Powerpuff Girls: Season 6

I didn’t finish watching Powerpuff Girls for a long while. In part, it was because it’s a shame to see the end of a classic show, but mostly it was because by season 6, it wasn’t really feeling like a classic any more.

The show had been on air for over 6 years by the time it finished, and felt like it was running short on ideas. Weird and politically incorrect Rocky and Bullwinkle parodies, returning a monster baby to its mama and poor Buttercup being told she’s got no particularly special talent over the other girls don’t feel like the playful and inventive episodes of old. The season plays out without the sparkle of inventiveness or irreverence that characterised its early run. A steampunk episode, featuring the Steamypuff Kids, is pretty fun, though.

The Powerpuff Girls have endured in a way that not many similar shows have. There was the anime spinoff, the spiritually similar early My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and now a new revival that I haven’t seen yet. The designs are enduringly popular and rewatching old episodes never fails to put a smile on my face.

But the problem is that there’s only so far you can go. Sure, you can give the little kindergarten-age heroes crushes on some boys and have them go from fist-fighting with their antagonists to going camping with them, but they’re still funny little bug-eyed kids with insane super powers. There’s nothing to discover about their pasts and no angsty teenage plot arcs they can go through. So flipping to alternate worlds of the wild west or making a whole episode in the style of the Who’s concept albums starts to feel a little like scraping the barrel.

But apparently there are enough stories to tell for a new series to come out. So I guess my Powerpuff adventure doesn’t stop here.  

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic season 7

There's still no end in sight for MLP, with a movie just out and the show continuing into its 7th season. 

In many ways, the show's character arcs have reached their endgame, which is quite nice to see - it forces the characters to grow and develop further from there, and means the show can't just endlessly freeze itself in the same cycle of character ambitions and dreams. The Cutie Mark Crusaders have their Cutie Marks, and now set out to help others. Rainbow Dash is a wonderbolt, and has issues as part of the team rather than as a rookie. Twilight is used to being a princess now, even if still a neurotic one, and mostly imparts lessons to others. 

Trying to make Sunset Glimmer a major character isn't working that well. The show doesn't seem all that convinced of her, not even making a place for her in the intro (which still revolve around the friendship lessons that haven't had much of a place in the show for a long while). Some of her interactions with Trixie are fun, and she's at least a welcome voice of cynicism sometimes, but she's just not interesting or likeable enough to carry episodes, and there's already a large cast of characters who can lead episodes and learn the same things she does. 

On the other hand, surprisingly it's the show starting to plumb deeper depths of its lore that keeps this season interesting amongst several dud episodes about Rarity's fashion boutique or being more friendly with the dragons. Having more of an examination of Starswirl the Bearded made for a compelling cliffhanger into the finale, even if it's very awkward writing that allows Twilight not to see the obvious consequence of her spell from the beginning. 

I also loved the episode where Rumble became the focus. He was an extremely minor colt with just one speaking line before, but there was something very cute about him and how he was one of very few boy ponies to be given the same face shape as the fillies. I always liked him in fandom and with his brother Thunderlane getting featured more, it made sense for him to have an episode. He had a bad attitude and his voice evidently dropped, but he got a great song, I liked the underlying issues his attitude was copying and generally I'd enjoy seeing him featured again, questioning the things blindly accepted by pony society. 

The show also let darker elements of Scootaloo's backstory come through some more, while not being explicitly tackled. Absent parents, abandonment issues and disability make her a potentially extremely interesting character for such a light show. Because it's so light we can't count on much more than hints of an underlying sadness, but those notes are sweet when they're hit, just like finding out more about Applejack and Applebloom's parents. 

But I still have my doubts about stretching this show out too much more. With most character arcs completed, episodes with just the 'Mane 6' hold the attention less and less, and they can't keep relying on new characters or fleshing out previously minor background ponies without a feeling of scraping the barrel. I don't mind another season or two but they really need to take on a bigger scope and work towards something bigger than how well a shop runs or whether or not your friend genuinely likes the cakes you make her. If the show continues much longer, I'd like to see it try to get more serious. 

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - season 6

The show that so quickly spawned a subculture continues to prove itself just another show. And that’s fine. It’s not redefining kids’ shows, it’s not deviating from established formulae and it’s not broaching surprisingly tough topics for a colourful show for smaller kids as many hoped at the start – but it is still enjoyable, easy viewing.

