Smile Pretty Cure/Tear Jerker

• Episode 18. For the entire episode, the girls train for the baton relay at their school's sports festival... for once, the Precure stuff is almost perfunctory. In order of fastest to slowest, the girls are: Nao, Akane, Miyuki and Reika tied, and poor Yayoi coming in dead last... a very familiar scenario to artists in the audience. Over the course of a week, all the girls try their hardest to practice and train, even Yayoi, who's not at all confident in herself, saying that she always comes in last in these sorts of things. The afternoon before the festival, she leaves the others to go get something she left in the classroom... and overhears her classmates bad-mouthing her, sarcastically wondering why she was picked to represent and saying that she'll cost them victory.
  • And then there's the ending: In the race, Yayoi does her best, to the cheers of the same students who trashed her, and passes the baton to Nao. Nao takes off, pulling into second place, neck-and-neck with the lead. Then she trips. The triumphant theme music comes to a halt as she falls in slow motion, and the other runners stream past her. After all that training, after all the hard work, Nao comes in dead last. When she picks herself up, she apologizes and starts to cry... only to be mob-hugged by the other girls, who are all crying as well, telling her she did a great job.
• Episode 19 looks to be this too. It's about Yayoi's relationship with her dead father, whom she can barely remember.