Pretty Series Quick Introduction

Asalam aeikoum how's it going. I initially wrote this for a Discord server. A streamer I like was asking for people's favorite OPs so we'd all watch them together during their streamer anniversary livestream. I ended up sharing the OP below and several messages, writing all this, shocking everyone lol. I wanted to do it because sadly it's really hard to find humane, passionate info on Pretty Series in English. Just to be sure that if anyone got interested after watching the OP, they had access to all the basic facts about the series. Also if you wanna learn more about my history with the series you can read this pretty personal post on Ko-fi. It's subs only though.

Note that this isn't a trashy SEO guide I was paid to write, nor a Wiki page, I'm not planning to update it every week or something. Screw that.

My fav OP animation from Pretty Rhythm, my favorite anime of the 2010s & the 2020s so far. It's part of a bigger franchise called Pretty Series airing since 2011 with TakaraTomy + SynSophia on the arcade games, Avex + Tatsunoko on the anime series.

Pretty Series doesn't have anything to do with Purikyua/Pretty Cure by Bandai Namco, besides that they're both Kodomomuke series (series primarily aimed at kids).

Pretty Series is a "media mix" series, meaning besides the anime you always had arcade games for kids, console ports to Nintendo DS, 3DS, and Switch, and manga adaptations. The series' first arcade game was Pretty Rhythm Mini Skirt, released in 2010, before the first anime aired.

List of Pretty Series anime series:

The Pretty Rhythm franchise

Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream (51 episodes)

Pretty Rhythm Dear My Future (sequel to Aurora Dream, 51 episodes. Set 3 years after Aurora Dream, most of the characters return to mentor a new generation.)

Pretty Rhythm Rainbow Live (new story in a new world with no direct links, 51 episodes).

King of Prism (sequel to Rainbow Live. Also known as Kinpri. Series of movies. Set one year and a half after Rainbow Live. It's basically the same concept as Dear My Future: the older characters mentor a new generation, while their own stories keep going.)

The PriPara franchise

PriPara (brand new series with no links to the past ones, 140 episodes)

Idol Time PriPara (sequel, 51 episodes)

Idol Land PriPara (sequel, 13 episodes. Was released online only, several years after the series first ended. PriPara is the most popular series of all Pretty Series so it's still getting new episodes and movies every now and then).

The Kiratto PriChan franchise

Kiratto PriChan (153 episodes)

The Waccha PriMagi franchise

Waccha PriMagi (51 episodes)

The Himitsu no AiPri franchise (ongoing as of 2025)

Himitsu no AiPri (currently airing, 80ish episodes so far).

Additional context

Pretty Series is niche outside Japan. Seeing it's a franchise "for kids", it gets looked down on, so you won't find much impressions on it in English. You won't find official releases either. Some of the Kinpri movies were cut into a TV series and were on simulcasts, along with PriMagi, but that's it.

Pretty Series wasn't very popular inside Japan either, until PriPara started. So there are way more people who watched PriPara than the other series.

Pretty Series also has a big Korean fanbase, most notably because Dear My Future featured several Korean main characters.

I watched the series "live" from Aurora Dream in 2011, till 100+ eps of PriPara in 2016 or so, then stopped due to lack of time. I saw some of PriChan but nothing of PriMagi & Aipri yet.

I like all of Pretty Series but I really love Pretty Rhythm/King of Prism the most. I think they're a cut above the rest of the series. And starting PriPara, the series started being much more like other idol anime and more like other kids anime (though it still had some really good things like any kids anime, and is overall better than most "adult" anime contemporaries).

Since Pretty Rhythm wasn't very popular until Rainbow Live and later on its sequel King of Prism, most people in Japan first got into Pretty Rhythm by watching Rainbow Live or the first King of Prism movie. And then watched the rest to better understand King of Prism.

The 1st Kinpri movie in 2016 almost flopped too, but got popular thanks to how the movie was made with Cheer Screening in mind: There are scenes where the audience can voice over lines, sing along etc.

The first Kinpri movie popularized these screenings in Japan. Till the pandemic forced cinemas to close down and the fad to stop, nearly every single movie in Japan would do a few Cheer Screenings. Anime movies like Detective Conan, action movies, Indian movies like Baahubali, etc. It was really a huge cinema culture revolution. Hope I can get paid to write about all this in detail one day insha Allah. I've been pitching stories like this whenever I can but to no avail.

Kinpri's story focuses on the male characters in Rainbow Live + new characters. At 1st it was "just" a sequel to Rainbow Live, but now it's a really cool convoluted story, in a really good and clever way, where characters from all of Pretty Series can (briefly) appear due to lore reasons.

The latest King of Prism movie, King of Prism Your Endless Call, includes characters from Pretty Rhythm Aurora Dream & Pretty Rhythm Dear My Future, PriPara, PriChan, and PriMagi. Pretty Rhythm was already one of the best anime ever story-wise, but it managed to surpass itself with Kinpri.

In a way, if you really want to understand everything in King of Prism now, you need to have seen all of Pretty Series. Plus some of the series the staff worked on, to better understand certain references, most notably Mashin Eiyuden Wataru, some Gundam especially Turn A Gundam, Crush Gear Turbo, Onmyou Taisenki, etc.

Pretty Rhythm/King of Prism is extremely similar to Gundam in themes, most notably regarding kids dealing with the adults' mistakes. There's always prominent adult characters in Pretty Rhythm. In Aurora Dream, you had several adult women, most notably the main characters' manager, Kyouko, who end up getting under the spotlight in the end of the series and in Dear My Future. She's in a way the true protagonist.

Similarly in Rainbow Live, the characters' managers and coaches are men, so that's why the King of Prism sequels focus on them.

Besides Gundam, Pretty Rhythm is also extremely similar to old shoujo series like Aim For The Ace and Glass Mask. But it's unique is how the cast practice shonen ice skating called Prism Shows.

It's the most over-the-top-thing of all time, they can rewrite reality like with Reality Marbles (or like Domain Expansions in Jujutsu for younger anime fans) and jump to space and stuff.

If you heard of Aikatsu by Bandai Namco, (I really like the 1st series, others I haven't seen yet), Pretty Series is its eternal rival. Long story short Takara Tomy copied Sega's arcade game Oshare Majou Love And Berry to make Pretty Rhythm. Then Bandai Namco copied Pretty Rhythm to make Aikatsu, and Aikatsu was MUCH MORE popular. So then Takara Tomy copied Aikatsu to make PriPara, and PriPara ended up becoming one of the most popular arcade games in the 2010s in Japan.

However due to the shift in the industries and pop culture in Japan, and how dire things are for Kodomomuke (works primarily aimed at children) and Joseimuke (things primarily aimed at women), the two franchises are teaming up now. Most notably there was an Aikatsu x PriPara crossover movie released in Japan in 2025. I wrote an article about the movie when it was first announced.

That's all thanks for reading, feel free to ask me anything in the comments.