There are a few signs of the malaise that affects so many shows towards the end of extended runs. One is that old cliché, a new main character. The ‘Mane 6’ still have their adventures and lessons to learn, but they’re starting to achieve their goals. Rainbow Dash is a Wonderbolts reservist, thus essentially has fulfilled her life’s goal. Twilight Sparkle is princess of friendship, wings and all. Rarity has her boutique, and the others are pretty well-established and content with their lots in life now. Even the Cutie Mark Crusaders have actually completed their mission and transcended the ‘blank flank’ subplot, which is the biggest flag for the show ending soon yet – though they continue to have little adventures helping others get cutie marks, which is just a little forced.

But yes, a large part of the focus now turns to Starlight Glimmer, once an antagonist whose episode was actually a very interesting analogy for libertarianism, as she ran a village where individuality and rising above the rest was forbidden, so no pony could feel inadequate or ashamed – only for the heroes to prove, of course, that being unique and special in your own distinct way is extremely important.

In this season, she is reformed, and Twilight takes her on as a student. The little pony taken under the wing of a princess now becomes a teacher in her own right, which is quite a nice progression but another end-of-character-arc flag. As for Sunset Glimmer herself, she’s really not a very interesting character. She’s given centre-stage in both the opening two-parter and the season closer and manages to just about be likeable without actually being interesting. Her angst about her past isn’t a good hook for her character and she just needs more personality quirks in a group that not only has had five seasons of development, but had most of their key moments in the first handful of episodes. It’s a little bizarre when a random juvenile from a previous season’s antagonist race is more interesting than your new major character – though Thorax’s story’s conclusion was a little too cheesy.

Otherwise, the show plumbs the depths of classic derivative cartoon plots. Rainbow Dash makes dumb mistakes in her new position, or helps out other trainees who are in a pickle. Rarity’s new boutique has problems with its opening day and difficult staff members. Delicious home-cooking eventually wins over the hearts and minds of a society that mindlessly follows critics. It’s nothing original, though sometimes it’s very well-done – I rather enjoyed the Rashomon episode.

In the end, I’m left feeling unmoved by this Pony season. It’s not exciting, new, fresh or different any more. If they had gone the Fawlty Towers route and ended this show in its prime, it would probably have endured, but this fading into mediocrity is painful – doubly so when the writers are so keenly aware of it they make an episode bitching about fans who only like the oldest instalments of a franchise. Really, they make a character – Quibble Pants – who has this as his defining characteristic…and then he sees the error of his ways not by being shown later instalments are just as high-quality as the rest, but only by finding out what he thinks is fiction is actually reality, with a tacked-on random speech later about how old and new episode have different focuses, thus different pros and cons. It was horribly transparent, insecure writing that really got on my nerves.

Yet still I will watch on, until the end. But I’m not sure how much steam is left in this one. 

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, season 5

I got a certain gratification from the deflation of hype that came with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic season 4. It became very clear that this cartoon was really nothing that remarkable, one in a long line that sat alongside all the other animation I watch in a fairly normal way. The fandom started to fizzle out and it seems people are forgetting being a ‘Brony’ was ever a thing. Can’t say that’s something I’m sad about. I watch so much animation that having to disassociate myself from a subculture just for watching this as well was a little tedious.

But season 5 also lost me a little. I grew tired of it, stopped watching for a long period of time, and just decided to finish the season and start the next this past week. Trying very, very hard to keep their fandom alive with an episode full of in-jokes that the wider audience must have been baffled by in ‘Slice of Life’ rubbed me the wrong way, and after the mid-season break I just didn’t continue with the show for almost a year.

There’s a real feeling of a show running out of steam here. The Cutie Mark Crusaders are finally given a pay-off moment, which honestly I thought would be saved until the last five or six episodes of the show, and was of course pretty anticlimactic. Continued episodes with them in season 6 can only be more so. Discord episodes become less of a treat and more flogging a dead horse, and bringing yaks into the equation just came over as very patronising.

The flow of the season seemed very odd. Barely any rarity in the first half, but then way too much of her in the second, which is too much Rarara for any but her staunchest fans. Pinkie is as annoying as ever, and while I liked the writing of the episode where Applejack meets her friend who is now famous, direct Lady Gaga references are going to get very dated very quickly, and were already hardly up-to-the-minute.

