The Powerpuff Girls (2016)
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"I swear, The Powerpuff Girls franchise can't catch a break. First, this dumpster fire reboot, and then the potential abomination that will be the CW’s live-action adaptation. Oh, Craig McCracken. I am so sorry this happened to your creation. Come on, folks… Pour one out for Craig, because his vision has been violated to hell and back. But, I guess that's showbiz for you, unfortunately."
— Saberspark
The Powerpuff Girls is an animated series based on the 1998 series of the same name by Craig McCracken, also the series developed by Bob Boyle (creator of Jetix's Yin Yang Yo and Nick Jr.'s Wow Wow Wubbzy) and Nick Jennings. It is a reboot that aired on Cartoon Network on April 4, 2016. It stars Amanda Leighton (replacing Cathy Cavadini), Kristen Li (replacing Tara Strong), Natalie Palamides (replacing E.G. Daily), and the rest of the original cast coming back from the 1998 series.
Why It Was Never Saved by the Powerpuff Girls
- Addressing the crime in Townsville, the reboot lacks the charm of the original, as it has less crime-fighting and more slice-of-life scenes related to what the characters do when "they are not saving the world". Just like Teen Titans Go! and the 2016 Ben 10 reboot (before Season 5), it lacks an action-packed tone, dark elements, clever writing, and creativity of the original and (to a lesser extent), the anime, instead more of lighthearted comedic elements and pop-culture references coincidentally then also same as Teen Titans Go! before three years was release of the show.
- Speaking of Teen Titans Go!, it even had a crossover with that show called "TTG vs. PPG", which is pretty mediocre and barely qualifies as a team-up.
- Poor grasp on the source material, mainly because Craig McCracken, the creator of the original series who was also the executive producer and story developer of the last two seasons, was not involved with the reboot because he was still under contract with Disney when the reboot was announced.
- Awful and questionable script writing and writing in general that comes off being nonsensical.
- Much like the 2015 Bob the Builder reboot, Fireman Sam since Season 6, Teen Titans Go!, Postman Pat: Special Delivery Service, Noddy, Toyland Detective, the Netflix era of VeggieTales, the 2016 Monster High reboot, Caillou's New Adventures, Thomas & Friends: Big World! Big Adventures! and All Engines Go!, this reboot tries way too hard to modernize PPG, but it's done very poorly to the point where it doesn't even feel like the same show at all.
- Amanda Leighton, Kristen Li, and Natalie Palamides are a giant step down from Cathy Cavadini, Tara Strong, and E.G. Daily in their voice roles of Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup, respectively.
- Palamides, in particular, sounds nothing like E.G. Daily as she makes 2016 Buttercup sound too tomboyish and high-pitched, while Leighton and Li's impressions of 2016 Blossom and 2016 Bubbles sound too whiny.
- The original voice actors were not even consulted when the network decided to recast the girls, much to their disappointment, especially Tara Strong, who called it a "stab in the heart" on Twitter/X.
- On that note, the male characters have their original voice actors reprise their roles, while almost all the female characters recast, which comes off as a bit sexist.
- While passable, the animation is noticeably slow and stiff.
- Speaking of the animation, there are numerous animation errors everywhere in almost every episode such as this one. This show has so many animation errors that even a blog points them out. Surprisingly, the animation is provided by Sunmin Image Pictures, which is unacceptable since it's the same animation studio that provided the solid animation of Steven Universe, another show known for many inconsistent off-models and character sizes.
- A handful of episodes lazily reuse plots of episodes from the original series:
- "Power Up Puff" rehashes "Ice Sore", only with Bubbles and Buttercup getting new powers first instead of Blossom.
- "Rainy Day" rehashes "The Powerpuff Girls’ Best Rainy Day Adventure Ever", as both episodes involve the girls staying indoors as it rains outside.
- "Man Up" rehashes "Makes Zen to Me", as both episodes involve Buttercup finding her inner peace.
- "Bubbles of the Opera" rehashes "Bubblevicious". Both involve Bubbles changing due to complexes over her cuteness.
