Spotto does a really long review!
Sep. 3rd, 2010 05:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
spottoYes Spotto should stop talking about PPG now because it ended six years ago unless you count the special which was two years ago and the anime was three years ago. I will shut up.
Because pictures say a thousand words!
I have decided to review the entirety of season one of PPG today. Why season one? Because the whole thing in one post would be ginormous (even though I usually write ginormous posts anyway) Why now and why of this certain cartoon? Lately I have been praising it as the GREATEST CARTOON IN EXISTENCE. Even though that is generally my opinion, I should look at it also at a critical standpoint...because it's not perfect and yes, even in PPG some episodes were a complete waste of animation. (The phrase I usually keep for the anime which had many wastes of animation...)
Of course PPG actually didn't begin its life on the very first episode of season one, there were some extremely old episodes before it aired standalone on the "What a Cartoon" shorts and even its own four-minute long episode as the "Whoopass Girls" (the name they originally had for the PPG)
As awesome as Chemical X is, "Accidentally adding a can of whoopass" would've been amazing if they kept that in, sadly they didn't. (It just sounds so amusing. "Sugar, spice, and everything nice! But Professor Utonium accidentally added...A CAN OF WHOOPASS." Lol.
That very first concept and episode of the "Whoopass Girls" (Whoopass Stew! A Sticky Situation) had the Amoeba Boys being competent, the girls getting stuck to them, and then flying to the sun to fry them to death in order to defeat them. Yeah back then the PPG were not as subtle in the violence department. In fact with the name of "Whoopass Girls" it certainly didn't sound like something originally pitched to kids...and it was not. Their intentions of keeping it kid-friendly never actually surfaced throughout the rest of the series (except maybe the later seasons...) so somehow this rather violent cartoon stayed...well, violent.
The next episode (Now on "What a Cartoon!" called Meat Fuzzy Lumpkins...I think) were of Fuzzy turning everything to meat...why he wanted to do that I have no idea, and then at one point showing Bubbles swinging into space and then going berserk on Fuzzy, eventually they turn him into meat and have a barbeque! This is actually rather disturbing and certainly not kid-friendly. They ate Fuzzy. There weren't even eyeballs still blinking on the meat to show he was still alive...so he was pretty much dead. Of course at this point they were now called the Powerpuff Girls, so if they were trying to dumb-down the violence for weekday-afternoon TV, they didn't do a very good job.
The Bubblevicious before Bubblevicious
The final episode before the PPG got their own half-hour timeslot would be the "Crime 101" episode, with yet again the Amoeba Boys. I'm under the impression they created all these dumb villains first before the ones we have come to known for the Powerpuff Girls (CERTAINLY Mojo Jojo, but also Him and arguably the RRB (I'll touch on this later) ) Then again the Amoeba Boys were competent before this episode and now...that is no longer true. Here the Amoeba Boys try to show the Powerpuff Girls their amazing villainous crime of...JAYWALKING! Gasp! So the girls roll their eyes and proceed to show the boys how to rob a bank.
The way they robbed that bank was very very believable, in fact they probably did a better and more believable job than any bank robber to come in the rest of the series! First they...tried to put some sort of disguise on that didn't work very well and looked more like condoms on their heads, erm, but it did make them look more menacing that's for sure. Then they robbed the people blind. The way Blossom just yells "SHUT THAT KID UP!" is also believable. It just gives you an odd and not-exactly-positive message that if three supposedly innocent little girls could terrorize a bank like that so easily if this truly is for kids. O_o Anyway they get arrested obviously because that was as I'll continue to emphasize a really believable robbing job, no wonder no one believed them when they tried to explain that they were just showing the Amoeba Boys...
So in court, one of the more amusing scenes had the judge obviously thinking this whole robbery-accusation is just that, an accusation, so he is rather relaxed and casual, but then the girls plead guity, thus the judge had no choice but to sentence the girls to "ONE MILLION YEARS IN TOWNSVILLE STATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES STARTING RIGHT--" (that was the most dramatic and drawn-out sentencing I've ever seen!) but then the Amoeba Boys show up with the money and practically confess they did it...even though they...did nothing, but they had the money. Of course they are happy they committed an evil crime and so ask the girls for a favour, to finally be acknowledged for it by being beaten up. Is it just me or are these villains masochists? They were SMILING as they were beat up...very weird...
CONDOMS! On their heads!
And any show that sentences five year olds to prison for a million years is obviously not taking itself seriously. I don't know what the executives were thinking, but if I were one of them I'd be pretty weirded out...luckily I am NOT an executive and the series did get greenlit for its own series, and so the Powerpuff Girls were born!
Before I move on to the first season, besides summing up the pilot/experiment whatever episodes they are considered with "weird" the characterization was also somewhat odd. My biggest complaint would be Buttercup having absolutely no personality. Blossom definitely had the most lines in those three episodes showing her clear leadership and Bubbles had the most standalone scenes (drawing on the walls, swinging into space, and practically murdering Fuzzy) but Buttercup was just there! I barely ever even heard her talk and when I did she was basically saying the same things the other two were. So if someone had just watched these three episodes, they'd be thinking Bubbles is the scary insane-crazy brutal Powerpuff, not Buttercup.
Luckily we have the first season to find out about her!
Insect Inside brings us to the VERY first scene of the Powerpuff Girls, Bubbles running away scared from a cockroach. Well there went that assumption of her being crazy, and Buttercup finally doing something, trying to squish the cockroach! Then we have Blossom trying to be all good and moral by saying cockroaches should not be squished. There you have it, the personality of the Powerpuff Girls...except their personalities were already established in the theme song itself. You have the three girls flying into screen, Blossom with the regular music, Bubbles with the cuter, fluffier music, and Buttercup shows up as the heavy-metal rockish music. Then they beat their enemies up and Buttercup is the one that draws blood and teeth.
Wait, an opening to a children's show that has BLOOD AND TEETH!?
I honestly will never understand how this show became a kids show. Ever. Of course no wonder my young mind was drawn to it. The very opening had three little girls beating up a bunch of bad guys. In the opening. Yay violence!
Anyway the episode in my opinion was very average. Not bad, but simply average. You have a monster-of-the-week trying to take over Townsville and the girls saving it! Of course it brings into some odd logic that stays consistent throughout the series, like Blossom randomly finding a giant jar to contain the bugs in. The episode though in my opinion is still far from kid-friendly. One of the most nightmare-inducing scenes in the series (yes, in the very first episode) had a happy man ordering a hot dog and then COCKROACHES CRAWLING OUT HIS MOUTH AFTER A CRINGING "CRUNCH" SOUND. This is for kids!? The imagery of hundreds of cockroaches crawling out my mouth is for kids!?
Also it subverts the whole Warner Brothers theory on falling. If you fall you could actually die, as their reactions to the monster-of-the-week smashing into the ground was. Luckily he was a robot.
All this text and I've only covered the first episode...first half of the first episode. The next episode is Powerpuff Bluff! This episode basically tells us that the entire city of Townsville are morons. Even Miss Bellum is a moron for not noticing that those six-feet grown muscular men inside really bad PPG costumes are not the Powerpuff Girls! I suppose it's all in the logic of comedy. Even the PPG themselves were confused as who was who! Oh well. This episode also brings back that whole "THE GIRLS GO TO JAIL" thing they did like, two episodes ago. It does develop more personality, like Bubbles crying, Buttercup yelling at her, and Blossom saying it is wrong to break out of prison, eh. The episode was amusing, I mean we had a convict imagining himself in pretty bows and dresses...
Well this looks familiar...
Monkey See Doggie Do introduces Mojo Jojo officially! You can already tell the show isn't very serious if Mojo's idea of taking over the world is turning EVERYONE into dogs, not the mention how chaotic that could be. (You could DESTROY the world by turning them all to dogs if you think about it enough) We have more hammerspace logic with the girls having a doggie bowl with the name "Professor" out of nowhere. I find how easily they defeated Mojo (as dogs) also very amusing. The fact that it was Buttercup who basically did it (to the audience we'd be like "GASP! Is Buttercup the smart one now!?") by running around could be an early-series kind of thing. Usually she isn't the one who figures out what to do, that happens to be Blossom's job, so I'm thinking at this point they still don't know the girls' personalities for real yet. Or I'm reading into it too much and Buttercup just happened to notice first that there were stairs on the other side...
But Powerpuff puppies! Awwwww.