It’s now very clear that Friendship is Magic is not revolutionary, is not going to break boundaries and is not going to provide entertainment that’s far more epic than expected. But I have to say, the variety of alternate universes glimpsed in the season finale, including several where the familiar characters are in a tough post-apocalyptic warrior setting, were a pleasant glimpse of that. I’d love to see those angles developed more, but sadly I know that’s not going to happen. Because this is no longer a show that has the capacity to surprise or redefine cartoons for girls. I’d like to say a new Powerpuff Girls would be more likely to accomplish that…but honestly, I don’t think we’ll see anything but the same old safe formulae there either.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic – season 4

Possibly because the third season was too short for the effect to happen, the fourth season of MLP:FiM feels like the point at which the fandom finally snaps out of its apparently-newsworthy fever and realised that this is, after all, just another cartoon. A nice, colourful, fun one – but still just a cartoon, with the same limitations as any other. It is not going to unveil some epic overarching storyline that Lauren Faust kicked off before she departed. It is not going to push the boundaries, deal with being disabled through a flightless young pegasus or tackle dead parents head-on. For all the lessons that the characters have learned, they are not going to stick, because this kind of sitcom set-up requires characters who don’t change. In short, season 4 makes it clear that the show is not that special. Which of course isn’t to say it is not good.

I don’t think we’ll be seeing another Bronies documentary. This was a fandom that peaked and is now on its way down. The fan works will also dwindle, I feel sure. Which actually suits me rather well, because I stopped being fascinated by the rabid, often twisted fandom and watch this like any other cartoon. It’s a little bizarre, too, to have any attempt to say that I like My Little Pony because I like animation in general, and watch literally hundreds and hundreds of animated shows/films, yet to get the response that no, liking My Little Pony means that fandom must outstrip all others and I must be a brony.

Accordingly, this season has some episodes that feel like the barrel of ideas is running a bit low. The transformation of Twilight into a princess changed very little except for a few episodes exploring the tension between ‘I have a public role and want to feel adequate’ and ‘I am still a normal person (pony) and don’t want people treating me differently’, though these are usually only sideline – for example, Twilight might find it awkward to be presiding over a glorified car boot sale.

There are some episodes that I’m sure had some of the fandom screaming about the worst episode ever. In one, the ponies are sucked into Spike’s comic book and take on the identities of the superheroes there, which is as cheesy as it gets. In another, Rarity has to compete for a stallion’s affections when he falls for Applejack, and ends up imitating her in the most cringe-inducing ways. Then there are the times Fluttershy becomes a vampire fruit-bat, and the unlikely concept that Rainbow Dash has an incredible memory for things she perceives peripherally while flying. 

All the characters can be positively nor negatively exaggerated to fit plot moments or jokes – Twilight can be smart and responsible or an obsessive bore; Rainbow Dash can be a leader figure who cares deeply for her friends or an insensitive, brash halfwit, though remains the one I find the most likeable no matter how unfashionable that opinion; Rarity can be a thoughtful, elegant beauty or a superficial drama queen; Applejack can be the voice of reason or a stubborn, short-sighted idiot; Fluttershy can be a caring, loving sweetheart or a doormat; and Pinkie can be hilarious or incredibly annoying, and is often downright creepy. Rarely do they sit comfortably between the two poles. Yet that is how stories are written, and I don’t mind it at all – even if the perception of mistakes leading to growth never really leads to any lasting changes. That’s how cartoon sitcoms work.

The series introduces some new ideas, including funny little pixie things called ‘Breezies’, the Olympics-derived ‘Equestria Games’, and the evil centaur-minotaur thing Tirek, who is the bad guy in an amusingly Dragonball-ish season finale, involving much flying about and shooting of giant laser beams. But more than that, it seems to seek to repeat the (apparent) success of last season’s returning to old character Trixie, bringing back The Flim Flam Brothers, ‘Flutterguy’, as much Discord as possible and an unashamedly foregrounded Derpy – no longer deemed offensive, it seems. Thankfully.

This season very much felt ordinary. Some episodes I didn’t care for, mostly the ones where Rarity or Pinkie became neurotic, as they are the most annoying in this state – even when Weird Al is making a cameo – and the Cutie Mark Crusaders episodes were all a little more superficial and unlikely than they have been in prior seasons, especially when it came to Scootaloo, in spite of one episode where she desperately tries to prove she’s a worthy pegasus by flying.

Perhaps oddly, given the old impression that the series would get epic and episodic, it was the more low-key episodes I tended to enjoy. Fluttershy dealing with stagefright but yearning to perform, the kids’ ‘Twilight Time’ getting out of control, Sweetie Belle getting jealous of her sister getting all the attention – though the latter was much less affecting than Scootaloo’s dream episode last time. Rainbow Dash preferring to compete with friends on her team rather than abandoning them to win more easily. Simple, cute stories about characters, with a touch of magic. I usually applaud attempts to experiment, but the more this season tried to branch out to comic books and Indiana Jones-style adventures, the weaker it seemed. The season opener, involving flashbacks to the past, had some much-needed fleshing-out of authority figures, but it also lacked anything much to drive the plot along, whereas the finale, while brainless, was at least high-energy.

