The New Powerpuff Girls Totally Fuckin’ Sucks
The new show completely misses the point of the Powerpuff Girls. The whole premise served as nothing more than a simple joke: cute, 2 foot tall kindergartners pummeling the piss outta big ugly monsters in gratuitously violent fights. At least that’s what the original show was all about. You had 3, while somewhat simple archetypes, eventually they evolved into unique characters complete with unique personalities, and strengths as well as glaring flaws, as any good character should have. Blossom was the bookish, nerdy girl, a born leader, but also, a stubborn know-it-all with a bit of an ego. Bubbles was the girly-girl. She loved her dolls and cute things and anything that came to be associated with prissiness or femininity, but who was a bit of a fraidy-cat, but who when pushed to her limits wasn’t afraid to get down and dirty. And Buttercup, a rough and tumble tomboy with a bit of an attitude, whose recklessness and hastiness and abrasiveness could get her in trouble with others.
Their whole deal was that they were superheroes. A monster attacked or some bad guys were robbing a bank or some evil thing showed up and they were there to kick its ass. There were no questions asked. There was no needed message of girl power. They just did it. There would be obstacles, but it was always internal. It was never because they were girls, They were strong and smart enough to not get outwitted by the devil (Him) or a mad genius monkey (Mojo Jojo) or some furry redneck (Fuzzy Lumpkins).
My biggest problem with this new one, which is also my biggest problem with Teen Titans Go!, is that it’s a show about superheroes that don’t do superhero things. Teen Titans Go! is essentially a sitcom starring the Teen Titans. It’s like Seinfeld (except not funny) where it’s just this group of stupid people dealing with mundane situations and they’re all idiots and terrible people. There’s almost no fighting in The Powerpuff Girls 2016, and when there is, it’s totally watered down. The original had blood, and dismemberment, and people losing teeth, complete with teeth flung out the mouth and spit spewing out. A monster would be cut in half and puss and ooze would come out of them. What do the Powerpuff Girls do in the new series? Well, they twerk, and engage in memes, spout already dated dialogue, and go to school.
None of the characters show any semblance of their original characters. They’re all just stupid and spout memes, because the network producers don’t understand kids at all and think they literally know nothing but memes, and that memes, (especially cringeworthy, dated ones) are funny. It feels very much like a bunch of old people, or aliens who don’t understand people, are trying to make their best adaptation of the Powerpuff Girls which is really sad because it’s not a hard concept to grasp at all.
This show is so fuckin’ neutered. They took Miss Bellum out simply because she was hot. Never-mind the fact that Miss Bellum is actually a smart, independent woman, the mind behind a brain dead mayor, whose essentially running the town under his feet while he struggles to get a plastic bag off his head. They had to go and get rid of Miss Bellum, all because she was essentially red hair, red dress and boobs, and she talked in a smoky voice. She was a cool character and totally iconic and memorable and she didn’t deserve to be removed. On a side note, I honestly wouldn’t have noticed the redesign of Miss Keane to not have any boobs or really any sexuality to her body at all, but thanks to the internet, she got fucked over too.
Another thing I hated was how the creators went and hired new actresses to play the girls. First off, I don’t hate those girls; they do a fine enough job with the parts. Buttercup sounds kinda off but really, who can pull off replicating a voice as iconic as E.G. Daily’s? I just hate the really underhanded way they decided to not even ask the 3 actresses if they wanted to reprise their roles (which all 3 come off as would have saying yes) It’s just bullshit. You got 3 of the best known voice actresses out there, and you just completely negate them when trying to pull off a proper revival, stupid.
Now here’s something I don’t think alot of the reviewers talk about, and it’s how disgustingly bright this show is. It’s so over-saturated when in the original show all the colors where mostly toned down pastels or even grays. In contrast, the girls were all highlighted in bright colors, hot-pink, sky-blue, and lime-green. Those colors made the girls pop and it was genius coloring and it attracted attention where the attention needed to be met. You’ll notice that all the important characters wear bright colors too so that you know to focus on them when they’re the primary character on screen. In this new show, everything is ridiculously bright. PPG 2016 makes Lisa Frank looks positively grey-scale by comparison.
