On the framing of Kaito/Uta
Over the course of this past year, I've found myself continually baffled over how much trouble the fandom has had following the development of this relationship. It took until the Christmas episode for the fandom to realize that, huh, he might actually have feelings for her? Even though the framing up until this point made it obvious that she's someone special to him. (For the record, I also think Kaito/Kazuma's framing is romantic as hell, but I doubt I need to say anything about that.) (Kaito is a man of sin and should just go for the two hands route. Go on dates with Kazuma while talking about Uta, and go on dates with Uta while talking about Kazuma.) And then it took until episode 47 for the fandom to go, "So he does know her identity!" YEAH? HE OBVIOUSLY FIGURED THAT OUT 10 EPISODES AGO?
This is mostly a post where I ramble about the staff, their intent, the writing, the storyboarding/direction (and how I wish it were better), and how this relationship was planned out as one that was meant to gradually evolve rather than jump head first into love. (I also go into tangents about Kaito's 中の人 when they're relevant, sorry. Precure fans pulling a misogyny during the idol season somehow unironically caused a domino effect that got me into actual oshikatsu...? I didn't ask for this.) No full translations of interviews this time around (just Trust Me™), unless you own the physical January 2026 issue of Animedia and are willing to send me clear pictures of Sakuma's entire interview, then I'll be willing to suffer for the cause.
I wrote far more than I intended to (and don't have the time to edit it)... I'm sorry...... It's super sloppy at parts, but I really need to move on with my life... ^q^
The staff, and their intent
A quick rundown: Director Kon Chiaki was the one who wanted a romantic subplot. Writer Katou Youichi came up with the concept of a legend idol. Producer Murase Aki + ABC producer Nishimura Mao (+others?) helped shape Kaito's personality. Character Designer Sugimoto Miho has no major influence on the writing, but her priorities are hilariously clear with what she chooses to redraw as the chief animation director. Aside from Katou, who tends to speak objectively when answering interviews, it's clear to me that the staff cares quite a lot about Kaito and the romance he has with Uta.
I have to reiterate: Kaito's lack of appearances has nothing to do with his seiyuu's busy schedule. Officially, Katou has stated that Kaito's romantic relationship with Uta is meant to be a subplot, which is why it's detached from the main plot and only started developing further during the second half of the story. Kon even noted that she made the scriptwriters add scenes for him during the first cour! Murase noted that they put so much care into plotting out the development of their relationship that she was like, uhh are we forgetting about Kaito-san? And Sakuma? He keeps getting dismissed as a celebrity getting shilled, but he is a legitimate voice actor who was taught by Tarte's seiyuu Matsuno Taiki in uni. He wants to voice act. He WILL fit in those recording sessions between touring, filming movies, livetweeting Precure, and flirting with Ooishi Masayoshi. (JK, he noted that he was informed that characters named Kazuma (CV: Hayashi Yuu) and Jogi (CV: Hayashi Yuu) Exist when he had to record separately once due to his schedule. And that he was grateful that Uta's seiyuu Matsuoka Misato was there with him when he had to come in earlier to dub the final episode.) (Busy, unlike Kaito himself,) Any discussion that places the blame [regarding a writing problem] on Kaito's seiyuu, or his fanbase, instead of the staff's failure to structure his character better is so frustrating because this isn't how it works. This isn't how any of this works.
Unofficially, I would argue that Kaito's concept as a friendless loser career idol put him at odds with the series composition, simply because they couldn't slot appearances for him into episodes that weren't focused on Uta. And I absolutely believe the staff could and should have done a better job integrating him into the show as well as give him more of a personality. They should have, at the very least tried to establish his presence as a legend idol in the setting better, like having him appear on TV doing dumb gags in the episodes where he's not relevant. However, despite his lack of relevance in the main plot, I will defend his existence, because I believe they told a story relevant to the themes of the show that couldn't be told through the main characters.
Okay, but if romance, then why age gap?