- "Imagine That" rehashes "All Chalked Up" as both episodes involve HIM as the villain and he uses Bubbles' imagination to create chaos.
- Ugly and bland character designs for the background characters that don't fit in the same universe as The Powerpuff Girls. They look like rejected or background characters from Gravity Falls, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Steven Universe, Over the Garden Wall, Redakai, Inuyasha, Grojband, A Kind of Magic, BeyWheelz, Lucky Fred, We Bare Bears, Harvey Beaks, and Clarence because of how they're rubbery/rounded out, cheaply designed, and not as dynamic-looking as the characters in the original show.
- Some of the character redesigns are unnecessary, such as Professor Utonium having some round corners and Ms. Keane, the girls' teacher, not having visible breasts (though they reappear in the episode "Save the Date")
- The narrator, who had made the original cartoon special because of his hilariously over-dramatic narrations, as well as the iconic ending hearts are rarely featured in the first season and are completely absent from subsequent seasons.
- Usage of outdated 2012 memes in the first season in an attempt to pander to modern culture, such as the "No Me Gusta!" meme as seen in "Tiara Trouble", Frowny Cat (a parody of Grumpy Cat), the Mojo Jojo Meme Generator in "Viral Spiral", and Bubbles saying “OMG! Yaaaas!” and "I can't even" in "Painbow". Thankfully, the following seasons did not use memes.
- Speaking of lines, much of the dialogue is quite laughable and stupid.
- Ms. Bellum, the mayor's assistant, is gone because Nick Jennings (The director of the reboot and an art director on SpongeBob SquarePants and Adventure Time) thought that she would be offensive to the new generation and started getting rid of her was "a good choice", yet they added a villain named Bianca Bikini who only cares about fashion, being another sexist stereotype. It's painfully obvious Ms. Bellum was eliminated to appease Moral Guardians who found her inappropriate based solely on her busty appearance and not her personality too.
- Speaking of which, to add salt to the wound Bianca Bikini is nothing more than an offensive sexist stereotype and is a poorly-written female villainess.
- The characters from the original series are flanderized to the point that they are wildly different and completely out-of-character compared to their original counterparts:
- Blossom's 2016 counterpart who sadly didn't recover from being flanderized by the later seasons, went from a leader and the smart girl of the group, and also the most rational, into an over-reactive, nagging, and exaggerating OCD neurotic perfectionist who cries and throws a tantrum over the slightest things like being out of the student council ("Fashion Forward") and not becoming part of the Model UN club ("The Secret Life of Blossom Powerpuff"). She's obsessed with Jared Shapiro as well (in every episode he is featured in, except "Phantasm Chasm"). She seems to be the most unlikable out of the three.
- Bubbles' 2016 counterpart went from a cute girly girl in the group who is the most optimistic and shy, into a childish, crybaby, whiny, and stereotypically girly "girl" who cries and throws tantrums over the smallest stuff like a bad school picture and losing her doll, Octi. She becomes more tolerable in later seasons.
- Buttercup's 2016 counterpart went from a sporty, no-nonsense tomboy who is always eager for a good fight into a too-sarcastic tough girl who teases her sisters and beats people around her, although she is the most tolerable (at least most of the time) out of the three.
- The Professor's 2016 counterpart went from being a caring, and responsible smart father to an unfunny idiotic dad trope whose inventions come out more often than silly rather than useful, though he didn't see much of a decline and remains likable for the most part.
- Mojo Jojo's 2016 counterpart no longer utilizes his famous language and speech patterns. Instead, he acts like a stereotypical villainous elitist who speaks in the third person (similar to other villains who do it like Zim from Invader Zim, but without its charm) almost all the time for example: "Mojo pays good money for high-speed Internet", "Mojo is not hideous! He is at least a solid... eight!", "Chelsea, crush the last Puny Puff Girl! And her dopey unicorn friend". He is likable most of the time, though.
