The fourth member of the Healin’ Good Precure team makes her debut this Sunday/Saturday! Her name is Asumi Fuurin, a.k.a. Cure Earth. Yep, she’s the Precure of Earth itself.
What colors come to mind when you think of our planet? Blue and green, right? Well, blue is already taken by Cure Fontaine, the Precure of Water.
But green’s still available! Perfect! Cure Earth must be a green Cure, right?
…Right?
Nope. She’s purple.
I love this uniform. I really do. It’s gorgeous. This is one of my favorite Precure designs ever.
But nothing about it says, “I’m the Precure of Earth.” Pretty or not, she should be a green Cure. Period.
Heck, her civilian dress is green! If she wears green in normal life, why couldn’t her Cure uniform have been green? Her two designs would have looked a lot more cohesive. As it is now, they clash with each other somewhat, almost to the point where they look like two different people. (Yeah, that makes sense for a superhero identity, but you know how magical girl shows are.)
To make things worse, her element is wind. (The “fuu” [風] in her last name means “wind”.) You know what color is often associated with wind? Green!
There’s no way around it: Cure Earth should be green. So why isn’t she? Because like a toddler who hates broccoli (or green peppers in Japan), Toei avoids green like it’s poisonous. In 16 years and 17 seasons, there have only been two truly-green Precure.
Cure Mint and Cure March
One fan theory for why green Cures are rare is that the first one, Cure Mint, a.k.a. Komachi Akimoto, didn’t go over well. She was the least popular member of the Yes! Precure 5 team (probably by doll sales). Toei may have concluded that girls don’t like green, so they started using it less.
I’m not sure this theory is true, though. As I’ll explain later, Toei’s hatred of green predates the Precure franchise.
Anyway, it wasn’t until four seasons later that they introduced another green Cure: Cure March, a.k.a. Nao Midorikawa. If you watched the “Netflix original” Glitter Force, which was really an English dub of Smile Precure!, you might know this character as Glitter Spring, a.k.a. April. I don’t know how popular she was compared to Mint, but based on the comments I’ve read in the Precure fandom, people seem to like her.
But the target audience must not have bought enough Cure March toys and cosplay sets because there hasn’t been another green Cure since. Well, at least not true green.
A Little Green
The next official green Cure was Cure Felice, a.k.a. Hanami Kotoka, from Mahou Tsukai Precure! As you can see, she wore pale green instead of natural green — and not as much of it. She wore a lot more pink and white than green, but she’s still considered a green Precure.
That’s become the trend in this series. The green Cure won’t necessarily wear green (or not much of it), or they’ll wear pale green or teal. But Toei will still lump them together with Mint and March.
As a result, Precure fans get confused about who’s a green Cure and who’s not. It’s not as simple as “she wears green” anymore.
For example, Cure Parfait, a.k.a. Ciel Kirahoshi, from Kirakira Precure a la Mode wore green civilian outfits sometimes. Plus, she’s been grouped with the green Cures in official merchandise and music videos. But she’s not green. She’s rainbow, all the colors.
On the other hand, Cure Milky, a.k.a. Lala Hagoromo, from Star Twinkle Precure is a green Cure. Toei confirmed this in the Halloween episode (episode 37) when the Precure pretended to put on a Super Sentai (Power Rangers) parody stage show to hide their identities. They called themselves the Mihoshi Stars, and Milky was “Mihoshi Green”.
But notice she didn’t wear a lot of green in her civilian outfit, and her hair and Cure uniform are teal. This is the closest Toei has come to a green Cure since March, but it’s still a stretch.
To show you how confusing this gets nowadays, some fans thought Cure Cosmo, a.k.a. Yuni, was the green Cure of Star Twinkle. Look at her, though. She’s obviously wearing blue! Why would anyone think she’s geeen?
Well, “aoi” (青い), the Japanese word for blue, also means “green”. According to Nihongo Master, the Japanese used to think of green as a shade of blue, so they used the same word for both colors. Nowadays, “midori” (緑) for green has become more prevalent, but they still use “aoi” in some cases. For example, the green light is “aoi”.
Is that the real reason why green Cures are rare: because Toei combines them with blue Cures? Of course not. They acknowledge the difference. Cosmo called herself “Mihoshi Blue” in that Super Sentai skit, and both Cure Mint and Cure March had blue teammates (Cure Aqua and Cure Beauty/Glitter Breeze, respectively).