According to Sugimoto, Kaito was originally described to her as a former idol who would become a mentor to the MC and give her advice, and with that, she originally designed him both shorter and younger. He had to be redesigned later when his concept was changed to an oniisan type. The change does make sense for a character who's meant to be an experienced mentor figure, as 18 might have been the youngest they could make him while still keeping his status as an experienced "legend idol" believable. The show had to speedrun his career in order to for him to be as young as he is for his level of fame, and the age gap between the him and Uta would be negligible when they're older. (After the timeskip, it'd be about the same as the one between Takumi's parents when they first met.)
To discuss fictional age gap relationships on a more general note: there's a reason why they're so common in joseimuke/female-oriented works. The appeal of them is that they are, essentially, a power fantasy, as there is a safety that can be guaranteed and explored in the realm of fiction that doesn't exist in real life. Romantic fiction already skews towards the dramatic and the ideal, so the dynamics of the problematic power imbalance of real life age gaps are often evened out, or even flipped. (Hence, fictional age gap ships that are told from the POV of the older character, as well as those that step out of this idealized state typically don't work for me.) We know that there are no impure intentions from the older character, and we know that their feelings are genuine. When an older character falls in love with a younger character, the younger character holds power over them, whether that older character is a teacher, a boss, a guardian, a celebrity, an ageless immortal, or, very often, the emperor of China. If we were to use a (non-spoilery, because, there's a, lol, lmao,) Precure example, Nozomi is quite literally the one who holds power in her relationship with Coco. He's a tanuki(?) who has to rely on Cure Dream for protection.
This is not uncommon in shoujo/joji romances, and in fact used to be far more common. I would argue that this is the angle the staff is coming from, especially when you consider how it was the female staff who vetoed the ideas the male writer had for Kaito's personality. There isn't much of a difference between KaiUta's situation, and say, the trope of a prince falling for the charms of a lowly commoner. Think about what an insane fantasy it is for a hot and famous celebrity to owe his current existence to a regular girl, who in his eyes was special enough to change his life. It's thanks to that regular girl that he was able to find his path, that he was able to genuinely smile again, that he was able to reunite with a lost connection. Uta holds immense power over Kaito.
To be clear: I completely understand why age gap ships make people uncomfortable. There are many, valid reasons for that and I am not here to argue against anyone's discomfort. I only wish to explain that the show is approaching this from the angle of the feminine gaze, and the appeal that makes the trope so prevalent in josei/shoujo/jojimuke.
The Slow Burn of a Romance Born Out of Admiration
Let's get this out of the way: the relationship between Kaito and Uta is written as a romance. The staff planned their relationship as a romance, the framing is romantic, they hit Japanese romance story beats and tropes, Uta's friends acknowledge her feelings as romantic in-universe, and they have paired merch featuring a form of Cure Idol that only came into existence out of Uta's strong feelings for Kaito. Said form uses a rearranged version of her image song titled "~only you ver.~", as well as an attack that is named after him.
But the audience struggles to view it as a romance because their relationship didn't begin from the point of mutual attraction. Kaito is undoubtedly fond of (possibly even too attached to) Uta, but his feelings toward her are ambiguously platonic at worst, or unconsciously romantic at best. Uta was very clearly attracted to Kaito from the start, and is blatantly in love with him by this point. But because Uta's feelings haven't been made verbally explicit, even her seiyuu Matsuoka doesn't see it as such??? I know media literacy is practically a meme at this point, but my friends and I have been losing our minds seeing how all of this blatant romantic development has been going over everyone's heads this past year.
It is worth nothing that, although their relationship is written as an idealized shoujo romance, the scriptwriters have pretty much gone out of their way to avoid having either of them use any descriptors of physical attraction towards each other. Perhaps the confusion of the viewers stem from this? The show doesn't want to distract from the base their bond is built upon.
Their relationship is built from their mutual admiration of each other: the way they shine when they sing, they way they're able to make others shine through their singing, they way they support others, and the appreciation they have when they're the ones being supported. It's because they've already deeply bonded in such a manner that it will feel all the more satisfying when their relationship eventually develops into love. It's very easily one of the most romantic romances in Precure. Romantic, in the sense that it conveys a narrative ideal as a blossoming relationship. Romantic, in the sense that their bond does not develop within the realm of realism—their numerous encounters usually happen only by chance, the few moments they do share together are life-changing, and in the Precure series most cognizant about our modern, interconnected world, the two are purposely separated without contact to make their future reunion all the more emotional. (Romantic, as in AIKATSU IN NEW FUCKING YORK OF ALL PLACES MAKES ZERO SENSE MISTER KATOU YOUICHI.)