- The Mayor of Townsville's 2016 counterpart is now an unfunny comic relief who has an obsession with only pickles instead of his other favorite foods such as sunflower seeds and toast, though he remains likable for the most part.
- Princess Morbucks' 2016 counterpart is much greedier than in the original series and is now the stereotypical famous girl who's making money jokes. Her new voice, too, is distracting, sounds like a stereotypical teenage girl, and doesn't match her appearance.
- Lots of continuity errors:
- Mojo Jojo mentions having a mother in his life more than once, even though he didn't have a mother.
- "You're a Good Man, Mojo Jojo" depicts a pre-Chemical X Mojo as being calm and sweet, but his original origin story in the episode "Mr. Mojo's Rising", his 1998 counterpart was a playful, jumpy, but destructive chimp whose rowdiness caused him to break the Chemical X vial and give born to the titular girls.
- The songs and singing are terrible with "Tiara Trouble", "Once Upon a Townsville", "Snow Month", and "Drama Bomb" being notable examples.
- There are disembodied voices singing everything, with some examples like Bubbles' Real Unicorn Horn in "Horn, Sweet Horn", Morbuck's introduction in "Princess Buttercup", and the Soda of Peace in "The Secret Life of Blossom Powerpuff".
- With the exceptions of Mojo Jojo, HIM, and Princess Morbucks, the original villains are very underused to make room for more uninteresting, lame ones, such as the Fashionistas, Manboy, Janitaur, Gnat, Bianca Bikini, and Allegro. Also, several original villains such as Sedusa weren't introduced in the reboot, meaning they appear randomly with no explanation of who they are or why they're even there.
- Some of the original villains have been relegated to being crammed into scenes for no apparent reason, such as The Rowdyruff Boys making a pointless cameo in the episode "Total Eclipse of the Kart".
- Weird media in the reboot that makes no sense for the show's universe such as Space Tow Truck, The Turn Around Tank (a parody of Shark Tank), etc.
- The humor show is unfunny, very awkward, and cringe-worthy and it's a big contrast to the original series.
- Speaking of the episode "Painbow", Blossom and Bubbles actually twerk in one scene, seemingly in a misguided attempt to appeal to kids in Illumination style. To make matters worse, they are little girls, (5-10) so this can be considered a minor child sexual offense. This also comes off as extremely hypocritical: this is okay for showing on a kids' network, but not Ms. Bellum and Ms. Keane's visible breasts except for one episode.
- What makes this even worse is that the episode was storyboarded and even written by Julia Vickerman, the creator of Twelve Forever, who was infamously exposed as an actual pedophile in 2019!
- Blossom was given a love interest named Jared Shapiro. Jared appears to be older than her and she's frequently seen having weird fantasies about him. This is very creepy, especially since the character has the same given name and appearance as ex-Subway spokesperson Jared Fogle, who was arrested for child pornography charges, shortly before the reboot aired.
- This led to theories by fans that Jared was modeled after and voiced by series lead writer Jake Goldman. Luckily, this was debunked since it was Haley Mancini's idea rather than Goldman's.
- Not only is Jared Shapiro older than Blossom, but he's also a pointless love interest with no character and personality, and he’s nothing but a nerdy stereotype.
- Jared can also be seen as a nerdy version of Sakamoto from Powerpuff Girls Z.
- Filipino fan artist and PPG YouTuber Jerimin19 drew fanart of the Blossom x Jared Shapiro ship, and the fans are going to get angry at her before she died in 2017.
- The credits' theme is poor as it's just a shortened remixed version of the show's theme song.
- The use of firearms seen in the original series, usually carried by police and robbers is removed, another way to appeal to Moral Guardians.
- Pokey Oaks Kindergarten has been destroyed all because their class hamster, Twiggy, mutated from a potion in "The Wrinklegruff Gals", meaning the girls are now in middle school for some reason despite being about 5 to 6 years old.
- It's probably revealed that they're 10 to 11 years old because one episode claimed that they had five picture days (picture days happen once a year), yet their appearances have not changed one bit. This is justifiable, since they are not human, although a flashback in the original series showed them as young adults.
