Powerpuff Girls...in Japan?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Taped the new episode of PPG earlier today, which got me to thinking about a PPG-related story, about the series finally going to Japan. Powerpuff.com has a little on this.

Now, I’m aware that the series is huge in Japan (practically every Japanese-owned store in Hawaii has PPG merchandise), and I’m all for spreading one of the most entertaining, funny, and lively cartoons around, but still…are they really going to go for it? The Powerpuff Girls is a cartoon designed by an American strongly influenced by American cartoons, filled to the eyeballs with American culture, references to American movies, TV shows, and music, and unmistakably American characters. Its format, short stories with plenty of action and singular plotlines, was designed for a specific American audience (you know, short attention span and all).

Nothing in this show even remotely resembles the way things are done in anime. Start with character design. The girls have no fingers, wrists, elbows, shoulders, toes, knees, noses, or ears. They’re completely unlike any anime girl I’ve ever seen. (Yes, this includes the eyes; go compare their three solid-color equal-width rings to actual anime eyes sometime.) And I’ve certainly never seen anyone composed entirely of straight lines, like Professor Utonium. I don’t think I need to explain Sara Bellum or Fuzzy Lumpkins.

The abilities of the girls are largely dependent on the requirements of the plot. Several characters are there strictly for laughs. It’s all very cartoony and nonserious on a level that doesn’t exist in even the allegedly “wacky” anime series (cough Urusei Yatsura cough).

And the pacing! A typical fight scene lasts 20 seconds! An entire plot plotted, implemented, and smashed to bits in one episode, which lasts about eleven minutes! Simply put, things happen really, really fast in Townsville…and if mainstream series like Dragonball and Pokemon are any indication, Japanese audiences are going to be absolutely reeling. (It’d almost certainly have to be subtitled…I’m not sure there’s a voice actor in the world who can talk that fast.)

Anywise, I’d like some opinions on the prospects of actual episodes, not just merchandise, of PPG in Japan. What they hey, I’d like to see one of these episodes sometime, if only to see lines of Japanese zipping across the screen like in those Simpsons gags. :slight_smile:

2

Wow, I wonder if they had this same argument over in Japan when they thought of selling shows over here.

I don’t see why PPG won’t be sucessful over there. It’s not as if this will be their contact with American pop-culture ever. Our movies play in Japan. Our CDs sell over there (even if for novelity). The art style, while highly-stylized should not be completely foreign. IE there are character designs floating around for a Japanese animated show called “Super Milk-Chan” which looks like it comes from the same stylebook as PPG. NOT SAME CHAPTER, mind you, but stylebook. (It’s probably somewhere on the Animation Blast website. You might have to dig in the old news archives[sup]1[/sup]. And the fact that the plots are so simple should help people to digest it easier. I’d say more, but it’s late. Good night all.

[sub]1. It was probably the only anime design that the operator, Amid Amidi liked. He’s a very outspoken critic against anime.
[/sub]

3

PPG is also loaded with references to JAPANESE pop-culture - albiet ones that the (anime watching, manga reading, Pocky eating portion of the) American viewers will understand (Godzilla, Giant Robot anime, manga (Bubbles reading one with an incredibly long and cutesy title (‘The Cute Story of Happy-Happy Bunny-Chan’, or somesuch), etc.), and the characters are CUTE, in a slightly creepy Sanrio (Hello Kitty, Keropi, etc.) way.

Not only do I see no reason it couldn’t fly, I can see no reason to believe it could fail.

4

I confess that I have not seen PPG, so my understanding is limited to pictures I have seen and to the OP.

PPG may be different from “Sailor Moon,” “DragonballZ,” and “Pokemon,” but it is important to remember that these are a small sampling of cartoons from Japan. From the description in the OP, PPG sounds, stylistically, quite a bit like Doraemon, and a little bit like Chibi Maruko Chan and Crayon Shin Chan. In addition, remember that when Japanese anime come here, the scripts are often radically changed to make sense to American audiences. The same thing will presumably happen when PPG goes to Japan.

5

Mmm…well, stylistically, I don’t see a problem. Anime and manga cover a lot of territory, and I’m pretty sure most viewers could get used to the simple forms.

It’s the episodes themselves that could cause trouble, especially the pacing of both the dialogue and plot. Trust me, Japanese is a pretty syllable-heavy language, and simply getting understandable Japanese dialogue (dub) or messages (subtitle) could be a challenge…unless they REALLY change a lot of dialogue, which would be just unforgivable. I know, I’ve seen Sailor Moon. Bleah. And again, things happen extremely fast in Townsville…

Tengu - Bubbles’ comic, “The Great Fun Time Adventures of Bunny Bunny and Friend”, is the first actual manga reference I’ve ever seen. (I read somewhere on powerpuff.com that a few prior eps had Pokemon dolls, but this is probably just a reference to how pouplar Pokemon is here. IMHO, anyway.) Uh Oh Dynamo was just a huge spoof of Japanese robot/monster movies, of course…that’s why the girls were initially in that Japanese-owned health spa, or whatever it was. In any case, these are few and far between, and I wouldn’t say that the show’s loaded with them (in fact, it’s possible that the Bunny Bunny comic was actually a response to PPG’s unexpected popularity in that land).
Personally, I hope that it does succeed, mainly because I think it’s a terrific show and want these kind of shows to completely overshadow unfunny dreck like Family Guy or Courage the Cowardly Dog. And no, I ain’t budging, so don’t bother. :smiley:

6

DKW—did you ever hear of Super-Deformed Anime or Manga.

PPG ain’t that different.