Mommy Fearest introduces another "regular" enemy (though not too regular, she doesn't really show up that often) Sedusa! Who proceeds to go by her name and seduces the Professor into disciplining all the girls so she can rob a bank. Her "fake" name is something that sounds obviously devious "Ima Goodlady". Right you are Ima Goodlady! I suppose this episode goes into Professor Utonium's character now, even though at this point we have had no episodes on the girls themselves who are actually the main characters. Go figure. Now I'm not sure if this is particularly true or simply speculation, but from what I read on TV Tropes on the radar page, apparently Buttercup slips "some of this!" into the Professor's pocket. The entry there says it's something "square and small" but when I saw the episode I didn't really see the actual thing she put in. The whole mystery behind what she did put in does strongly suggest it probably was condoms but how the hell does a five-year-old, particularly Buttercup of all people know what condoms are?
Then again maybe that's where their masks from Crime 101 came from. Hmmmm... Oh well, the episode was already edging on edgy anyway... (A villain named Sedusa!? Surely you jest.)
Moving on! An episode that finally touches on the girls' home life (well, if the episode before didn't) Octi Evil! Finally there is conflict within the team with Blossom and Buttercup arguing constantly, everyday, on what to do during their battles. Bubbles is all sad because she doesn't want them to fight (again I think this is the early-series syndrome, when personaltiies and characters have not been completely set yet because eventually she also argues with Buttercup and strays away from this original personality plot point) so she talks to her doll, Octi about her woes.
If I put Him here that'd be five negative pictures in a row. :D;
Cue the very creepy and manipulative debut of Him. AGAIN I still can't understand how this cartoon became a kids cartoon because Him is obviously some sort of stereotypically gay drag-queen Santa Claus version of the Devil. I kid you not. You know this is during the same time I've been watching South Park...as a nine-year-old? Oh well. Anyway he possesses Octi. Keep in mind as kids a lot of us had treasured and precious dollies, like my dalmatian stuffed-animal named Spot (who replaced my sadly-long gone misplaced teddy bear in San Francisco...) so you know, the whole notion of the devil possessing your favourite toy you are with 24/7 (yes when I was young I took him everywhere) is extremely terrifying. I have no clue how Bubbles continued to sleep with Octi to this day after this episode because geez.
So the stuffed animal convinces Bubbles to convince the others that maybe Buttercup should be the leader for once. (And apparently this is a bad thing, didn't she defeat Mojo a few episodes ago? By biting him in the butt and running around the giant dog-machine of death, but still) So Him decides to turn the dolly into a gigantic octopus monster and kidnap Bubbles. (No wonder the cartoon was so popular in Japan!) Of course when their sister is in trouble they put their feud away and save her! Dadadada! Him, not understanding this TEAMWORK compassionate thing, fades away. At least they can defeat him like that and not having to do something even less kid-friendly to defeat him. (Seriously when he first appears it feels like the only way to really defeat him is to kill him somehow...)
Now the only reason this isn't one of my favourite episodes is because the Bubbles here isn't really the Bubbles I know, otherwise it is a very well-ochestrated episode with Him's unique villainy at the time and the fact that hey, it's an episode about the girls for once! Not some villain or their father or some monster-of-the-week, the girls!
Geshundfight reintroduces the Amoeba Boys and basically brings in a similar plotline from Crime 101. They fail at committing a crime yet at the same time do something that was potentially the most horrible thing they could ever do without realizing it. Ya know, irony! I found the episode a bit gross as well, and the whole "grossness" will actually show up in a few other episodes (it really doesn't feel like a girly show anymore...if it was at all) So anyway I personally don't find the Amoeba Boys that interesting so this episode wasn't really that interesting. Certainly not a waste of animation (I will probably hold that form of criticism until the later seasons >_>) but not amazing either.
The next episode is another episode about the girls, well at least Buttercup, and the introduction of the Gangreen Gang: Buttercrush. I like to note that at this point the episodes are starting to develop the girls' personalities by deviating it away from the original "one-dimensional" character they seem to be portrayed to be in the opening because really at this point, did anyone expect Buttercup of all people to have a crush? Buttercup? I actually think it made more sense back then because people's personalities weren't that explored yet, but still. Buttercup!?
Hey look! More blood!
At least this was better than Geshundfight because not only does it introduce a fairly regular villain, it also focuses on a main character! I tend to like those ones better, at least early on. I'm gonna assume Buttercup never got over her illness from the last episode either because she barely has a single line in her episode! I miss those days actually. Nowadays there can never be a single moment of silence in cartoons or wait, was that dubs. Whatever. Anyway I suppose Ace seemed like one of those bad boy-type guys that girls always fall for, y'know except Buttercup is five, not thirteen. Five. FIVE. I understand the whole PPG/RRB dynamics because they are BOTH five! Oh well, Buttercup/Ace is one of the "crack" pairings in PPG that seem popular, a girl/villain pairing (as well as Bubbles/Him and Blossom/Mojo...o_O) Oh right the plot, basically Buttercup hangs with the guys and almost gets her sisters killed, but she manages to save them, realize that Ace is a jackass, and beats them up. Then she says "I'm sorry" (her only line!). The end!
We now move on to Fuzzy Logic which reintroduces Fuzzy. He now has a quirk about him, being extremely extremely territorial. A squirrel leads him into Townsville, which he proceeds to deface. The episode also introduces the first instance of a Powerpuff having a unique power (yes, before Ice Sore!) Bubbles can understand the squirrel language! Buttercup also seems very-bully like in this episode, but nonetheless they get to Fuzzy's house to punish him basically by tormenting him with his banjo, which Buttercup similar to how she smacked Bubbles with Octi in the beginning, smacked Fuzzy with his Banjo "Joe". The moral of this episode is supposedly SHARING, but it felt more like "IF SOMEONE DOES SOMETHING BAD, GO BEAT THEM UP BY SMASHING UP THEIR FAVOURITE STUFF!"
Now aren't we glad we learned today's lesson? :D!
I'm gonna assume these next two episodes aired around Halloween because Boogie Frights brings in the lovely Boogieman character, who is basically a monster who wants to party all night. We also learn that Bubbles is afraid of the dark and she supposedly overcomes this fear later on in this episode (even though she still has that hall-light thing in a few other episodes) Anyway, in order to party forever he blocks out the sun so the girls have to defeat him...a pretty average episode at best in my opinion, with Star Wars refrerences but yeah. Also a bit about Bubbles too, you know at this point Blossom is the one with the least character exploration...hmmm...
Abracadaver time! This is also another episode that doesn't seem entirely kid-friendly. Why? Well first of all...they left a magician's dead body inside an iron maiden for fifty years on stage. They never buried him or removed him from the stage, they just left his body there to rot. Well gee no wonder he came back as a zombie all angered and vengeful. Also his undead magic is very disturbing as well, like turning a schoolbus into a bunny...a NAKED WRINKLY GIANT BUNNY. He also saws people in half with his lovely magic. Nonetheless I also found the episode quite clever because despite the girls' fear of zombies in the beginning (they were watching a horror show on TV, god knows why five year olds were allowed to watch that) they basically reversed what the zombie did (he was sawing Buttercup in half, drowning Bubbles, and threw Blossom into an iron maiden) When all that happened I swear, it felt like NOTHING could change what happened so it'd be a happy ending. All the girls were dead!
OR WERE THEY? Blossom rips off her zombie costume, revealing at Bubbles was not in a bag underwater, but actually the legs of Buttercup in that sawing thing (so she wasn't sawed in half at all) and it was the zombie in the iron maiden...his arm hanging out and all...clever ending yes, but still scary and creepy. These two episodes, especially this one definitely works for Halloween, even if you aren't a child. ESPECIALLY not a child, it's still pretty frightening.
"He's dead, Jim"
The next episode Telephonies was not all that great to me, but it did show all the enemies seen so far doing mundane things like reading the newspaper and exercising, which was nice. They had lives besides destroying/taking over the world! Then the enemies teamed up to beat the crap out of the Gangreen Gang, who had been prank-calling the girls this entire time. A somewhat amusing episode, it also shows Grubber able to imitate anyone's voice (even though in Buttercrush he did a poor job of imitating Buttercup's voice...despite the fact that it still worked >_> Morons indeed!)
