Why the Pretty Cure anime failed in America - Explained

The Pretty Cure anime is a very interesting case when it comes to anime series and receptions in America. The series started back in 2004 and has since been adapted into manga, toys, video games, movies, and so on, with each version featuring a group of girls who are granted special tools that turn them into legendary warriors for fighting evil.

However, the Pretty Cure anime did not pan out well in America.

This is not the first time that an anime series has not succeeded in America, with even highly-regarded series such as Fist of the North Star and Saint Seiya not being successful there as well. Each series has its own share of reasons, and here we look at a few which led to the Pretty Cure anime's poor run in the US.

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The Pretty Cure anime and its history in America

Pretty Cure was one of Toei’s attempts in the mid-2000s to go for the magical girl anime genre that was all the rage at the time, which resulted in the creation of this series as an anime-first product instead of the usual formula of starting with a manga series. Another point to note is that there was an ever-changing cast in every single version of the show.

The series had a very good run in Japan, with the Pretty Cure anime having a wide variety of media over there, including movies, video games, manga series, and even theater plays. America, however, did not glean similar results, proving to be a market that the series struggled with since its initial foray over there.

It is often said that the Pretty Cure anime failed in the American market because the audience over there was not interested in the magical girl genre, but other series of a similar style, such as Sailor Moon and Sakura Cardcaptor, have proven to be quite successful in that country. So, what went wrong?

One of the main reasons was the dub. When the series was going to be released to American audiences, Toei gave away the rights to Saban and the latter provided a low-quality Canadian dub that didn’t prove to be very impactful for audiences. In fact, contrary to what a lot of people may think, this is one of the main reasons why a lot of classic anime series fail to succeed in the American market.

Much like the Pretty Cure anime, there are a lot of cases, such as Saint Seiya, Dragon Ball Z, and Yu Yu Hakusho, where English dubs have had several lines of dialogue changed.

Furthermore, voice-acting at the time in the anime industry in America was not of the highest quality, which often led to lackluster results, which could also be a reason why the Pretty Cure anime could not manage a strong foothold in the industry.

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Final thoughts

Pretty Cure is a very good example of the fact that not every product is going to work in every market. There are a lot of reasons for that and this series can be a direct result of Toei giving away the rights to a company that didn’t know what to do with it, a poor dub, a lack of aiming at the correct target audiences, and overall poor handling of the franchise in America.