Walsall Wonderland

I like cartoons, I really do. I don’t watch just any old cartoon, however, because I look for a certain amount of quality to a show before I really like it. Powerpuff Girls is my favourite children’s cartoon still being created today, there are other new good ones out there, but PPG is the best.

The reasons are many, but to name a few, great artistic style, you know they don’t skimp when making episodes, the art style has a consistent, pleasant, quirky, sometimes 60’s inspired feel, that really just works. The story lines are fun and different, and you don’t feel like the same old lessons are being rehashed in this series. The sense of humour in the show is very good, too. The characters remain consistent throughout the series, with no-one having drastically altered personalities sticking out in particular episodes. I also like the continuing narrative, where if one of the girls learns a new skill – Blossom getting ice breath – they keep it from then on, rather than the show defaulting back to a singular point at the end of each episode.

So that’s what I like about the Powerpuff Girls… so when I heard there was going to be another PPG cartoon, I was excited. I thought that it would be a continuation of the original series, with a PPG Style feel to it. PPG Style was a brief spin-off with a video and song, that also had a website for a while. Basically, the premise was to show young girls a positive teen image. That was a very nice thought, in my opinion, however it wasn’t too long before PPG Style disappeared. So I thought perhaps PPG Z was a remake of that… I couldn’t have been more wrong!

PPG Z is an anime based extremely loosely on the original characters. In this one Professor Utonium didn’t create the girls, no, he sort of was dabbling in something else. The girls aren’t sisters, and weren’t even friends before they were accidentally turned into super heroes. They get a dose of a ‘white light’ that came from a mishap with some Chemical Z, whilst a bunch of other people got doused in ‘black light’ which means they’ve essentially been mutated into baddies for the girls to fight.

The girls now have weapons, and far less in the way of powers. Blossom fights with a… get this… oh this is so wrong… yo yo. Yeah, they made her fight with a damn yo yo. The utter shame that whoever came up with that stupid, ridiculous idea, should feel is astro-bloody-nomical. It gets worse, though. Yeah, seriously, it does! How? How can it be any worse? Bubbles fights with a bubble wand. Oh, sorry, no wait, a bubble wand staff, yeah, that makes that embarrassment better… in no way at all. Thankfully Buttercup isn’t using anything worse, she gets a hammer. It’s the nerfiest looking hammer, but at least it’s actually a weapon!

I watched two episodes of this crap show and couldn’t stand any more. I was so angry that they could take the good PPG name and put it to something so crap. The original creator of PPG also have next to nothing to do with this, and I can see why. It’s awful. The voice acting is irritating to listen to, like a hungry cat who’s trying to break into an inhuman octave of meowing, the storyline are mediocre, and the original sense of humour is replaced with very childish and silly humour, and the art direction is seriously lacking snap.

Okay so there’s my rant on PPG Z, now for today’s pattern… Bubbles is my favourite of the Powerpuff Girls, so I have to go with something inspired by Bubbles, I think. If you’re a Bubbles fan you will know that she can speak to squirrels, so today’s pattern has a squirrel and an oak leaf, one of my favourites!