- The show lazily uses live-action stock images and footage, with the rap scene from "Once Upon a Townsville" and this scene from "Presidential Punchout" being notable examples. It also uses an exploding car in one scene.
- The girls are given multiple cartoony and anime facial expressions that are too over-the-top and feel like they don't suit the characters' normal faces, although a few of them are creative.
- Special mention goes to the scene in "Odd Bubbles Out'', where Bubbles, jealous of Donny being with Chelsea instead of her, makes a rather weird and uncanny-looking sad face that looks like Charlie Brown or a sad emoji. Heck, even characters like Stimpy, Snoopy, or Patrick Star would make fun of this.
- The fighting is nowhere as exciting and violent as the original 1998 series. This is because the girls can't hit anybody without a flash used to censor it and the removal of blood spurts, this is yet another attempt to appeal to today's increasingly extreme moral guardians, which failed since Infinity Train was allowed a bloody death scene only two years later, yet they somehow can't allow scenes of the titular girls punching the villains with full impact. Additionally, the flashes can unintentionally cause eye damage to some viewers as it happens to every single fighting scene.
- Yes, the original show also sometimes used the flash, but it was mostly used to simulate or add immersion of the real feel of being hit and beaten up, here it's used to death and only for censorship purposes, which is insulting, even worse, Ben 10 (2016) would later on do the same thing.
- There is the infamous 4th Powerpuff Girl named Blisstina "Bliss" Utonium introduced in Season 2, who wasn't well-received by fans and can be an example of the show Jumping the Shark.
- The new logo doesn't look as good as the 1998 one.
- The show is a blatant continuation of the franchise, given the original series already had a 15th-anniversary special called Dance Pantsed that aired back in 2014 which, despite having different character designs that reassembles the anime Powerpuff Girls Z and an awkward storyline, it was still true to the original.
- During the production of this show, Cartoon Network lied that the series' original creator Craig McCracken gave the reboot his official blessing, which turned out to be untrue since Craig McCracken himself denied doing so on his Twitter posts, commenting that he had never given the new reboot his official blessing.
- It has lots of accidental unfortunate implications:
- The LGBTQ+ community, as well as fans, have a problem with the transgender metaphor in "Horn, Sweet Horn" and dislike the show's handling of it.
- The violence is toned down during certain crime-fighting scenes such as the removal of blood and most of the hit impacts being censored by a hit flash.
- The removal of certain firearms.
- Ms. Bellum's removal and the twerking scene, as mentioned before.
- Max Giraldi discusses some on his episode of it on Brain Dump. Aside from the whole business of Ms. Bellum getting written off, he brought up two other points;
- The fact that the girls' teacher, Ms. Keane, had been consistently drawn with a modest chest size in the original show, but the reboot inexplicably portrayed her as completely flat-chested, pointing out that it seemed to carry an implied message that it was wrong for women to have breasts at all.
- With the sole exception of Ms. Keane, every female character from the original show had their voice actors replaced while all the male roles were retained by the original actors, which implies a message of "men are expendable, but women are replaceable".
- A few viewers, including RebelTaxi, have noted the accidental implications of the brown-skinned Bliss being an overly emotionally flawed prototype replaced with "superior" white incarnations.
- This show would later get another planned reboot in 2021, and that reboot itself is even worse than the original due to having an even worse grasp to the source material and the horrendous writing.
- The reboot has many mediocre to awful episodes, such as
- Escape from Monster Island (a bad way to start the series)
- Painbow (Likely the worst episode in this reboot)
- Horn Sweet Horn
- Man Up (along with its sequels)
- Bye, Bye, Bellum
- Strong Armed
- Power-Up Puff
- Tiara Trouble
- Arachno-Romance
- Puffdora's Box
- A Minor Hiccup
- Blue Ribbon Blues
- Frenemy
- Once Upon a Townsville
- Viral Spiral
- Bubbles of the Opera
- Odd Bubbles Out
- Presidential Punchout
- In the Garden of Good & Eddie
- The Secret Life of Blossom Powerpuff
- Deb' O Nair
- Summer Bummer
- Super Sweet 6
- Snow Month
- People Pleaser (which ended season 1 in a sour manner)
- A Star is Blossom
- Imagine That
- Rainy Day
- The Power of Four arcs (the episode arc that introduced Bliss)
- Sugar, Spice, and Super Lice
- Monkey Love
- Can't Buy Love
- Save the Date
- Worship
- Oh Daisy!