Nothing about season 4 of My Little Pony went drastically wrong. Nothing was a big risk. And sure, this may be upsetting for those militant fans who want this cartoon to be more than it is. For me, it’s actually refreshing. Because it fits with my view of MLP – something nice, pleasant to watch, but far from life-changing, or a particular stand-out in the animation world.

The Powerpuff Girls: Season V

By season 4, the Powerpuff Girls formula was wearing a little thin and getting a bit dull. I fully expected to see an episode in this season where I could go, ‘Yup, that’s where it jumped the shark’, but in fact the show-writers managed to rather exceed my expectations and as a matter of fact, I’d say that moment doesn’t come until the season 6 episode ‘A Made Up Story’, which given how close it was to the show’s end isn’t a bad stretch. Even the clips episode here is quickly subverted so that it’s quickly apparent that the flashbacks are actually all-new and often rather nonsensical snippets.

By this point, the bulk of the writers and episode directors on Powerpuff Girls are the people who will go on to write most of the episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, though Amy Keating Rogers had yet to contribute. Lauren Faust is established enough to really be taking a back seat here, but Chris Savino has his first work in this season and helps define it, while Cindy Morrow also joins to put in some small-scale episodes in her recognisable style.

Two things, I feel, kept this season from becoming tired – one, the use of an ace long kept up a sleeve in that finally, after being in every intro sequence yet not actually having been in any episodes since their first appearance in the first ever full-length episode back in season 1, the Rowdyruff Boys make their return, coming back for a full-length episode and then later for two more half-episodes. They are an interesting counterpoint to the girls and their return is welcome, making for some very enjoyable episodes, especially when poor Bubbles has to pretend to be one of them.

The second strength is that the show falls back on its old successes of imitating other shows and styles, but picks some very unusual things to imitate. One full half-episode parodying Rocky and Bullwinkle is so-so at best, but there’s a really lovely episode that imitates both silent movies and that era’s cartoons at once, the excellent episode about judging by appearances ‘Substitute Creature’ has some brilliant pastiches of pulp comic panels, and Chris Savino makes up for the slight misfire of the Rocky and Bullwinkle episode with a cracking rock opera tribute, ‘See Me, Feel Me, Gnomey’. While of course taking its cues mostly from The Who, it also has hints of The Wall and War of the Worlds, and it is a rather bewildering and dark tale about the girls taking a wish from a sinister little gnome to rid the town of all its evil in exchange for their powers, only for the gnome to then assume the role of saviour and force have everyone suppressed and lacking individuality. The girls and their father/creator decide this is not real peace and rebel. It’s a story confusingly-told, morally ambivalent and even rather disturbing when the girls drive the little man from a branch and to his death, and never aired in the States – rumour has it because the story hinted too heavily at weighing up communism and democracy, though I find this dubious – but who cares when it has wonderful 70s synths and guitar solos and a full-on Jack Black impression from Wakko Warner voice actor Jess Harnell? It’s not quite ‘Meet the Beat-Alls’, but it’s bolder overall and another, lesser-known highlight.

Otherwise, things are largely unambitious, often just poking at the boundaries of cartoon humour without taking many risks. There’s an episode where Bubbles hears a naughty word and everyone is shocked to hear the girls saying it – so soon they fight a giant potty mouth. There’s a swipe at the far Left when the girls are prevented from stopping Mojo Jojo’s crimes because an animal protection lobby group get self-righteous and force them to stop. 

The Mayor’s stupidity is played upon – and he sounds more and more like the Ice King – with him taking over Monster Isle and being turned into a rampaging monster himself when Chemical X makes him huge. And Cindy Morrow turns in bland but entertaining episodes about bet-wetting, some adorable fluffy animals turning master criminals but nobody except the girls wanting to prosecute them on account of being so cute, and an annoying passive-aggressive dog being looked after by the girls as they try to protect him and persuade him to tell them about a crime he witnessed. The mixture of full-on weirdness, small-scale drama, repetition of old ideas and attempts to get the girls into different scenarios – including seeing caveman equivalents of them – retains the fun.

So yes, while I genuinely expected this to be quite the disappointment as a season, it actually turned out to be pretty good. 

