Glitter Force Doki Doki: Painful to sit through
Despite my longtime antipathy toward Magical Girl anime, I've been watching quite a few lately. Puella Magi Madoka Magica (https://www.strangeaeons.me/blank-2/2017/12/18/Puella-Magi-Madoka-Magica-A-fresh-take-on-an-old-genre) was an excellent deconstruction of the genre and the original Glitter Force (https://www.strangeaeons.me/blank-2/2017/11/13/Glitter-Force-Awesomely-Stupid) was so awful as to be awesome. So with this in mind I decide to check out the next Glitter Force series on Netflix hoping for at least another awesomely stupid entry.
Sad to say I was disappointed. The stupidity in Glitter Force Doki Doki is in no way awesome.
Despite being a sequel the new series introduces new characters and a brand new mythology including a new fantasy world to fight over. The broad strokes are that the new girls are fighting to liberate a magical kingdom called Splendorius from a race of evil beings called Mercenares. The entire series is a remarkably transparent vehicle for marketing toys and accessories.
Our main character Maya is the best example of a Mary Sue I've ever encountered outside of fanfiction. She's overly sweet and loving and whose favorite activity is to make friends. She's also a star athlete and the President of the Student Council. Her dialogue is cringe worthy; all about being loving and spreading joy and happiness but never actually so bad its good. Seriously, Jesus would tell this chick to give it a rest.
At the end of the series Maya achieves victory virtually without effort. She defeats the ancient embodiment of evil simply by being so pure and loving.Her victory is achieved without her ever really doubting herself or ever actually struggling. This is not how you write a character arc.
The other characters are mostly forgettable and the plot leads nowhere. The series finale was actually slightly interesting raising questions about different kinds of love (selfless versus selfish) and how neither is necessarily good or evil. The concept was interesting but nothing interesting was done with it.
The most interesting character was a sixth ranger archetype called Regina who was the main villain's, King Mercenare, daughter. She is eventually recruited into the Glitter Force but the series makes this redundant by introducing an annoying 'lawful good' and uncompromising new character called Glitter Ace.
To be completely fair, the series does have some good ideas but nothing interesting is ever done with them and most of them are introduced too briefly to do anything with anyway.
Maya is the single worst character in the series and a perfect example of a Mary Sue. One of the series's better ideas (which again they do not develop) was introducing another Glitter Force character named Glitter Spade (Macenzie Mack) who is not only a warrior from Splendorius on a quest to find the missing princess but also a famous pop diva, a cover identity she cultivated to help her search for the princess. The series does a few episodes focused on how stressful her life is, both due to being a famous celebrity in a world she doesn't really understand and her responsibility of finding the princess; however it doesn't really go anywhere. If Mack had been the main character and Maya was left out, the series would have been far improved. Even if intended for young girls Maya's character is just annoying.
At the very end of the series we discover that the King of Splendorius and King Mercenare are the same person. The King made a pact with the powers of darkness to save his own daughter from a mysterious illness. This resulted in his corruption and in his daughter being split into several individuals: Regina, Glitter Ace, and a magical flying baby named Dina (don't ask).
The ideas introduced in the series about the concept of selfish love versus our obligations to others are interesting but nothing is really done with the concept. Magic saves the day and nobody learns anything except that the power of love can do anything.
This series is really hard for me to recommend. Again there were good concepts IN it but they were ignored so in my opinion you can get as much out of reading about the show on wikipedia as you can from watching it.
Final Score:
1/10