- Tooth or Consequences
- Our Brand is Chaos
- Drama Bomb
- Musclecup
- Sideline Dad (which ended the series with an overall negative outlook)
Qualities That Were Saved by the Powerpuff Girls
- Even though the girls have new voice actresses, some of the voice actors from the original series such as Tom Kenny, Tom Kane, Roger L. Jackson, Dee Bradley Baker, and Jennifer Hale reprise their roles as the Narrator, Professor Utonium, Mojo Jojo, the Mayor, and Ms. Keane.
- And there are still some decent, tolerable, and likable characters such as The Derbytantes, Barry, Professor Utonium, The Mayor, Ms. Keane, HIM, and sometimes Buttercup, Bubbles, and Mojo Jojo.
- Speaking of which. The Derbytantes were one of the awesome goth characters in this series. Maylyn has her awesome tomboy heroic act. in Princess Buttercup. they stop Princess Morbucks and break the crystal trap to free Blossom and Bubbles.
- Bubbles and Buttercup become more tolerable during Seasons 2-3. They also gained more character development than Blossom. Bubbles started crying less than her original counterpart from Season 1 of the reboot and is now a computer geek and Buttercup is good at math.
- The theme song, "Who's Got the Power?" by Tacocat is good, and the full music video had great animation and more action than the actual show.
- The voice acting is at least passable, like Amanda Leighton's, Kristen Li's, and Natalie Palamides's when the girls are not annoying.
- The Japanese dub is an improved English version, featuring voices that sound more like the original actresses.
- The new soundtrack is pretty nice.
- Although the facial expressions are over-the-top and don't suit the characters, they are at least creative and arguably an improvement on the original series.
- The studio outro logo is nice to look at, it shows The Powerpuff Girls in live-action flying.
- The outdated meme references are removed in the second season and onwards.
- At least the redesigns of the characters are minor and still stay true to the original designs.
- The redesigns of the girls are decent and add some minor details, such as giving Bubbles pigtail hair decorations and Buttercup a cowlick.
- On top of that, the character designs look cute.
- There are moments when it can be funny.
- Good Dubs Like Japanese, Brazilian,Korean, German, and Spanish Latin America dubs.
- The episode "The Wrinklegruff Gals" has a nice reference to the intro of the original 1998 series.
- There are some tear-jerking and heartwarming moments when they aren’t forced, such as the Professor missing his girls in "Somewhere Over The Swingset", Silico's backstory in "Halt and Catch Silico" homesick Blossom in "Home, Sweet Homesick", moments between the Professor and the girls, and Morbucks becoming friends with Blossom in "Poorbucks".
- The animation is passable, despite its errors and stiffness.
- Likewise, the animation in Seasons 2 and 3 is a slight improvement over Season 1.
- Decent modern art style and nice new color palettes, mostly due to Bob Boyle being involved, with beautiful backgrounds.
- Ace of the Gangreen Gang was utilized better outside the series by filling in as bassist for Gorillaz in several music videos while Murdoc was incarcerated.
- Some of the new villains are unique and creative for what they are, like Packrat, Jemmica "Jemoire" Thrash, and Silico.
- Compared to Teen Titans Go!, the morals are decent. Most of the time, the episode endings are good as well.
