JokaRei

JokaRei is the het ship between Joker and Reika Aoki from the Pretty Cure fandom.

Canon
Joker and Reika first meet in episode 21 (18th episode in Glitter Force version). Combining their strengths, the Cures defeat the Akanbe and gain the final Decor they need. Just then, Joker appears before them, stealing the Decor Decór and all the Decors inside it and kidnapping Candy. As the girls realize they still possess one Decor, which Miyuki had used as a Tanabata decoration, they travel to Märchenland, where they are confronted by Joker. The Cures attempt to fight off Joker, but he overwhelms them by turning their powers against them.

Even when they did not know each other, their similarities were noticed despite their different personalities. They are both smart, come up with different ideas to their teams, and skilled fighters who are ready to go to great lengths for their goals. However, Joker often use his intelligence to make problems and manipulate others, while Reika often tries to help others and hates to put anyone through trouble, going so far as to initially refuse any help. When the Cures went to Bad End Kingdom, the commanders, Wolfrun, Akaoni, Majorina and Joker were waiting for them. While the other Cures were fighting the 3 commanders, Joker tried to stop Happy. But Beauty and Pop battled him instead and Joker was quite impressed by her strength and intelligence. During their fight, Joker often teased Reika with his words. Later, when she tries to hit him, Joker dodges her attacks and then licks her hair. Reika froze in shock for a short time, but then she tries to hit him again, but as before, she missed. Joker just smirked at this. Joker had the upper hand in the first half of the battle and all the Cures were almost defeated, but when they remembered their promise, Beauty and the Pretty Cures pumped their adrenaline and powers allowing her to have a strong Beauty Blizzard and defeated Joker, but he managed to escape. After the three generals all fail to defeat any of the Cures, Joker decides to target them himself. In Bad End Kingdom, Joker is thinking about which Cure he should choose to fight with. Then, he decides to attack Cure Beauty saying that she is brainnest after all. As Reika questions her decision to study abroad, Joker appears before her and drags them both into an alternate world (Joker's Circus). Reika transforms into Cure Beauty and prepares to fight, but '''Joker instead congratulates her and throws a farewell party for her. He says that no one did it for her before (even her friends) except him.''' This confirms that he was spying on her. Reika starts feel that something is strange. Later on, Joker tells her that he would love for her to leave for England, as it would give him one less Cure to defeat. He twists and turns his words, taunting Beauty and stating that it would be selfish to stay with everyone in Japan as they all wanted her to go. He also says that this will be the best option for everyone and this is what she also wants. Laying his hands on her shoulders and whispering in her left ear, he adds that she can make him happy too. As expected, Beauty is broken by his words, and turns back into Reika. However, with the help of her fellow Cures and Candy, Reika then realizes that her path is to stay with her friends and to remain a Pretty Cure. Once again, she transforms into Cure Beauty. '''In that moment, Joker truly felt surprised and horrified by how strong she is. He was even speechless for a few seconds.''' Joker utilizes the Black Nose Akanbe to have a sword fight with Beauty. When they fought, they were really angry to each other. Later on, they both came close to each other's face and it looked like they were about to kiss. This didn't happen, but the artists started redraw this moment as kiss scene. In an attempt to beat her, Joker makes multiple copies of himself. However, she is able to see through them and unlocks her new attack: Beauty Blizzard Arrow.

Novel
10 years later, Reika becomes a teacher of the same school she attended. She felt tired due to a culprit in school so she tried to sleep on the one of the desk. When she wakes up, it was dark and the sun had set meaning, everyone had gone home but the atmosphere felt weird to her. She noticed someone sitting on the culprit's sit named Irie. she thought it was one of his pranks that is when she was met with a cackle. the moon reflects to the figure making it clearer for her to see a familiar figure. It was Joker. Due to her lack of memory of her being a Pretty cure, she fails to see him as a dangerous person until he attacks. Joker uses his sharp cards trapping her in the classroom instantly. he then grabs on to her neck and throws her against the blackboard calling her names and telling her that she doesn't have what it takes to be a teacher while choking her until she finally wakes up sweating heavenly and realizes that it was all a dream.

Fanon
Many of the fandom ships them, especially the Japanese fanbase. However, much like other ships in the Smile PreCure series, many people also do not like it and disregard it as pedophilia due to Reika being 14 during the show and Joker being hundreds of years old. However, despite this, it's one of the most popular ships in all of Precure and the most popular ship for both of characters. It has hundreds of fanarts on sites like Pixiv and Zero-Chan, and there's a couple edits of it on Instagram as well as other sites.

The support for the ship depends on where you look. In multiple Smile PreCure Amino's, the ship is banned due to it's controversial undertones. However, in different communities such as Pixiv and a few discord servers, the ship is highly praised and welcomed.

Some people believe that Joker has crush on Reika because he acts odd when he is with her. For example, he licked her hair, bring her to his special place (Joker's Circus), threw a farewell party for her, layed hands on her shoulders, whisper in her left ear, often dodge her attacks and fly up instead of making a counter attack, also pick her instead of the leader (all enemies would prefer to choose the leader). Even If they are enemies, he began to admire her skills and recognized her incredible intelligence. He even considered other commanders as useless and threw them away as trash, other Cures he considered as stupid, while he behaves differently with Reika. According to those facts, some people think that there is possibility that Joker had crush on Reika but didn't realize it. Was it love or not, it's noticeble that for Joker it was something special and had a big impact to him.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Joker/Reika on FanFiction.Net
 * Joker/Reika on FanFiction.Net

TWITTER

Trivia

 * Joker and Reika are always paired up together during fights. This can be seen during "An Abroad Decision," and "Into the Shadow Realm."
 * Joker and Reika are also frequently drawn together, such as in the light novel or in height comparison sketches.
 * Interesting fact, Kore Yamazaki, the author of manga/anime series The Ancient Magus' Bride ships Jokarei. She posted an artwork with them on her Pixiv account and tagged it with their ship name.
 * Joker usually uses personal pronoun "watashi" (私) in his speech, but only when he talks to Cure Beauty, he uses personal pronoun "boku" (僕). "Watashi" (私) is a universal "I" and it has no stylistic coloring, it can be used by everyone. It's formal speech. "Boku" (僕) is used by males (generally young boys) to address someone equal or lower to speaker and when they want to show themselves modest. It's a gentler, semi-formal pronoun alternative.
 * In Glitter Force dub, their names are Rascal and Chloe. However, in one episode, Rascal was nicknamed Joker by Chloe, which references Smile PreCure, the original Japanese dub.
 * Itaoka Nishiki (also known as @itaoka1), a key animator, animation director and character designer of Pretty Cure franchise, made his own book which contains frames (progress of working on various scenes). Despite of that most of them are about Doki Doki PreCure, some of them are frames from Joker and Cure Beauty's fight from episode 23.