Welcome to Victory Script, a world dedicated to reviewing the best and worst moments of anime and video games.

Victory Script - Nao's Precious Bonds With Family

An example of really well done emotion from Episode 42 of Smile Precure - Nao's precious bonds with family.

Nao's mother is hospitalised while delivering her seventh child, Nao being the oldest, takes charge in looking after the siblings and decides to make a curry for everyone, simple sweet Shojo stuff.
Missing an apple from the recipe, two of her siblings offer to get it for Nao only for them to be captured by the witch villain Majorina in order to lure out Cure March, Nao along with the rest of the family find Majorina and seeing no choice in the matter Nao transforms into Cure March despite it revealing her secret in front of her family.
Cure March struggles with the Akanbe monster prompting Nao's family to defend her which only angers Majorina more as she goes into her younger form and fights Cure March head on as she to powers up, March getting more angered attempts her new attack but it fails to do anything to the Akanbe, Majorina then uses the moment to attack her siblings in an attempt to kill them, March completely has a mental breakdown as she helplessly watches the attack happen, thankfully the rest of Smile Precure show up to save them, the team wrap up by defeating the Akanbe forcing Majorina to retreat. The episode ends with Nao welcoming her newest sibling into the world.
Two Takeaways from this episode.
1. It's a major testament to the voice talent of Inoue Marina for her performance as she absolutely nails the distress that Nao went through and double the praise to the animation team for making that scene so effective. What really sells the scene is the fact that Nao is in so much shock it takes quite a few seconds for herself to click that her siblings are okay, even while her siblings are hugging her, she's still clearly shaking; for a season of Precure that is traditionally sillier, when they do go serious they absolutely nail it.
2. At the same time, I miss when Precure were capable of being serious and really making the effort to push the direction into situations that may force it's target audience to grow up just that little bit, too often over the last few seasons they fall short of delivering the story often being too accepting of a quick resolution.

Next time on Victory Script
Beyblade

Victory Script - Search for the Virtual Idol

Welcome to Victory Script where we dissect the interesting episodes of anime throughout the ages, starting with Burn Up W episode 2 - Search for the Virtual Idol.

It starts with resident pervert cop Yuji talking to a virtual idol named Maria who tells him that she's going away, the reality is that her A.I is being downloaded into an android in order to transport her data to the villains in order to distribute the virtual drug, meanwhile the ring leader is approached by underworld investors but decides to utilize an android bodyguard to prove her point.
With all this going on, Rio's forever empty bank account forces her to try and sell her underwear but to no avail, Rio forcing Yuji to deal with bill collectors chasing Rio.
Word comes to Warrior about the Maria case as she's gone missing, Maria sets up a ransom for her own kidnapping as she's forced to use a body she's not used to.
Knowing that the android bodyguard is after Maria, Warrior sets up the exchange with Nanvel introduced to setup a mecha named El Huggante for heavy firepower to deal with the attack android.
The actual exchange doesn't go to plan as faulty equipment plagues Rio and Nanvel leading to both androids being destroyed, the episode ends with Maria's A.I stuck in El Huggante.
Three takeaways from this episode.
1. The high level creepiness of having to sell underwear to perverts, keep in mind Rio had to pretend to be a high schooler for a higher price, this was a thing back in the 90s but I'm not even going to attempt to find out if its still a thing today.
2. The fact that the A.I was built to smuggle the Virtual drug draws an interesting parallel between what Maria is being used for and what A.I today is being used for in the crypto market, there is quite alot of overlap there.
3. As early as 1996, there were already parodies of Eva unit 1, as El Huggante is a heavy, poorly functioning version of the Eva unit, Burn Up would later do an actual full parody of Evangelion in sequel series Burn Up Excess.

Next time on Victory Script
Smile Precure

Victory Script Reboot

I've come to a massive decision regarding Victory Script, please read if you regularly follow any of my posts.
1. I will no longer be doing fictional content.
2. Due to the fallout of the Dungeons and Dragons situation with Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast, I will no longer create any character builds or write any campaigns, months of work down the toilet.
3. Instead I'll be rebranding it as an anime in depth episodes guide much in the same way I do with Walk of Fame, a few episodes are ready to go, so look forward to it.