Live Action Powerpuff Girls: Initial Reaction-Animated Critic Special

 

Hello, my name is Eila AKA The Animated Critic. I know what you're asking. Where's the next review? It'll be out soon. I promise. Maybe the next week or so. But before we talk about Cybersix, let's talk about another show I love about Superheroines kicking butt and taking names. The Powerpuff Girls. I love the original show. Even if it did have some seasonal rot near the end of it's life. It was fun, hilarious, memorable, and the trio of Blossom, Buttercup, and especially Bubbles will always remain as some of my favorite cartoon characters. Hell, I didn't even mind the 2016 show all that much. I didn't watch it as much as the original and it had stupid moments, but it had moments that made me feel like this was a proper modernization of the original series. And even some of the newer things it did to stand on it's own weren't that bad. Hell, I liked some of it even. 

So as you can imagine, I am a big fan of this show. So I have some thoughts about the recently announced live-action series. Now, I have nothing against transplanting a cartoon into live-action. Some have criticized this practice and say it's part of an overarching problem of people not taking animation seriously. And while I do agree with that, I think some live-action adaptations do take great respect and care to adapt the original source material. However, this doesn't sound like one of those. This is a going to be a show aired on the CW, following the girls as adults. In this "darker and edgier" reboot the girls are disillusioned and hate life because they lost their childhood to crime-fighting. 

Now I don't want to say this idea will immediately fail. It's unfair to say that and judge a product based on its premise. It's the execution that matters. However, I do have the right to make an initial impression, and to talk about this problem I feel animation, heck kids entertainment as a whole, is facing. 

Let's get to my complaint with how this contradicts what we've seen multiple times in both iterations of the show. The girls are apparently miserable because they feel they lost their childhood to crime-fighting. However, we've seen multiple times in multiple episodes them doing normal childhood things. Going to school, making new friends, hell even stuff like peeing the bed. Watching cartoons, playing video games, pillow fights. All that fun stuff. What childhood did they lose? Professor Utonium made them to be the perfect little girls. He wanted to raise children and give them a normal life. It's just the freak accident of Chemical X gave them superpowers. But he still tried his best to give them a normal life and also let them use their powers for the greater good. Hence why they go to school and such. The gimmick of the show is that these are normal girls in almost every other way. They just have powers and also fight crime with them when not busy dealing with their own thing. So I don't know what's up with this cynical look that they lost their childhood. Look I know as well as anyone, that taking a more serious and cynical look at classic cartoons that are usually all happy go lucky and colorful can be funny.  But it has to still make a little logical sense within the concept of the show, and can't be contradicted by the fricking basic premise. Also, you really want to make a whole season based on that one semi-funny idea. 

