Tropical-Rouge! PreCure Episode 17: Swaying Ocean

Laura is in the hands of the enemy in the seventeenth episode of Tropical-Rouge! PreCure, but she’s not about to sit there and just do nothing. Even if the Witch of Delays does have quite the interesting offer for her.

The Witch of Delays makes Laura an offer

In this episode, the Witch of Delays offers to turn Laura into a human. Laura refuses to rely on her enemy’s power to do so. An opportunity to escape soon presents itself, and Laura is granted a new power.
Laura comes across Pretty Cure in a pretty desperate situation, and that’s when that new power activates.

We get two Zenzen Yarane-das this time around

For the first time, we get two Zenzen Yarane-das in an episode. Which begs the question why haven’t the enemy generals worked together before? It seems like they’d be making a lot more progress in collecting Motivation Power.

Stealthy mermaid

Something I’m glad to see is that Laura proactively tries to escape from the Witch’s mansion. It could have been easy for her to play the distressed damsel, but nope, she’s not like that at all. She wants to get back to her Manatsu, after all.

The Mermaid Queen

This episode even gives us a brief appearance of the Mermaid Queen, who gives Laura something that will prove to be very important a little later on in the episode. If Laura is a “Queen Candidate”, that implies the existence of other candidates, no? Would like to meet them. I also though Laura and the Queen would be related in some way, but judging by the way Laura addresses her, maybe not.

Laura finds Cure Summer in a bit of a pinch

All right, time to talk about the main event of this episode, almost. Just want to quickly say that Manatsu spent quite a lot of time underwater in her untransformed state… Probably shouldn’t think too hard about that.
But, hey, Laura has an outburst of emotions, and the time has finally come.

Cure La Mer

Remember back in the beginning of the season when Laura said mermaids can’t become Pretty Cure? Did anyone actually believe that for a moment? Though I guess there is a technicality at play, but I’ll get to that in due course.
But here she is: Cure La Mer. Following in Ruru’s footsteps of using her last name as her Cure name. I like her design; it brings to mind Sapphire Style from Maho Girls PreCure. Makes sense, considering it was based on mermaids

Cure La Mer’s victory pose is good

I think the build up to and transformation of Laura into Cure La Mer was pretty strong, but her debut battle didn’t really feel that spectacular. Her finishing move does look good, though, and her victory pose got a chuckle out of me.
All right, that technicality I mentioned earlier: Laura’s human now. But she did transform into Cure La Mer as a mermaid… or did she become human the instant she gained legs?
For simplicity’s sake, let’s just say she’s the first mermaid Cure (not to be confused with Cure Mermaid from Go! Princess PreCure, who has a mermaid theme). We’ve had aliens, androids, fairies… all sorts becoming Cures. We’re just adding mermaid to that ever expanding list.

Good episode. Kind of wanted more from Cure La Mer’s first battle, but everything else surrounding that was strong enough to make up for it.
I definitely prefer this kind of build up towards a new Cure, as opposed to one just showing up out of almost nowhere – looking at you, Cure Earth. This has been developing for a while now, and it’s a delight to see that Laura will actually be able to contribute more than just sitting back and reclaiming lost Motivation Power.
Laura’s feelings for Manatsu being the trigger for the transformation was the icing on the cake, too. Well, that’s how I’m choosing to interpret it, anyways.

Next time, Laura’s first day of school.