Tough Love apparently shows that the Halloween spirit isn't finished, with Him deciding to...in a stroke of genius "Why don't I just invert the love everyone has for girls!" And if the town loves the girls that much, with the love inverted that means they all want to kill them! Rip them to shreds and basically murder them all! What a perfectly stereotypical children's cartoon! One of the most questionable scenes of the entire series has Him licking the Professor's face. I think the censors went on vacation for this cartoon, seriously. They probably had one censor who got paid poorly and only looked at the scripts every two months. "Oh, Satan is licking Professor Utonium in the face! That's a fine scene for kids and adults alike! Approved!" It reminds me of that Animaniacs episode when the Warners went to hell and they tormented Satan...except this episode wasn't very funny, it was kind of horrifying...in a good way! I mean I did enjoy the episode, but the answer to stopping the citizens from killing them is to BEAT THEM UP! Supposedly that defeats Him so he fades away...huh.
So much violence and we're only halfway through the very first season!
I think Major Competition is some sort of moral to the kids. As in not all superheroes or even heroes are always very moral, like the Powerpuff Girls! Though for this episode our not very morally inclined "hero" is MAJOR MAN! A beefy, muscular man who is so much cooler than three little kindergarteners. (Seriously whoever thought that having three little girls be your security force for the city very cool?) Also the citizens of Townsville, the heartless morons they are, forget all about the heroic things the girls have done and immediately send their loyalty to Major Man! For comedy's sake! Major Man even has an epic theme! MAJOR MAN! A HERO TO EVERYONE! FIGHTS HIS BATTLES TO THE END, NEVER GIVING UP! Seriously this was really, really catchy. Whoever decided to make a theme for a phony hero this catchy really knows how to push the propaganda! I also like how they defeated him at his own game by fighting fire with fire. You know instead of the whole cliche' "NO! I REFUSE TO BE AS LOW AS THEM!" they just go ahead and do what needs to be done to restore the status quo! I think that's why I did like this cartoon over others like Disney...and such.
Powerpuff torment at its best!
Mr. Mojo's Rising depicted the creation of the Powerpuff Girls, not to the extent of the Movie, but still at this point of the season lots of loyal viewers and fans alike are probably wondering how the PPG were created beyond the opening sequence. It's always something that could make a good episode and be explored (a nice plot that was extended into something even greater in the movie. But this isn't the movie, alas) It also depicted where Mojo came from, so again at this point we now know where one of the enemies even came from, and some more indepth into the girls' creation. Seems like quite the significant episode in that case, particularly for the cartoon's canon. In the end despite the somewhat-of-a freudian excuse, we're still not supposed to be sympathetic to Mojo even if he was thrown out and ignored because he broke everything as a monkey. Well Professor instead of ignoring him put him in the zoo or something, don't neglect him! Nonetheless this also beings a pattern of irony for Mojo Jojo, entertaining irony! Mojo Jojo is the PPG's father! Technically!
So at this point we have kind of two Bubbles episodes, one Buttercup episode, and zero Blossom episodes...so why not have another Buttercup episode! We finally see the our heroes going to school in Paste Makes Waste at least as far as I can remember. Maybe Pokey Oaks and Ms. Keane showed up in one of the earlier episodes, I seriously can't remember. Anyway Buttercup has so far shown that she is rebellious, tough, and can have crushes like a girly girl. So why not add more teenage angst to the middle child and make her succumb to "wanting to be like the others" more by also making fun of the kid who eats paste! I always wondered why only Bubbles and Blossom were all refusing to be like the others and making fun of him but Buttercup wasn't, almost like she was more human and the other two had to be shown as "good" to have a good influence for the children watching the TV...okay if there's supposed to be a role model in this cartoon I don't see it yet. Lol. Of course Buttercup goes a bit overboard because instead of simply using words, she throws some paste into the kid's face. Not very nice, not very nice at all.
But this episode is another, albeit milder, version of "gross"-ness the cartoon has. I mean, eating paste!? And then EATING A RADIOACTIVE FLY WHO WAS EATING GARBAGE EARLIER? It almost reminds me of Ren and Stimpy. So far I am not convinced at all that this cartoon is girly whatsoever, maybe that's why there was quite a large male demographic watching the show as well. So anyway, in order to make the GIANT PASTE MONSTER not destroy EVERYTHING, Buttercup has to apologize to him. I almost think the executives finally noticed how un-kid friendly the show looked and asked them to make some sort of episode with a lesson kids should learn, like apologizing for your mistakes. The writers then parodied and mocked this order by making it so that she has to apologize to a giant monster destroying things and committing numerous battery offences and property damage by apologizing. It sounds and looks very outrageous. Oh well, the fact that Buttercup had to FORCE an apologize out at first, then her apology felt sincere also tells me something about this cartoon, hmmm...
Now we finally get a Blossom episode! We have Ice Sore!
Subtle, very subtle Blossom.
Expanding on an idea that started episodes ago from Bubbles' ability to talk to animals, we have Blossom discovering her ability to breathe ice. I actually have a picture book-version of this episode as well, but I have no idea where I put it. We are basically told from the episode that Blossom has strong morals, if the other episodes didn't show us this before (well besides those really old ones like Crime 101...lol) and at first she abuses her ability since it's like a massive heatwave going on, making the other two girls' jealous. Anyway after she botches up one of their crime-fighting days, she promises to never use her ice breath again! Then a giant fireball appears, HOW CONVENIENT. I especially liked how Miss Bellum assumed the Mayor was referring to the sun when he said "GIANT BALL OF FIRE!!" while looking through his telescope because really he probably would have been referring to the sun! This episode actually felt like it DID have a moral, to use your powers responsibly, but moreso something that would affect the normal people, to do things in moderation! It's too bad she never really kept her fire breath from the end of the episode, but that was mostly the rule of comedy!
And is it me or is a fireball that turned into an ice ball that was shattered into millions of pieces not going to be like snow, but like...hail? Yet everyone stares up at the falling ice/whatever anyway? Oh well. Anyway of course the very first Blossom episode would have a geniune moral! Of course.
And after the very first Blossom episode we NEED MORE BUBBLES EPISODES! CLEARLY! So we have the episode that brought this series its first emmy, Bubblevicious.
This episode reintroduces the Bubbles from Meat Fuzzy Lumpkins, you know the crazy one that caused everyone to cannibalize Fuzzy. And she does not disappoint. At this point it's pretty well-known that Bubbles is the younger, more childish of the three. So the writers decided to finally subvert that, but I personally found it a bit too early. It's only the first season and despite a few episodes before, I think this episode would have had a lot more impact if it came even later, but oh well. It did its job if it won a freakin' emmy. This episode is also the most popular, most highly rated episode of all episodes so...asking for it to be even better is kind of silly? You can't deny that so far Bubbles has been getting some of the better episodes so far and it's only the first season!
Bubblevicious during...Bubblevicious
Anyway if you want to justify the opening with the blood and teeth Buttercup kicks out of Him, well you can simply say...it's Him. He's the devil, he's Satan. So it's okay to kick his teeth and blood out! Here we even have Bubbles bleeding, although not that much, it's the whole badass-look a character gets when blood comes from the edge of their mouth, and they gave this imagery to Bubbles. Not Buttercup or even Blossom, they gave it to "CUTE! LITTLE! BUBBLES!" (She seriously said it like that, like THIS! IS! SPARTA!) And I must admit I am with the mass majority that this too was one of my favourite episodes because CUTE! LITTLE! BUBBLES! is my favourite character. Basically we have this cartoon, generally assumed to be aimed at little girls (so wrong) with this cute little innocent character...being badass, and vicious and BLOOD. Then there's that super violent scene where she absolutely massacres a group of monsters, very savagely I might add.
This episode, like Buttercrush, is another episode that deviates the character from what you expect, usually from the not-subtle-at-all opening. So yeah, cute little Bubbles is beating up a dog to a pulp! EMMY! Woo! I have to say this is my first experience with the "UP TO ELEVEN" trope, not only literally but instead of being that cute, innocent Bubbles we all know, her personality changes more to the "emotional, extreme" Bubbles as in if she's sad, she's REALLY sad. If she's happy, she's a jumping hyper ball of glee, and if she's angry...this episode. Yeah.
The Bare Facts takes us from that rather...intense action and throws us into one of the most humorous episodes of the entire series, so this episode (as you know each episode is 10 minutes and takes half the timeslot, so they have two a timeslot. The combination of Bubblevicious and The Bare Facts gives this full-episode my five-stars thumbs up for being the best of the best!) Basically this episode is an ingenious excuse for not having to animate as much, by animating each version of the girls' story differently, and basically having three minutes of the episode of only audio, so...