But that's what I mostly want to take a look at. The cynicism. Why is there constantly attempts to give classic kids media a darker edge to them.  Especially kids cartoons. Not saying it doesn't happen with live-action stuff as well, but let me just say you're not seeing an Icarly reboot where Sam's sex tape is accidentally leaked to the web. It happens with some live-action stuff, but mostly with cartoons or comics. Michael Bay's TMNT and Transformers movies for example. The live-action Scooby-Doo movies tried to throw a lot more adult themes in there. Hell, even Shyamalan's Avatar movie. Most of these were critical flops, but they were financial successes. So there's that. But they're not really looked back on fondly for the most part. I heard the Power Rangers movie was decent so that's cool. I didn't watch it though since I don't really care about Power Rangers. But that's a live-action property mostly. Why do cartoons always have to have grittier reboots? Why can't they be more like the Popeye live-action movie, which was stupid but felt like they were trying for a Popeye feel to it? Why is it that the original gets tossed to the side. Minus the characters and some ideas they borrow from the original. Why not just make Powerpuff girls, but live action. Have the fun campiness, and cool action. Why does it have to be dark? Hell, if you wanted to you could still make them adults. Yeah, a Powerpuff show where they live normal adult lives, but they still kick all sorts of evil butt. I have no problem with dealing with adult themes or targeting a different audience. But it just seems they are forgetting why Powerpuff Girls has so much appeal to it. It's cool they're making their own thing with it, but it feels like they threw out what made the show so special and pick up an audience to begin with. You can still make your own thing with the premise and capture the magic of the original show. I don't know. Like I said the premise alone isn't enough to say this'll fail or be bad. But it certainly doesn't get me interested in this show. I'm sure someone will like it. After all, the CW is pretty much doing what they did with the Archie comics when making Riverdale. And that has a decent audience that loves it. I never saw it, because I wasn't particularly interested in Archie to begin with, but I heard mixed things. Some people genuinely love it though. And I'm sure this show will have its audience. It's just...why can't we have fun. There's a place for more serious and gritty things, but there's also a place for more fun and lighthearted stuff as well. I know I'll always have the original show, and this has no bearing on the original whatsoever, so maybe I shouldn't care. But it just feels sometimes like people disregard animation and that's why these live-action adaptations disregard trying to capture the feel of the original work. Which is just bull. Animation is just as important and artistic as any other medium even if it mostly targets kids. Lots of love and passion still gets put into it to craft the perfect story. But even with some of the most renowned pieces of animation, like Avatar (which is considered one of the best shows ever even outside the animation community). Heck not just Shyamalan's version, but the live-action version that's currently being produced just lost the support of the original creators for trying to take a darker and edgier route. Like I said there's room for this stuff, but what's wrong with light-hearted fun as well. After all, you don't see people making something like Breaking Bad into a lighthearted romp through the flowers. That'd be dumb. It's kinda how I feel about this. Why is animation not considered a mature medium? Well, because people don't take it seriously. Hell, even the creators don't take it seriously sometimes. That's why I created this blog to begin with. To show animation has more potential than it's given credit for. To show the things you like have nothing to do with maturity. And to sometimes laugh at the crap that doesn't care. I'll give this new show a chance when it comes out, but as of right now I'm not excited. I'm sure there is some effort and talent behind it. And like I said it will have an audience. There can still be fun in darker more realistic stuff, but not the same kinda fun Powerpuff Girls provides. I don't know. It all mostly feels like a wasted opportunity.

Anyway, end of rant. Hopefully in the next week or so the Cybersix review will go up. That's a show with some good episodes that I think will show what I'm talking about. But we'll get to those later. This review will be over the first episode.  Either way, have a good day. I'll see you later. Bye-Bye.

Ink Lemonade (SpongeBob SquarePants)-Animated Critic #1

"My return to animation...and it's an abomination. And I'm not talking about the Squidward/Patrick love child."

Show-SpongeBob Squarepants
Episode Title-Ink Lemonade
Air Date-May 9th 2018

Season 11

Episode 231b

Hello my name is Eila A.K.A. the Animated Critic. 

So I know you have all probably heard the long-winded story of SpongeBob's downfall time and time and time again. Seasons 1-3 and the movie are considered classics. The seasons after the movie are mostly hated. Though most people are starting to say 4 and 5 are mostly meh, seasons 6-8 are hated all around. Season 9 also started in this direction, but something miraculous happened. You see the reason that's attributed to the post movies downfall was the original creator, Stephen Hillenberg, and a lot of the original writers left the show. Probably because they didn't want the show to end up a carcass. A shell of its former success barely breathing, striving for someone to end it all. Whoops that's what happened. Ah, you got to love corporations. Why make something new when you could just beat the dead horse? Which, now that I'm thinking about it, that's exactly what I'm doing. Long story short season 9 as a whole was considered an improvement. Even before Hillenberg came back. Unfortunately, I couldn't tell you much about Season 10 and 11. Due to life circumstances outside my control I haven't been able to keep up with those seasons and I haven't heard much about them. I know I kinda skimmed a lot of the facts and history, but it's been talked about soooo much. Sooooo much. But if you all are interested I may do a full retrospective on the show at some point. Even though Pieguyrulz already did that, whether he's gonna finish it or not is up in the air though, but I might. This show means a lot to me. It may not seem like that since I just spent this entire paragraph telling you how much the show has gone downhill, but I really can't even begin to tell you how much this show means to me. I can try, but I don't think I could do it properly without making this entire blog post about that topic. But considering I love this show so much it's about time I catch up. I missed a lot of episodes some probably really good, and some probably really bad. Most probably just meh though. Just to be clear I missed out on the latter third maybe? of Season 9, and all of Season 10 and beyond so far. So yeah, I have some catchup to do. And what a better place to start than the episode Ink Lemonade. There's a lot of buzz going on about this episode. Which hopefully means it's good. 

....Oh, who am I kidding this is the internet. This is probably the worst episode of the entire season isn't it. Welp, at least I'm getting it out of the way. I guess. Let's dig into Ink Lemonade and see if I can figure out what the buzz, good or bad, is about.

