Sugar, Spice, and Everything Nice · 9:08pm Mar 28th, 2017
These were the ingredients chosen to create the perfect little girls!
The Powerpuff Girls!
So for those who don't know me, I was a huge PPG fan back in the day. I wrote more fanfiction for it than the number of years I've been alive. I was heavily involved in the community for a number of years. So when this new reboot came up I was interested, but I made a mistake. I started listening to what people on the internet had to say about it when they badmouthed it (hard). However, recently the show made its way onto Hulu (I no longer have Cable, and couldn't really watch it before) so I decided to take the plunge and see if it really lives up to its abysmal reputation.
Aside from some caveats and personal preferences, I have to say yeah, I really like it. I mean I can see why diehard fans of the old series who wanted more of THAT don't like it, but for what it is and what it's doing, I have to say I'm really enjoying it.
THE GOOD
The animation is just straight-up better than the original show, during any of its seasons. There are all kinds of small details in it, and the characters refuse to become static images. They're constantly moving, and the imagery is given much more solidity and depth. I suppose there are those who will prefer the more abstract style of the original (particularly in the backgrounds, where they are now designed like normal backgrounds as opposed to abstract shapes with mismatched blocks of color), but for me the show is kind of a feast for the eyes. From the moment the badass opening credits roll to the adorable dancing chibi-Puffs in the end credits, the show's style and animation are just ON POINT. I even like how the girls' gigantic eyes are occasionally replaced with dots or symbols for extra expressiveness, making them seem even more dynamic.
The pacing of each episode actually feels significantly faster than the original, and it actually has good comedic timing. Back in the 90's on Cartoon Network they ran into a point where it sort of became "their thing" to make up a lot of their comedy with awkward pacing and pauses. A joke will happen and some character will just stare at them like they just said something weird, only moving on when the joke has had several seconds to sink in. This show doesn't do that. It keeps moving, and each episode is just packed with stuff. And it's GOOD stuff, for the most part. Like, this show actually makes me laugh. The original never did that. Not because it was bad, but because it wasn't that kind of humor. The original PPG's humor was more of the "oh I see what you did there" variety, where this show's is much more blatant, silly, and obvious, but yet I think it actually might be delivered a little better, on the whole.
Princess Morbucks. For the most part the classic PPG villains are relegated to cameos and one-off jokes in the new series, but Princess Morbucks has practically been elevated to the status of the girls' main villain. Not only does she have more appearances than any other villain in the season, but she actually has a whole episode dedicated to giving her actual, legit character development. This is a personal "good" because she was my second favorite villain in the original show (The first was HIM, if you're curious), but someone at CN gets why I loved her, because she's everywhere. I don't even mind that they sprinkled a Hip-Hop theme on top of her Li'l Miss Moneybags gimmick (Nobody blings out like Morbucks), she still works as a villain and a character, and I still love her.
THE BAD
It's a modern trend in "whacky" cartoons to use still pictures of real life places and people for extra "whackiness", and this show does that too. I've never understood what's supposed to be funny about this, personally. Is it the unexpectedness? It kind of stops being unexpected when you're the fiftieth show to do it. It can be kind of annoying and jarring, but it doesn't happen often enough for me to really start disliking the show for it.
As I mentioned before, the classic villains are relegated to cameos and jokes, for the most part. Mojo Jojo's only function is as a comedic punching bag, and nobody else has had much of any real impact on any episode plots that I've seen yet. HIM managed to make a splash in one episode though by Trolling a beauty pageant with a cursed crown, but that's about it. What's really puzzling to me about this is the apparent absence of the Amoeba Boys. You'd think their Three Stooges gimmick would fit right in with a more slapsticky kind of show, but they have yet to even gain a cameo. Also if HIM does end up spending this series as Townsville's Infernal Troll... I think I could live with that, because it's kinda awesome.
Also the new villains they seem to be trying to set up as the new recurring cast just don't feel like they can carry repeated appearances. With most of them it feels like trying to make the Clown/Mime from the original show carry his own line of episodes. I dunno, maybe they can pull it off, and I'm not saying they need to bring back the old ones (new show, new cast), but they do need to work harder to make their villains' gimmicks more universal and less focused on the needs of a single episode.
Oh yeah, and they wrote Miss Bellum out of the show. If there isn't another episode this season where she comes back that I haven't seen yet... that is some bullcrap.
THE MIDDLE
A lot has been said about the girls' exaggerated personalities, and honestly I'm kinda neutral about it simply because they're clearly shooting for a different feel with this show. In the original the girls felt more like "real little girls" (barring their almost supernatural intelligence), but they were also more boring. They held interest by learning and being themselves, and interacting with different fun characters, but they simply weren't all that funny. The new girls are engineered more for comedy. Their personalities are pushed a little further in the name of laughs, which honestly, they have been getting from me for the most part. And while I'm not going to say it's BETTER than the original, I'm not going to say it's WORSE either. It's more of a lateral shift, and if you don't like this kind of show, sure, I can see why you wouldn't like it, but there are plenty who would. Me? I kinda like that so much more of the show's feel is driven directly by the girls' personalities, and part of that comes from how exaggerated they are. The new voices even grew on me within the first episode.
Overall, I like the show. It's a different beast from the original, but then I didn't really expect more of the same.
I'm one of those people who appreciates New PPG for what it is, just like I appreciate Teen Titans Go for what it is.
I also think a lot of the haters need to take a step back and think things through a bit.
Ah. I see someone else decided to quote a popular show from their childhood for their daily blog post.
I did one where I parodied the Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers intro to promote my newest story.
Is there really a reboot?
4475234
It's hard to say what the new PPG is. It was advertised as a reboot, but acts more like a sequel at times.
4475489
It's basically a reboot without the retconning or time advancement. It was like the showrunners got into a series of arguments with the producers about what changes they could and couldn't make.
The girls aren't actually older but they seem to be in middle school (except when they're in coloring class or something).
The girls changed voices and personalities, but every other classic character has the same voice and (mostly) the same personality.
Things they can hammer down more solidly in season 2.
4475489 Huh. Intresting.
I didn't watch the original PPGs enough to really call myself a "fan" of the show. I only saw maybe a dozen episodes, some of which I remember in surprising detail. I enjoyed it, of course, but I didn't watch it on a regular basis. So I feel like I might be able to watch the new one without any baggage from the old show...