So, as much as I support my favorite het-brained, het soldier Narita Yoshimi's desire to push her het propaganda, she had a bit of het tunnel vision when she wrote Satoru and Iroha the previous year, where the journey was neglected in favor of reaching her goal. And this is coming from the person who thought her scripts did a good job setting up Subaru/Yume in her Aikatsu Stars! episodes (until the staff went nah, we're not going to develop the boys further). (Hey. Hey. Hey. Guess which jojimuke franchise didn't capitalize on their boy characters and thus couldn't retain the original audience after they grew up. Hint: it's not the two franchises that start with "Puri", those have a larger female to male audience at events and concerts, unlike...)
Like, I'd be the damn first to argue that Kaito doesn't appear nearly enough for Uta's "he supported me so much" (DID HE?) "now I want to support him back" to be believable. As much as it frustrates me, I fully understand why KaiUta lacks the popularity of SatoIro or TakuYui, given that Kaito's presence as well as a proper platonic basis with Uta are both so lacking. But I would also argue that, as cute as those pairings are, romantic relationships that are born out of close friendships just because, don't make for actually satisfying, interesting narratives.
The air around them has once again changed in episode 37, a story about Uta and Kaito growing closer. What did you keep in mind when crafting their narrative? Murase: First, we started by deciding how we wanted their relationship to culminate in the final episode, and worked backwards from there to decide on what kind of dialogue or elements we wanted to include to build upon Uta’s relationship with Kaito. From there, we incorporated those into what we had of the [series] composition at that point. I was particularly happy to have Kaito threaded into Cure Idol’s power up in the aforementioned episode 37. Speaking of their relationship, given that we were writing it as something meant to develop, we found it important to convey certain points through the dialogue, like “Why does Kaito like Uta’s singing” or “Why does Uta want to help Kaito”, etc. We had discussed things like what needed to be said by certain episodes. Kaito is someone uninvolved in the main plot, so if we weren’t careful about it, then their relationship would end without an inch of progress, so I often found myself asking, “Aren’t we forgetting about Kaito-san~?” (laughs).
The development of KaiUta can be hard to follow given how sparse Kaito's appearances were, particularly during the first half of the show. Nevertheless with every appearance, their relationship progressed in a clear, if gradual, manner, intertwined with the reveal about Kaito's guilt over letting go of Kazuma. I broke down the series composition of just their relationship out in this post (please ignore all the nonsense and just scroll to the bullet points at the bottom). You can see how the staff plotted their relationship as one that gradually closes its distance through a feedback loop of mutual support. Uta pulls Kaito forward by guiding him back on path → Kaito pulls Uta forward by guiding her to her friends, guiding her to her fans → Uta pulls (or, as Kon phrased it, pushed) Kaito forward by guiding him to Kazuma → Kaito pulls Uta forward by guiding her to her dream → Uta pulls Kaito forward by saving the world, etc.
The Framing
Honestly, part of my fun with KaiUta is how the show and staff keeps validating all of my takes, lmao. My yapping has been alarmingly accurate this past year. Sakuma had Kazuma/Jogi's seiyuu Hayashi Yuu on his radio show (he also had Nana, Uta, and Tanaka? sorta), and he mentioned how he could really feel the 対等の扱い between Kaito and Kazuma. These two are bonded as equals, meant to walk hand-in-hand, side-by-side. That's the key difference between KaiKazu and KaiUta.
The above scene storyboarded by Sasaki Noriyo perfectly exemplifies how Kaito and Uta view each other. When Uta praises Kaito, he's standing at a higher elevation, so she is quite literally looking up to him. But their positions don't stay that way. Before Kaito expresses his admiration and gratitude towards Uta, he walks down so he can literally look up to her, inverse to how he pulled Kazuma up so they could stand on equal ground, at the same eye level with each other. While the bond Kaito and Uta hold may be mutual, they don't see each other as equals. To both of them, the other is holding their hand to guide them forward.
