The Powerpuff Girls: What Went Wrong?

[Music] Oh [Applause] the Powerpuff Girls three young girls created in a lab that happened to also possess superpowers who spend their days beatin the ever-loving crap out of various criminals various criminals such as a mutated monkey that quite literally has his brain hanging out a redneck pink guy a gang of green skinned teenagers who I swear in one episode was grooming Buttercup who's meant to be a child in kindergarten [Music] and we also had whatever the hell this thing was the show was created by former animator Craig McCracken and was produced by hanna-barbera studios it was a huge hit on Cartoon Network in the late 90s to early 2000s and during its run the show was nominated for six Emmy Awards nine Annie Awards and a Kids Choice Awards but over the course of the years the show would begin to undergo huge changes both in art style writing and staff changes which in my opinion were for the worse changes that would just make you want to go but before we get into what made the show bad let's take a look at what made the show good the blob the Powerpuff Girls follows the lives of three kindergarten age girls who possess an array of superpowers ranging from super-strength SuperSpeed flying laser eye beams and the ability to speak Spanish the reason for their superpowers is explained in the show's opening where a scientist named professor utonium decided to play God in the hope that he could create the perfect little girls why did professor utonium want to do this well in a later episode is explained that when the professor was young he got a brief glimpse of the Powerpuff Girls because of some Wiebe wobbly timey wimey stuff he was so captivated by them that he decided to dedicate his entire life to trying to recreate them which now that I say that out loud actually sounds quite weird whilst making his concoction for the perfect little girls professor utonium accidentally added some chemical eggs to the mix which results in the ghost creation from there on they dedicate their lives to fighting bad guys and the forces of evil cue that epic intro music the bob of girls first began airing on Cartoon Network in 1998 with the episode's monkey see doggy Doo and mummy fairies but technically these weren't the first episodes to air on Cartoon Network as back in 1995 a single short episode named meet fuzzy Lumpkins aired on the water cartoon series along with crime 101 a year later even this wasn't technically the first time Cartoon Network had featured the Powerpuff Girls as in 1994 there was the original pilot episode titled a sticky situation where we see professor utonium who kinda has a more stylized look that would later become the Dexter's Laboratory series but in this pilot instead of accidentally adding chemical X he adds a can of whoop-ass which ends up not creating the Powerpuff Girls but instead the episode never aired publicly and was only screamed at animation festival eyes probably due to the fact that Cartoon Network did indeed the term whoop ass appropriate for children this but then at some point I got that inevitable inevitable phone call where somebody said you know you know marketers and you know cable programmers you know don't want to show on the air with word then we're gonna have to change it but thankfully you can now find the full pilot online praise the Internet when the Powerpuff Girls first started airing on Cartoon Network I remember seen it advertised but saw the name Powerpuff Girls I thought now this isn't gonna be for me thinking it would be like a My Little Ponies kind of show then my best friend at the time was like hey Steve have you been watching the new Powerpuff Girls show and I was like no isn't that a show for girls and he was like no no it's really good you should come over and watch it after school so I was like Oh fine and even as the show's intro began to play I was like I don't know may this is still looking pretty lame I really don't think I'm gonna like this and holy moly did she just kick the teeth out of that red guy is that blood that's blood Michael that's blood oh my god this show looks amazing and it was the show was colorful creative and really wasn't afraid to turn up the brutality factor I remember this one episode titled mine for a change where there's this happy jolly clown guy named rainbow who one day gets covered in bleach which drains him of all his color oh my rainbow the clown has now become mr. mine so he then turns evil and starts draining the town of all its color as well so the girls combat it by singing a song about love and how it makes the world go round which I know guys that sounds really lame and it could easily have been but this song was Dan catchy and it damn well worked all rainbow gets reverted back to his original self and he's like oh thank you so much girls for saving me for turning me back yay and they always just beat the crap out of it and the episode end of him rotting in a jail cell like what another episode I remember was titled bubble vicious in this episode we see bubbles who is normally the soft personality getting teased that she's too weak so she decides to become more she gets a call from the mayor that he's stuck in traffic and desperately needs to get to his next meeting and what followed had me an absolute fits well I may be able to talk but I sure as heck can't drive bubbles just beat the living crap out of a poor innocent dog who is now absolutely petrified with fear I mean where's PETA when you need them oh yeah mocking your dead guy and of course no good kids show would be complete without a little bit of a dog humour thrown into the mix well what can I say love is in the air hmm care to just smell it and along with its hilarious moments the show wasn't afraid to also dip into the more darker elements every now and then the episode knock it off where the professor's old college buddy dick yep that was actually his name created an army of disturbing looking Powerpuff Girl clones who eventually turned on