Exactly. I wasn’t reading in any agenda to the show - It was funny, and the stories were good and funny. I mean, come on… Moooojo-jo-jo! HIM! this wasn’t something serious or commentary on society.
There certainly were some funny moments. I’d argue that the best episodes were either Mojo Jojo- or Ameoba Boys-centric; they couldn’t not be funny. (Him and Princess Morbucks were too overbaked and I found Fuzzy Lumpkins just boring.) There were a lot of low points too…I defy anyone to find humor in Professor Utonium luring Buttercup into a trap to get her teeth knocked out, or the girls getting trapped in a dystopian future where no one knows they exist (which, incidentally, happened because they raced each other home), or Blossom refusing anyone to use force against a gang of old robbers, to which the ONLY alternative was enlisting a pair of way-past-their-prime crimefighters and getting them both seriously hurt.
This wasn’t supposed to be like Inspector Gadget, where the title character was obviously a moronic bumbling clown who constantly has to get bailed out by his young niece and pet. That’s was the point. That was the formula. The whole premise, and pretty much the entire marketing, of The Powerpuff Girls was “three tiny superheroes save the day with their amazing superpowers”, and that almost never happened.
But that’s all in the past, which I don’t like to dwell on. My question is, what was it about the 2016 series that was so much worse? I’ve never heard anything concrete from anybody. If the girls were hopelessly incompetent, or fought each other too much, or made terrible decisions, or could get really annoying, or were heavy-handed in their methods, it’s nothing I’m not already used to. You could say much the same for the movie, or Dream in Style, or, heck, that silly Teen Titans crossover.
I will agree with all the criticisms of the live action trailer, but as that one’s buried, all we can really do is shrug and move on.
Jophiel - I watched pretty much every 80’s “half hour toy commercial” you could name (which, ironically, often had inferior production values to the actual toy commercials). They were okay time fillers, but I had no illusions about them being fine entertainment, let alone worth getting into huge arguments over decades after the fact. I think the only one I consistently enjoyed was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Most of those sound hilarious, but I don’t actually remember any episodes besides the one were Bubbles turns into Mojo Jojo, or the one they break into prison to beat the crap out of him because they couldn’t figure out who did a crime.
Well, not if the characters were portrayed as actual people. But they are not people; they are cartoon characters…with superpowers, no less. As such, there is plenty of humor to be found in any of those scenarios.
I know this is weird but I don’t think the show is about story at all. The story is just a convenient hanger for their off the wall humor, which was some of the best.
It’s not weird at all, it’s 100% correct.
Last week I read about a tiny, isolated town in Australia that desperately needs a doctor, and a high salary will be provided to any doc who’ll commit to some length of employment. The name of the town is Townsville. Of course, I immediately thought of the Powerpuff Girls.
Isn’t that how all superhero stories go? If the heroes beat the villains the first time they meet, the episodes would be five minutes long. There have to be losses, beatings, infighting, disfunction, etc. to make the stories interesting. Then the heroes overcome those things to prove that they’re heroes.
I’ve only seen one or two episodes of The Powerpuff Girls, but it sounds like they were following and satirizing the superhero genre, not undermining it.
I mean, them saving the day “just in time” is literally in the chorus in their end credits theme song.
I did watch the original cartoons on occasion, but didn’t really follow it. But my entire experience of any later versions is by osmosis from fans screaming about how they butchered the characters and are simply horrible.
I find myself asking the same question about shows I enjoyed when I was a child. In 1999, the Cartoon Network started airing reruns of Thundercats and I hadn’t seen an episode since maybe 1987. This was a show I absolutely loved and I spent the better part of 4th grade running home each day after school just so I could watch it. When I finally sat down to watch an episode of Thundercats when I was in my 20s I couldn’t even finish a single episode. I found the voices of the Ro-Bears (?), a race of cybernetic teddy bears, to be so grating that I simply couldn’t stand it.
Obviously I was an adult when the Power Puff Girls first started airing and while I enjoyed it well enough I wasn’t a regular viewer. I suspect a lot of people experience nostalgia and just don’t like the idea of someone messing with their childhood memories. Or early adult memories.
I was either in my late 20s or early 30s when I finally came to terms with the truth that ever single beloved cartoon from my childhood was just a commercial. Once I accepted this truth I stopped caring what changes were made.
Whenever I came across this show, I always wondered just how abstract a character design could be before it no longer registered as being humanoid.
I watched pretty much all the episodes when I was around 25/26/27 years old. I had been living in Budapest and Cartoon Network was one of the few English non-news stations available to me in whatever cable package came with my apartment. I loved the PPG then and when I catch an episode or two now, nearing 50, I find it every bit as funny as I did then. One of my favorite cartoons.
I have no idea what you mean…
I love the Powerpuff Girls. I have all their albums. I see the series is available to watch on Netflix. Maybe time to rewatch them all.
Most of my childhood cartoons, I don’t think they were. There were Voltron toys out there, but you hardly ever saw them. And I don’t think I ever even heard of Animaniacs or Duck Tales toys (though there was a Duck Tales NES game that was surprisingly good).
It was the early 80s to early 90s stuff, triggered mostly by the success of Star Wars merchandising. GI Joe, Transformers, Masters of the Universe, Thundercats, Silverhawks, TMNT. Disney stuff obviously wasn’t just commercials for toys, neither was anime like Voltron.
I watched so many cartoons as a kid in the 80s. So many.
I’ve watched them now and they were awful. I mean, I see kids’ cartoons today (because I have kids) and by comparison they are so much better. The only way I can enjoy the old cartoons I watched is for nostalgia.
Bad animation, acting, barely any story, so much suspension of disbelief for everything. Typical action scene has lasers flying past everyone like a rave and everyone being calm about it and nobody ever getting hit unless there was a glancing blow for a particularly dramatic moment. Or a nearby explosion stuns someone briefly.
I have to go to cartoons from the 90s, my teen years to early adulthood, to find anything I can still enjoy, and they were a more mature subject matter to begin with. (Shows like Ren and Stimpy, or Beavis and Butthead for example.) Those I can enjoy as more than just pure nostalgia.
You mean like back in the day when Felix the Cat forced a robot claw to release him by using Metal Telepathy?