It may be a more subtle example, but the above scene is a classic case of light/shadow storyboarding in Precure. Uta shining her light upon Kaito is surprisingly consistent among their interactions, though Kaito being in the shadow is pretty much (possibly intentionally) exclusive to the first time she inspired him. Tezuka Emi storyboarded this episode, and KimiPre's production is so much weaker without her sticking around as a regular. (Ueda Hanako did well in episode 7 when Uta and Nana pulled Kokoro into the light.)
It's possible that we could've gotten more dramatic, and obvious framing between these two had KimiPre gotten a stronger storyboarding rotation. Yokoya Kenta storyboarded the Cure Connect episode, and while he did great, you can tell that his background is that of a freelance animator, rather than a director who was trained within Toei. Knowing this timeslot's previous highs, and considering how that episode was about the darkness within Kaito vs the light within Jogi, I can't help but mourn the loss of something potentially better.
I think that it is worth comparing the exact moment when Uta is depicted to fall in love with Kaito, versus the exact moment when Satoru is depicted to fall in love with Iroha. My dumb ass didn't even realize the former was supposed to be the moment where things clicked for Uta until I thought about the script more! The scenarios are similar, with both Uta and Satoru receiving kindness from the other party, until that kindness accumulates to the point where their respective hearts are pierced. In episode 35 of Kimi to Idol Precure, storyboarded by the aforementioned Yokoya Kenta, the moment Uta falls in love is an understated one, merely represented by her 恋する乙女 expression, of which the impact isn't felt because she's already made similar expressions earlier in the episode. Compare this to the setup of Satoru's moment that wasn't necessarily dictated in the script: in episode 35 of Wonderful Precure, which was Hirosue Yuuna's solo debut as both the storyboarder and director, Satoru's flashback is cold and gray, its mood only transforming when the skies clear upon Iroha's smile, literally bringing light and color to his world. His feelings for her, quite literally, blossoming.
What is extra frustrating is that Hirosue is actually a regular on KimiPre's rotation! Her skills have clearly been recognized as an important asset, so she's been tasked all the important climatic episodes this year, and I find that she's just...wasted on them because they don't play to her strengths. (Also, the climaxes this year are so rushed? Katou...?) I don't even necessarily wish that she got the date episode specifically, just that they would allow her to direct some lower key episodes. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that she's allowed that freedom when KimiPre's rotation just doesn't have the same number of standouts as WonPre's.
Heavy hitters from last year that are missing this year:
Ueda Hanako (WP 17, 36, 50) (KP 7, 49) -> left for HeroAca
Hatano Morio (WP 12, 29, 49) -> left for World Trigger reboot (presumed)
Noro Ayaka (WP 5, 13, 23) -> did clothing design for a Digimon PV and then ??? WHERE IS SHE
Tezuka Emi (WP 21, 37) (KP 4) -> took over for Nagamine for the new Doremi MV (full respect) and then DIDN"T COME BACK WENT TO BUTT DETECTIVE INSTEAD (NO RESPECT)
Shinohara Kana (WP 11, 28, 42) (KP 12) (tbh weaker than the others here but she is a young talent that I want to root for) -> put on the movie -> put on the detective show without the butts
Hirosue Yuuna (WP 35) (KP 16, 30, 42) -> on the show, but the wrong episodes
On the other hand, while you can pinpoint the moment when things clicked for Uta, you can't say the same about Kaito. His case is probably more gradual. It's important to note that for the most part, he was the one calling out to her, and the first time the more meek Uta initiated was when her friends encouraged her to. He was more attached to her than she was to him from the get-go. (If we go purely by the above image, then it's possible that Kaito was only able to fully embrace his feelings for Uta after he managed to confront, then move past his guilt over Kazuma. "If he couldn't overcome [his guilt over Kazuma], he wouldn't be able to move forward with his life." - Katou)
In an implicitly romantic bond built upon multiple through lines, one of the most surprisingly consistent of these has to be how the storyboards frame Kaito's view of Uta. Uta is depicted to be a constant source of light in his life: her brilliance cheers him up, pushes him forward, makes him kirakkiranran. In Kaito's eyes, Uta is always beautiful (thanks to Sugimoto's priorities lmao). We get to perceive her through the lens of a man falling in love.