We have the Mayor who is kidnapped by Mojo, from his POV, the blackness of the scene afterwards is because the Mayor is blindfolded, and then when he is rescued and returned, the girls then tell him what happened from each of their own POVs, and they keep interrupting each other because they think their biased version is the correct version. Blossom's style is basically a reddish-shade of animation, while Buttercup's is all darker and edgier...Bubbles is crayon drawings, lol. I must say Bubbles' was the most amusing because she always strayed from the story somehow, either because of "clouds that looked like clouds" or the colours of lillies, or kissing Mojo's booboo but then remembering he's bad so she kicks him instead...all around a hilarious episode. Oh, and the Mayor was naked, that's why they were giggling. Awesome.
"So I kicked in his face!!"
Cat Man Do gives us a moral, that we should never judge a book by its cover...except this time the cover we LOVE but the real thing...was something rather despicable. The episode actually reminds me of Monkey See, Doggie Do because the cat tried to turn all humans into, well not necessarily cats, but treating cats better and then taking their place as the cat's pet instead. I quite like how the episode ended, with the evil cat stuck in a tree, no one bothering to help him. A certainly fitting punishment for an evil cat. Again a milder version of the "gross" thing the PPG has, but the Professor did not look attractive as a kitty-possessed human, not at all.
Another Mayor episode comes in the form of Impeach Fuzz which is actually a really funny episode, with the Mayor actually being somewhat competent (at SOMETHING at least) if his hat is stolen. Who cares about the city or their citizens or anything, if that hat ain't his, he's going to become as hardcore as Bubbles from Bubblevicious! It's also funny how Fuzzy treats the girls when he is the Mayor, they have to play stereotypical hillbilly music and chase pigs, etc. It actually doesn't seem like he's doing anything bad to the city besides that, but still there's the status quo and wrestling with Fuzzy in a ring is also amusing to watch. It is unfortunately not one of my favourites because I can barely remember the episode. His real name is actually also the Mayor (despite the name Barney showing up at some point) or maybe it's his last name. "Mayor Barney Mayor"...maybe?
Just Another Manic Mojo expands on the idea from Telephonies, where it shows the enemies having their own lives, and this is that up to eleven! Seriously this episode was hilarious, funnier than even Bare Facts! It shows Mojo "CUUURSES!" just trying to buy eggs, and eat breakfast, and then finally relaxing but alas a ball breaks through the window! Everything's so mundane but how no one screams or runs away that a supervillain is among them is too entertaining to ignore. He also finds the citizens of Townsville annoying and stupid, and I agree they do seem annoying and stupid. "I must remember to destroy those kids after my breakfast has been eaten!" The girls are not there to beat him up, they were just playing ball and want their ball back, to which Mojo uses the opportunity to try to destroy the girls, the episode felt very Looney Tunes/Animaniacs/anything from Warner Brothers-ish how it went, particularly the second half of the episode. It was also very Dexter Laboratory-ish, he even says it like Dexter. "MY LABORATORY!" Bubbles has never been so Deedee-like until this episode. He gets so annoyed he just returns the ball so they will stop annoying him, but the next day he is further annoyed since he is praised as the hero of the day for returning the ball. Slow news day huh?
Mime for a Change ...just watch the video!
This episode had the polar opposites in terms of ups and downs. As in this song is AWESOME and it was the best excuse to stick a song in the episode ever...DIRECTLY after it though, came the moment most fans went WTF!? at. The plot is pretty much a birthday clown got doused in a truck of bleach in an accident, turning him into MR. MIME, an evil mime bent on turning everything colourless! It's pretty much another Bubbles episode because she loves to colour with her crayons, and watching her go batshit insane when everything is gray by colouring everything with her crayons is hysterical! Then she decides that her crayons are not enough, and sings a song. (with everyone colourless everything is lifeless, no sound, no conscious...) and the song spreads love and colour to everyone, including the mime, curing him! He actually thanks the girls for curing him of his evil alter-ego self...THEN HE GETS BEAT UP AND THROWN IN JAIL, with the narrator agreeing with the girls that that was justice. Actually it was the higher-ups who demanded that the episode end normally, as in bad guy goes to jail for what he does, but it was probably the least morally-correct ending of any PPG episode I've ever seen. The only reason this episode doesn't completely SUCK with that is because this song keeps it from the pile of trash.
With only two more episodes left for the season, what do we have next? The first episode that takes up the entire timeslot rather than half, we have...The Rowdyruff Boys...my feelings for this episode is really, really mixed but I will try to review it as unbiased as possible. In that case, this was a really good episode. You got action, an enemy actually a fighting match, perhaps even better than the girls, and...that's about it. I never found it particularly funny except maybe the beginning where the Professor tells Mojo Jojo the ingredients of the girls rather easily "I'm just a stranger from Townsville Community College!" You'd think he'd keep it a better secret...and the part when the girls slam into the window with the Mayor greeting them and saying goodbye, lol. Also again the whole "gross"ness of the PPG returns yet again when Mojo uses the toilet to create the RRB, the toilet EXPLODES in dirty toilet water, splashing ALL OVER THE PLACE. When it shows Mojo he's holding his breath, but it almost looks like he has that icky water in his mouth for a moment, I'm glad he was holding his breath...but still. D:
You have to admit they have nice sneakers.
Oh right the other hilarious thing about the episode, the RRB's voices. They're all voiced by Rob Paulsen...so I keep imagining a REALLY ANGRY YAKKO TALKING. I can't get it out of my head. It's Yakko, being really angry and mean. So OOC! Agh! Yes I know Rob Paulsen has voiced tons of characters but they DO sound kind of like angry Yakko, so... Anyway for the first entire-episode special, it was pretty good. The problems I have for the RRB really are their newer-selves from the later seasons, so... Oh right, and the PPG almost died but the tears from the citizens can revive them! ...Actually I don't think they were ever dead to begin with, the tears just woke them up, and the RRB flying off is simply a case of "left for dead" that lots of protagonists in anime and manga suffer from, (thus why villains always return! Just because they fell off a cliff doesn't mean they're dead!) except reversed!
This episode also makes me wonder...if a simple kiss can kill the boys, would whatever little girls fear the most make them explode immediately back to their components as well? In that case is there actually a way to defeat them once and for all without brute force or the like? Hmm...
It seems the season will end with a bang because we have one last timeslot-spanning episode, Un Oh...Dynamo. This is definitely some sort of spoof on sentai, godzilla, basically Japanese stuff in general. I mean it starts out at "Banzai Park" located in a "Japantown"-like area of Townsville (Tokyo Townsville?), where a pufferfish monster, which is some sort of fish the Japanese stereotypically eat, supposedly appears. The girls easily defeat it, but the Professor gets rather paranoid for the first time in the cartoon, realizing that his little girls are outside constantly in danger protecting the citizens of Townsville. So he gets really tired (and not attractive, with baggy bloody shot eyes and discoloured skin, another gross-like art point of the show) building a giant mecha for the girls, another Japanese-spoof, if he girls themselves who apparently look like anime-characters themselves (at least the big eyes, I don't know what character has no fingers or toes!) aren't already. So the giant monster returns with an evil bigger, giant-er monster and the girls are forced to use the mecha to fight in the monster in all out brawl! The ring? Townsville! Everything is destroyed but at least there's lots of action, with scissor bows and razor pigtails, ninja-star-like landmarks, spikes, and MORE DAKKA, it's like an action packed Power Rangers episode!
Also I think it shows an old woman being eaten...like not saved, you don't see her alive again. She is eaten and doesn't come back. I wonder, if the entire city is destroyed if more people died? Obviously they won't show such things directly, but you can always think. So yeah they destroy the evil monster but destroy the city as well, so the Mayor bans them from ever using it again. if you think about it this would be a pretty good conclusion to the PPG series if it had ended only after one season, good for us though that five more seasons are on the way!
"So once again the day was saved--er...destroyed thanks to the Powerpuff Girls!"
And that is Spotto's review of the PPG first season! See, if I have five times more of this the post WOULD be even MORE ginormous. As for the season as a whole, it was largely a very enjoyable season, some odd parts here and there like the beating of the clown and if I were a conversative parent I'd be like "WTF! THIS IS VIOLENT!" but eh, I enjoyed it as a kid and I certainly never did anything questionable to "imitate" the girls. (Speaking of which, this issue is brought up in an episode itself later on...I will comment on that when it comes)
Otherwise, I plan to review season two next, and the rest of the seasons after that too! Whenever I feel like it I guess. Until then, Spotto is out!