The Powerpuff Girls Movie – plus shorts and commercials

Midway through the fourth season of The Powerpuff Girls, where ideas were starting to run a bit low, the theatrical movie version came out. It may seem like an obvious cash-in now, but it was hardly common for Hanna Barbera at the time, this being in 2002 their first feature film since the lamentable Once Upon a Forest almost a decade earlier in 1993, and at the time the only extension of a Cartoon Network property to the big screen. 

Prior to this, their only film that could be called a cash-in on a current weekly series (as opposed to an adaptation of a decades-old favourite) was 1986’s Go-Bots: Battle of the Rock Lords, and until the constantly-in-production Samurai Jack film comes out, it remains the only instance of a big-screen version of a Cartoon Network property. If it seems like every series that makes it big gets a cinema version (just look at Equestria Girls!), as a matter of fact that doesn’t apply to Cartoon Network, and that in large part seems to be down to this film just not making money.

There’s no denying it – The Powerpuff Girls was a flop. Even with Treasure Planet competing against it, it was the lowest-grossing animated movie of 2002. On the other hand, quite fortunately it was done on a shoestring, so whereas Treasure Planet cost $140 million and made back about $111 million, this more modest effort cost just $11 million and ended up making $16.4 million, no huge loss but clearly no blockbuster.

Part of the problem is really that while the series seems clever, that doesn’t come over in its big-screen counterpart. Deciding on an origin story, essentially the film retells the story from the episode Mojo Jojo comes to understand he was in part responsible for the girls’ creation, then extends the plot to show how at first the girls are not understood by the wider public. They have a game of tag without knowing how to restrain their powers and tear the city apart. The Professor is arrested and the girls become pariahs – which becomes worse when Jojo manipulates the girls into building his observatory for him and facilitating his plot to empower all the zoo’s monkeys to take over the city. They have a moment of deep rejection on the moon before hearing the Professor’s cry for help and learning to use their power to save people – and mete out enormous violence on those deserving it.

Where it seems the series would deliver the twist that what the girls really learn is how to be incredibly violent and beat people up with a glib irony and a knowing wink, the film does none of that. And without its cleverness, surreal touch and knowing nods to an adult audience who knows that the clichés of kids’ TV are being subverted, the mood just doesn’t come over, to the extent that the adults who watch this without being stoners who already watched the show simply won’t get what made The Powerpuff Girls such a success. Couple with that the fact that it really doesn’t have much original thought put in, being an expansion of a story already established in the show, and I see why it flopped. There’s also the fact that while there’s a polish to the cheap, simple look of the show, it’s clearly not an animation from a leading studio – hence the tenth-of-Disney’s-budget thing, and it seems that while Cartoon Network were putting about big talk about their feature film, internally it had to be made clear that this was a small-scale project, reportedly with the voice actresses having to be talked down when they were a little deluded about the budget involved and went on strike because they didn’t get a big pay hike.

Watched as an adaptation of a TV show in the mode of South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut or Beavis and Butthead Do America, though, it makes sense. The show’s simple style is retained, with a nice sheen overlaid to make it prettier and the action more impressive. The Gangreen Gang in particular end up looking much more striking as a result. To lose that would be to lose much of the piece’s charm, and after all this is primarily for the established fanbase rather than new viewers. Taken in context, as a cheap extension with nicer animation, it is charming and does the job very well.

Just don’t expect too much – and, sadly, don’t expect the old smartness that made the series work in the beginning.

I also took the time to watch the DVD extras (fun seeing the actresses recording their lines, with the ‘deleted scenes’ basically more dialogue in the construction scene) as well as promotional animations for the show, and several other adverts and eyecatches made for the series. It’s a lot of fun seeing promo animations made with the characters interacting with other Cartoon Network figures, but best seeing different animation styles, including the kind of cereal advert that the series lampooned. It’s great to see an attempt to integrate the girls into live-action shots with heavy shading, and other animators rendering the girls in slightly more lanky form. A footnote, to be sure, but interesting and entertaining to watch. 

Powerpuff Girls – season 3

Well, as we previously established, season 2 was largely a very direct continuation of season 1 of The Powerpuff Girls. And with season 4, the show makes a notable transition – from almost full seasons of half-episodes to having more fleshed-out full-length episodes each time. So where does that leave season 3?

