Did you figure out who Cure Éclair is before the reveal in episode twenty-five? Whether you did or not, there's no denying that the publicized hunt for her identity was a very smart marketing move on the part of Toei. It recognized that for many mystery fans – even the very young ones who are the intended audience for Star Detective Precure! – the joy of the genre is solving the case alongside the detectives. This type of mystery, known as “fair play,” comes out of the Golden Age of Mystery between the world wars, and it was something of a departure from the earliest detective fiction, where the idea was that the detective needed to be smarter than the reader. In yet another nod to the genre's history, Star Detective Precure! gives us both styles: Cure Arcana Shadow is the Holmesian smartest (wo)man in the room, already knowing the solution, and Cures Answer and Mystique are the fair play detectives, engaging with clues that viewers can learn alongside them.

Like the characters' names, this feels like another piece of the show for older viewers, making this perhaps the most all-ages inclusive of the licensed Precure series. The idea in most children's media that does this is that parents should be happy to watch alongside their children, and this deliberate effort in Star Detective may in itself be another piece of the overall mystery of the series. The inciting incident for this show is that Anna is sent back in time to 1999, where she meets Mikuru. As you may have noticed from the opening theme, Mikuru and Anna's mother have the same color hair, which may indicate that Mikuru is, in fact, Anna's mom. (She'd be forty-one in 2026, which works.) That would make this show specifically about the relationship between a mother and daughter, which in turn would suggest that parents watching this with their kids is part of the point. I know I always loved it when my parents watched something I loved with me, and this would have kept my mystery-loving mother engaged when I was five. (It probably still would!)

That question isn't a major component of the show yet, though, remaining relegated to clues in the opening theme. The overarching mystery of this cour is the identity of Cure Éclair, rightly Cure Arcana Shadow's old partner. (“Éclair” means “light” in French as well as being a delicious pastry.) In the month leading up to the reveal, episodes zeroed in on this question, offering us four possible choices for the mystery Cure's identity. When the answer was revealed on July nineteenth, viewers had been primed to tune in and see if they were right. The clues were really very good for a children's show, and quite varied. The answer, Kurea, could be reached in a variety of ways, including her name (“Kurea” sounds like “Claire”), the fact that she works in a bakery (playing on the word “éclair”), and her interactions with Luluka, making her the only “side” character to really speak with the mysterious girl. Red herrings also abounded: multiple girls wear butterfly accessories, Rei knows about Pochitan, Eliza writes detective fiction, Shiruku is heroic. Even if you didn't figure it out before the reveal, it still worked well as a gimmick.

And speaking of gimmicks, the crossover with Detective Conan in episode eighteen is another very successful one. It works better than the Crayon Shin-chan crossover in Wonderful Precure! because it's not used just as a silly moment. Having the Cures meet and work with Conan highlights the appeal of different styles of mystery shows while also offering insight into how the magical girl element looks to outsiders. Even though he's a brilliant detective, Conan is baffled when the girls suddenly disappear to have their battle, and they don't come off as self-serious as Conan and his gang are. It also must be said that the Detective Conan cast looks great in Star Detective's style, even if I wish that weird hair cone on Ran's head wasn't there; it's always bugged me.

While the main plot of this cour is largely wrapped up in finding Cure Éclair, it also has time to discuss the role of partners and friends. Anna and Mikuru are a firmly established duo by this point, and that highlights how alone Luluka is. Even with the rest of Usonoir's group, she stands apart, and that's by her own choice. Yes, we learn in episode twenty-five that she's infiltrating them rather than actually being a part of the organization, but that's perhaps a reason why she should attempt to be friendly with at least one of them. Instead, she self-isolates, with only Mashutan to keep her company. She rebuffs the Cures even when she's not directly opposing them. The reason for this comes clear when she interacts with Kurea in the bakery: she doesn't feel like she deserves anyone by her side. While we still don't know precisely what happened with Cure Éclair, it was her loss that sent Arcana Shadow away from the detective agency. Her sadness and anger at her loss drove her to eschew help, instead seeking out the people who caused the problem in hopes of getting back Éclair's makoto jewel. Whatever the truth actually is, Luluka seems to feel like she caused Éclair's amnesia and inability to continue as a Star Detective.

Interestingly enough, she also appears to have been training Cure Answer and Cure Mystique. When she comes back to their side (or rather, reveals her truth), she comments that she hopes the younger Cures understand now, indicating that she was always a Star Detective, always Cure Arcana Shadow. If Usonoir and his minions thought otherwise, that's on them. It's a case of the answer being in plain sight, because while her theme color is black, she also never had a “dark” transformation, as we saw briefly in Soaring Sky Precure or the live-action Sailor Moon TV series. Shadows aren't always bad – they just obscure the truth and make the light shine brighter, which is what Cure Arcana Shadow's role has been thus far.

Now that Cure Éclair is back, and the truth about Usonoir's identity has been revealed, the stage is set for the third cour to open explosively. The Star Detectives are going to need all four of them to defeat these thieves, even as Luluka is going to need some time to come to terms with her past and rebond with her partner.