him and all ended up dying in a huge fiery inferno the episode speed demon where the guy was accidentally time travel to the future only to find that the villain him has taken over Townsville whilst they were away not only offering a lot of creepy imagery but also the dark ideology that the girls are locked into the role of forcibly protecting the town 24/7 and if for one moment they decide to stop or take a break it will mean the end of their loved ones forever and of course the famous episode Twisted Sister where the girls tried to create a fourth Powerpuff Girl but by the end of the episode she proves unstable and ends up exploding on screen press f in the comment section to pay respects the body the animation for this show was also on point beam under hanna-barbera productions the same production company as the Dexter's Laboratory series and even having some of the same art directors and animators including the legend himself Dendy table tolik RT genndy tartakovsky there i said he goes i said the name properly this time because of the similarities it also shared the same art style and animation bold colors detailed drawings fluid animations even dipping into some more stylistic choices every now and then and because of these crossovers you would occasionally see little easter eggs of the characters appearing in each other's shows and does that technically mean that Dexter's Laboratory and the Powerpuff Girls are taking place in the same universe does that mean that they could potentially meet oh my god I've just realized how much I would have loved a Powerpuff Girls and Dex as a boss we crossover as they could go up against some mega obese super villain plus the fact that you have the same writers who would know how to best handle both sets of characters I mean the Justice friends have appeared in both shows and they could have been some interesting character interaction from Mojo Jojo and monkey that would have been awesome certainly better than the other Powerpuff go crossover episode we got but I think the greatest strength for the Powerpuff Girls was its vast array of characters along with their unique quips and quirks in the girls who on surface level seemed pretty identical actually have some very impersonal --'tis which gives them some different strengths and weaknesses blossom is the smartest but this can lead to her becoming close-minded and arrogant bubbles is the most empathetic but can also be naive and overly emotional and Buttercup my personal favorite is the strongest that can also be too stubborn an aggressive the amazing thing about these personality traits though is that they are shown in the opening credits just through the music alone [Music] but I think the greatest personalities in the show by far has to be the villains not only varying massively in appearance but also personalities and of course my personal favorite villain him oh I'm a scared edweird red lady man thing creeps me out like what in the world was this guy some half demon half lobster half drag queen individual with his eerily high-pitched echoing voice that would suddenly shift into a deep satanic rage [Music] there was definitely something more sadistic indeed going on with this guy even to the point that other villains in the show would fear him his plans also seemed more cunning involving manipulation and psychological torment then of course he had his peek in the episode speed demon that I mentioned earlier where he shows off his true capabilities as he not only takes over the town but also murders key characters and still manages to turn the surviving citizens against the girls you know the get show the original series ran for a solid four seasons from 1998 to 2002 we're in the same year of July we got the release of the official popov Girls movie which was meh considering the show's popularity and merchandise sales the film was considered a financial disappointment barely turning a profit on its 11 million dollar budget Cartoon Network as a result decided it was not a safe investment to produce any future films so much so that it won't be until 2018 where they finally made another theatrical release but the Powerpuff Girls series wasn't quite done yet and in 2003 the series was brought back but this time there were a few notable changes [Music] so after the Powerpuff Girls movie Cartoon Network brought back the Powerpuff Girls for its fifth season only this time round there were a few changes made to the series the creator of the show Craig McCracken had let the zoo's along with some other members of the original team the show had also moved from hanna-barbera productions over to Cartoon Network Studios just like another certain show did and like that other certain show there was once again a notice all drop in the quality both in the show's look and it's writing the show moved from its traditional hand-painted cells and was now being colored through digital inking now this is something I want to point out quick the people were commenting on in the dexstar video where people were stating that the art style changed so much because the show was now using digital ink instead of traditional painted cells and I'm just gonna say that that simply isn't true moving to digital ink would not result in a change to this shows art style there are numerous shows that shifted over to digital ink that still retain their overall look The Simpsons for example had been experimenting with digital ink way back in season 7 and as you can see the show practically looks the same the only difference you get with digital ink is that the outer lines will be much more crisper and more consistent and you don't get the variation in colors from the different animation layers now that we've got that cleared up let's move on the backgrounds went from these warm bright colors over to this simplified cold bleached out blue look and character designs were also altered though not as bad as the Dexter laboratory series but still a decline the Powerpuff Girls seem to have got an even