Horn Sweet Horn (The Powerpuff Girls, 2016)

"Horn Sweet Horn"
The true moral of this episode: Never make fun of a person's gender, EVER.
Series: The Powerpuff Girls (2016) Part of Season: 1 Episode Number: 5 Air Date: April 7, 2016 Writer: Diego Molano Julia Vickerman Director: Nick Jennings Bob Boyle Previous episode: "Painbow" Next episode: "Man Up"

Horn, Sweet Horn is the fifth episode of season one of The Powerpuff Girls (2016) and revolves around a pony named Donny's attempts to become a unicorn, which end up going horribly wrong.

Why It's NOT Sweet

1. To get the unicorn out of the room first: Transphobia. The topic about the episode, gender identity, ended up backfiring and offended many people in the transgender community, and caused another controversy similar to the previous episode, "Painbow".
   • To make things worse, this episode aired during the fallout from the North Carolina "Bathroom Bill" controversy.
   • As a matter of fact, the episode wasn't even intended to have a transgender message, but Cartoon Network failed to realize that the metaphors in this episode is portraying trans as ugly instead of asking them to change it. Case in point, this goal obviously failed.
   • Also, the episode was written by the same person who wrote and storyboarded "Painbow", Julia Vickerman, who is notable for her creepy actions in both real life and social media.
2. Bubbles is extremely unlikable in this episode, as she has a temper tantrum because the Professor says that the transformation might be dangerous for Donny.
   • Plot of her attempting to get her classmates to believe her claims of unicorns being real is very similar to the plot about Jimmy's attempts at making Kevin see that fairytales exist in the infamous Ed, Edd n Eddy episode "Tinker Ed".
   • She doesn't care for Donny despite making friends with him because she only cares to prove that the unicorns exist.
   • She also forced Donny to become a unicorn without even caring about what negative consequences might happen to him.
   • To add a cherry on top of the unpleasant dessert: during her confrontation with monster Donny, Bubbles never shows any concern by his situation, showing that she wasn't a true friend at all as she only sees Donny as a tool for her selfish purpose of boasting that she is friends with a unicorn. So all in all, this makes her more of a villain than a heroine (similar to how Blossom is in "A Star Is Blossom").
   • Worst of all, she never shows remorse for what she's done nor does she get any comeuppance for her actions, which makes her a Karma Houdini.
3. The disembodied voices singing everything is singing the horn's name.
4. The episode takes the Mayor's pickle obsession WAY too far to the point where he has a pickle museum, which is just weird.
5. Lots of continuity and animation errors, like the Professor's boards suddenly being blank in one scene to being filled in the next scene.
6. As the episode progresses, Donny's monster form gets even uglier to the point where it looks out of place for a kids' show.
7. Hypocrisy:
   • Donny doesn't even realize he was a unicorn since his horn is covered his bangs the entire time, until his mother, Marybelle, uncovered his bangs to see his horn.
   • The students of Midway Elementary ridicule Bubbles by telling her that unicorns don't exist until she blows her "Totally Real Unicorn Horn" to summon unicorns to prove that they do actually exist.

Redeeming Qualities

1. Professor Utonium is the only likable character in this episode.
2. There are still some hilarious moments that are passable here and there.
   • PROFESSOR UTONIUM: "Now how can you say you hate science?"
   • BLOSSOM: "Really, that's what your upset about?"
3. Passable animation, as usual.

Comments

Loading comments...