heroes have made lifelong friends, discovered key facets of themselves, and even fallen in love (with a hamster). And through all these trials, Hugtto has continued to offer charming and poignant reflections on aging, teaching both its heroes and its viewers to look towards adulthood with ambition and hope.

Most recently, we’ve been tying up the loose ends of our heroes’ various personal journeys, starting with first Homare and then Saaya. If the pattern holds, I’m looking forward to some hard rocking Emiru adventures, as she continues to break free from the expectations of her grandfather and embrace her own guitar-shredding identity. Let’s see what awaits us in a fresh episode of Hugtto Precure!

Episode 45

Oh right, I totally forgot that Santa Claus fell out of the sky at the end of the last episode. Well, scratch all my predictions, it looks like we’re doing a Christmas episode!

Yes Hugtan, ebryone for Crismas indeed

And of course Hana immediately begins accosting him for presents. Bless our girl

“At this rate, Christmas might need to be canceled!” Well this certainly sounds like a job for some Precures

Honestly, I couldn’t be happier to be diving into some episodic season-appropriate nonsense. The longer we can delay the departure of Lulu, the better

“Hugtto All Together! Merry Christmas!”

Back at Harry’s shop, Santa explains that he must have caught a cold from his reindeer. I love how unquestioningly both Santa and our main cast have accepted this state of affairs; I wonder if Precures get invited to the mythical creature holiday parties

Hana is determined to help in any way she can. That girl is not skipping her goddamn presents

“Can I fly? Look at me, I’m a mouse!” “Ah, he admitted it!”

And then Doctor Traum shows up! This episode keeps getting better

Oh my god Doctor Traum. He arrives equipped with a mechanical reindeer, sleigh, and even an elf suit for himself, having clearly been waiting all his life to pull a The Santa Clause

And of course, Saaya finds this ominous metal reindeer adorable

Having realized they haven’t advertised the Mirai Pad in half a dozen episodes or so, our girls swiftly transform into… present wrapping costumes? I’m afraid that’s not an actual job, girls, it’s really just a bonus expectation when you work retail during the holidays. My own present wrapping expertise comes courtesy of a stint at Barnes & Noble back when I first got out of college

They’re individually decorating each present’s wrapping paper!? Girls, there are several billion children in the world, this pace is not sustainable

Elsewhere, George is also painting a vast field of flowers, making for another unnerving tether between him and Hana

Oh my god, the immediate shift from happy distraction to annoyance when Traum calls Lulu’s name. Kinda funny how Lulu’s humanity comes through most clearly in her frustration with her father

Traum confesses to Harry that he’s really just here to make Lulu smile. His shifting role has been one of Hugtto’s greatest late-season treasures; there is no tidy solution here, no quick fix that can resolve his rift with Lulu in the space of an episode. Mending a broken relationship like this takes time and dedication, and I greatly appreciate Hugtto’s dedication to articulating the nuance and magnitude of this task

“I’m allowed to dream, aren’t I?” Traum’s position also expands the scope of Hugtto’s core themes, similarly to the reinventions of our previous Criasu expats. The future is no more a steady, unchanging vista than the present; Traum is still working to improve and change himself, still carrying hope that he might make up for the mistakes of the past. To say Traum can’t change would be to agree with George’s diagnosis

Saaya’s theme color on full display as she receives a blue-wrapped present from her blue-haired mother in her blue-painted room, opening it to reveal a blue fountain pen

“I think that all the experience you had as an actress, putting yourself in other’s shoes, will be helpful to you as a doctor!” Saaya’s mother emphasizes how important it is to try things, even if we’re uncertain they’re our true destiny, even if we ultimately decide they’re not right for us. Everything we do serves as experience to enrich us and expand our possibilities, so the most important thing is simply that you do something, that you reach out and grasp life’s opportunities

Saaya and Homare graciously stay at Harry’s, letting Hana and Emiru enjoy the sleigh ride

Meanwhile, Lulu struggles to cook a curry from the heart, generously assisted by the entire Hugman Clan

Our contented post-Criasu characters are contrasted against Gelos, who’s still desperate to maintain her fading youth

“I want a job just like Santa’s where I can make everyone smile!” The adoption of Christmas as a Japanese holiday tradition is a funny thing. The secularization of the holiday has actually made it a more humanist celebration, seemingly divorced from either the religious or capitalist American interpretations. By removing the holiday from its original context, Japan has actually kinda improved upon it

The former Criasu members and our Precures are all prepped and ready for a Christmas party when Gelos shows up, ready to start some shit

Traum dives in front of a blast aimed at Lulu!

“I’m out of time,” Gelos admits. The antithesis of the hope embodied by Criasu’s former employees, that there is always time for personal reinvention and new happiness. Gelos is trapped by her certainty that life ends the moment your first ambitions fail, a self-made cage that imprisons all too many anxious adults. Given that perspective, it only makes sense that stasis would be preferable to inexorable decline

Well, at least her Oshimaeda form looks badass. Gelos has always had a phenomenal sense of style

Gelos begins to freeze time all across the city! Oh no, it’ll be Christmas forever! Wait, I’m conflicted now

“No matter how hard you try, only the young are cherished! As time goes by, our colors fade… if that’s my future…” Gelos’ words sting because there’s truth in them, at least in a cultural sense. Youth is heavily prized in popular culture, even more so today than in eras past, and attempting to find a happy path towards aging when those are all your external cues can be a dispiriting task. That’s why people need more than culture at large to console them – they need communities, and communities are also decaying in our atomized modern era. Hugtto’s town actually represents a sort of fading dream in that regard, a place where you actively feel a sense of kinship and common cause with your neighbors, where regular public events ensure a feeling of communal responsibility and hope for the future

Appropriately, it is Gelos’ assistants Tamuki and Jinjin who block the next blow, demonstrating that Gelos still does have a community that cares about her

“What food it is doesn’t matter, as long as we can be together.” Gelos sought meaning and satisfaction in climbing distant mountains of professional achievement, when the essence of happy adulthood was right beside her

“We can grow old together.” The trick is finding joy in that future, not despair at the end of youth

Oh right, Santa was also here. This episode sure went some places

And Traum at last receives curry from Lulu, the most fundamental gesture of familial love

And Done

Ah, that was a fantastic episode! I wasn’t really expecting a tearjerker out of the Hugtto Christmas Special, but the second half of this episode was absolutely Precure at its finest. I obviously enjoy the adventures of Hana and the gang, but as someone who’s grappled with several renditions of the Criasu employees’ anxieties, it’s the troubles of Hugtto’s wandering adults that speak to me most directly. Gelos’ fears are totally understandable, and in the context of George’s fatalistic perspective, it’s little wonder that she possessed no hope for finding happiness beyond the end of her youth. Life changes, and we can’t expect to see ourselves or others in the same way as the years pass by. But with trusted friends and a supporting community, it is indeed possible to see something glorious in aging, in savoring old memories while creating new ones with the people we love.

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