...But we don't really get the same framing from Uta's POV since her view of him is clouded by her wet co—maiden gaze. He's objectively beautiful, there's not much more the lens of a hormonal middle school girl can say about that.
The big development however, is when Kaito drops his perfect idol façade and begins to open up to her. That's when he goes from the legend idol smile he does on reflex, to a genuine one, and thus Uta in turn stops reacting flustered. It's only after Kaito shows Uta his true face that she makes it her goal to make him smile. Not the idol smile he's been trained to give out, but the genuine one she's been made privy to. And, Uta returns the favor.
The last thing I wish to point out (sorry this is so disorganized) is the fight scene storyboarded by Hiraike Ayako in episode 35. In the dialogue, Kaito's feelings for Uta are left unknown. Cure Idol even notes that he may not feel as bonded to her as she does to him. But beating up her crush alone doesn't do anything, it's only when Kaito's MOTW and Cure Idol fist bump each other that the Idol Heart Ribbon emerges, essentially confirming the bond they have is mutual. KaiUta really is all showing instead of telling...
I WANT TO PROTECT THAT SMILE
This isn't related to the visual framing of KaiUta, but I needed to share this because I laughed when I read this bit in Tamon-kun Ima Docchi!?, a romcom between a fan and her idol. Romance story tropes really are all the goddamn same! They go to the amusement park together (as friends!), he tells her he wanted to see her EGAO in person, and while on the ~Ferris wheel~ she asks him what he meant by that because even a 2D character is aware that the subtext of "I want to see you smile"/"I want to protect your smile"/"I love your smile" = "I love you".
Smiles are pretty integral to both Kaito and Uta's characters. The former defaults to it as a mask while the latter's whole thing is that she has the ability to naturally bring smiles to everyone. But it's also undoubtedly clear that when Uta says "I want Kaito to smile", there's an intended secondary meaning to it, because it really is that damn cliché. This gives me war flashbacks to the Dungeon Meshi discussion trenches I used to waste my hours in. The Stewed Head chapter implied that Laios had feelings for Marcille via the EGAO line (whether she reciprocates or they end up together is a different story) and then confirmed it via his succubus. Readers couldn't pick up on the former and instead jumped through hoops to explain that succubus away.
In fact, the EGAO line is so cliché that famed anime otaku and wota Sakuma Daisuke has a solo song titled Mamoritai, Sono Egao. He had personally requested anisong legend Ooishi Masayoshi to produce his solo song for him, and the end result is indeed anisong-esque; a love song that doubles as an oshikatsu song about how idols and their fans make each other shine. It was produced in parallel to KimiPre's production, yet very much captured the essence of the You&I theme!
One of my favorite romcoms ever is Adachi Mitsuru's Cross Game. Without spoiling it beyond the hyperlinks, I got pulled in by the gut punch of episode 1's ending, then kept up with the manga during the final year of its serialization. Considering that Adachi is known as a master of showing instead of telling, high school-aged me had struggled to fully comprehend the developments of the story. When revisiting it later on, I found myself appreciating it even more than I had previously now that I could read between the lines. Adachi built up a reveal in Cross Game that has become one of my favorite confessions of all time. Indirect, and layered through its implications, but not necessarily coded. And the response to that confession? All code. Because of this, it's not hard to find discussion that's a bit confused about the status of their relationship in the ending.
"The moon is beautiful, isn't it?" is the example of a coded confession (though I don't know if it's ever actually used). Regardless of whether or not its origin story is true, the idea behind the phrase is that it can be more narratively meaningful for feelings to be implied rather than outright stated. So while it makes perfect sense for Satoru to directly confess to Iroha a year prior in the Precure series with communication as its main theme, it makes just as much sense that Kaito and Uta's (romantic) feelings for each other are conveyed through their more explicit desire to support one another, in the series with You&I as its main theme.
Extra: How their relationship concludes (kinda a big extra)
Okay, originally the EGAO stuff was meant to be extra until I accidentally reached the perfect conclusion to a not-essay, and was going to have the post end there. But uhh, it turns out I started writing after the Christmas episode (distractions...happened), so most of this was already written, or at least planned before the final episode aired. And I Have Things I Want To Say.
