(there’s a tl;dr at the bottom!)
Balala the Little Magic Fairies (or Balala for short,) is a Chinese magical girl meta series, where each season has a different theme, new characters, villains, and worlds to explore.
Pretty Cure (or PreCure for short,) is a Japanese magical girl meta series, where each season has a different theme, new characters, villains, and worlds to explore.
It’s easy to see the similarities - but besides the obvious difference in origin, these series have plenty to prove they’re entirely original and different as well.
Here at MSF, we think it’s important to understand what makes a series part of a genre, and what makes it a rip-off, which is why we’re breaking down and comparing similar series and franchises like these.
If you’d like to know more about the franchises or individual seasons, just click on the BOLD titles.
SCROLL TO THE BOTTOM OF THE POST FOR A TL'DR SUMMARY.
Fairies, Fairy Realms, & Mascots
Both series have ‘fairies,’ but with quite different roles.
In PreCure, Fairies are the mascot and guide characters. They’re usually quite small, in a toy or animal shape. The protagonists are known as Pretty Cure, Precure, or Cure(s) for short. The amount of time spent in the fairy realm varies greatly, but usually it’s significantly less than in the human realm.
In Balala, the main cast of characters are themselves human-sized and human-shaped fairies, or humans training as fairies, and are referred to as such. Balala does occasionally have mascots and guides, sometimes also called fairies, but other times known by other names such as sprites or pixies, along with some animal-type mascots. Time in the human and fairy realms is usually an even split.
In both series, there are mascots that have turned into full-sized Precure / Fairies, like Cure Parfait of KiraPre (let) and Alyssa of Balala Over The Rainbow
Live Action & Lack Thereof
Balala was originally created as a live-action series. It’s had two live-action seasons to date, as well as live-action movies and performances, all of which can stand alone or as sequels/prequels to the animated series.
Pretty Cure has no live action series or films, although it does have live-action dance performances that take place in malls and at theme parks in Japan.
Although the character designs often appear to have a similar style, the overall aesthetics of the two shows, and how they change, are very different.
With Pretty Cure, most seasons have new character designers, animators, concept creators, writers, directors, actors and actresses, and more. The entire cast and crew is different, and so the style of each season can be quite drastically different from the last. One thing that does remain consistent however, is that the characters remain 2D, while the backgrounds are often hand drawn, or appear that way. Sometimes, 3D models will be used for emphasis, ending songs, or movies, but are usually blended well into the 2D styles.
Balala takes a very different approach. The same crew is kept when possible, and the art style remains fairly consistent, and any changes made carry into the next season. Balala uses 2D characters, but has many 3D backgrounds, sets, sequences, and items. They don’t attempt to blend these in at all in the original sequels, though they do try to in the later reboots.
Both series bring in a new theme every season - but how much it impacts the show does vary.
In Precure, it varies singificantly between seasons. In some seasons, the theme impacts the character’s interests, after school activities, motivations, and powers. But in many more seasons, it’s purely aesthetic, impacting only the design choices and character names.
In Balala, the themes are consistently impactful, changing the character designs, school subjects, general interests, magical powers, villains, and the fairy worlds involved.
Both series colour-code their characters, with pink and blue being the typical main characters, yellows, greens, reds, and purples being the secondary cast, while colour accented greys blacks making up the villains.
Pretty Cure is - sometimes painfully - consistent about it. Pink characters - Like Cure Happy of Smile Precure on the left - are always the team leader as well as the main protagonist, blues are (almost) always their best friend and the second cast member to appear, yellows come third, while red, purple, and green are relegated to the background. PreCure does, however, occasionally throw in a new colour - like white or orange. Even the personalities associated with each colour tend to fall into categories, such as the usually either extremely shy or very refined yellow cures.
Balala, on the other hand, is anything but predictable. While the initial leading ladies are indeed a pink-blue pairing, they’re not the team leads. That role goes to a yellow member for the first few seasons, with a green as the second in command. In Over the Rainbow, the leading lady is red, and in Ocean Magic, the initial pairing is yellow-pink and gains a blue leader, Nahiya, pictured on the right. Purple characters are also wildcards.
