3 Reasons I love it:
Tokyo Mew Mew is a series that's really comfortable and fun to just watch. Sailor Moon is my favorite series but I don't just randomly read a chapter of SM. I will just sit down and watch a random TMM ep though. So why is that? Well...
1: First off TMM has a really great primary cast. I'm really fond of all the Mews Mews and their personalities as well as their relations to Ryo, Keiichiro and Masaya. They characters have a good mixture of high presence, entertaining and compelling in between them. Part of this I think is because TMM is very good at invoking the spirits of things. Each of the Mew Mews sort of invokes the spirit of their associated animal such as Ichigo invoking the dramatic reasons, cuteness but sometimes mysteriousness of cats or Pudding invoking the playful hyperactive curious nature of apes. This invoking extends especially to the ending of the series where the series gets it's most mystical with Deep Blue being an ancient spirit tied to humanity or the odd statement that the Earth "chose" Ichigo to be it's defender. Not only does this give it's characters immediatly recognizable and impactful archetypes, but it creates a sense of gravitas from the sense that the series events are the cultimation of the events long in the making.
2: Tokyo Mew Mew has the ability to seamlessly switch between comedy and drama. I'm always a bit nervous with a series trying to be comedic and dramatic at the same time. I tend to like them to be kept to seperate episodes or scenes as when they are immediatly together it can feel like a bit of a mood whiplash. However in TMM, both the comedy and the drama are drawn from the same place, that being generally the emotionality of the characters, especially Ichigo. As such just as the rush of emotions can quickly change, the mood of TMM can quickly change without causing whiplash. There's a chapter in the manga, where after the until now aloof Minto is despondent that her idol Zakuro won't join the Mew Mews, so the Mew Mews hold a sleepover at her house to cheer her up, leading to childish hijinx like a pillow fight. Minto asks Ichigo why she came over and Ichigo responds to "see you smile". After this Kish attacks Ichigo and Minto stops him saying that Ichigo was her dear friend and if Kish hurt her Mint would make him very sorry. In a lot of series that much stuff of vary different emotional tones would feel like a major whiplash, however in TMM seems to build on itself as different levels of the same emotion.
3: This one is a bit hard to pin down but the series has a very wholesome energy and a very innoncent first love atmosphere. Where a lot of series with environmental themes can go wrong is that they make that like the only message of the series, or only that and very closeby messages. TMM is a series with an environmental theme but that's not the core of the series, it's just something that feels like a natural extension of the energy of the series, about 5 young girls representing (and quite literally from Deep Blue's perspective) the best of humanity and their desire to protect our planet. It's a series that wants to encourage you to be good not by showing what could go wrong but by showing as Ichigo does, what you can preserve.
3 Flaws:
1: I know that Kish has a really big fanbase, especially in the west but I personally don't really find the villains very interesting until Deep Blue fully appears. I mean they're fine but this is a definitely a series where I watch for the protagonists not the antagonists. It also confused me even when I was reading this when I was younger why if the aliens are mad humanity is polluting the planet and want to reclaim why they are speeding up pollution...it seems counter-intuitive to their goals. Side Note: I really wish the alien species had a name so that it seems less generic when I refer to "the aliens".
2: The series can get pretty melodramatic at times. I'm not generally a fan of civilian drama in series with supernatural stuff and while Tokyo Mew Mew handles it better then most series, it still gets kinda soap opera-y at times and much like the main character kind of makes a bigger deal out of something then it's worth. The biggest example which is arguably a character example but it goes on for so long and effects the plot so much is Ichigo worrying about revealing that she's a Mew Mew to Masaya because obviously any boy would be totally repulsed finding out his girlfriend changes into a catgirl superhero magical girl. That might seem like a character decision but it takes up a signifigant amount of time in the series of Ichigo just worrying about how she can't tell Masaya and waiting for the two of them to get together
3: A La Mode, the official sequel to Tokyo Mew Mew feels quite rushed, taking place over two volumes and having a story that could easily be much longer. I don't dislike Mew Berry like a lot of fans do; I think her personality itself is perfectly fine. The problem comes more from the framing, how the series presents her as suddenly the new leader of the mew mews for no reason, and how rushed we get to know her. Berry is fine but the framing and presentation of her in A La Mode, like a bunch in it feels overly indulgent and too quick to really gives details about it.
Favorite Part:
For a lot of these series, my favorite part is the climax of the series. Sometimes it's the part right before the climax but for TMM it's actually the part right after the climax. Ichigo has sacrificed herself to save Masaya and everyone wants her to come back to life and we see the mew power leave her body, just as it was stated was gonna happen several times throughout the series, when she defeats the aliens she'll go back to being a normal girl, turns into the image or spirit of a cat and leaves her body restoring her because mew power restores things to their natural state so the mew power moving through and exiting her body restored her body. It's a small moment but it's a moment that to me feels so well foreshadowed and is the perfect explanation for this trope you see in MG all the time, and it's a moment where intellectually you know what's gonna happen coincides with what you emotionally want to happen.
This is a series that I would have probably written off immediately a few years ago. Just looking at its title “Tokyo Mew Mew” and surface level elements, it would definitely look kinda odd to me. But now that you describe the show, it does sound pretty interesting. It’s partially sci-fi storyline, environmentalism focus, alongside a lovable cast does make it seem like a really fun concept for a show.
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