Why a Single Room? The Logic Behind the Layout of Pokey Oaks Kindergarten
Today's analysis comes inspired by this Reddit Post pondering similar questions, so thank you SilverKittenX9 for the idea!
Pokey Oaks Kindergarten is an iconic location in the Powerpuff Girls. So much so that it was even present in the pilot, albeit, looking much different. Though there has been a question on some fans' minds since the very beginning. Why is Pokey Oaks Kindergarten a single school, with a single big room, teaching a single grade and not a part of a bigger elementary school? Lets discuss
Our first point of interest brings us back to a theme I've mentioned in previous analysis, the UPA style. Predominate in the 1940s-1950s, which was a huge inspiration for the Powerpuff Girls' iconic look pre-movie. SilverKitten mentions in her post that it could be based on Kindergartens from that era, and she's not far off.
Kindergartens of this time could very well just be a single room or building teaching one grade, or many grades. Of course, we often associate a single schoolhouse with a little red building with a bell on top, not the sleek rectangular building like Pokey Oaks is, and elementary schools and the modern education format was just starting to pop up.
It's likely that Pokey Oaks is a hybrid of these older UPA era classrooms and a modern kindergarten. Making for a simplified setting that's easier to make backgrounds for.
This brings me to my 2nd point, Pokey Oaks is probably a single room because an entire elementary school would be complicated to write around and make backgrounds for
That's not saying it's IMPOSSIBLE for them to have designed a school. They did! In the episode "Get Back Mojo," where they, coincidentally, go back to 1959 to stop Mojo from hurting the professor as a child. The professor goes to an elementary school closer to what we're used to seeing.
Though that's a lot of tables, thats a lot of lockers with a lot of details. It's doable for a single episode, but if they had to paint these new backgrounds frequently it would be a pain.
For a single room, non defined classroom like Pokey Oaks Kindergarten, it's easy to make backgrounds a lot faster. On a meta level it's not hard to write, board, and frame around. Making Pokey Oaks a very efficient location for the animators.
My last point is one similarly brought up by SilverKitten, they possibly wanted the girls to mostly interact with their own peers while in school rather than integrating with other grades.
When we look at the girl's classmates, we KNOW they are other kindergartners. Because its a Kindergarten. Around the same size, same age, likely sharing the same interests. When the girls interact with kids of different ages, it's usually outside of school or the basis of an episode. It makes sense for kindergartners to play and hang out with kids their age or close to their age.
Comparing that to when they DID transition to an elementary school in the 2016 reboot. Now theres a lot of stories you could tell, putting the girls in a more integrated school's setting most kids can relate to. There's just one problem, the girl's classmates... well except for the returning ones don't look even remotely like their peers.
Looking over the elephant in the room that these side characters look like they belong in a different show. A lot of plots involving the girls and the other kids, especially older kids, at the school feels very jarring. Perhaps some of these work for a single episode, but remember. Midway Elementary School is the setting that REPLACES Pokey Oaks in PPG 2016.
It makes sense for the kindergartners to have to deal with scenarioes with kids their age. Why are these kindergartners worried about things that the teenagers in their school care about? Why is Blossom in love with a teenage boy? Remember when that happened in Buttercrush except it was, rightfully, treated as bad then? (And I dont just mean because Ace is a villain)
Perhaps one could say, "Well Bliss is a teenager! Being at an elementary school can bring her into play!"
Except you forget the reboot, for how much it hypes her up, BARELY uses her. She goes to school about once before blasting herself back off into space because the reboot itself never likes to acknowledge her until the plot revolves around her.
All this is to say that making Pokey Oaks a contained classroom and building avoids odd trappings and awkward plots by giving the girls kids their own age to bounce off of.
At the end of the day we have to remember, the Powerpuff Girls is fictional. They don't have to exactly follow a school system one to one with what we're used to in our world. Just one that's vaguely familiar enough not to question it. As it stands, likely Pokey Oaks is a fusion of both the schools known in the UPA era, and the modern schools of the 90s-early 2000s, and the choice to make it a single school with a single room made it ideal for both animators and writers alike.
A place we visit in a cartoon made well not only serves a purpose, but has a reason for why it was made the way it was. Whether that's in homage to an inspiring source or for the ease of the people creating the cartoons we love.