Comedy, Schools, & Slice of Life
Both series have strong slice-of-life focuses, with characters from both sides attending school, and showing all the trials that come with it. What sets it apart, however, is the approach to it.
Every Precure season has a different writer and director, and thus, ends up feeling very different. Some series are more serious, others more comedic. Some have a strong focus on the school setting and activities, while for others, it’s simply established to show the girls do things besides fighting evil. Often, there’s other elements, like dance classes and working at a cafe that are just as, if not more important than their school lives. The vast majority of characters are middle school students, with a few notable high school students.
In Balala, there’s a heavy focus on school. Sometimes, it’s a magical school, while other times it’s a human school. It’s treated with a healthy dose of comedy, most of which is slapstick in style. They rarely have regular activities outside of school. The ages range from twelve to at least 18, so their school years vary drastically, right through to school leavers.
Pretty Cure is iconic for dramatic, extreme, and well-made battle scenes, spectacular individual and group finishers, and for not using battle stock footage. There’s often physical combat, often inspired by real life techniques.
Balala on the other hand rarely has serious battles, never has physical battles, and tends to resort to comedy over flashiness. There’s quite a lot of stock footage used, and while they do have finishers, they’re usually by independent characters and are re-used often.
Both series are meta series, meaning each season starts anew, while still following along the guidelines or concepts established by those prior. However, the two series do so in quite different ways.
In Precure, there’s exactly two sequel series - Futari Wa Precure’s sequel was Futari Wa Precure Max Heart, while Yes Precure 5’s sequel was Yes Precure 5 GoGo - there hasn’t been another sequel series since then. Both the original seasons, and every season past Fresh in 2009, starts again from scratch, with a whole new cast, themes, story, and setting. Though there are crossover movies, and Hugtto Precure has crossover episodes, for the most part it is accepted that each season takes place in a separate world and time.
In Balala, it’s completely different. Several seasons are all direct sequels of one another. While the base cast - the twins, Shirley, and Queen - remain the same, there’s always a new cast member, who usually takes the lead as that season’s main protagonist. There’s also new villains, new henchmen, and new season themes, just as in Precure. Later on, there were two original / reboot series, each with a totally new cast separate from the original. However, they are canonically set within the same world, just in different locations within it, so while they are yet to cross over on-screen, they do reference one another.
It’s quite common for superheroes and magical girls alike to have secret identities, or aliases.
In Pretty Cure, all of the magical girls have one, usually starting with the word Cure, like Cure Moonlight or Cure Whip, though there are exceptions, like Shiny Luminous, they all consist of two words.
The Balala girls, on the other hand, don’t have aliases at all.
OFFICIAL SUBS, DUBS, & WHERE TO WATCH
Subtitles and voice-overs (dubs) in English often play a huge role in how well a series does internationally.
Pretty Cure has a total of three dubs. One dub, of the original Futari Wa Precure season, was made in the 2000s and received largely positive-leaning reviews in terms of it’s interpretation of the source material. The second set was made by Netflix, titled Glitter Force and adapts the Smile and Doki Doki seasons. It received generally negative reviews regarding it’s adaption, and we’ve explained why HERE. Unfortunately, the only official Precure subs that exist are for the first season, and then sporadically, on some newer-season and re-release DVDs. Because of this, most people watch Precure subtitled by fans on unlicensed websites like KissAnime.
Balala has no official English dubbed version. However, it is officially available via YouTube, which is impressive, and even more impressively, the first two animated series have been fully and officially subtitled there - the titles are in Chinese, but simply press play and turn on the CCs to see the subtitles in English. Unfortunately, they’re very slow to add subtitles, so after that there’s only very irregular subtitling. Unofficially, only the original set of animated seasons have been fully fansubbed, with the reboot seasons being partially and sporadically subbed. They are also difficult to find, because being Chinese, it technically isn’t anime and thus is often not on unofficial anime sites, but are instead scattered around the internet.
