Japanese Professor Solves Anime's Greatest Mystery With SCIENCE

A Japnese girl pop group named NMB has a weekly show called NMB to Manabu-kun wherein the pop group invites a lecturer on various subjects every week to give a talk on an area of expertise, along with a Q&A segment from the group and various comedians.

The theme of one episode this year was "The Science of Science Fiction" with professor Yanagita Rikao. The question pretty much anyone who's ever watched a single episode of Sailor Moon or the like has probably wondered about: How come nobody ever attacks the heroines during the lengthy transformation sequences?

The answer is both illuminating and entertaining.

 
Question: The transformation scenes in Pretty Cure are very long, so why don’t the bad guys attack the girls in the meantime?


"Even when I was little, I was thinking ‘Hey! Attack them now!’ "
I found this odd as well, so I watched the transformation scene many times. And what I noticed is, when the Pretty Cures yell ‘Dual Aurora Wave!’ and transform, a rainbow-colored column of light shoots up from the ground, going BOOM!"

"And then the Pretty Cures levitate, and go up into the air. Based on this, I believe the protagonists of Pretty Cure are being held up in the air by the power of light.


"When we think of light, we usually think it heats up things or lights up things. But in reality, light has the power to hold up things as well."
"When the sun is beating down on us in the summer, the human body is being pressed downwards by the sun beams with a force of 2/100,000g.”
"But this is only about a one-hundred of the weight of a mosquito, so no matter how hot it is, we don’t feel that sunlight is heavy."
 
"So that means the light holding them up must be extremely strong. If we assume that the two Pretty Cures each weigh about 45kg and do some calculations…”
"It means the light during the transformation must have the energy of 2,100,000,000 kiloWatts per square mile
.
"While the entirety of power that Japan is capable of generating is only 100,000,000 kiloWatts.”
"So they’re using 21 TIMES the amount of energy the whole of Japan can generate.”
"So what would happen if a bad guy jumped in to try to sabotage their transformation?"
"He would EVAPORATE INSTANTLY.”
“DEATH AWAITS ANYONE WHO DARES TO DISRUPT A PRETTY CURE TRANSFORMATION."

"So this means the best thing to do would be to transform close to any bad guys."

"Yes. They are the strongest while they transform, and are practically invincible.”



I know, Jack Swagger. My mind was blown, too.

A huge thank you to Alicia for the screenshots and Japanese translation, and QueenBella for the tip.