So I'm truly wondering if I'm watching a different show from a lot of the audience, who think KaiKazu won or that the endgame was left ambiguous. There's really nothing ambiguous about the way Kaito became so attached to Uta that he'd reconsider fulfilling his longtime dream with Kazuma had he gotten to see her face before leaving. And the way Kazuma played wingman since he recognized how Uta was so important to Kaito that he needed to see her one more time. You could argue that KaiKazu won because he prioritized fulfilling his dream with Kazuma over his desire to see Uta, but even then, he makes it clear that he wants to improve himself for Uta???
(I honestly find the "Kazuma is the legal wife" and "this is the look of safety from someone who knows he already won" jokes funny but I can't have my fun when I'm here feeling compelled to write all this!! Let me be a multishipper in peace without having to write a dissertation explaining how one of them is actually canon!!!!)
Hear me out here: I've been going on about how everything is implied rather than explicitly stated for this entire post. Even then, this scene might require more interpretation than before, yet, I really can't read this as anything else. Kaito tells Uta that he wants to become the ultimate idol because he wants to see her smile. It's a bit of an odd statement, isn't it...? How exactly is that linked? He's essentially saying that he wants to improve as an idol for her sake specifically, that he wants to be her idol, that he's hers. And she responds by declaring that she wants to see him again (that he is her idol), before she and Kaito promise each other that they will meet each other again. In five years, when Uta is just old enough that Kaito won't get arrested. There is a track on the second KimiPre OST titled キミの一歩のために/So You Can Take Your Next Step (give or take for the translation). I can't say with 100% certainty, but it appears that the track was only used twice: the first was when Kaito runs to meet Uta at the stadium, and the second, when Uta runs to meet Kaito at the airport. Make what you will with that.
No Precure series is fully finalized during its pre-production stage. In KimiPre alone, we know that Nana was intended to be a more straightforward, intelligent blue archetype, yet she took a life of her own and ended up transforming into an eccentric weirdo (starting from Inoue Akiko’s Nana episode). Meroron is romanticist bibliophile who conveys her feelings through poetry, but that core aspect of her character didn’t exist until the script for her introduction episode was written (also by Inoue). Contrary to what many believe thanks to his merch, the staff had not intended on making Kaito a Precure at the beginning, and he only got to become one when they ended up writing a situation where it made sense for him to transform. This might sound like a mess of planning, but this is just how these year-long original productions are made. There are characters like Vibry and Battamonda, who were brought back due to their respective popularities, and then there's a major plot point in Hugtto that was invented halfway through, one that made its narrative so powerful that we're willing to forgive the incongruities it created.
All of that is to say: I'm not so sure the staff originally planned on ending KimiPre with a timeskip where Uta becomes an actual idol. Uta had two episodes dedicated to her dreams: the first was about how her current dream is to continue her activities as the Idol Precure with her friends, and the second had Uta reject her newfound dream of becoming an idol. So it might be worth reexamining how integral Kaito was to that latter episode (again, written by Inoue). In it, Uta decides to seize the chance to pursue the path of an idol after she was inspired by Kaito's ability to bring kirakkiranran to so many people. But, she wavers. Does she truly want to become an idol if this means she loses the freedom to bring kirakkiranran to those around her? As Uta expresses her uncertainty, Kaito conveys his gratitude towards her, explaining that she was the one who showed him the way after he had lost his. (Making it quite ironic that both of them felt inadequate compared to the other back when they first met.) The episode essentially concluded that Uta didn't need to become an idol, because she is already an idol.
At the same time, I'm also not confident that the staff didn't plan on ending KimiPre with a timeskip where Uta becomes an actual idol. Episode 43 deliberately left the door open by having the CEO see the error of his ways, and it's hard to imagine Uta pursuing a career that isn't idoling because she already is an idol. That, and the final scene being a callback to the first does make it feel like it was planned from the start? Uta has oriented herself onto the same path as Kaito, officially becoming the idol that he had always seen her as. If we go back to the Murase-P quote earlier in this post, one has to wonder if the final episode endgame they worked backwards from was one where they You&I'd each other so hard that they ouroboros'd into a legendo aidoru power couple that would reunite on stage.