Well, while in a broad sense it’s undeniably more of the same, and once again there was only a gap of about a month between the last episode of the second season and the first of this one, there is certainly a little more experimentation – and long gaps between the first episodes suggest some development was going on. The girls moving to Citiesville for an episode, a full episode riffing on American cereal advert characters (which I’m sure I didn’t get the first time I saw it, and which again makes me wonder how this cartoon travelled to so many countries so well), an episode where the girls decide to emulate their favourite comic heroes (Blossom opting for DC, Bubbles for cutesy manga and Buttercup for Spawn) and of course, the brilliant ‘Meet the Beat-Alls’, chock full of Beatles references, allow some chances for stylistic experiments, which help the show get more complex. 

With the characters and formula firmly established, the writers also take the opportunity to give the girls a dark side, with them learning lessons after stepping deep into moral grey zones plentiful: when they discover the Professor is stealing toys for them in their sleep, they gleefully encourage him; when Princess makes crime legal, they turn criminal to show her how stupid that idea was; when Buttercup discovers that she can get money from the tooth fairy, she starts to purposely knock out others’ gnashers; and when they find out that they can get candy for beating Mojo, the girls strike a deal with him to keep busting him out of jail so that they can once again catch him and get their reward – even if it means great damage to Townsville.

It feels like the traces of Hanna-Barbera are being left behind, and the new identity of Cartoon Network is being firmly established, despite more mini Jetsons and Top Cat cameos, and even some familiar Flinstones faces (and on a tangent, Powerpuff Girls heavily featured Totoro long before everyone declared it oh-so-surprising in Toy Story 3). That said, dem terrible repeating crowds and backgrounds, plus a whole episode making a point of recycling animation from a season 1 episode recall the studio’s lowest points.

For the first time, the name Lauren Faust starts cropping up on storyboarding credits – starting with the stylish ‘Equal Fights’ episode. It becomes very clear the future My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic creator cut her teeth on what is after all very much the future bizarre hit’s spiritual predecessor – the formula of writing an episode by taking one of the characters and exaggerating one of their personality traits to make a silly story was very well-established here. There’s Buttercup’s teeth adventure, Bubbles’ love of animals going so far that she tries to keep a whale in her cupboard, and Blossom’s vanity is explored in an episode where her sisters give her a terrible haircut. Otherwise, most of the episodes take established characters and put them in fish-out-of-water situations – the professor becomes a fellow superhero but, being a dad, embarrasses his girls; the Mayor attempts to fight crime himself rather than relying on the girls; the Gangreen Gang also gain powers; and one of the fearsome monsters turns out to just be looking for his cat. The show is largely done with introducing new villains, with new antagonists really limited to some old people and a lazy cop turned bad, which are basically gimmicky one-off ideas that don’t lend themselves to any reappearances.

A few new steps in interesting directions make this series stand out a little – but really only because I’m watching in a way that specifically lends itself to looking out for developments. Syndicated, these episodes could easily fit in alongside any from the first couple of series. And going into series 4, I largely find myself wondering if we’ve seen the last of the Rowdyruff Boys. Was it just because of their prominence in the intro that I felt like they were in more than one ep? 

The Powerpuff Girls – season 1

After the previously-documented show pilots, The Powerpuff Girls made it to a full series at the end of 1998, a couple of years later than its partner Dexter’s Laboratory. Though clearly Craig McCracken’s baby, Tartakovsky is clearly still heavily involved, co-directing a majority of the episodes.

It’s clear from the start that the series was heavily developed before ever reaching the air. It’s not unusual for a series’ title sequence to show characters who don’t appear until many episodes in, but this one even has characters who don’t even appear until the early episodes of season 2 – the guy from The Collector and, more prominently, Princess Morebucks.

The series does that very syndicated-American-toon thing of having no establishing episode or premiere but simply launching into the setting without explanation with the assumption that the audience knows the scenario and characters already – so random episodes can easily be broadcast in any order. It even seems very likely that ‘Tough Love’ rather than ‘Octi Evil’ was written as Him’s introductory episode, but things were swapped around. Indeed, however the show was broadcast when I used to watch it on TV was likely pretty random – I’d seen most of these episodes before, but some, like ‘Insect Inside’ and series finale ‘Uh Oh Dynamo’ were new to me.