So no, Toei really does have something against green. Like I said, this isn’t the first time they’ve shied away from it in a magical girl series.
Ojamajo Doremi: The Green Ojamajo
In their first cash cow series, Ojamajo Doremi (which I love), the eventually-seven witch apprentices wore pink, orange, blue, red, purple, yellow, and white. There was a green Ojamajo named Nozomi Waku, but she only appeared in the OVA series Ojamajo Doremi Na-i-sho. (“Naisho” means “secrets”.) Also, she technically didn’t have magic powers. You’ll have to watch the episode to see what I mean.
Long story short: Nozomi wasn’t a recurring character, so she doesn’t count. So the main cast didn’t have a green Ojamajo.
Winx Club
You know I can’t help bringing up Winx Club. As it turns out, Rainbow also has a weird history with green.
The first green Winx was Aisha (a.k.a. “Layla”), who was introduced in the second season. She wore green in her first fairy outfit. (It’s my favorite, by the way.) But Rainbow immediately started having second thoughts and made her first Enchantix outfit in season three blue. (Enchantix was the next fairy form after Charmix.)
But blue belonged to Bloom, the fire fairy. (Yeah, it’s another Cure Earth situation.) So in the middle of the season, Rainbow suddenly switched Aisha back to green. Was there any explanation in-universe? Nope. She just started wearing green as if she had been the whole time.
To be honest, I preferred her blue Enchantix. Her green one is ugly to me, but I understand Rainbow’s decision. We didn’t need two blue Winx.
In season four, Rainbow shifted Aisha to cyan in her Believix form to make room for who we thought would be the seventh Winx: Roxy. But after they spent more than a year promoting her as a Winx, Rainbow canceled her club membership. (Maybe producing seven dolls per line was too expensive.) She still shows up from time to time, but she’s just an “adventure companion” now. (That’s literally what a staff member called her.)
After Roxy’s exit, Aisha went back to green in season five for her first new transformation, Harmonix. Then she changed again to teal in her Sirenix form. Flora, the Fairy of Nature, also wore green in both Harmonix and Sirenix. (She was originally the pink Winx.)
Then came season six. Spoiler alert: the Winx restored Bloom’s sister Daphne’s spirit to her body in the previous season, and it turned out she had Sirenix because…I don’t wanna talk about it. Anyway, she wore an elegant golden dress and masquerade-style mask in her spirit form. But when she became corporeal again, Rainbow said, “You know what? We don’t have enough green fairies in this show.”
So Aisha wore teal again in her new transformations, and Daphne wore green. She also got a few new civilian outfits, most of which had shades of green.
In season seven, the Winx benched Daphne and pulled Roxy out of retirement. She also got new civilian outfits but not a new transformation. Aisha kept teal in her Butterflix transformation before switching to purple (huh?) for the second new form: Tynix. Flora wore green in Butterflix and pink in Tynix, and out of nowhere, Tecna, the Fairy of Technology, took over green in Tynix. (Green was always her secondary color, but never her main color until that season.)
The most recent season had one new transformation: Cosmix. None of the Winx wore green in that form. But Sirenix made a comeback with two new designs for each Winx (one not explained in the show). In the first style, only Flora wore green (Aisha wore purple), and in the second style — a wintry version called Crystal Sirenix — Tecna wore green again.
Finally, in the Netflix spin-off World of Winx, Tecna wore green in her Dreamix form, and she and Flora both wore green in Onyrix. Aisha wore a green Onyrix outfit in an animation error, but her real outfit was purple. (I wonder if Rainbow thought about dressing her in green again, but changed their minds.)
To sum it up: the only main fairy who has consistently worn green is Roxy. But that’s just because she’s only had one transformation since her debut. Poor girl. To think she was almost a Winx…
More Green Magical Girls
Back to Precure. While some fans have accepted that Cure Earth is purple, a lot more feel the same way I do. Green would have been better. Besides, if Toei thinks we hate green, they’re wrong. We love green magical girls just like all the others.
I found a transformation montage that features Cure Mint, Cure March, Aisha, Flora, Mew Lettuce, Sailor Jupiter, Itsuki from Yuki Yuna is a Hero, and a lot of other green-clad heroines. Enjoy! (Warning: A little nudity because…anime. 🙄 )
