Star Detective Precure! gets a franchise-first 4DX run
The film's first 4DX screenings open on 2 October, with a one-week Hanamaru Discovery card giveaway from 25 September and a new First Step trailer.
Star Detective Precure! is set to become the first film in the franchise's history to be released in 4DX. The film's official site announced the motion-seat run on 20 September, with 4DX screenings of the Star Detective Precure! movie beginning in Japanese cinemas on 2 October.
The film itself opened in Japan on 18 September, so the 4DX version arrives two weeks into its cinema run. It is a first for a series that has now released 23 films, and the announcement puts the film in the small group of Japanese animated releases given a full effects-theatre version while still on general sale.
What 4DX adds to a screening
4DX pairs a moving seat with theatre effects: the seat pitches, tilts and shakes in time with the action, while wind, water spray, lightning flashes, scent and smoke are triggered to match what is happening on screen. It is an attraction-style format rather than a standard auditorium, and the film site notes the conditions that come with it. Audiences under 100cm cannot be admitted, the effects differ slightly from cinema to cinema, and viewers are pointed at the individual venue's own page for the detail.
A second gift for cinema-goers
The same update also names the film's second admission gift. The Hanamaru Discovery changing card is a limited card that changes its picture when it is moved, and it comes in three designs drawn from Star Detective Precure!, You and Idol Precure and Wonderful Precure!. It is handed out at random, one per person per screening, and only for a week, from 25 September to 1 October, with each cinema holding its own limited stock. Adults can collect one alongside children, which was also true of the Pochitan Miracle Light given out for the film's opening run.
A new trailer built on the insert song
The film site has released a new trailer as well. The First Step edition is built around the film's insert song of the same name, and it follows the earlier Miracle Light trailer, which showed the film-exclusive future forms for Cure Mystic, Cure Éclair and Cure Arcana.
Our opinion
4DX is an odd flex for a franchise whose main event is a plastic torch waved in the dark. But Precure films have always been built around getting children out of their seats and into the story, so putting the seats themselves in motion is a smaller leap than it first looks, and it arrives while the film is still fresh in cinemas instead of in a later rerelease window. For families within reach of a participating screen, that is a genuinely different way to watch the film, and the theatre list is worth reading before anyone books.
For everyone else, the announcement is mostly a reminder of how the franchise travels. Nothing on the film site points to a release outside Japan, and the card giveaway is tied to Japanese cinemas and their stock levels. Precure has never had much of a theatrical footing abroad, so a British audience gets the trailer, the changing card and, for now, nothing to point a cinema ticket at.