And for the love of GOD CN, please, fuckin’ please, stop pushing this SJW, feminist, girl-power bullshit. It’s bad enough that it’s practically inescapable on the internet (here of course I realize that I am indeed typing this on the domain, the MOTHERSHIP dare-I-say, of this whole cancerous ideology). Kids don’t care about it. They just want to be entertained without having some agenda shoved down their throat. Do I think women should feel empowered and encouraged to better themselves? Yeah I do. Do women deserve equality? Of course they do. This should be completely evident by now. The problem I really have with this ideology is the immense level of low self-esteem that seems to emerge from the fact that you have to constantly enforce that you’re powerful. Do you know who keeps telling people they’re strong? Weak people. If you’re strong, and independent, TRULY independent, then you have the confidence to do whatever the fuck you want without caring what anyone thinks or says about it. That is confidence. Self-awareness (another thing these people lack in) is also a trait of independence. Sorry about the tangent. Don’t kick me off Tumblr. Some of you are really cool and great artists and not all of you are horrible. There’s just a massive tumor on this site which other than it’s somewhat questionable navigation issues, I have no problem with whatsoever. Back to PPG.
So what DO I like about this new version? Well, the character designs are modernized a bit but still instantly recognizable from their original counterparts. Tom Kenny’s back, and the guy who voices Mojo Jojo. The art-style isn’t too far off from the original and the voice actresses aren’t bad. They don’t distract me from the fact that it’s not the original 3. Honestly, that’s it. I have nothing else nice to say about this trash.
Oh and one more thing, I think the design of the new Powerpuff Girl, Bliss, totally stinks. It’s obvious that she had little to no creativity or thought out into her physical design at all. Whether or not she’ll be a cool or even likable character has yet to be determined (although gauging on the consistency of the rest of the content of this show, probably not). Just saying her physical design stinks, and no it’s not cause she’s black or has hips for some reason, but because she’s purple and Bunny (the abomination of a sister from the original show) rocked purple, so pick another color. I also don’t like her blue hair that doesn’t fit the rest of her palette. It’s bad color choice. This whole character feels like she was designed by one of those lazy DeviantArt artists that just made the character in a custom PPG character creator and then added hips in MS Paint. Also she looks ambiguously like Nicki Minaj which weirds me out.
I said it before, Powerpuff Girls isn’t a hard concept to grasp. You just take cute girls and make them fight monsters and maybe learn some valuable life lesson. That’s it. They coulda satisfied everyone by just doing the same show as before, just with new stories and more villains. The nostalgia bandwagon thing is still strong and marketable and the fact that the producers at CN don’t realize this just makes me wonder how they ever got their jobs when they’re so out-of-touch with their audience. Between unhealthy, borderline lethal doses of Teen Titans GO! that pretty much dominates the network, all we have to look forward to are mediocre shows like Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, OK KO (which is OK, no KO… I am so sorry), and the few remaining shows that haven’t been cancelled that are actually good, like Steven Universe, Adventure Time and Gumball (all of which have their futures held by the balls by the network), We Bare Bears, which is just meh to me, kinda on the boring side really, reruns of great shows like Regular Show and Clarence and THIS.
PPG and Teen Titans GO! are the two reasons I WON’T watch Cartoon Network anymore. I am so fatigued by their insistence, and their false, baiting nostalgia trap marketing, and their tired, unfunny, totally corporate, pandering humor, and their borderline omnipresence that it has pretty much killed my desire to even scroll over the channel anymore. Fuck this show.
So that’s it. That’s my review/rant. Hope you enjoyed, and if you didn’t, that’s cool too. Let me know how you feel. I’d be interested in some hopefully varied opinions on the topic of PPG, TTG and other shit related to the network.
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