Split into 22 half-episodes and 2 full episodes, Powerpuff Girls is very easy to watch. Its exaggeratedly cute characters are of course adorable, but what makes the likeable is the heavy emphasis on their faults and failings despite their powers. Bubbles is childlike and gullible, a bit of a crybaby despite not wanting to be underestimated, allowing for her to be adorable, to learn and also for reversals like her deciding she wanted to be ‘hardcore’ being very funny. Tara Strong’s brilliant voice work (here still credited as Tara Charendoff, as she hadn’t gotten married yet) brings the role to life. Blossom is perhaps the least immediately distinct of the three, wanting to be a leader and taking charge, but getting a little boastful when she develops new powers and easily annoyed when Buttercup challenges her authority. And Buttercup is the quintessential tomboy character, making her most probably my favourite – she’s stubborn and self-conscious and that makes me feel like she’s actually the most vulnerable. And y’know, there’s something pretty heavy about an episode where she falls for a guy, he makes her feel really special and loved, and then only by happy accident does she see he’s actually just getting her out of the picture so he can brutally murder her two sisters. That’s a lot for a kindergartener to take on!

Indeed, the series gets its adult-friendly edge in two ways, really – first, by being irreverent with what’s appropriate for kids to see, taking pride in showing gross-out humour, its tiny adorable heroes being constantly abused both physically and mentally, a whole episode about how funny the mayor looks without any clothes on, and in its wanton destruction, the certain death of many thousands of Townsville residents. And second, with a real sense of bathos – some episodes feel they’re late in the run of a well-established show, like one with Mojo just trying to go about his daily routine in peace but the girls bothering him interminably, endlessly and indeed unendingly. A new superhero shows up but turns out to be engineering crimes, but the way the girls beat him is by doing the very same thing. And one episode is about the Gangreen Gang making prank phone calls, which ends up with the villains sorting the problem out while the heroes are unawares.

The strength here is really in the characters, major or minor. The girls are immediately engaging and understandable, Professor Utonium’s protective nature but vulnerability to women is easily understood and though some baddies are duds – ‘Roach Coach’, with power over cockroaches, for example, or some kid who eats glue before a radioactive insect turns him into a huge hulking glue monster that’s actually one of the girls’ toughest challenges – many, many more of them are brilliant and iconic. The Gangreen Gang and the Amoeba Boys from the pilots/shorts are great, but it’s really Mojo Jojo with his ridiculous pleonastic way of speaking and Him with his evil mind games that stand out as classics. The Rowdyruff Boys are an obvious but strong idea, and Fuzzy Lumpkins becomes much stronger conceptually with his pseudo-Southern attitude to people on his property. Plus you can’t help but love the Mayor.

The voice work is also top-notch, which is something that made 90s cartoons appeal so much to Gen-Xers and stoners. The three girls have an instant dynamic, two of them having starred in Rugrats before this, and of course Tom Kenny puts his stamp on every role he plays, from Spongebob to The Ice King. Where Mojo’s daft speech patterns came from I do not know, but they’re absolutely inspired, and Him’s voice sends chills down the spine.

Being ironic and going for a lot of parody – from Star Wars to Godzilla – protects the show from a lot of criticism. Of course it’s lame – it’s a joke on silly superhero tropes! But there are some real shortcomings. Sometimes the episode length means a strong idea has to just be randomly dropped, like when Him’s Octi just blows up because it’s made to drop the captive girls, or when a cure for a terrible disease can simply be taken out of the Amoeba Boys. It is also unashamedly politically incorrect to the point of being offensive – racial caricatures abound, there’s something anti-trans in how Him is portrayed, I don’t know why Mojo has that accent and with the mecha parody episode and all those unflattering representations of the Japanese, it’s amazing they loved it so much. And while sure, kids won’t notice or care, this is emphatically not just for kids and I don’t see what gets added by it.

But it doesn’t stop the real brilliance of the writing, how it turns typical Hanna Barbera-style cartoon making into something hip and intelligent, or how well-performed and well-executed the whole thing is. Impressive work.

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

So on the back of the stratospheric success of MLP:FiM comes the first feature film, released theatrically in the US so that bewildered parents can look at the multitudes of [insert your own stereotyping adjectives] bronies sharing the cinema with their families with great concern, and likely have their kiddies get disapproving looks right back, what with the presence of the target audience being an unfortunate distraction.

The Equestria Girls project has had little approval in fandom – set in an alternate universe, it has the ponies represented as teenaged schoolgirls attending ‘Canterlot High School’. Not, as I had expected, a completely alternate-universe setting, it is in fact not only within the timeline of the show but directly follows on from the end of season 3, with Twilight newly alicorn-ified and quite sweetly having difficulty adjusting, with a sweet scene of her unable to get comfortable in bed with the new limbs that sprouted from her back. The other world is much like our own…only with nobody at all alarmed by blue, orange or violet skin – anything as long as it isn’t a dark shade, slightly worryingly. Just look at Luna!

