2020 Reflection: The Powerpuff Girls

 

The Powerpuff Girls were written in November 1998 by Craig McCracken. The series is a superhero series starring the titular Powerpuff Girls, sisters Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup who are also kindergarden girls and their efforts to protect the city of Townsville from crime and the forces of evil. This will only be discussing the original series. I like Powerpuff Girls Z alright, possibly due to my affinity for magical girl series, but both it and the 2016 reboots are clearly seperate series to the original series with different continuities and shouldn't be considered the same thing. Superhero series can generally be viewed as a spectrum between two polarities in my opinion; "iconic" superhero series that focus on superhero tropes, which tend to have archetypal characters, relatively clear cut morality, and tend to be relatively idealistic overall (IE series that tend more DC-like) or "realistic" superhero series that tend to focus on human problems outside superheroing, tend to have more realistic characters, more grey moral issues, and tend to be more realistic (IE series that tend more Marvel-like). I tend to prefer more Iconic type superhero series and PPG I think is definitely closer to that type. It's the first primarily superhero series on this list after DC and the first western cartoon in general and I think that's attributable to it being a feminine iconic superhero series with a good mixture of comedic and dramatic elements, and themes personally relevant to me.

3 Reasons I love it:

1: The series centers around a dichotomy of the fact that that these three 5-year old girls are also really powerful superheroes, like "throwing Kaiju around, faster then light 5 year Pre-Crisis Kryptonians" power. That seems like it might just be a small gag however it's actually used as the emotional core of the series. At the same time that PPG was airing both Marvel and DC tried to create what was basically superhero soap operas with their runs of X-Men and Teen Titans and part of the reason I don't like those is that I don't want my superhero comics to be soap operas, these are adults you expect to be acting emotionally sensibly. The PPG being young girls allows for them to each show more vulnerability and limits in emotional intelligence. This not only allows for humorous dichotomy showing little girls throwing giant monsters out of a city, but also creates the sense that you can be weak in some ways and still be a hero. It also highlights the important of family in this series. This is part of the reason that Bubbles is my favorite; Blossom and Buttercup in different ways act slightly more adult so for me the contrast works at it's best with Bubbles who is the most childish. However the girls personalities complete and compliment each other, they are far more effective because they can compensate for what each other lacks. Likewise the love their father the Professor has for them and they have in turn works so well because it highlights how the Powerpuff Girls can be both super strong, the perfect little girls; the heroines that Utonium sees them as that save the day, while also being...well little girls, emotionally vulnerable and needy at times. This also forms the basis of many of the episodes being an often humorous contrast between their job saving the city vs their nature as young girls. 

2: The series uses stylization and superhero tropes as a way that is a good balance between standardization and playfulness. Take for instance that episodes end with a sequence showing the Powerpuff Girls in front of a hearts silhoutte background with the narrator saying "so once again the day is saved, thanks to....The Powerpuff Girls!" This is played straight just enough that it becomes iconic but played with enough that it feels actually reactive to the episode and can be used for comedic or even dramatic purposes. At the start of each episode, during the theme song each girls comes on screen with a similar jingle but pitched differently and with a differnet tone to showcase each girl's personality. The villain roster of the series runs a gamut from highly sinister like HIM to (nearly) completely ineffectual like the Amoeba Boys and range from more common supervillain tropes like the evil counterparts and enhanced street crime to strange concepts sometimes fitted to the girl's unique nature for superheroes as being little girls, such as The Boogie Man, playing off Bubbles' fear of monsters or Sedusa whose first appearence is her trying to woo the girl's father in disguise so she can keep the Powerpuff Girls from stopping her crimes by acting as their maternal guardian. This is a point that is especially a composite of many smaller examples so hopefully the points gets across by now.

3: While PPG is a show that is made about little girls, it's surpisingly adult in how it handles many topics. It has an episode about misandry and an unrelated episode about misogyny "Equal Fights" and "Members Only", it would have often very brutal action scenes or very dark episodes (Speed Demon is the infamous example). There's also another episode that is filled with nothing but Beatles references. The series has a trait that I really value in media aimed at children in that it doesn't talk down to them. Not only does it encourage an actual child watching to think more, and not only was it annoying even at that age to be condescended too, but it just makes it so much more watch-able as an adult to have a series where it feels like there's something you can get out of it beyond just escapism. In particular and maybe I only notice this because Bubbles is my favorite, but despite the fact that the series seems entirely episodic with only nods to continuity showing clear continuity, there is actually subtle character progression for Bubbles over the course of the series. While she remains over the series the most fearful and naive of her sisters, she goes from taking a baby whale and putting it in their room because she thought he was sad in Helter Shelter to being the one to let Bullet the Squirrel go against her sisters' wishes because she knew it was best for Bullet in Stray Bullet. She also goes from being unable to sleep in the dark from fear in Mommy Fearest to facing her fears to help her sisters in Powernoia. I can tell Blossom and Buttercup similarly develop though I am less able to articulate the ways. 

3 Flaws:

1: After Craig McCracken left the series after the fourth season, the last two seasons changed up and generally not for the better. There are parts of season 5 and season 6 that I like, however the series pacing, which up until this point had been delightfully fast-paced, seriously slowed, and the series started focusing on unpleasent topics like Sun Scream or Pee Pee Gs.

2: Sometimes the series has a really odd perspective on who is in the right and who is in the wrong. Buttercup in particular very often gets the short end of the stick like being mocked for relying on a security blanket, when Bubbles relys on her stuffed friend Octi for security. There's other examples. Bubbles is my favorite but there's one episode where HIM gives the girls a test they have to solve in a certain time and Blossom the smart one gets the worst score and Bubbles is the only one who passes getting a massively higher score and it's really unfair. Now granted it's meant to be a gag, that Bubbles just drew a picture of a flower on her test answer sheet and that somehow were the correct answers but the gag doesn't make sense (even if Bubbles got it by sheer chance you would think Blossom would get a higher score then Buttercup and if HIM was rigging it why did he let Bubbles easily beat the requirement). There's also Mime for a Change, an episode that's mostly a personal favorite but ends with Rainbow the Clown being put in jail even when he wasn't in control of his actions the entire ep. And it wasn't even reckless behavior on his part, he was warped because of a truck accident that he had no control of turning him into a supervillain. 

3: So this is just a pet peeve of mine but it really does annoy me. I really don't like when superhero series depict the "normal" people as incompetent. The mayor is incompetent but that alone would be fine because he's meant to be a comic relief character but almost all of the people of Townsville are regularly depicted as incompetent, especialy later on in the series seeming to regularly turn into an angry mob and get angry the Powerpuff Girls over nothing. There's also another episode where the Powerpuff Girls try to teach the people of Townsville how to help themselves and the entire episode is them being too incompetent to do so. Although I will admit there is one ep where they do save the Powerpuff Girls from their deranged fan Lenny Baxter which was great, though I don't really understand how Lenny beat them in the first place (the PPG don't have any kryptonite-like weakness that would have explained it)

Favorite Part:

My favorite episode is Super-Zeroes where the Girls get obsessed with different comic book superheroes (or a cute manga protagonist in Bubbles case) and essentially attempt to mimic them, making themselves vastly more inefficent and completely destroying their team dynamic and the end of the episode I thought was a very heartwarming message about how you shouldn't try to be a lesser version of someone else but try to play to your own strengths. While the moral has obviously been done, I really happen to like the execution of it in this episode in particular.