- There were a handful of good or decent episodes, such as:
- Princess Buttercup
- The Stayover
- Not So Secret Service
- The Wrinklegruff Gals
- The Trouble with Bubbles
- Sister Sitter
- Cheep Thrills
- Road Trippin'
- The Big Sleep
- Halt & Catch Silico
- Secret Swapper of Doom
- The Squashening
- Electric Buttercup
- Buttercup vs. Math
- The Long Skate Home
- Derby Dollies
- Clawdad
- Green Wing
- Fashion Forward
- Splitsville
- The Buttercup Job
- Sugar, Spice and Super...
- Home, Sweet, Homesick
- Blundercup
- The Oct-Father
- Never Been Blissed
- A Slight Hiccup
- Total Eclipse of the Kart
- The Gift
- Lights Out!
- Toy Ploy
- There is another reboot that's in the works right now, and hopefully, this one will be an improvement since Craig McCracken is working on it.
Notable Bad Episodes
- "Escape from Monster Island"
- "Painbow"
- "Horn Sweet Horn"
- "Man Up"
- Summer Bummer
- Super Sweet 6
- "Bye, Bye, Bellum"
- "Little Octi Lost"
- "Strong Armed"
- "Power-Up Puff"
- "Tiara Trouble"
- "Arachno Romance"
- "Puffdora's Box"
- "Once Upon A Townsville"
- "Bubbles of the Opera"
- "Odd Bubbles Out"
- "In the Garden of Good & Eddie"
- "The Secret Life of Blossom Powerpuff"
- "Professor Proofed"
- "Snow Month"
- "People Pleaser"
- "A Star is Blossom"
- "The Power of Four"
- "Oh Daisy!"
- "Musclecup"
Notable Good Episodes
- Buttercup vs Math
- Princess Buttercup
- The Squashening
- Never Been Blissed
- Derby Dollies
- The Long Skate Home
Episodes with their own pages
- Buttercup vs. Math
- Princess Buttercup
- Man Up
- Super Sweet 6
- Summer Bummer
- The Squashening
- Derby Dollies
- The Long Skate Home
- Painbow
- Never Been Blissed
Trivia
- The 2016 reboot of The Powerpuff Girls was the main topic for an episode on the cooking show Cake Wars.
- The 2016 reboot of The Powerpuff Girls was also one of the sets available to purchase for the game LEGO Dimensions, alongside two other CN-affiliated cartoons, Adventure Time and Teen Titans Go!.
- Tara Strong didn't return partially because she was busy with her roles as Raven from Teen Titans Go!, Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Unikitty from the Cartoon Network show Unikitty!, and among others.
- As of now, Season 4 has not been announced, nor have there been any official announcements of the show getting canceled but not until 2022, another reboot produced by Hanna-Barbera Europe and CMCC, during the series went development.
- As with the original series, the reboot is popular in Japan; until 2023, it was also successful in Europe. With have their events in most cafés, a crossover online game event with the Love Live! anime series, Boba tea at Pearl Lady, etc.
- It spawned a clone of Burrito Bison: Launcha Libre called "The Powerpuff Girls: Monkey Mania", though to be fair, they were both made by the Canadian company Juicy Beast and published on mobile devices by Kongregate.
- There was originally going to be a live-action reboot of the franchise being made by The CW until it had its script leak in mid-2021 and was universally and negatively panned by fans and others alike for its abysmal writing in general and for being more unfaithful to the source material than even Dragonball: Evolution, The Last Airbender (2010), the 1993 Super Mario Bros. film, and even this reboot, and because of that the reboot ended up scrapped in 2023.
- Some of the voice actors reunited of the original show with the exception such as Jennifer Hale, Grey DeLisle-Griffin, Rob Paulsen, Kevin Michael Richardson, the final role of Chuck McCann in 2017, Carlos Alazraqui, Jim Cummings, Frank Welker and Dee Bradley Baker.
- The series associates also other voice actors from other franchises such as Tress MacNeille and Rob Paulsen in Tiny Toons, Jill Talley, John O'Hurley from SpongeBob SquarePants, Cree Summer and Grey Griffin from Danny Phantom, Vanessa Marshall from Fish Hooks, Dwight Schultz from Chowder, Kate Micucci from the Scooby-Doo franchise, Benjamin Diskin from Codename: K.N.D. and others.