Because pictures say a thousand words!
I have decided to review the entirety of season one of PPG today. Why season one? Because the whole thing in one post would be ginormous (even though I usually write ginormous posts anyway) Why now and why of this certain cartoon? Lately I have been praising it as the GREATEST CARTOON IN EXISTENCE. Even though that is generally my opinion, I should look at it also at a critical standpoint...because it's not perfect and yes, even in PPG some episodes were a complete waste of animation. (The phrase I usually keep for the anime which had many wastes of animation...)
Of course PPG actually didn't begin its life on the very first episode of season one, there were some extremely old episodes before it aired standalone on the "What a Cartoon" shorts and even its own four-minute long episode as the "Whoopass Girls" (the name they originally had for the PPG)
As awesome as Chemical X is, "Accidentally adding a can of whoopass" would've been amazing if they kept that in, sadly they didn't. (It just sounds so amusing. "Sugar, spice, and everything nice! But Professor Utonium accidentally added...A CAN OF WHOOPASS." Lol.
That very first concept and episode of the "Whoopass Girls" (Whoopass Stew! A Sticky Situation) had the Amoeba Boys being competent, the girls getting stuck to them, and then flying to the sun to fry them to death in order to defeat them. Yeah back then the PPG were not as subtle in the violence department. In fact with the name of "Whoopass Girls" it certainly didn't sound like something originally pitched to kids...and it was not. Their intentions of keeping it kid-friendly never actually surfaced throughout the rest of the series (except maybe the later seasons...) so somehow this rather violent cartoon stayed...well, violent.
The next episode (Now on "What a Cartoon!" called Meat Fuzzy Lumpkins...I think) were of Fuzzy turning everything to meat...why he wanted to do that I have no idea, and then at one point showing Bubbles swinging into space and then going berserk on Fuzzy, eventually they turn him into meat and have a barbeque! This is actually rather disturbing and certainly not kid-friendly. They ate Fuzzy. There weren't even eyeballs still blinking on the meat to show he was still alive...so he was pretty much dead. Of course at this point they were now called the Powerpuff Girls, so if they were trying to dumb-down the violence for weekday-afternoon TV, they didn't do a very good job.
The Bubblevicious before Bubblevicious
The final episode before the PPG got their own half-hour timeslot would be the "Crime 101" episode, with yet again the Amoeba Boys. I'm under the impression they created all these dumb villains first before the ones we have come to known for the Powerpuff Girls (CERTAINLY Mojo Jojo, but also Him and arguably the RRB (I'll touch on this later) ) Then again the Amoeba Boys were competent before this episode and now...that is no longer true. Here the Amoeba Boys try to show the Powerpuff Girls their amazing villainous crime of...JAYWALKING! Gasp! So the girls roll their eyes and proceed to show the boys how to rob a bank.
The way they robbed that bank was very very believable, in fact they probably did a better and more believable job than any bank robber to come in the rest of the series! First they...tried to put some sort of disguise on that didn't work very well and looked more like condoms on their heads, erm, but it did make them look more menacing that's for sure. Then they robbed the people blind. The way Blossom just yells "SHUT THAT KID UP!" is also believable. It just gives you an odd and not-exactly-positive message that if three supposedly innocent little girls could terrorize a bank like that so easily if this truly is for kids. O_o Anyway they get arrested obviously because that was as I'll continue to emphasize a really believable robbing job, no wonder no one believed them when they tried to explain that they were just showing the Amoeba Boys...
So in court, one of the more amusing scenes had the judge obviously thinking this whole robbery-accusation is just that, an accusation, so he is rather relaxed and casual, but then the girls plead guity, thus the judge had no choice but to sentence the girls to "ONE MILLION YEARS IN TOWNSVILLE STATE CORRECTIONAL FACILITIES STARTING RIGHT--" (that was the most dramatic and drawn-out sentencing I've ever seen!) but then the Amoeba Boys show up with the money and practically confess they did it...even though they...did nothing, but they had the money. Of course they are happy they committed an evil crime and so ask the girls for a favour, to finally be acknowledged for it by being beaten up. Is it just me or are these villains masochists? They were SMILING as they were beat up...very weird...
CONDOMS! On their heads!
And any show that sentences five year olds to prison for a million years is obviously not taking itself seriously. I don't know what the executives were thinking, but if I were one of them I'd be pretty weirded out...luckily I am NOT an executive and the series did get greenlit for its own series, and so the Powerpuff Girls were born!
Before I move on to the first season, besides summing up the pilot/experiment whatever episodes they are considered with "weird" the characterization was also somewhat odd. My biggest complaint would be Buttercup having absolutely no personality. Blossom definitely had the most lines in those three episodes showing her clear leadership and Bubbles had the most standalone scenes (drawing on the walls, swinging into space, and practically murdering Fuzzy) but Buttercup was just there! I barely ever even heard her talk and when I did she was basically saying the same things the other two were. So if someone had just watched these three episodes, they'd be thinking Bubbles is the scary insane-crazy brutal Powerpuff, not Buttercup.
Luckily we have the first season to find out about her!
Insect Inside brings us to the VERY first scene of the Powerpuff Girls, Bubbles running away scared from a cockroach. Well there went that assumption of her being crazy, and Buttercup finally doing something, trying to squish the cockroach! Then we have Blossom trying to be all good and moral by saying cockroaches should not be squished. There you have it, the personality of the Powerpuff Girls...except their personalities were already established in the theme song itself. You have the three girls flying into screen, Blossom with the regular music, Bubbles with the cuter, fluffier music, and Buttercup shows up as the heavy-metal rockish music. Then they beat their enemies up and Buttercup is the one that draws blood and teeth.
Wait, an opening to a children's show that has BLOOD AND TEETH!?
I honestly will never understand how this show became a kids show. Ever. Of course no wonder my young mind was drawn to it. The very opening had three little girls beating up a bunch of bad guys. In the opening. Yay violence!
Anyway the episode in my opinion was very average. Not bad, but simply average. You have a monster-of-the-week trying to take over Townsville and the girls saving it! Of course it brings into some odd logic that stays consistent throughout the series, like Blossom randomly finding a giant jar to contain the bugs in. The episode though in my opinion is still far from kid-friendly. One of the most nightmare-inducing scenes in the series (yes, in the very first episode) had a happy man ordering a hot dog and then COCKROACHES CRAWLING OUT HIS MOUTH AFTER A CRINGING "CRUNCH" SOUND. This is for kids!? The imagery of hundreds of cockroaches crawling out my mouth is for kids!?
Also it subverts the whole Warner Brothers theory on falling. If you fall you could actually die, as their reactions to the monster-of-the-week smashing into the ground was. Luckily he was a robot.
All this text and I've only covered the first episode...first half of the first episode. The next episode is Powerpuff Bluff! This episode basically tells us that the entire city of Townsville are morons. Even Miss Bellum is a moron for not noticing that those six-feet grown muscular men inside really bad PPG costumes are not the Powerpuff Girls! I suppose it's all in the logic of comedy. Even the PPG themselves were confused as who was who! Oh well. This episode also brings back that whole "THE GIRLS GO TO JAIL" thing they did like, two episodes ago. It does develop more personality, like Bubbles crying, Buttercup yelling at her, and Blossom saying it is wrong to break out of prison, eh. The episode was amusing, I mean we had a convict imagining himself in pretty bows and dresses...
Well this looks familiar...
Monkey See Doggie Do introduces Mojo Jojo officially! You can already tell the show isn't very serious if Mojo's idea of taking over the world is turning EVERYONE into dogs, not the mention how chaotic that could be. (You could DESTROY the world by turning them all to dogs if you think about it enough) We have more hammerspace logic with the girls having a doggie bowl with the name "Professor" out of nowhere. I find how easily they defeated Mojo (as dogs) also very amusing. The fact that it was Buttercup who basically did it (to the audience we'd be like "GASP! Is Buttercup the smart one now!?") by running around could be an early-series kind of thing. Usually she isn't the one who figures out what to do, that happens to be Blossom's job, so I'm thinking at this point they still don't know the girls' personalities for real yet. Or I'm reading into it too much and Buttercup just happened to notice first that there were stairs on the other side...
But Powerpuff puppies! Awwwww.
