Healin' Good Precure: A Superweapon of Psychological Warfare Disguised as Children's Entertainment

By [My little Robot that found my words for me]

What happens when something that's supposed to "heal" ends up hurting you instead?

That question haunts Healin' Good Precure, a season in the long-running Pretty Cure franchise that aired during one of the most vulnerable periods in recent human history: the COVID-19 pandemic. At first glance, it promised comfort -- magical girls, pastel aesthetics, environmental themes, and the ever-reliable narrative of friendship triumphing over adversity.

But beneath the surface lies something much more insidious. This series, head-written by Junko Komura and produced by Toei Animation, is not a story of healing. It is, in many ways, a broadcasted psychological weapon -- a work that reinforces ableism, purity politics, fascistic subtext, and emotional repression under the guise of hope and health.

Illness as Evil: The Ableist Core

At the heart of Healin' Good Precure is Nodoka Hanadera, a girl recovering from a long, unexplained illness. Rather than treating her story with care and nuance, the show frames her condition as a past weakness to be overcome -- something that once made her a burden, a problem to be fixed. As she gains the power to become a Pretty Cure, her worth is suddenly restored, and the unspoken implication is clear: she's only valuable when she can fight.

The show's antagonists, the Byogens, are physical embodiments of sickness and decay. They infect the Earth like a disease, and the mission of the Precure team is to purify them. This metaphor is not subtle -- and it's dangerous.

When sickness is portrayed as evil and those who are ill are symbolically equated with corruption, the show reinforces deeply ableist ideas. Chronic illness and disability are not moral failings. They are not contamination. They are not villains. And to frame them as such in a show aimed at children is not just misguided -- it's actively harmful.

A Narrative of Purity: Fascistic Echoes

The structure of Healin' Good draws a clear moral binary: health is good, illness is bad. The girls are portrayed as soldiers in a war for the planet's purity -- tasked with removing "contamination" from the Earth and themselves. Even the term "Byogen" (sick/illness origin) evokes the language of biomedical purity and disease eradication in disturbingly authoritarian ways.

There is no space in this world for ambivalence, complexity, or coexistence with difference. The show's black-and-white morality reflects ideologies that prize strength, purity, and conformity while eradicating perceived weakness or corruption. These are not simply the mechanics of a kid's adventure story -- they are echoes of real-world fascism, dressed up in magical girl glitter.

Smile and Obey: Emotional Repression, Gender Roles, and False Healing

Healin' Good Precure wants to be a story about healing. Its protagonists are magical girls who literally channel the power of nature to cure wounds, purify disease, and restore life. On the surface, that sounds noble -- even revolutionary. But the problem lies in how this "healing" is distributed, controlled, and withheld.

In this story, healing becomes conditional. You only deserve it if you're already aligned with the "good." If you're a Byogen -- a metaphor for illness, difference, or corruption -- you don't get healed. You get eradicated. There is no empathy, no rehabilitation, no understanding. The villains are not offered transformation. They are simply removed.

That is not healing. That is exclusion.

True healing does not draw lines between the worthy and the unworthy. It does not punish the sick, the angry, or the misunderstood. Real healing demands compassion, and in the case of storytelling, it demands that even "villains" be allowed the chance to grow, to change -- to be seen as more than their pain.

Healin' Good Precure fails because it claims to be about healing, while modeling the opposite: conditional acceptance, emotional suppression, and moral purging disguised as care.

And when the girls are expected to remain soft, nurturing, and happy no matter what -- even while fighting in what amounts to a biological holy war -- it becomes clear this isn't healing at all. It's gendered labor. It's forced emotional compliance. It's a smiling mask over a system that refuses to ask: What if the bad guys are suffering too?

The Corporate Machine Behind the Curtain

It would be easy to place all the blame on Junko Komura, but the truth is more complicated. Healin' Good Precure was not made in a vacuum. It was a product of a massive corporate system -- Toei Animation, Bandai, and the broader Precure franchise -- driven by merchandising, branding, and marketability.

But complicity doesn't disappear in the machine. The writers, directors, producers, and brand managers all had a hand in shaping this narrative -- and in failing to recognize (or choosing to ignore) the psychological violence it could do to viewers who are disabled, ill, emotionally sensitive, or simply tired of being told their pain makes them unworthy.

Quotes from Fans & Critics

"I kept waiting for them to offer a hand to the villains, but that moment never came. That was when I realized the show wasn't about healing -- it was about purging." -- Anonymous viewer testimony

"When illness is portrayed as evil and 'cure' means destruction, it's not empowerment. It's a eugenics metaphor." -- Tumblr user @sick-and-magical

"The show taught me that being weak made me disposable. As a disabled girl, it hurt in ways I still can't fully explain." -- Zine contributor, name withheld

"They had the chance to show healing as radical empathy -- and instead used it as a weapon." -- Fan critique, @precurewithteeth

"If you look at how the show treats characters like Daruizen -- punishing them for being sick and expecting them to disappear quietly -- it's not just bad writing. It's cruelty." -- Twitter user @cure_blood

"I don't care if it's "just for kids." The ideology in that show is terrifying. My kid cried when they killed the villain instead of helping him. That's not "healing.'" -- Reddit user r/precure_dissent

Conclusion: Glitter Can't Hide Harm

Healin' Good Precure is not just another lackluster entry in a beloved franchise. For some of us, it was a betrayal. It promised healing, and delivered harm. It offered comfort, and served conformity. It said "smile" when we needed to scream.

It's time we stop accepting toxic narratives just because they're wrapped in pastel packaging. Media for children holds tremendous power -- and it's our responsibility to call it out when that power is used to erase, control, or damage.

We deserve better. Our kids deserve better. Magical girls are supposed to protect us -- not become foot soldiers in a war against our own humanity.