Shugo Chara Doki Ep. 52 - Recap+the next villain is...Lulu?

Recap episode. Dia randomly hatches from her egg for no good reason, and the other guardian charas (plus El and Il) bring her up to speed on everything that happened in the first season. ::disappointment:: The preview tricked me into thinking there'd be some nice stuff going down. I was all OH SNET DIA! And then...it wasn't really worth mentioning. I don't know why she just randomly hatched, since she was supposed to reappear the next time Amu shone, or something like that. ::sigh:: The OP is pretty promising, at least. All of Amu's upgrades are shown in action. Turns out the Amulet Clover upgrade is a bubble blower (and not a ping pong paddle). The most promising part, however, is the return of everyone's favorite trap, Nadeshiko/Nagihiko. Except this time as a dude. Looks like he'll be standing in as the Jack chair for awhile. The OP was fine in terms of the music. I know a lot of people prefer Buono!'s work, but I think this was pretty cute too. Animation seemed a little less dynamic that previous OPs, but I still like it. The ED was equally pleasant, and fans will be happy to see Buono! performed it.

Overall, a somewhat useless episode, as we just finished the first season a week ago. A recap episode feels like a pretty weak opening. But there are plenty of interesting things to come. Scans+spoilers below:

The following scans were unceremoniously lifted (and edited) from the Shugo Chara community.

Nadeshiko/Nagihiko's Chara Nari with Temari: Yamato Mai Hime. I don't care if it's a dude, Nagihiko really is the ideal "yamato nadeshiko." So much beauty. So much grace. So much trappyness. And so much lovely, lovely violence when he wields that naginta~

Nagihiko's chara nari with his second chara, Rhythm. This one is called Jump Beat, which despite sounding like a bizarre crossover of mangazines looks more like a snowboarder dude. I honestly don't like the design as much as Yamato Mai Hime, but if his chara's name and chara nari name are any indication, I'm hoping for some musical, possibly drum-themed attacks. That would make me very happy. I love drummers. @_@

Well, this girl appears to be the next villain for shugo chara. Her name is...Lulu...
Okay, now that that's out of the way. Don't know much about Lulu, here. She's an anime original character, and supposedly the next villain in the series. In the OP and ED she's mixed in with all the other main characters, etc. From her design, I'm not too excited about where this is going, but maybe she'll turn out to be a decent antagonist who isn't like...annoying. She looks annoying though. Maybe she's Easter's secret weapon? I suppose annoying but effective would be much easier to deal with than annoying and ineffective x 3.

--Ou-bento