Mommy Fearest introduces another "regular" enemy (though not too regular, she doesn't really show up that often) Sedusa! Who proceeds to go by her name and seduces the Professor into disciplining all the girls so she can rob a bank. Her "fake" name is something that sounds obviously devious "Ima Goodlady". Right you are Ima Goodlady! I suppose this episode goes into Professor Utonium's character now, even though at this point we have had no episodes on the girls themselves who are actually the main characters. Go figure. Now I'm not sure if this is particularly true or simply speculation, but from what I read on TV Tropes on the radar page, apparently Buttercup slips "some of this!" into the Professor's pocket. The entry there says it's something "square and small" but when I saw the episode I didn't really see the actual thing she put in. The whole mystery behind what she did put in does strongly suggest it probably was condoms but how the hell does a five-year-old, particularly Buttercup of all people know what condoms are?
Then again maybe that's where their masks from Crime 101 came from. Hmmmm... Oh well, the episode was already edging on edgy anyway... (A villain named Sedusa!? Surely you jest.)
Moving on! An episode that finally touches on the girls' home life (well, if the episode before didn't) Octi Evil! Finally there is conflict within the team with Blossom and Buttercup arguing constantly, everyday, on what to do during their battles. Bubbles is all sad because she doesn't want them to fight (again I think this is the early-series syndrome, when personaltiies and characters have not been completely set yet because eventually she also argues with Buttercup and strays away from this original personality plot point) so she talks to her doll, Octi about her woes.
If I put Him here that'd be five negative pictures in a row. :D;
Cue the very creepy and manipulative debut of Him. AGAIN I still can't understand how this cartoon became a kids cartoon because Him is obviously some sort of stereotypically gay drag-queen Santa Claus version of the Devil. I kid you not. You know this is during the same time I've been watching South Park...as a nine-year-old? Oh well. Anyway he possesses Octi. Keep in mind as kids a lot of us had treasured and precious dollies, like my dalmatian stuffed-animal named Spot (who replaced my sadly-long gone misplaced teddy bear in San Francisco...) so you know, the whole notion of the devil possessing your favourite toy you are with 24/7 (yes when I was young I took him everywhere) is extremely terrifying. I have no clue how Bubbles continued to sleep with Octi to this day after this episode because geez.
So the stuffed animal convinces Bubbles to convince the others that maybe Buttercup should be the leader for once. (And apparently this is a bad thing, didn't she defeat Mojo a few episodes ago? By biting him in the butt and running around the giant dog-machine of death, but still) So Him decides to turn the dolly into a gigantic octopus monster and kidnap Bubbles. (No wonder the cartoon was so popular in Japan!) Of course when their sister is in trouble they put their feud away and save her! Dadadada! Him, not understanding this TEAMWORK compassionate thing, fades away. At least they can defeat him like that and not having to do something even less kid-friendly to defeat him. (Seriously when he first appears it feels like the only way to really defeat him is to kill him somehow...)
Now the only reason this isn't one of my favourite episodes is because the Bubbles here isn't really the Bubbles I know, otherwise it is a very well-ochestrated episode with Him's unique villainy at the time and the fact that hey, it's an episode about the girls for once! Not some villain or their father or some monster-of-the-week, the girls!
Geshundfight reintroduces the Amoeba Boys and basically brings in a similar plotline from Crime 101. They fail at committing a crime yet at the same time do something that was potentially the most horrible thing they could ever do without realizing it. Ya know, irony! I found the episode a bit gross as well, and the whole "grossness" will actually show up in a few other episodes (it really doesn't feel like a girly show anymore...if it was at all) So anyway I personally don't find the Amoeba Boys that interesting so this episode wasn't really that interesting. Certainly not a waste of animation (I will probably hold that form of criticism until the later seasons >_>) but not amazing either.
The next episode is another episode about the girls, well at least Buttercup, and the introduction of the Gangreen Gang: Buttercrush. I like to note that at this point the episodes are starting to develop the girls' personalities by deviating it away from the original "one-dimensional" character they seem to be portrayed to be in the opening because really at this point, did anyone expect Buttercup of all people to have a crush? Buttercup? I actually think it made more sense back then because people's personalities weren't that explored yet, but still. Buttercup!?
Hey look! More blood!
At least this was better than Geshundfight because not only does it introduce a fairly regular villain, it also focuses on a main character! I tend to like those ones better, at least early on. I'm gonna assume Buttercup never got over her illness from the last episode either because she barely has a single line in her episode! I miss those days actually. Nowadays there can never be a single moment of silence in cartoons or wait, was that dubs. Whatever. Anyway I suppose Ace seemed like one of those bad boy-type guys that girls always fall for, y'know except Buttercup is five, not thirteen. Five. FIVE. I understand the whole PPG/RRB dynamics because they are BOTH five! Oh well, Buttercup/Ace is one of the "crack" pairings in PPG that seem popular, a girl/villain pairing (as well as Bubbles/Him and Blossom/Mojo...o_O) Oh right the plot, basically Buttercup hangs with the guys and almost gets her sisters killed, but she manages to save them, realize that Ace is a jackass, and beats them up. Then she says "I'm sorry" (her only line!). The end!
We now move on to Fuzzy Logic which reintroduces Fuzzy. He now has a quirk about him, being extremely extremely territorial. A squirrel leads him into Townsville, which he proceeds to deface. The episode also introduces the first instance of a Powerpuff having a unique power (yes, before Ice Sore!) Bubbles can understand the squirrel language! Buttercup also seems very-bully like in this episode, but nonetheless they get to Fuzzy's house to punish him basically by tormenting him with his banjo, which Buttercup similar to how she smacked Bubbles with Octi in the beginning, smacked Fuzzy with his Banjo "Joe". The moral of this episode is supposedly SHARING, but it felt more like "IF SOMEONE DOES SOMETHING BAD, GO BEAT THEM UP BY SMASHING UP THEIR FAVOURITE STUFF!"
Now aren't we glad we learned today's lesson? :D!
I'm gonna assume these next two episodes aired around Halloween because Boogie Frights brings in the lovely Boogieman character, who is basically a monster who wants to party all night. We also learn that Bubbles is afraid of the dark and she supposedly overcomes this fear later on in this episode (even though she still has that hall-light thing in a few other episodes) Anyway, in order to party forever he blocks out the sun so the girls have to defeat him...a pretty average episode at best in my opinion, with Star Wars refrerences but yeah. Also a bit about Bubbles too, you know at this point Blossom is the one with the least character exploration...hmmm...
Abracadaver time! This is also another episode that doesn't seem entirely kid-friendly. Why? Well first of all...they left a magician's dead body inside an iron maiden for fifty years on stage. They never buried him or removed him from the stage, they just left his body there to rot. Well gee no wonder he came back as a zombie all angered and vengeful. Also his undead magic is very disturbing as well, like turning a schoolbus into a bunny...a NAKED WRINKLY GIANT BUNNY. He also saws people in half with his lovely magic. Nonetheless I also found the episode quite clever because despite the girls' fear of zombies in the beginning (they were watching a horror show on TV, god knows why five year olds were allowed to watch that) they basically reversed what the zombie did (he was sawing Buttercup in half, drowning Bubbles, and threw Blossom into an iron maiden) When all that happened I swear, it felt like NOTHING could change what happened so it'd be a happy ending. All the girls were dead!
OR WERE THEY? Blossom rips off her zombie costume, revealing at Bubbles was not in a bag underwater, but actually the legs of Buttercup in that sawing thing (so she wasn't sawed in half at all) and it was the zombie in the iron maiden...his arm hanging out and all...clever ending yes, but still scary and creepy. These two episodes, especially this one definitely works for Halloween, even if you aren't a child. ESPECIALLY not a child, it's still pretty frightening.
"He's dead, Jim"
The next episode Telephonies was not all that great to me, but it did show all the enemies seen so far doing mundane things like reading the newspaper and exercising, which was nice. They had lives besides destroying/taking over the world! Then the enemies teamed up to beat the crap out of the Gangreen Gang, who had been prank-calling the girls this entire time. A somewhat amusing episode, it also shows Grubber able to imitate anyone's voice (even though in Buttercrush he did a poor job of imitating Buttercup's voice...despite the fact that it still worked >_> Morons indeed!)