The literal first thought I had after waking up one day was that, if Kaito feels this strongly about Kazuma after three years, imagine how strongly he'd feel about Uta in the same. (Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Possibly yearn even harder now with a 5-year timeskip?) Kaito values being someone that people want to meet again, so he must cherish the promise with the girl that he himself wants to meet again. Their promise to meet each other again is essentially a promise to be each others' idols, or, a promise to be together in the future. See you at the Kanshasai...
Extra Extra: An Edit: Notes from the relevant parts of the interviews from March 2026 Animage & Animedia:
Had seen this theory prior, but the 5 year time skip was indeed because that was how long it takes for a sakura tree to grow.
"It all begins right now!" was just something Kon had written on the storyboard as a note, that ended up being used as the actual first scene. Murase-P was the one to suggest it also be the last.
Episode 43 was written in anticipation for the timeskip.
The KaiUta ending they worked backwards from was "promising to reunite" (at the airport). They specifically wanted the old school romantic cliché of parting with your beloved at the airport, but now in Reiwa. (IF THE AIRPORT WAS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART, THEN WHY DID YOU GUYS SEND THEM TO NEW YORK SPECIFICALLY!? KATOU!!!!)
"I think their relationship of admiration and mutual support is lovely." - Murase-P
At first Uta was dazzled by Kaito, but fell in love with him (好き) once she got to know him as a person. On the other hand, Kaito admires (認めている) both Cure Idol and Uta, as she is someone who cheers him up (元気をくれる子). But his feelings towards her aren't love (ラブ).
The staff was far more aware of the age gap than I gave them credit for, lmao. They noted how sus it would be for an 18-year-old working adult to exchange contact information with a middle schooler. It definitely feels like they didn't want Kaito to cross the line in the relationship, even though they otherwise seem to be all for it. That it's just right for a middle schooler to have one-sided feelings.
For the record, I don't think any of this contradicted what I wrote above. Kon said that Kaito's feelings aren't ラブ (an odd word choice compared to 好き for Uta, but not necessarily deliberate since Kon is just like this), but also questioned why he went out of his way to see Uta on Christmas of all days. So while Kaito doesn't outright "love" Uta (because that is off limits in Reiwa), I don't think it's wrong to say his feelings towards her are unconsciously romantic.
Guys, I don't think Uta will ever wash that stinky scarf.
Extra of an Extra: An Edit of an Edit: Electric Boogaloo: The Legacy of Nekoyashiki at Kanshasai
I knew it. This chronically online livetweeter, who famously hates spoilers with a passion, spoiled the KimiPre Kanshasai. I KNEW IT.
Relevant script reading spoilers:
Uta became an idol because she wanted to making all the "You"s in the world kirakkiranran. Because she did so with the Idol Precure. But Kokoro firmly believes Kaito was the one who gave her that push to pursue that dream (after she ran 20km to that airport).
Nana, Kokoro, and Meroron couldn't stop Mayuposting. 「会えばふたりは、燃え上がる。」 What exactly did you have in mind, Meroron!?
I legitimately couldn't stop laughing when they cut to the kigurumi of Kaito. (wheeze)
They reunited backstage after Kaito's solo concert. Both of them have been keeping the other in their minds as their ideal idol these past 5 years. When Uta expresses uncertainty that she isn't on Kaito's level, Kaito affirms that she's already perfect as herself. "As long as you remain as yourself, you'll be able to bring kirakira to so many people. Even to those who are feeling down. I know this, because you made me smile even while I was in New York." "Really?" "Every time I watched Uta-chan, I wanted to shine just as kirakkiranran as you. Because you don't just want to send your feelings to everyone as a whole, you want to send them to each and every individual." "Yes... To each and every single one of 'You'." "I think that's incredible. That's why you're already the ultimate kirakkiranran idol. You'll be fine as long as you stay the way you are, Uta-chan."
"Hey, Uta-chan, I want to be the one to say it this time." "Huh? What is it?" "I want to see you again. Next time, on the same stage." "Yes! It's a promise."
Had I known that the endgame they worked backwards from was a promise to reunite with each other, I would have discussed Inoue Akiko's contributions in greater detail. She did a wonderful job turning Kaito and Uta's endgame desire to see each other again into a through line intrinsically tied to their relationship and the show's core theme. What a brilliant writer.
