Precure is a rare franchise: for over twenty years its score has undergone constant "generational change," with composers handing off the baton and updating the sound of its fighting heroines each time. For 2026's latest entry, Detective Precure!, that sound has been entrusted to two women composers, Erika Fukazawa and Misaki Umase. On September 16, the original soundtrack to the film Detective Precure! The Mysterious Garden and the Secret of Two arrives alongside the theme-song single. It's a mirror reflecting exactly where today's most energetic "Precure sound" stands.
The "Sixth Generation" Fukazawa, and Osaka College of Music's Top Graduate Umase
Erika Fukazawa graduated from Tokyo College of Music's composition and conducting course, studying composition under Akira Senju. Beyond writing and arranging for stage and live-action film, she also serves as music director and conductor. After contributing to the music of the film Your Name., she wrote part of the score for Delicious Party Precure and then joined in earnest as the "sixth-generation" Precure composer from Hirogaru Sky! Precure. Grounded in rigorous classical training, she has scored these heroine tales with a stance of "not being bound by what's supposedly Precure-like."
The other half, Misaki Umase, was born in 1997 in Kakogawa, Hyogo. She graduated at the top of her class from Osaka College of Music's Music Creation program, and began her career in earnest after working on Precure music while still a student. Her signature is a light-footed crossing of pop, jazz, rock, funk, classical, and electronica. Two artists of different generations and backgrounds now run side by side, holding up the sound of Precure.
From "Kimi to Idol" to "Detective" — A Second Team-Up
This isn't the pair's first collaboration. They already worked together on the previous series, Kimi to Idol Precure, making Detective Precure! their second outing as a duo. From "idol" to "detective": when a show's motif flips 180 degrees, so must its sound. On the TV soundtrack, tracks like "Theater of Darkness" and "Usono-Noir" (Umase) and "Open! Tear Arcana Rod!" (Fukazawa) built the mysterious, stylish air unique to a detective story. It's fascinating how the division of labor between them becomes the very depth of the show's world.
It bears adding that a Precure score is also a long-distance run: dozens of cues a year, and an enormous body of music across the franchise. Transformations, finishing moves, everyday scenes, showdowns with the enemy — the staple set pieces have firm templates, yet each series demands the flexibility to repaint the palette to fit its theme. For a "detective" motif, tense low-end swells, stylish jazz beats, and modulations that heighten the thrill of solving a mystery all come alive. When Fukazawa's classical sense of structure locks in with Umase's genre-hopping pop instincts, all of it can coexist naturally on a single album. That deep well of options, unique to a two-composer setup, is precisely the strength of today's Precure sound.
The Film Soundtrack, Sept 16, Simultaneous with the Theme Song
The film The Mysterious Garden and the Secret of Two opens September 18. The original soundtrack is released simultaneously with the theme-song single on September 16 from Marvelous. The single carries "FIRST PRISM" (sung by Yuka Masui & Chihaya Yoshitake) and "First Step" (sung by Ami Ishii). The soundtrack side is expected to line up the feature-length score newly written by the Fukazawa-Umase duo, just as on the TV series. Don't dismiss it as mere kids' fare: Precure's score is a composer's laboratory that seriously deploys everything from full orchestra to jazz to electronica. How will these two solve the "detective" motif in sound? We'll check the answer to that deduction with our ears on September 16.