The episode starts with Patrick being obnoxious. Yelling and making these strange, random noises while trying to sell lemonade. This is going to be our humor for tonight. Loud, random, and obnoxious. Is it funny? Well what do you think? 

Squidward comes outside of his house to take the trash out. And of course, he gets annoyed by Patrick. Patrick tries to sell Squidward on his lemonade by making more annoying grunts. I should stop using the word "annoying" before it runs it's course. Squidward asks what he's doing of his rock in the morning. Which I find an odd question considering Patrick is usually out in the day. There's never been an indication that's he's a nocturnal creature of darkness. He then says Patrick should crawl back into his rock like "the hideous freak you are". Which did get a laugh out of me. I mean come on, Patrick has done nothing but yell "lemonade" and make weird pig noises. I think he deserves a little cruel joke tossed his way. Anyway Squidward asks what he's selling because Patrick's sales pitch doesn't involve any English whatsoever. In fact, it involves no legit languages. Patrick...well

Does this. 

This is the main comedy of this episode. Funny faces. It's like a less creepy version of Face Freeze. Oh but don't worry there'll be plenty of creepiness to dissect. It may not be this.

But it can sometimes come damn close. 

Patrick finally responds, in English, yelling "Lemonade" into his loudspeaker. Right into Squidward's face.  Causing yet another hilarious face. 

You know...Patrick is dumb. Like really dumb sometimes. But this is a whole new level I don't think I've ever seen him in. Even in some of his worst appearances in the post-movie episodes. Like he's almost a brainless drone in this episode. He's never like that. Oh yeah, he's dumb, but his stupidness had some charm and wit behind it with the writing. Here they'll literally just making him sit, drool, and yell. It's not clever or funny. It barely even qualifies as a joke. Lol, it's funny because he's being loud. No! Loudness can be used to enhance the delivery of the joke, but the joke itself still, you know, has to be funny. Yelling Lemonade over and over like this and making random grunting noises isn't a joke. Also as you may have notices Patrick's lemonade doesn't actually have lemon in it. When Squidward points this out guess what Patrick does. If you guessed making a funny face you were absolutely correct. Congratulations on recognizing patterns. He also seems confused that he needed lemons. Squidward throws a dirty lemon from the garbage at him.

This is the least of the yuckiness we'll encounter.

Squidward sarcastically apologizes for it being a little bruised. So Patrick proceeds to...

and slaps the bandage on the lemon. Get it. Cause the lemon is bruised. Like the injury. Holy crap! Fricking Hilarious! NOT DISGUSTING AT ALL!

Oh and guess what!

More fricking hilarious faces! 

Duh doh dum Im MaKiNg A fUnNy.

Anyway, Patrick now finally has lemonade. So now cue more yelling. We cut to Squidward trimming his nose hairs.

Gross, but with Patrick yelling and Squidward doing his own thing you can probably guess what's gonna happen.

Of course he gets hurt by the trimmer. 

In case you haven't guessed it yet this is one of those Squidward torture episodes. Mostly known as Squidward Torture Porns by the community. These episodes, both good and bad, revolve around, well, punishing Squidward and making his life miserable. In a good episode like Culture Shocked or Artist Unknown Squidward acts like a stuck-up jerk and the punishment he gets as a result is fitting, clever, and a little cathartic. An equation that equals funny. And while Squidward did maybe act a little jerky at the beginning, I would argue that Patrick kinda deserved it. And the punishment doesn't really fit the crime. This happens a lot in the Post-Movie episodes. Squidward may be a little bit of a jerk towards SpongeBob and Patrick, but most of the time in the newer episodes they did something to deserve it. Yet Squidward is still treated as the "bad guy" for whatever reason. In the Pre-Movie episodes I mentioned before, Artist Unknown and Culture Shocked, Squidward acted like a jerk towards others without cause. He was just naturally stuck-up. But here, and in maaaaany other bad STPs SpongeBob and Patrick are annoying, rude, awful, plain stupid, and overall well-deserving of a punishment. But because they're the main characters Squidward gets to be the designated baddie that takes all the punishment. Keep this in mind as we continue to delve further into this mess on an episode. 

Back to Patrick as he's selling a whole jug of Lemonade. Unfortunately, the customer has a complaint.

Gross....again.

