Precure Discussion

Actually, the manga was an adaptation of the anime.

@Fenekin That's pretty interesting. Usually it's the other way around no? but it doesn't look like the manga did that well then, I can't find it anywhere.

@Animelover875
I don't know how its sales were in Japan, but at least in the west, the whole Precure franchise was never that popular. The anime and the merchandise are very popular in Japan, though.

The price is very accessible (less than 5 USD), and I think you can still purchase it in Japanese on Amazon.jp. I just checked on CDJapan, and it was already sold out. I don't know if it was ever officially published in English, but you can find fan translations for it quite easily by just searching for "Futari Wa Precure Manga".

@Animelover875
It's quite a hard task to read the later seasons of Precure. Most of it is not available in English; for Tropical-rouge, for example, I could only find a French fan translation of it.

If you know Japanese, you can read the raws. Precure is a kids show, so it can be helpful if you are a beginner. But I personally do not think it is worth the effort, especially if you cannot read Japanese. Although there are some exclusive stories, if you are not a hard-core fan of Precure and want to know every little detail, you can just skip them and you will not lose anything important.

I also never see the manga series being talked about, but I don't like the western fanbase of Precure very much, and the Japanese gachisei are more concerned about the current season and movies.

@Fenekin What are Gachisei? Funny you mentioned learning Japanese; I've actually wanted to fluently learn Japanese for a long time, although I get burnt out a lot, so I tend to get burst desires to learn it. So I pick up little phrases and words occasionally, and know a good deal. I can read hiragana, katakana, and some basic kanji, but it's not too fluent for me in reading terms.

@Animelover875
ガチ勢 (Gachizei — I mistyped it on the last reply, sorry) are people who are really engaged in something; think of them as "hard-core fans". It's crazy to think that they look for the minimum details in every episode. For example, they knew since the first time a certain villainess showed up that she was a student of the same school as the protagonist and her role in it (I will not give many details of it in order to not spoil it for you), or they knew at least 5 weeks prior to the episode that a new cure would join the team because of the day that the merchandise would be put on sale. A famous gachizei of Precure is Takayuki Haranishi; he is a comedian who showed up on Smile Precure and has a section on Wikipedia about how much he likes Precure.

That is a nice thing that you still didn't give up the Japanese language. I know that the Japanese language is one of the hardest to learn for English speakers, but after you have learned the conjugations and particles, you only have to expand your vocabulary; you can use Anki for that. Precure is a kids show, so its manga is very kind to people who are not used to reading Japanese kanji. I think it would be a fun experience to use it to learn Japanese if you used a good dictionary to help you (like takoboto.jp or jisho.org). If you cannot go to Japanese classes, you can learn it on imabi.org or on YouTube.

@Fenekin I wouldn't call myself a "hard-core" precure fan, although I own a few physical and legal digital copies of the manga and light novels (which I have yet to read).

From what I recall, the design of the new cure is revealed on things like magazines before the anime airs. Besides, you can sometimes tell if a character is likely to become a Precure if you have enough experience following the franchise.