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Finished watching Powerpuff Girls Z, the 2006 anime. In spite of its age, image is the usual reaction when longtime fans of the Cartoon Network cartoon hear there is a Japanese version.
Here, the Girlz become what they should have been all along: elegant, well-formed, and romantically interested magical girls. Toward the end, a scene that was supposed to cross into the world of the cartoon Powerpuff Girls brought home just how much the originals looked like overpowered gnats pummeling foes with brawn. In the anime, the attacks are more graceful and pleasant to watch. While the animation isn’t up to the super-realist standards of say, Gundam or Evangelion girls, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup bear only traces of the Calarts blobs they once were, and are much prettier. Another main draw in this series is, at one time or another, each of the girls gets an older boyfriend! (Meanwhile, I wanted to check the newer version of the cartoon, in fairness. It is such a great sacrilege, I almost do not want to mention, but friends, know the evil we are up against. I searched “Powerpuff Girls Blossom boyfriend”, and woe is me. In the 2016 cartoon, the boyfriend Cartoon Network gave this ginger a generation grew up in love with, is a Jew. “Why we weeb”, guys.)
A lot is different in Powerpuff Girls Z. The setting is Tokyo City, though still governed by the bumbling Mayor and buxom Miss Bellum. But biggest of all, the girls were not created in a lab, but were ordinary girls who received their powers from Chemical Z: Momoko Akatsutsumi becomes Hyper Blossom, Miyako Gotokuji becomes Rolling Bubbles, and Kaoru Matsubara becomes Powered Buttercup. Their personalities are mostly the same, but plenty is done to localize them, including visits to shrines, long rides on public transportation, and frequent consumption of Japanese sweets. They have homes and families, but the viewer learns little about them until later in the show. Almost the only character to change for the worse is Professor Utonium, who doesn’t have his pipe and somehow lacks in stature.
Strange, or perhaps not so strange, that Cartoon Network hasn’t even aired its own property in the United States, as that would demonstrate that even an American original classic, is much better redone by the Japanese. How would they even justify keeping their doors open? Why not just send the series idea to Toei, and let them do the rest? #PowerpuffGirlsZ #PowerpuffGirls #Calarts #cartoons #anime
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