larger heads with even bigger bug eyes staring into your soul Mojo Jojo now had these pointed ears which I know he got given them in the official movie but still why bother changing his design what was wrong with the original round this bothered me also this is a nitpick but I really hated the new art style when the pupils would be pressed flat against the counters eyes I know I know I'm clutching at straws on this one but it really did bother me back in the day please tell me other people get bothered by this art style to other characters to receive a redesign were the Rowdyruff Boys who are basically the boy version of the Powerpuff Girls but I'm gonna admit with this one I do actually kind of prefer the new design over the originals as there actually seems to be more variety and uniqueness to them but I think the biggest hindrance to this new series was the writing there doesn't that feel better the pacing of the episodes just seemed to move a snail's pace jokes will be dragged out way too long and the creativity and storytelling just seemed to be stagnant here's a few examples there was an episode where the girls had caught sunburn and they spent half of the episode doing nothing but crawling around in agony just fly you idiot also these are the same girls who have been dunked in acid and survived literal fire without so much as a scratch and I'm supposed to believe that they've succumbed to a little sunburn then of course at the end of the episode we get a beautiful gross out scene as we're watching the girls skin peel off yep this is what I wanted to see in my show no unique villains no brutal humo intensity of kicking violence I just want to see them moaning about sunburn oh by the way I was being sarcastic I want to see I think I'd rather watch the professor yuppie for ten hours there was that episode where the girls were turned giant by Mojo Jojo so have to painstakingly sneak around the town to avoid doing any damage to it wow how fun there was that episode where Pizza are trying to protect Mojo Jojo and the whole episode revolves around the ghosts squabbling with them then there's that weird episode where fuzzy lumkins is trying to have sex with the professor then literally has sex with what I presume to be a pile of fecal matter [Music] and of course as that famous episode where the girls are banned from using their powers and spend over a three-minute scene trying to call the police to report a crime I felt as though with the new series they were just being produced for the sake of being produced there really wasn't any fresh ideas being told and to be fair to the writers I can't really think of what much else could have been done the scale of the story seemed to have reached that peak in the original series him practically conquering the world nano creatures nearly dissolving the entire city the girls meeting up with other superheroes the main villains all joining together to become the Beatles Mojo Jojo teaming up with the girls to fight a greater threat the episode roll the Powerpuff Girl clones are made and the girls nearly end up dying at the end there was just nothing else left to really top that and it shows much of the newer episodes revolved around trivial nonsense the sunburn the girls arguing with Peeta the girls looking after a talking dog to get information on a crime but all he does is passively insult them bubbles looking for a toy octopus the girls fighting censorship there was just nothing on the grand scale of things the creativity was gone the art style had dropped and the adventure was over we had done so many stories that have felt like well who's the monster this time what's the joke how do they fight him what happens in the you know and they come together in the end so it was tough but it's a really difficult pair of shoes to fill if you don't have the person whose vision it is filtering everything through them or at least asking them and not that he wasn't available to talk to but he too was very busy and so in 2005 the Powerpuff Girls series finally came to an end and this time it seemed like it for good [Music] or so we thought [Music] so in 2008 a one-off half-hour special episode was released to celebrate the Powerpuff Girls 10th anniversary titled the Powerpuff Girls ruled with three explanation marks this episode certainly was an interesting one the show's original creator craig mccracken who left the series actually came back to write and direct this one the show was also now been animated in flash for the first time ever and I know that flash animated shows don't really have the best reputation out there but I've got to admit the art style and this comes pretty damn close to the original series this is what I mean when I say Digital inking doesn't necessarily change a show's look and the best bit about it mojo has round ears again and the professor has round eyes again the wafer roundness this sure is very fast paced and has a lot of energy to it both in the animation and the quick firing jokes in an interview with craig mccracken he said how he felt the movie was a little bit too serious in hindsight maybe I wish it was a little silly or a little lighter a little more not so heavy the whole time which to be fair I do agree with him so for this special they really just wanted to go all out and have a bit of fun with it which from the looks of things they certainly did oh I guess just that I made it special for you and all but if you want to fly that's fine perhaps in my opinion it may have gone a little too far in the other direction as characters would be a little too out of character characters who are normally being the sensible level-headed ones was suddenly reduced to giant goofballs even the villainous him that we talked to our earlier was portrayed as really clown like in this I mean this is him the guy that took over Townsville and murdered its citizens now making bad puns and pulling stupid faces though I have got to admit even though this short was a little bit too silly it did have