I can't claim these are the most memorable Cures of the franchise.

Hugtto! Precure is about a quarter of the way through its (presumably) year-long run, so we should have a pretty good sense as to what sort of Pretty Cure it is. In contrast with its predecessor, Kirakira☆Pretty Cure à la Mode, Hugtto! is notably more violent. At least there is significantly more melee in the fights again. This was immediately apparent in its first appearance during the crossover cameo at the end of the Kirakira run, as that series quite obviously avoided direct punching and kicking—probably more so than any other Precure generation thus far. (Kirakira sure was happy to lean way into the emotional trauma side of things, though.) In any case, the return of fancy beatdowns is a welcome development.

The matching guitars are actually magic beam rifles. This is not a joke.
P.S. Spoilers.

Seven or eight of the shows I plan to watch during the Summer 2018 anime season are shows continuing from Spring 2018 or sequels. Specifically, Overlord III, One Room 2, and Cinderella Girls Gekijou 3rd Season are sequels, and the shows continuing from last season are Detective Conan, GeGeGe no Kitarou, Major 2nd, Hugtto! Precure, and possibly Piano no Mori.

Emiru is probably remembering that everyone at school still thinks she's nuts.

Now well past the halfway mark, Hugtto! Precure is better than it has any right to be. Based on the number of strikes it normally would have against it, I shouldn't be enjoying it so much. Namely, it's got a magic baby. It has a shrimpy Cure. And it has my least favorite battle costumes of the entire franchise. It turns out, though, that the magic-baby scenes are not as objectionable as I had feared (although I could still do without them). The battle costumes are tragic; I guess that's not going to change. On the plus side, though, the shrimpy Cure is tops.

Actually, most of the cast is pretty good.

Cure Muse basically ruined shrimpy Cures for me. Cure Ace, I guess she was okay. Aguri was definitely more endearing than Ako. Emiru, though, as Cure Ma Chérie? Emiru is frickin' great. It's mostly because she's completely neurotic, which we got to see ahead of time in her two really good pre-transformation introductory episodes. It also helps that she's partnered with RUR-9500. The two of them bring out the best in each other's scenes. I suppose I can't quite say the same thing about Cure Amour, although they are fine together as well. After all, they do have beam-rifle guitars.

So who's taller?

Ranze is a pretty minor character in Hugtto! Precure, and even her guest appearance in the most recent episode (44) was rather limited. Nevertheless, I appreciate that she occasionally shows up even if she's not necessarily bitching people out. That said, my enjoyment of her scenes is directly proportional to the amount and degree of sassing and/or highly motivated-but-questionable activities in which she engages.

Saaya or Ranze?

With regard to Hugtto! Precure itself, the show turned out to be a lot better than I was expecting. It's been consistently fun and it has good little gags. Fortunately, the magic baby did not turn out to be nearly as bad as I had feared. In fact, she can even sort of babble in technically complete sentences now. Seeing as how the magic baby is inevitably going to get her full-grown form back as Cure Spoilers again in the finale, I'm inclined to believe they should have just restored her, like, 20 episodes ago and been done with it. In any case, five will get you 10 that the mouse will still regard her as a love interest even after a year of basically being the magic baby's single parent.

Is it racist to refer to those aliens as bananafish?

Actually, probably the real reason I haven't written about Star☆Twinkle Precure yet is because it's fine. I've watched every episode of Pretty Cure. It's been running non-stop for more than 15 years now. That is, quite frankly, a LOT of Pretty Cure. Most of the seasons are reasonably good. Some are great. And even the ones on the bottom of the list aren't actually bad. So it's not as if Star☆Twinkle Precure isn't good, it's just that I don't have much to say about it. What I should have done was provide a end-of-series write-up for Hugtto! Precure, because that was bananas. No promises, but maybe I'll go back and eventually give Hugtto! Precure a proper sendoff. At a minimum, I've got to say that Hugtto! Precure ended in a totally unique way that differed dramatically from how every other series in the franchise dealt with its main antagonist.

Bonus secondary transformation in episode 27.

Seeing as how Star☆Twinkle Precure is only a little past its halfway mark, there are plenty of opportunities left for it to go off the rails. I mean, its squad of legendary warriors already includes actual space aliens, one of which has so many different personas that I'm losing track of which one is her "real" one. It's arguably the embodiment of the idea SDS applies to Cure Sword. At a minimum, it has a lot of diversity and no shortage of new ideas. However, through 27 episodes, I'm still waiting for Star☆Twinkle Precure to do something dramatic enough that I'll want to revisit it in the years to come. That's surely not a fair demand to place on the latest installment of a show intended for small children—one that's been running since 2004, but that's at least where I'm at in 2019.

Cure Earth's transformation hasn't been integrated with the other three.

There have been five Healin' Good ♡ Precure episodes already featuring Cure Earth and I still find her presence entirely pointless. Mid-season additions to the Pretty Cure franchise aren't always popular. Maybe everyone liked Cure Passion (because she's fuckin' awesome, okay), but there were definitely viewers who were less receptive toward Regina when she became Mana's friend and started absorbing screen time in Dokidoki! Precure.

Lot of scenes showing Cure Earth saving the others.

Granted, I am well outside the target demographic of the Pretty Cure franchise (i.e., little Japanese girls), but I'm struggling to identify anything Cure Earth brings to the show. You would think her arrival sets up a variety of fish-out-of-water scenarios, but this isn't even like the alien girl trying to adjust to traditional anime society in Star☆Twinkle Precure. Asumi (what Cure Earth is calling herself when she isn't calling herself "Cure Ass") is a cipher whose main characteristic is not having any characteristics. It doesn't make her particularly compelling. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe little Japanese girls are actually huge fans of Cure Earth, but that would come as a big surprise.