“Could you hold on a minute before you continue?”
CONTENT WARNING: Spoilers (both for the episode and future episodes via discussion of visuals of the second ending theme–which premiered in this episode–and the preview for the next episode), Sara getting way too heated at decisions made in a show intended for children. (Okay, that last one isn’t a serious content warning, just a heads up before you inevitably point that out.)
Somehow, despite me giving this episode a free pass for the Kurea/Eclair focus for the finishing attack because this episode was set up from the beginning as focusing on Kurea’s past, there still somehow managed to be a way for me to just grip my head and groan with my watching of this episode, even if it wasn’t in the events of the episode itself.
I’m getting ahead of myself. I might as well give you guys the details as to why I feel this way.
We start with Goemon and Decchi Agein having already stolen the item that has the Makoto Jewel. Okay, that just means that the mystery of this episode isn’t going to be “how did the item get stolen” or “who stole it”, because those aren’t relevant to the plot of this episode.
Anna, Mikuru, and Kurea get onto the scene, where a combination of Goemon’s trick mazes and Decchi Agein’s teleportation power recreate some of Kurea’s memories. We start with when Luluka and Kurea meeting at the London CUREtto Detective Agency, and it also includes discussions that Luluka and Kurea have with Mafuru–an older woman that works at the London CUREtto Detective Agency, investigations that Luluka and Kurea do when they open up the Japan branch of the CUREtto Detective Agency, and the shattering of the Makoto Jewel. We don’t get to see the actual shattering, but we all know what happened at this point, so it isn’t worth repeating.
There are two mysteries that are presented during this section that seem like they could be the mystery of the episode. The first is “How will Anna, Mikuru, and Kurea get out of this situation?”, and…well, once you get told “you can’t touch things here” only to see a butterfly touch Pochitan, I feel like even the target audience will be able to solve that mystery.
The second mystery, however, is for Kurea and Luluka’s detective test, and it’s “Where did this family’s vase go?”, and I feel like it’s one that’d be harder for the target audience to figure out unless they already know how to read into microexpressions, though for someone of my age, it was an easy mystery to figure out. I’m not going to hold this against the series, though, as my higher life experience is probably what caused me to get to the answer.
But once the Cures get out of the past by having Anna and Mikuru capture the butterfly, we get the Hanninda and the transformations for our main Cures, with our hero Cures falling off of the building because of the Hanninda. We also have Luluka run onto the roof and get her transformation.
Hero Cures fight and purify the Hanninda, Cure Arcana Shadow engages with Decchi Agein, the Phantom Thieves get out after the purification of the Hanninda, Pochitan gets the Makoto Jewel, standard fare.
We also find out from Decchi Agein talking to Luluka after the events of that battle that Eclair can use the power of the Top of Lily. Just…whatever, man. I’m honestly Eclair-ed out, and I genuinely hope that in the next week or two we can just finally end the Eclair chapter and go back to Anna and Mikuru development, because the Anna and Mikuru stuff is what attracted me to Meitantei Precure, and the current stuff with Luluka and Kurea just feels like a distraction from developing Anna and Mikuru.
Anyway, this episode debuted the second ending theme, which also debuted a new design for Cure Arcana Shadow. Or, well, if you want to get technical, Cure Arcana’s design. Confirming, much to my dismay, that we will most likely be getting redeemed Luluka. And you know what makes the inclusion of this ending hurt even more? Based on it, we know how the plotline that starts in the next episode (which includes a much more corrupted Luluka) is very likely supposed to end: Luluka gets a redemption arc and throws away the Shadow power, thus rejoining the Japan branch of the CUREtto Detective Agency.
They either should’ve made an alternate version of the visuals of this ending theme that uses the Cure Arcana Shadow design instead of the Cure Arcana design, or just not debuted it this episode and instead waited until next episode at minimum before debuting it.
“Oh, but Sara, you watch Detective Conan, which has some cases where you already know who did the crime before the detectives even get to the scene of the crime!”
Yes, but the mystery in those cases is what trick does the culprit use to establish their alibi? Here, you see Cure Arcana Shadow and Cure Arcana and the answer is a simple “Luluka gets redeemed”. Even if they wouldn’t use those exact words, I think the target audience would get that answer. We can’t even use the “but we need to figure out how!” as an excuse: Episode 30 lays down that Luluka gets corrupted into a new form, and getting Luluka out of it is likely what prompts the redemption. There’s no longer a mystery on that front.
I still believe that Luluka would be a much better character without redemption. But if Meitantei Precure is going on the redemption route for Luluka, I’ll just suck it up and see where this ends up taking us. Still peeved that we haven’t gotten much more development on the Anna and Mikuru front, but again, hopefully we’re getting close to the end of the Eclair chapter.
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Next Post: Episode 30 (“Eclipse Shadow”) hasn’t aired yet. Unless the episode gets delayed, the post will go live on August 23rd, 2026 at 12 PM (PDT).
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