It’s fun to see how storyboarder’s and animator’s art reflects the girls’ personalities in the Precure transformation sequences. Let’s take a look at a few:

The first are from Heartcatch Precure, the 7^th series. Character designs are by Yoshihiko Umakoshi (he also worked on Berserk, Guyver, Mushishi, and My Hero Academia, so you can see he’s versatile. For Heartcatch, he returned to the expressive style of Ojamajo Doremi, even more extreme this time!

Tsubomi is the first Cure in Heartcatch. She’s pathologically shy, somewhat clumsy, and fixated on flowers and the language of flowers (Hanakotoba). As she walks home, two fairies plummet out of the sky and crash into her, begging her to hide them. Later, she sees a scorpion woman imprison her new friend Erika in a tiny glass sphere and Erika’s anxieties are added to an lost doll, turning it into a huge monster

Even though she’s terrified, and can’t talk to strangers, she stands up to the woman and shouts “I’ve had enough!” (literally, “I’ve now cut off my cord of patience!”)

In the transformation, she doesn’t know what’s going on. You can tell the transformation is doing the driving, with her along for the ride. There are graceful moves, with a mix of surprise and delight shining through. There’s also some awkward flailing, backwards windmilling of arms, and “what the heck is going on?” which is 100% Tsubomi. “What the heck is with this costume?!” The fairies have expressions of “We can’t believe this actually worked!” Then more awkward flailing as she delivers her new tagline.

Here’s a clip of her first transformation– check it out!

In the first few episodes, the fairies make cracks about her being the weakest Cure ever, which didn’t help at all.