some cracking jokes in it and I'd definitely take the fast pacing of this short over the slower pace and we had in the later seasons this short really did feel like fanservice and there are a lot of past villains that we hadn't seen since the original series and many callbacks in the old show that fans will recognize and along with many other references to we even get a Wacky Races and Mario Kart reference in the same scene oh and also we finally got to see miss bellum face and for the next six years nothing really else came about [Music] then in 2014 we get this one-off special titled the Powerpuff girls danced pantsed though I guess that title sounds better if you pronounce it as dance pantsed not much to say about this one other than it had a radically different art style the plot is pretty stupid literally revolving around a controlling dance party game and the humor is there again this special had the overly silly attitude just like the tenth anniversary special the only difference is this one wasn't really that funny though I will say the techno style music used is pretty good but honestly the only reason you'll be watching this is for the art style also why is bubbles got ice breath that's meant to be blossom special power even the latest series got that right I suppose it's also quickly worth mentioning that there's also an anime adaptation of the series titled the Powerpuff Girls ed or Z I can't comment much on this as I've seen very little of it but from what I have seen it really doesn't seem to represent the original series much at all rather it just shares the same name and slight character design [Music] and thus brings us to 2016 where the new series of the Powerpuff Girls was created for Cartoon Network and it was [Music] yeah this was probably the biggest attraction from the original series even with old characters such as miss bellum disappearing from the show where creator Nick Jennings explained in an interview we felt like miss bellum wasn't quite indicative of the kind of messaging we wanted to be giving out at this time so we sort of had to move on so yeah miss bellum being a strong independent intelligent woman isn't the messaging we want to send but young goes doing the twerk yep that's the kind of we want to push the show also featured a whole new set of staff and voice actors who for the most part do okay but there's just something about buttercups voice actor that doesn't do it for me almost like they're trying a little too hard to make buttercup sound like a boy the series received mixed reviews with some praising the show for its fresh in you take an updated humor whilst others declaring it right off though I wouldn't quite say it's as bad as some people may doubt I definitely can't say I'd recommend this over the original series the art style looks childish with his goofy facial expressions the jokes seem awkward and rely heavily on internet references which are definitely going to become dated if not already one can't even one Oh like he literally can't even it honestly felt like the jokes were inspired by someone who googled memes for the first time and thought ah so that's what the kids like we better put a bunch of that in our show won't that be funny it's a real shame the show turned out this way cuz I'm amber seeing the promotional art for it and the opening sequence actually looks pretty damn decent as of now season 3 is still being produced whether it'll get renewed for a fourth season remains to be seen in conclusion I don't think the Powerpuff Girls Series suffered as heavy as the Dexter's Laboratory series did I will even say that it wasn't a complete disaster as there were some decent episodes still scattered in the later series you monsters have no rights as citizens of this town I will have you disbarred goodness gracious I don't know whatever came over me no further objections I trust the Christmas special in particular was pretty good especially with the race of the North Pole sequence but there was still a noticeable drop in quality from the art to the characters to the humor and the storytelling with the series still being produced to this day it's actually impressive how the Powerpuff Girls has stood the test of time unlike the other popular shows back in the day which have sadly fallen by the wayside it will be interesting to see where this goes in the future whether the 2016 series will improve or whether the series will be rebooted once more but from what I've seen so far it does seem unlikely that we'll ever capture the high quality that the original series gave us hey guys thank you very much for watching this review I do plan on making more of these what went wrong reviews in the future so do let me know what animated series you felt went downhill and would like me to look at be sure to subscribe for more animator reviews in the future and be sure to check out my patreon and Twitter button till the next one guys take care

Channel: Steve Reviews

Views: 1,427,602

Rating: 4.8641291 out of 5

Keywords: steve reviews, the powerpuff girls, what went wrong, the powerpuff girls movie, the powerpuff girls z, powerpuff girls 2016, cartoon network, 90s cartoons, craig mccracken, power puff girls, powerpuff girls review

Id: 5v38amCo0Q0

Length: 30min 59sec (1859 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/maks_orp]

Good channel.

[u/Hatterspring]

Oh man i have mixed views with this video. It's great and i agree with most of it but there are a couple of things i disagree with. I'm just hoping that if there is another reboot (which i doubt) that it is written by someone who knows how to write a good plot, and knows how to actually reboot a franchise. Then i would be happy. But otherwise, no more. The show has been ruined enough.

Honestly i feel that the reboot ran out of ideas in the middle of season 2. There was a lot wrong with the power of four, and now they just seem to have run out of ideas. Cartoon network did have some good ideas but they were actually executed really poorly.