Pretend that Patrick in the photo is a PNG like I was tricked into believing.

Of course Patrick slaps the bandage back on himself. The man pukes...guess where. Well remember this is an STP so of course.

It's Squidward's house. 

Squidward walks out. We don't see any of the vomit, yet Squidward still slips and slides like he's stuck on a hockey rink without skates. 

Squidward heads towards Patrick's Lemonade Stand and he sees Patrick trying to squeeze juice out of a....toy truck?

AND HE DOES IT!

WAIT HOW! WHY? Listen I know that there's a certain line with cartoon logic, but at the end of the day cartoon logic is still kinda grounded in reality. Enough that you can usually let your suspension of disbelief kick in. Most of that cartoon logic stuff is grounded in the real world, just exaggerated for comedic effect. Or even if the thing doesn't make logical sense in the real world, it can still work if the sense is grounded in the world the show builds up. Stuff like the talking Sponge. Having him be able to do things like light a fire underwater. Etc...etc...

What sense does this make? Since when in the real world or SpongeBob's world does a firetruck excrete juice! NEVER! IT NEVER HAPPENED! THIS IS JUST LAWL RANDOM HUMOR!

So now SpongeBob himself finally shows up to contribute barely anything to the episode and he also yells...a lot. yay.

Though SpongeBob does kinda kick off the plot in this episode. He scares Squidward and makes him ink in Patrick's pitcher. 

Patrick gives the ink to the Sponge for whatever reason, and he takes a swig. Cue the silly faces. Oh boy.

SpongeBob says it's surprisingly delicious though. Then an old lady comes to see what Patrick is selling. And he says he's selling the ink, now dubbing it "Black Lemonade."

She takes a drink. And then repeats SpongeBob's bit. Is this filler? Probably.

 

Like, the silly faces I guess are creative and well animated, but they are just a bunch of randomness and there's really no humor to just presenting a silly face. It can be used to enhance a joke, but the face itself is not a joke. It's the equivalent of jingling keys in front of an infant's face.

The old lady begins to also yell about Patrick's lemonade. Sorry....

Lemonad...It's like one letter off. That's not very funny. The lady wants some more of the black lemonade, but the pitcher is already empty. This has to be the smallest pitcher in the world. Patrick goes to Squidward to ask for more ink. Squidward rightfully says no. By the way I should mention even when Patrick talks it's in this simplistic, almost caveman-like style. Like he barely has a grasp on the language. So Patrick finally uses his brain and thinks that if he wants ink he needs to scare Squidward. What a douche. Our hero everyone. So what's Patrick's brilliant plan.

Gross. The intestines even talk,
.....

Grosser. 

So now the episode devolves into Patrick scaring Squidward in some of the most uncreative and boring ways imaginable. 

Firstly a spider. Like, come on. This is SpongeBob. Get a little creative with it. It's a show with a talking sponge that lives in a Pineapple under the ocean. Get a bit creative.

So Patrick scares Squidward again and gets more ink. He returns to the stand only to see a gigantic line of people. 

So he decides to go scare Squidward some more who's currently in a state of paranoia.

Almost like One Coarse Meal. Why would you repeat One Coarse Meal? The episode that's so infamous for how mean-spirited it is that actual people working on the show derided it. Ok, so Squidward's paranoia doesn't get as bad as Plankton's in that episode, but still. It's not very funny. Seeing Squidward fear for his life, and even mention things like he doesn't know what's real anymore...yeah. Hilarious right. Listen I'm a fan of dark humor just as much as anyone else, but this isn't how you do it. On top of not being funny I don't think Squidward's paranoia makes sense. It's rushed and happens too quickly. So I feel like it just comes out of nowhere. At least you could understand why Plankton got the way he did in One Coarse Meal. You know, maybe if they removed a few seconds of those funny faces you could at least put in a montage or something showing a few more seconds of Patrick doing more scares. So Squidward gets led to a room filled with obviously fake ghosts and snakes and scares.

Maybe if they spent more time setting it up I would understand why Squidward's paranoia is making him so oblivious to the fakeness. I mean, it still wouldn't be funny but it'd make sense. So Patrick scares Squidward some more and continues to make him ink.

Oh boy. More funny faces. I'm so happy. They really add a lot and are super hilarious. I'm not even being sarcastic. Why would you think that? 

Squidward wonders into a creepy nursery like setting and here we see the most terrifying thing that this episode shows us.