Tough Love apparently shows that the Halloween spirit isn't finished, with Him deciding to...in a stroke of genius "Why don't I just invert the love everyone has for girls!" And if the town loves the girls that much, with the love inverted that means they all want to kill them! Rip them to shreds and basically murder them all! What a perfectly stereotypical children's cartoon! One of the most questionable scenes of the entire series has Him licking the Professor's face. I think the censors went on vacation for this cartoon, seriously. They probably had one censor who got paid poorly and only looked at the scripts every two months. "Oh, Satan is licking Professor Utonium in the face! That's a fine scene for kids and adults alike! Approved!" It reminds me of that Animaniacs episode when the Warners went to hell and they tormented Satan...except this episode wasn't very funny, it was kind of horrifying...in a good way! I mean I did enjoy the episode, but the answer to stopping the citizens from killing them is to BEAT THEM UP! Supposedly that defeats Him so he fades away...huh.
So much violence and we're only halfway through the very first season!
I think Major Competition is some sort of moral to the kids. As in not all superheroes or even heroes are always very moral, like the Powerpuff Girls! Though for this episode our not very morally inclined "hero" is MAJOR MAN! A beefy, muscular man who is so much cooler than three little kindergarteners. (Seriously whoever thought that having three little girls be your security force for the city very cool?) Also the citizens of Townsville, the heartless morons they are, forget all about the heroic things the girls have done and immediately send their loyalty to Major Man! For comedy's sake! Major Man even has an epic theme! MAJOR MAN! A HERO TO EVERYONE! FIGHTS HIS BATTLES TO THE END, NEVER GIVING UP! Seriously this was really, really catchy. Whoever decided to make a theme for a phony hero this catchy really knows how to push the propaganda! I also like how they defeated him at his own game by fighting fire with fire. You know instead of the whole cliche' "NO! I REFUSE TO BE AS LOW AS THEM!" they just go ahead and do what needs to be done to restore the status quo! I think that's why I did like this cartoon over others like Disney...and such.
Powerpuff torment at its best!
Mr. Mojo's Rising depicted the creation of the Powerpuff Girls, not to the extent of the Movie, but still at this point of the season lots of loyal viewers and fans alike are probably wondering how the PPG were created beyond the opening sequence. It's always something that could make a good episode and be explored (a nice plot that was extended into something even greater in the movie. But this isn't the movie, alas) It also depicted where Mojo came from, so again at this point we now know where one of the enemies even came from, and some more indepth into the girls' creation. Seems like quite the significant episode in that case, particularly for the cartoon's canon. In the end despite the somewhat-of-a freudian excuse, we're still not supposed to be sympathetic to Mojo even if he was thrown out and ignored because he broke everything as a monkey. Well Professor instead of ignoring him put him in the zoo or something, don't neglect him! Nonetheless this also beings a pattern of irony for Mojo Jojo, entertaining irony! Mojo Jojo is the PPG's father! Technically!
So at this point we have kind of two Bubbles episodes, one Buttercup episode, and zero Blossom episodes...so why not have another Buttercup episode! We finally see the our heroes going to school in Paste Makes Waste at least as far as I can remember. Maybe Pokey Oaks and Ms. Keane showed up in one of the earlier episodes, I seriously can't remember. Anyway Buttercup has so far shown that she is rebellious, tough, and can have crushes like a girly girl. So why not add more teenage angst to the middle child and make her succumb to "wanting to be like the others" more by also making fun of the kid who eats paste! I always wondered why only Bubbles and Blossom were all refusing to be like the others and making fun of him but Buttercup wasn't, almost like she was more human and the other two had to be shown as "good" to have a good influence for the children watching the TV...okay if there's supposed to be a role model in this cartoon I don't see it yet. Lol. Of course Buttercup goes a bit overboard because instead of simply using words, she throws some paste into the kid's face. Not very nice, not very nice at all.
But this episode is another, albeit milder, version of "gross"-ness the cartoon has. I mean, eating paste!? And then EATING A RADIOACTIVE FLY WHO WAS EATING GARBAGE EARLIER? It almost reminds me of Ren and Stimpy. So far I am not convinced at all that this cartoon is girly whatsoever, maybe that's why there was quite a large male demographic watching the show as well. So anyway, in order to make the GIANT PASTE MONSTER not destroy EVERYTHING, Buttercup has to apologize to him. I almost think the executives finally noticed how un-kid friendly the show looked and asked them to make some sort of episode with a lesson kids should learn, like apologizing for your mistakes. The writers then parodied and mocked this order by making it so that she has to apologize to a giant monster destroying things and committing numerous battery offences and property damage by apologizing. It sounds and looks very outrageous. Oh well, the fact that Buttercup had to FORCE an apologize out at first, then her apology felt sincere also tells me something about this cartoon, hmmm...
Now we finally get a Blossom episode! We have Ice Sore!
Subtle, very subtle Blossom.
Expanding on an idea that started episodes ago from Bubbles' ability to talk to animals, we have Blossom discovering her ability to breathe ice. I actually have a picture book-version of this episode as well, but I have no idea where I put it. We are basically told from the episode that Blossom has strong morals, if the other episodes didn't show us this before (well besides those really old ones like Crime 101...lol) and at first she abuses her ability since it's like a massive heatwave going on, making the other two girls' jealous. Anyway after she botches up one of their crime-fighting days, she promises to never use her ice breath again! Then a giant fireball appears, HOW CONVENIENT. I especially liked how Miss Bellum assumed the Mayor was referring to the sun when he said "GIANT BALL OF FIRE!!" while looking through his telescope because really he probably would have been referring to the sun! This episode actually felt like it DID have a moral, to use your powers responsibly, but moreso something that would affect the normal people, to do things in moderation! It's too bad she never really kept her fire breath from the end of the episode, but that was mostly the rule of comedy!
And is it me or is a fireball that turned into an ice ball that was shattered into millions of pieces not going to be like snow, but like...hail? Yet everyone stares up at the falling ice/whatever anyway? Oh well. Anyway of course the very first Blossom episode would have a geniune moral! Of course.
And after the very first Blossom episode we NEED MORE BUBBLES EPISODES! CLEARLY! So we have the episode that brought this series its first emmy, Bubblevicious.
This episode reintroduces the Bubbles from Meat Fuzzy Lumpkins, you know the crazy one that caused everyone to cannibalize Fuzzy. And she does not disappoint. At this point it's pretty well-known that Bubbles is the younger, more childish of the three. So the writers decided to finally subvert that, but I personally found it a bit too early. It's only the first season and despite a few episodes before, I think this episode would have had a lot more impact if it came even later, but oh well. It did its job if it won a freakin' emmy. This episode is also the most popular, most highly rated episode of all episodes so...asking for it to be even better is kind of silly? You can't deny that so far Bubbles has been getting some of the better episodes so far and it's only the first season!
Bubblevicious during...Bubblevicious
Anyway if you want to justify the opening with the blood and teeth Buttercup kicks out of Him, well you can simply say...it's Him. He's the devil, he's Satan. So it's okay to kick his teeth and blood out! Here we even have Bubbles bleeding, although not that much, it's the whole badass-look a character gets when blood comes from the edge of their mouth, and they gave this imagery to Bubbles. Not Buttercup or even Blossom, they gave it to "CUTE! LITTLE! BUBBLES!" (She seriously said it like that, like THIS! IS! SPARTA!) And I must admit I am with the mass majority that this too was one of my favourite episodes because CUTE! LITTLE! BUBBLES! is my favourite character. Basically we have this cartoon, generally assumed to be aimed at little girls (so wrong) with this cute little innocent character...being badass, and vicious and BLOOD. Then there's that super violent scene where she absolutely massacres a group of monsters, very savagely I might add.
This episode, like Buttercrush, is another episode that deviates the character from what you expect, usually from the not-subtle-at-all opening. So yeah, cute little Bubbles is beating up a dog to a pulp! EMMY! Woo! I have to say this is my first experience with the "UP TO ELEVEN" trope, not only literally but instead of being that cute, innocent Bubbles we all know, her personality changes more to the "emotional, extreme" Bubbles as in if she's sad, she's REALLY sad. If she's happy, she's a jumping hyper ball of glee, and if she's angry...this episode. Yeah.
The Bare Facts takes us from that rather...intense action and throws us into one of the most humorous episodes of the entire series, so this episode (as you know each episode is 10 minutes and takes half the timeslot, so they have two a timeslot. The combination of Bubblevicious and The Bare Facts gives this full-episode my five-stars thumbs up for being the best of the best!) Basically this episode is an ingenious excuse for not having to animate as much, by animating each version of the girls' story differently, and basically having three minutes of the episode of only audio, so...