After her sparkly princess crown is stolen by a mysterious former protégé of Celestia’s by the name of Sunset Shimmer – clearly she selects student with light-phenomena-at-times-of-the-day themes – Twilight has to follow the ne’er-do-well through a magic mirror to another world, with only her loyal dragon Spike as company. On the other side of the portal, Spike has turned into a dog, and Twilight into something weirder – a human teenager. After some obvious culture shock, she makes her way into the ‘castle’ – actually a high school – and finds that not only do all her friends and acquaintances have counterparts here, but the crown was picked up by this world’s Fluttershy and given to Principal Celestia. Unable to talk her way into getting the crown back as her property in an inelegant scene that would have been much clearer if they stressed that Twilight’s crown looked just the one that was to be given to the prom queen that year, Twilight of course resolves to be that year’s prom queen – but will have to become popular first to win the hearts of the student populace!

Like most in the fandom, my reaction to initial leaks of the ‘Equestria Girls’ concept was scepticism. Much of the appeal of the ponies was – to me at least – their distinctive, stylised design, bright colours and despite all that clopping business, rather abstract, non-sexualised forms and simple world without the baggage of real American high schools. And of course, like just about all media based on life in American high schools, it focuses on issues of popularity, that weird and quintessentially American need to be very tribal, and the rife bullying that I’m sure is partly just a media representation but is clearly a big part of life there. You see, Sunset Shimmer has made her place in that world, established herself as the dominant bully of the school and always gets her way – because she’s a terrible bully. With Twilight having such quirky behaviour, she is of course an easy target for ridicule and the film has a chance to explore overcoming bullying…but sadly cops out with Twilight reuniting her best friends’ counterparts in this world after Sunset set them at odds with easily-undone tricks, they do a deeply embarrassing flashmob-style dance in the cafeteria in furry ears and tails, and suddenly Twilight doesn’t have to deal with the ridicule any more. It just…never gets mentioned again and she’s abruptly popular. And because her friends all belong to the different cliques (except Applejack, who hangs out with her little sister and the CMC, apparently either much older than they look and act or child prodigies accepted to high school at about  ~11 years old), there are some throwaway lines about uniting all these disparate peoples.  

Unlike many, I actually quite like the humanised designs – except Rainbow Dash, who looks kinda like some weird alien, and Vinyl Scratch who looks like a zombie. They’re skinny and idealised, but I expect that anything else would result in board members worried that dolls wouldn’t sell. Twilight’s human form is very sweet and there’s something less annoying about Rarity when she’s a teenager. I guess I kinda picture her as mutton dressed as lamb in the series, for some reason.

The problem here is really that the project clearly isn’t big enough in scale for a feature film. Even South Park and Beavis and Butthead knew that if they made the transition to the big screen, they couldn’t just churn out the animation of their series for the entire running time, but that’s what happens here. In fact, at the end, where it ought to get all epic and the animation stops pulled out, there’s a noticeable drop, with lazy transformation sequences (yes, really), and an altered Sunset Shimmer who looks a lot like the rather clunky early attempts at a Dofus animation. In story terms, it is also unsatisfying, with the aforementioned skirting of issues of popularity, the easy-out of the power of friendship, and the way Twilight relies on it so much despite, y’know, this super-magical friendship being based on a group of girls knowing her for a couple of days, and the way that while her pony friends are fretting to the point of tears about her back home and suffering terrible anxiety, she has a party and flirts with a dishy human boy (who has a pony counterpart, oh the drama!).

But we all know this is dished out for the monstrous fandom. I can almost see /mlp/ frothing at the mouth at all the ‘pandering’. Look, there’s Derpy dancing with a muffin, and there’s Scootaloo doing a chicken dance, and totally unneeded cameos for Trixie just because of her popularity with a leading news site. They must hate it. Yet…well, doing this humanised thing wasn’t really what the fandom wanted. It was much more what the little girls probably wanted. And beyond the thin plot, it takes the Pony concept somewhere a bit different, and I rather like that. Plus it comes a step closer to defining the characters’ ages and introduces a bit of romance beyond puppy crushes and secondary characters getting married. I don’t have as great a connection to the franchise as some and don’t care if it goes in new directions, so I quite enjoyed this for what it was – flimsy, light-hearted entertainment about some cute girls doing cute things.

And there’s a darker question here. I wondered what happened to Twilight’s counterpart, which was answered by Pinkie mentioning her being in ‘the city’. So where is Sunset Shimmer’s counterpart? Just what did she do to her to take her place?