by Rebecca Fisher

Introduction:

Sugar… spice… and everything nice. These were the ingredients chosen to create three perfect little girls. But Professor Utonium accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction: Chemical X! Thus, The Powerpuff Girls were born! Using their ultra-superpowers, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup have dedicated their lives to fighting crime and the forces of evil!

So goes the opening sequence of The Powerpuff Girls, the popular animated series that ran for six seasons (seventy-eight episodes in all) on the Cartoon Network, and which also managed to generate a movie, a few TV specials, and a lot of merchandising. I still have the Powerpuff Girl pencil case and stationary. Created by Craig McCracken, the show was a huge hit during its run, combining stylised animation with quirky humour, genuine warmth and a unique trio of four-year old superheroes.

From left: Buttercup, Blossom and Bubbles

The central gag inherent in the show’s concept is that of three tiny pre-schoolers taking on hardened criminals and giant monsters derived from Japanese films. It is not just their age and size that provides the contrast of sweetness and violence within the show, but that they are so thoroughly feminine, fighting crime with cute hairstyles, in Mary Jane shoes, and bearing the names Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup.

Premise:

Set in the City of Townsville, the sisters are cared for by their jovial and caring father-figure Professor Utonium, and are called to various emergencies by the Mayor via a telephone hotline (which has a smiley face and a flashing nose). Each one has a distinct personality: Blossom is the most mature and responsible of the girls, as well as their unofficial leader. Bubbles is the sweet and giggly one, who can be naïve and timid at times, but also surprisingly temperamental when she feels threatened or insulted. Lastly, Buttercup is the abrasive tomboy who loves fighting and often gets into trouble thanks to her inability to toe the line between what is and isn’t socially acceptable behaviour.

But despite their superpowers of flight, strength and laser vision (among others), they are still little girls who have to deal with things such as tantrums, bed-wetting, precocious crushes, school bullying, soft toys, fear of cooties and dependence on security blankets. They attend Pokey Oaks Kindergarten and have to carefully regulate their crime-fighting activities between classes, chores and bedtime, as well as being accountable to strict rules such as no fighting in the classroom.

The girls and their father: Professor Utonium

This naturally results in a fair amount of mood whiplash what with all the sweetness-and-light running parallel to the extreme violence required to defeat various monsters and criminals, but again – that’s all part of the charm.

Because each story is less than fifteen minutes long (each episode is broken into two mini-episodes) some storytelling shortcuts are taken, which cleverly feed into the quirky humour of the show. For instance, when three criminals decide to impersonate the Powerpuff Girls they easily find costumes and masks lying about in their cell. When the city is infested by cockroaches, Blossom deals with the situation by fetching a giant jar to scoop them all up, an inexplicable scenario casually summed up by the Narrator: “so with her lightning-fast speed and her knowledge of where to find giant jars, Blossom makes quick work of cleaning up the town.”

Story:

The good-guys-defeating-evil premise seems simplistic enough, but there is a surprising depth to the show, allowing adults as well as children to enjoy various episodes.

Some of the best episodes are told from the villain’s point-of-view or revolve around peripheral characters, providing a fresh spin on the usual formula. In one episode the girls’ painfully shy classmate has an imaginary friend whose antics spiral out of control, leading the girls to defeat it by summoning their own imaginary friend. In another, we meet the girls’ neighbour who is achingly bored with his life and increasingly resentful of his neighbours. Getting a secret thrill out of watching villains on television, he plans his own escape from the banality of non-heroic life, and the story paints a surprisingly vivid portrait of the supposed glamour of criminality.

Another simply involves the girls getting bored on a rainy day and re-enacting some of their adventures with toys and dress-ups, whilst another has the trio relate their latest adventure Rashomon-style, with each lending her own perspective to the events (thus Bubble’s version is visualized as childish crayon drawings, whilst Buttercup sees things as a series of dark and gritty comic-book panels.)

Perhaps the show’s most distinctive element is the existence of an unseen narrator, whose enthusiastic commentary is peppered throughout each episode. He offers observations, makes droll comments, points out story elements, breaks the fourth wall and sends off each episode with a rousing repetition of: “and so the day is saved, thanks to: the Powerpuff Girls!” He ends up being one of the most humorous parts of the show, particularly in his futile attempts to warn characters of what is obvious only to the audience.

The show’s success lies in subverting and playing with their established formula, not just the stories they tell, but in how they tell those stories – not to mention inserting plenty of girl power into the proceedings.

Characters:

As mentioned, all three girls have distinct personalities, but are also backed up by a strong supporting cast. As well as Professor Utonium as a loving single parent, the girls have their kindergarten teacher Miss Keane, and the Mayor’s shapely assistant Sara Bellum, to offer them guidance (though not so much the dim-witted and diminutive Mayor). In a nice touch, many episodes focus on the citizens of Townsville and the friends, family and classmates of the Powerpuff Girls saving them from peril, demonstrating that anyone can be a hero and proving the truth of the old adage: “it takes a whole village to raise a child.”

As well as this, the girls have an impressive rogue’s gallery, ranging from the spoiled Princess (think Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, only worse) to Fuzzy Lumpkins (a hillbilly pink bear who hates people trespassing on his property) to HIM, a truly scary devil with a pointy goatee, thigh-high boots and a creepy voice that echoes as though in a cave, ranging from a high-pitched falsetto to a deep demonic growl. Perhaps most significantly is Mojo Jojo, who is to the girls what Lex Luthor is to Superman, or the Joker is to Batman: their main nemesis.

A talking monkey with an oversized brain and the personality of a mad scientist, his repetitive and convoluted speech patterns (“I am Mojo Jojo. Mojo Jojo is my name. The name that I have is Mojo Jojo”) is partially modelled on bad anime dubbing, making him the show’s most memorable villain.

Conclusion:

The level of creativity and innovation in The Powerpuff Girls are its most enduring qualities, for each episode is filled with irreverent humour, clever wordplay and visual gags, many of which are slipped in under the radar, which in turn provides the possibility for rewatchability. It’s therefore ironic that the world’s youngest superhero team caters just as much to an adult audience as it does children, as it’s likely that not many under-ten year olds would appreciate one of the show’s most celebrated episodes: a story composed almost entirely of references to The Beatles. (Believe it or not, it manages to reference about sixty-five songs and events in its fifteen-minute timespan).

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Next Time:

The next time I post one of these reviews it’ll be October, the month of Halloween. So in celebration of that, I’ll be watching and commenting on some of my favourite spooky Stop-Motion animated films, starting with The Nightmare Before Christmas.

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About The Reviewer:

Rebecca Fisher is a graduate of the University of Canterbury with a Masters degree in English Literature, mainly, she claims, because she was able to get away with writing her thesis on C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. She is a reviewer for FantasyLiterature.com, a large website that specializes in fantasy and science-fiction novels, as well as posting reviews to Amazon.com and her own LiveJournal blog.

To read Rebecca’s detailed introduction of both herself and the series, click on Big Worlds On Small Screens.

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Previous Big Worlds On Small Screens Reviews: [click on the title to view]

• Avatar: The Last Airbender—Season One
• Maddigan’s Quest
• Warehouse 13
• Charmed
• Justice League
• Xena Warrior Princess
• Roar