Smile PreCure!, or Glitter Force if you were on Netflix, is a magical girl anime created by Toei Animation (the studio begind Dragon Ball!) in 2012. The show revolves around Miyuki Hoshizora and her friends Akane, Yayoi, Nao, and Reika becoming magical girls and fighting against Lord Pierrot's disciples who are trying to give the world's story a bad ending. [In Netflix's English dub, the characters were renamed Emily, Kelsie, Lily, April, and Chloe. For this site I use their original names.]
If this sounds like just a sterotypical magical girl show, that's because it is! PreCure is actually a massive franchise in Japan, going back as far as 2004, and introduced the idea of magical girls who fight with martial arts and their bare hands as opposed to just waving wands around. This format proved to be succesful enough to where PreCure is now massive in Japan, and still releasing a new themed series every year. Smile was the only season* to gain popularity in the U.S., due to its (questionable at best) Netflix dub. The theme for this season is fairytales!
* another season, DokiDoki PreCure, also recieved a Netflix dub. this season is mostly agreed by both American and Japanese audiences to be kind of trash
character appreciation here soon
this show is so great ! how could there be controversy ! ahaha shut up this is a psa
A couple times, I've mentioned Smile's dub, Glitter Force, to be questionable. That's actually kind of an understatement and the whole thing was a bit racist, among other things.
Glitter Force changed the names of the characters, but it cut several other crucial things as well; mostly entire scenes or episodes if they contained references to Japanese culture, no matter how important to the plot or character development they were.* For example, Episode 10 of Smile was meant to be a deeper look at Akane/Kelsey's character and exposed crucial parts about her to the audience, but the entire episode was cut from Glitter Force. The sole reason for this was that the episode revolved around Akane's okonomiyaki shop. As a result, we don't know that Akane even has a restaurant until towards the end of the season, let alone that she has deep insecurities about inheriting it.
the american fandom is a mess
*in total, Glitter Force cut 8 episodes because of Japanese rep. Glitter Force DokiDoki suffered from the same issues and cut 13 episodes. Smile PreCure also had a movie that Netflix never dubbed or put on the platform; this could've been due to budget issues, but it also may have been because of how much potentially-romantic tension there was between Miyuki and Akane.