We have the Mayor who is kidnapped by Mojo, from his POV, the blackness of the scene afterwards is because the Mayor is blindfolded, and then when he is rescued and returned, the girls then tell him what happened from each of their own POVs, and they keep interrupting each other because they think their biased version is the correct version. Blossom's style is basically a reddish-shade of animation, while Buttercup's is all darker and edgier...Bubbles is crayon drawings, lol. I must say Bubbles' was the most amusing because she always strayed from the story somehow, either because of "clouds that looked like clouds" or the colours of lillies, or kissing Mojo's booboo but then remembering he's bad so she kicks him instead...all around a hilarious episode. Oh, and the Mayor was naked, that's why they were giggling. Awesome.
"So I kicked in his face!!"
Cat Man Do gives us a moral, that we should never judge a book by its cover...except this time the cover we LOVE but the real thing...was something rather despicable. The episode actually reminds me of Monkey See, Doggie Do because the cat tried to turn all humans into, well not necessarily cats, but treating cats better and then taking their place as the cat's pet instead. I quite like how the episode ended, with the evil cat stuck in a tree, no one bothering to help him. A certainly fitting punishment for an evil cat. Again a milder version of the "gross" thing the PPG has, but the Professor did not look attractive as a kitty-possessed human, not at all.
Another Mayor episode comes in the form of Impeach Fuzz which is actually a really funny episode, with the Mayor actually being somewhat competent (at SOMETHING at least) if his hat is stolen. Who cares about the city or their citizens or anything, if that hat ain't his, he's going to become as hardcore as Bubbles from Bubblevicious! It's also funny how Fuzzy treats the girls when he is the Mayor, they have to play stereotypical hillbilly music and chase pigs, etc. It actually doesn't seem like he's doing anything bad to the city besides that, but still there's the status quo and wrestling with Fuzzy in a ring is also amusing to watch. It is unfortunately not one of my favourites because I can barely remember the episode. His real name is actually also the Mayor (despite the name Barney showing up at some point) or maybe it's his last name. "Mayor Barney Mayor"...maybe?
Just Another Manic Mojo expands on the idea from Telephonies, where it shows the enemies having their own lives, and this is that up to eleven! Seriously this episode was hilarious, funnier than even Bare Facts! It shows Mojo "CUUURSES!" just trying to buy eggs, and eat breakfast, and then finally relaxing but alas a ball breaks through the window! Everything's so mundane but how no one screams or runs away that a supervillain is among them is too entertaining to ignore. He also finds the citizens of Townsville annoying and stupid, and I agree they do seem annoying and stupid. "I must remember to destroy those kids after my breakfast has been eaten!" The girls are not there to beat him up, they were just playing ball and want their ball back, to which Mojo uses the opportunity to try to destroy the girls, the episode felt very Looney Tunes/Animaniacs/anything from Warner Brothers-ish how it went, particularly the second half of the episode. It was also very Dexter Laboratory-ish, he even says it like Dexter. "MY LABORATORY!" Bubbles has never been so Deedee-like until this episode. He gets so annoyed he just returns the ball so they will stop annoying him, but the next day he is further annoyed since he is praised as the hero of the day for returning the ball. Slow news day huh?
Mime for a Change ...just watch the video!
This episode had the polar opposites in terms of ups and downs. As in this song is AWESOME and it was the best excuse to stick a song in the episode ever...DIRECTLY after it though, came the moment most fans went WTF!? at. The plot is pretty much a birthday clown got doused in a truck of bleach in an accident, turning him into MR. MIME, an evil mime bent on turning everything colourless! It's pretty much another Bubbles episode because she loves to colour with her crayons, and watching her go batshit insane when everything is gray by colouring everything with her crayons is hysterical! Then she decides that her crayons are not enough, and sings a song. (with everyone colourless everything is lifeless, no sound, no conscious...) and the song spreads love and colour to everyone, including the mime, curing him! He actually thanks the girls for curing him of his evil alter-ego self...THEN HE GETS BEAT UP AND THROWN IN JAIL, with the narrator agreeing with the girls that that was justice. Actually it was the higher-ups who demanded that the episode end normally, as in bad guy goes to jail for what he does, but it was probably the least morally-correct ending of any PPG episode I've ever seen. The only reason this episode doesn't completely SUCK with that is because this song keeps it from the pile of trash.
With only two more episodes left for the season, what do we have next? The first episode that takes up the entire timeslot rather than half, we have...The Rowdyruff Boys...my feelings for this episode is really, really mixed but I will try to review it as unbiased as possible. In that case, this was a really good episode. You got action, an enemy actually a fighting match, perhaps even better than the girls, and...that's about it. I never found it particularly funny except maybe the beginning where the Professor tells Mojo Jojo the ingredients of the girls rather easily "I'm just a stranger from Townsville Community College!" You'd think he'd keep it a better secret...and the part when the girls slam into the window with the Mayor greeting them and saying goodbye, lol. Also again the whole "gross"ness of the PPG returns yet again when Mojo uses the toilet to create the RRB, the toilet EXPLODES in dirty toilet water, splashing ALL OVER THE PLACE. When it shows Mojo he's holding his breath, but it almost looks like he has that icky water in his mouth for a moment, I'm glad he was holding his breath...but still. D:
You have to admit they have nice sneakers.
Oh right the other hilarious thing about the episode, the RRB's voices. They're all voiced by Rob Paulsen...so I keep imagining a REALLY ANGRY YAKKO TALKING. I can't get it out of my head. It's Yakko, being really angry and mean. So OOC! Agh! Yes I know Rob Paulsen has voiced tons of characters but they DO sound kind of like angry Yakko, so... Anyway for the first entire-episode special, it was pretty good. The problems I have for the RRB really are their newer-selves from the later seasons, so... Oh right, and the PPG almost died but the tears from the citizens can revive them! ...Actually I don't think they were ever dead to begin with, the tears just woke them up, and the RRB flying off is simply a case of "left for dead" that lots of protagonists in anime and manga suffer from, (thus why villains always return! Just because they fell off a cliff doesn't mean they're dead!) except reversed!
This episode also makes me wonder...if a simple kiss can kill the boys, would whatever little girls fear the most make them explode immediately back to their components as well? In that case is there actually a way to defeat them once and for all without brute force or the like? Hmm...
It seems the season will end with a bang because we have one last timeslot-spanning episode, Un Oh...Dynamo. This is definitely some sort of spoof on sentai, godzilla, basically Japanese stuff in general. I mean it starts out at "Banzai Park" located in a "Japantown"-like area of Townsville (Tokyo Townsville?), where a pufferfish monster, which is some sort of fish the Japanese stereotypically eat, supposedly appears. The girls easily defeat it, but the Professor gets rather paranoid for the first time in the cartoon, realizing that his little girls are outside constantly in danger protecting the citizens of Townsville. So he gets really tired (and not attractive, with baggy bloody shot eyes and discoloured skin, another gross-like art point of the show) building a giant mecha for the girls, another Japanese-spoof, if he girls themselves who apparently look like anime-characters themselves (at least the big eyes, I don't know what character has no fingers or toes!) aren't already. So the giant monster returns with an evil bigger, giant-er monster and the girls are forced to use the mecha to fight in the monster in all out brawl! The ring? Townsville! Everything is destroyed but at least there's lots of action, with scissor bows and razor pigtails, ninja-star-like landmarks, spikes, and MORE DAKKA, it's like an action packed Power Rangers episode!
Also I think it shows an old woman being eaten...like not saved, you don't see her alive again. She is eaten and doesn't come back. I wonder, if the entire city is destroyed if more people died? Obviously they won't show such things directly, but you can always think. So yeah they destroy the evil monster but destroy the city as well, so the Mayor bans them from ever using it again. if you think about it this would be a pretty good conclusion to the PPG series if it had ended only after one season, good for us though that five more seasons are on the way!
"So once again the day was saved--er...destroyed thanks to the Powerpuff Girls!"
And that is Spotto's review of the PPG first season! See, if I have five times more of this the post WOULD be even MORE ginormous. As for the season as a whole, it was largely a very enjoyable season, some odd parts here and there like the beating of the clown and if I were a conversative parent I'd be like "WTF! THIS IS VIOLENT!" but eh, I enjoyed it as a kid and I certainly never did anything questionable to "imitate" the girls. (Speaking of which, this issue is brought up in an episode itself later on...I will comment on that when it comes)
Otherwise, I plan to review season two next, and the rest of the seasons after that too! Whenever I feel like it I guess. Until then, Spotto is out!
