Toei Animation announced on October 27 that the Precure franchise is getting another television spinoff. It is called Dual Shadow ~Precure Villain Heroines~ and it will air in 2027.
The title is the story. Recent Precure spinoffs went back to teams viewers already knew. Power of Hope: Precure Full Bloom brought the Yes! Precure 5 cast back as adults in October 2023, and Mahō Tsukai Precure!!: MIRAI DAYS picked up Witchy Pretty Cure! in January 2025. Dual Shadow skips that route. Toei describes it as an original work with original characters and an original story, which puts it apart from most of what the franchise has done with spinoffs so far.
The teaser is short and does exactly one thing. A field of flowers, then a line of Japanese text on screen: "Well, we are not Precure, after all." A single flower sways under a spotlight while a pair of eyes watches from the dark behind it. That is the whole clip. No cast, no studio, no broadcast slot, no date inside 2027.
Why villains
Precure has been converting its antagonists for almost as long as it has existed. Higashi Setsuna, better known as Eas in 2009's Fresh Precure!, switched sides and became Cure Passion, and the franchise has run variations on that arc ever since. Dual Shadow turns the camera around. The villains are the subject now, and the show says so in its own name.
A Precure series where nobody transforms into a pink cure is either the most interesting thing Toei has tried in years or a merchandising headache in a trench coat. The confidence of that teaser line suggests they know which one they are aiming for. Precure is, after all, a franchise that has successfully sold adult women their own childhood heroes twice in three years.
Where the main line stands
Star Detective Precure!, the 23rd main television anime, debuted on February 1 and is still airing. Crunchyroll streams it in North America, Central America, South America, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the CIS, which matters for a spinoff: the audience outside Japan now exists before the show does.
Its film, Eiga Meitantei Precure! Fushigi na Niwa to Futari no Himitsu, opened in Japan on September 18 and finished third in its opening weekend, selling 358,000 tickets for 446 million yen, about $2.82 million, over three days. It has since climbed past every other standalone Precure movie at the Japanese box office, which we covered when the record fell.
What to expect
Almost nothing is settled in public. There is no studio, no director, no writer, no voice cast. The official site carries the 2027 window and a placeholder for a new promo video, and that is all.
That is normal for a Precure announcement this early. Star Detective Precure! did not reveal its main cast and staff until January, weeks before a February premiere. If Dual Shadow follows the same pattern, names will arrive late this year or early next, and the first real look at the characters will come with them.
The franchise itself goes back to 2004 and Futari wa Pretty Cure, and it has produced a new main television series almost every year since. A spinoff built on villains rather than heroes is a change of subject for a brand that has spent two decades selling transformation sequences. Whether Toei is testing a new format or simply giving the antagonists their own stage, 2027 is when we find out.
Source: Anime News Network, citing the Dual Shadow ~Precure Villain Heroines~ official website and Comic Natalie
Source: Anime News Network, citing the Dual Shadow ~Precure Villain Heroines~ official website and Comic Natalie
Featured image: Teaser art for Dual Shadow ~Precure Villain Heroines~, via Toei Animation.
