Powerpuff Girls (2018): Season 1 (3/5)
This series is kind of fascinating.
Not on its own terms, but rather, how it relates to its 1998 predecessor. Watching the two relatively close to one another (you can see my review of season 1, 1998 earlier in the thread), it's fascinating how this series improves on where the other series fell short, yet falls flat on everything the prior series did well. To this end, I'm kind of going to review this as a point of contrast to its predecessor.
So what does this series do right? Well, to be frank, it does a much better job with its titular trio. I mentioned before that with the other girls, Bubbles and Buttercup were archtypes at best, and Blossom wasn't even that. Here, each of the girls' character is much more defined. Buttercup is still "the tough one," but gets some added depth of sorts with her style of humour (dry comedy, cynicism, 'slackerism,' etc.) Blossom goes from simply being 'the leader' to being to this show what Twilight Sparkle is to MLP - the "adorkable" one. The one who wants to excel in everything, who's a nerd, who'se got her whole life planned ahead of her, and who can freak out if anything goes wrong. And Bubbles is...okay, Bubbles is still pretty much Bubbles, but even then, the show does a better job of diving into her psyche than before.
More than that, the show really delves into the family aspect of the trio and with the professor. There's some genuinely heartwarming stuff going on here. If I was to judge these two series (or at least the seasons) based solely on how well defined the personalities of the girls themselves are, this series wins. There's, like, absolutely no competition. That's not to say that the girls are that deep per se, but it's at least a bath tub compared to a sink.
Of course, there's a downside to this, and that's unlike the prior series, the majority of episodes here are slice of live. The intro song's first line is "Powerpuff Girls fighting crime," and this is a lie. There's much, MUCH less fighting when compared to the previous series, and less intense fighting at that. I don't see this as being bad or good in of itself, but it's easy to see why so many fans of the previous series dislike this one, in that it's a completely different take. The previous series was action-driven, whereas this is character-driven, and because episodes are 11 minutes long in both cases, it's hard to adequately address both.
There's also the humour, which is very hit or miss. Sometimes it got a chuckle, sometimes it's downright irritating. If we're judging the two series on humour, I guess it's fair to say that this series has higher highs, but lower lows. On one hand, we get stuff like memes, and twerking, and everything else. On the other, we get parodies of horror movis, 1970s TV, and various other things.
So, okay then. What does this series do worse than the previous one? Without a doubt, if I had to sum it up in one word, it would be "villains."
Yep, this series is the inverse of its predecessor here as well. While the villains of the prior series were the highlights (sort of), the villains here are TERRIBLE. Not just in terms of the villains themselves, but how they're introduced. Or rather, not introduced at all. The original series had little inter-episode continuity, but it at least had episodes that were expliitly introductory episodes to its villains. Where the villain would appear, the narrator would explain who the villain was, and you therefore had some context. PPG2016 doesn't do any of that. Most of the villains from the old series are in this weird zone of just being thrown in at random with the expetation that the viewer knows who they are, despite the fact that this is a reboot, and the target audience is unlikely to have watched the original series. And when it comes to new villains, the series doesn't give us much either. We have "the Fashionistas" (bleh), Man-Boy (a guy in the body of a boy with the strength of a man, who wants to get Townsville back to its "manly ways,"), and the one decent new one, Silico. And by decent, I mean he appears in two episodes, the first being a prelude to the second, and the mystery of him answered in the second episode rather than, I dunno, be developed.
So, yeah. This series does some things better than its predecessor, some things worse. As to which is better...well, both get a 3/5 (which translates as "average" by my scale), but if I absolutely had to choose, I'd actually go with the original. It has a consistency to it that this series lacks, and its main issue (lack of development for its main characters) is arguably made up for by everyone around them being more entertaining.