- Like most kids' shows, they have an official YouTube Channel, which is owned by Cartoon Network UK, and has also recently started uploading clips from the 1998 series as well.
- This is the first reboot series of the franchise and the first that does not feature Jennifer Martin.
- At first, the series was one of Cartoon Network's most heavily promoted series, along with Teen Titans Go!, and CN was originally so confident in the series that they put it in the 6:00 PM slot (where Teen Titans Go! had been in for almost two whole years). Due to unexpectedly low ratings and an incredibly vocal backlash from fans and critics alike, the show was constantly moved around at different times on Thursday nights (which didn't help); the series was also put on hiatus for almost three months. The rest of season 1 beyond "The Secret Life of Blossom" ended up being punted along a Saturday morning slot with no warning or promotion.
- In early 2017, episodes premiered at 7:45 PM on Fridays before being shoved into an improbable time slot at 5:30 PM on Sundays in April (and even then, only new episodes aired and there were no reruns).
- Until January 2018, reruns were only seen on Boomerang at the expense of displacing reruns of the original series.
- The "Power of Four" special "movie event" was only given a week's worth of advertising, with a single promo spot running on-air for it. It only amassed 980,000 views, even though it was a five-episode long TV movie. Very likely because of this, its sequel special ("Never Been Blissed") was built up as a major special event in Cartoon Network's New Year's Day promo during 2018, only to be given zero advertising and earn only 577,000 viewers (a 59% drop from Bliss' original debut).
- The 2018 special "Small World" was barely advertised, if even that. The following June, the show was not only quietly canceled, but stopped airing reruns on Cartoon Network.
- Starting in May 2021, official merchandise of the girls in their original designs began to appear again, suggesting that Cartoon Network may have officially decided to put the reboot behind them. This was more or less confirmed when, during the 30th Anniversary of Cartoon Network, all references and airings were of the original 1998 show.
- Before 2023, most feeds of Cartoon Network in Europe seemed to believe the reboot started the franchise and thus pretended the original series didn't exist.
Reception
The show met with mixed-to-negative reviews from critics but was panned by fans of the original series and considered to be one of the worst cartoon reboots to date as well as one of the worst Cartoon Network shows. Some fans of the original series even deemed that the reboot is worse than "Teen Titans Go!" mainly due to its awful implications and one of the episode writers being pedophilic.
Saberspark considered this as the worst show to ever air on Cartoon Network, placing it at #1 on his Top 10 WORST Cartoon Network Shows and RebelTaxi named it as the absolute worst cartoon to air in the entire 2010s decade. TheMysteriousMrEnter ranked this show as #4 on his Top 10 Worst Cartoons of the 2010s list.
Craig McCracken, the creator of the original series, wrote on Twitter that he never gave this series his blessing and wished Cartoon Network didn't go ahead with their plans of a reboot of the series. He acknowledged from a financial standpoint why the series was commissioned.
When the reboot casts were confirmed, Tara Strong (the voice of Twilight Sparkle, Timmy Turner, and Bubbles) herself described the reboot's voice actor choices as "a stab in a heart".
On IMDb, it has a 3.5/10 however, the show strangely received a more mixed reception from Google users as it holds a 54% which translates to a 2.6/5 and a 3/5 from Common Sense Media.
The negative reception of the reboot was so severe that two years after the reboot ended, many former fans (and even the haters) started to protest against the show to show how the franchise was criticized.
Despite the mixed and negative reception, it won an award and was nominated for two awards; nominated a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Short Form Animated Program for the episode "Once Upon A Townsville" won a Gracie Award for the series overall, and nominated for an Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement for Music in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production for the episode "Home, Sweet Homesick".
Even Cartoon Network seemed to be ashamed of how The Powerpuff Girls reboot turned out and wanted to distance themselves from it by removing the reboot from reruns on Boomerang once the third season finished airing in favor of classic Powerpuff Girls episodes, and later on, announcing a new reboot with Craig McCracken's involvement.
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