Rejected Deviantart posts.

The horror. 

But in all seriousness. WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU PEOPLE THINKING WHEN YOU WROTE THIS!

Moving on because I don't think I need to elaborate on this abomination. Squidward then wanders onto the Krustee Krub. And no that wasn't a typo on my part.

Squidward finds a newspaper that convinces him that this obviously fake grease trap is in the future. Specifically: his future. And his greatest fear of all.

This one is actually pretty funny and clever. It would've been a lot better if Squidward deserved this punishment but it got a chuckle out of me. The fact that after all this horror this is what causes the biggest reaction from Squidward. And it fits his character too.

By the way I have to applaud Patrick on his craftsmanship. It's a lot more than I would expect from him. Especially in this episode where most of his dialogue had been brainless grunting.

Yes, this guy made all this happen. 

Squidward rushes out and slams into the line of people waiting for lemonade at the stand.

Here Squidward finally realizes what's going on and rightfully gets pissed. He asks if the people want Black Lemonade right from the source. And of course, they do. So Squidward sets up his stand.

However Squidward isn't inking anymore.

He's trying his best, but it ain't working out. Oh, and more grossness.

Squidward asks if someone can scare him and a shark, super pissed off cause he doesn't have his lemonade, says he'll do more than that.  

God why is Bikini Bottom full of so many jerks. Like I'd expect this from a fast food restaurant cause people are horrible, but not horrible enough to be entitled over a lemonade stand. 

Please let's just finish this. The shark is scary enough to cause Squidward to ink all over everyone. 

Now that they know where Black Lemonade really comes from they have to puke. 

Guess where...

So now Squidward is all sad and beaten up. On top of the black vomit that he'll have to clean up

Of course he once again gets punished for SpongeBob and Patrick's stupidity. This could've been so much better if maybe the town got pissed at Patrick. Or Squidward ends up outselling Patrick. That could be funny. But that wouldn't involve hurting or maiming Squidward and they have a quota to fill. 

And so the episode ends with SpongeBob and Patrick sharing their new business with Squidward. Homemade cookies. And Squidward is actually very grateful. He's actually saying thanks and everything to the two. So how do they ruin this very nice scene?

Well, SpongeBob says the cookies are made out of Spider Eggs and introduces Squidward to their new business partner.

This episode sucks. On top of being unfunny it's ungodly boring. I didn't realize it was so hard to fill in 11 minutes. It's filled with filler and awful Squidward torture. On top of inane dialogue it has plot points that make no sense. It's annoying, unfunny, and the worst sin of all?...it's not fun.

This is a medium for entertainment. The enjoyability is the most important factor of all and besides a joke or two, there's nothing here. The pacings bad, the jokes fall flat, the plot and characters are awful and mean spirited. Yeah this sucks. This doesn't feel like it belongs in a season where SpongeBob was getting its second wind. It feels like it belongs smack dab in the middle of Seasons 6-8. I'm sure if it was in the middle of those seasons not many people would bat an eye at it. Oh, sure it would be brought up but not as much as it was discussed. When we heard Hillenberg was returning no one expected something like this. And I don't mean to say anything bad about the man. But it just goes to show even a good creator can't fix everything. It takes a whole team to make these episodes and anything could go wrong. And that's what happened. This episode's awful and was probably a terrible way to get back into the medium. But you know what, it ended up being a good way to get my creative and critical juices flowing. So for that, I thank Ink Lemonade. You know what. I'm excited. We have a huge world ahead of us to rediscover...or even discover for the first time. Animation is filled with so many possibilities, engaging stories, and creativity. Crap what am I doing here. I have some exploration to do. Next time we should revisit some more shows that are beloved by me.

(Steven Universe)

Nah, I'm saving that for something big.

(Tom and Jerry)

I'm not really sure how I'd go about reviewing a golden age theater short.

(Pokemon/Yugioh)

Those two franchises are very important to me, but I wanna save them for something special. Plus I'm thinking of doing something different for my first anime review. I have a couple of ideas to break the ice with those. 

(Cybersix)

Hmmm, a bit obscure but...I think we got ourselves a winner. It's been a while since I've seen it so let's do it. See ya all next time.




Next Episode-Mysterious Shadow (Cybersix)
Coming Up:
Steven Universe
Family Guy
More SpongeBob
and more.


Thank's for reading.