Anime of the Childhood #14: Powerpuff Girls Z

出ましたっ！パワパフガールズZ / Demashita! Pawapafu Gāruzu Zetto / lit. “They’re Here! Powerpuff Girls Z”

I had some dark days in late 2006 as I was grounded after a Christmas vacation for complaining and being too dramatic, but that’s enough of my past. Instead, we’re going with something more “cute” as we haven’t reviewed another magical girl anime series on Medium (the first being Cardcaptor Sakura)… and we call it Powerpuff Girls Z! The anime is based on the 1998 American animated television series The Powerpuff Girls, created by Craig McCracken (though he was not actively involved with the project as he never watched it himself) and produced by Cartoon Network.

The anime’s English-language adaptation was produced in association with Ocean Productions in Canada. It was aired on Cartoon Network in the Philippines and Boomerang in Australia and New Zealand in 2008. Despite owning the IP rights to it, the anime series never aired on Cartoon Network or its sister channel Boomerang in North America. Unlike the original counterpart, the main protagonists are not sisters and do not attend kindergarten.

Plot

Professor Utonium, his son, Ken Kitazawa, and his toy dog, Peach, are busy working on Chemical X, a powerful chemical substance in Tokyo City (New Townsville in the English dub), when Peach accidentally drops a daifuku into a vat of Chemical X, which magically transforms it into Chemical Z. Countries around the world suddenly experience weather calamity, and Ken uses a light beam ray attached to the vat of Chemical Z to blast Chemical Z on an iceberg in the Tokyo City bay, causing black-and-white rays of light to appear in the skies above it.

Three ordinary 13-year-old girls, Momoko Akatsutsumi, Miyako Gōtokuji, and Kaoru Matsubara, are engulfed in white light, which transforms them into Hyper Blossom, Rolling Bubbles, and Powered Buttercup, the Powerpuff Girls Z. Peach is also engulfed in white light, transforming into a toy dog who can talk and call the girls to transform. Numerous rays of black light engulf people, animals, and objects to transform them into evil monsters who want to take over Tokyo City, such as Mojo Jojo, Fuzzy Lumpkins, Princess Himeko, Sedusa, the Gangreen Gang, and the Amoeba Boys. The Powerpuff Girls Z must protect Tokyo City with the help from the Professor, Ken, Mayor Mayer, and his assistant, Ms. Bellum, and use their respective weapons, including Blossom’s yo-yo, Bubbles’ bubble rod, and Buttercup’s hammer from evil monsters.

Characters

Note: Original voice actors for the 1998 series (including Japanese dub voices) are in italics.

• Hyper Blossom / Momoko Akatsutsumi (v.b. Emiri Katou in Japanese, Nicole Bouma in English; Cathy Cavadini / Kaori Asoh in the Japanese dub): The leader and first member of the Powerpuff Girls Z with orange hair with a red bow, and pink eyes. She uses a yo-yo as her signature weapon, but she can use her bow as a weapon if she doesn’t have her yo-yo. Like the original, she’s the self-proclaimed leader of the team. However, she is extremely ditzy, a bit boy-crazy, given to crushes and romantic fantasies. She wears a midriff dress in normal clothing. She is very familiar with the mahou shojo genre, along with some typical anime/super sentai concepts, and is regarded as a “hero maniac” in school, especially by Kaoru. Momoko also has a strong appetite for sugary foods. Momoko was the first to encounter Mojo Jojo at the park after buying candy.
• Rolling Bubbles / Miyako Gōtokuji (v.b. Nami Miyahara in Japanese; Revy University in English; Tara Strong / Kurumi Mamiya in the Japanese dub): The second member of the Powerpuff Girls Z team with lemon yellow hair with a sky blue hair clip, and matching eyes who uses a bubble wand as her signature weapon. Compared to her original counterpart, who is known for being the most childish of the three, Miyako is comparatively mature and often acts as the mediator in many situations and tries to calm her teammates down when in such situations. However, she is the ditziest member of the team, often appearing a bit clueless, and doesn’t seem to understand her powers completely, along with a few other things. She is also very polite and always uses honorifics at the end of names and ends most of her sentences with “desu wa”.
• Powered Buttercup / Kaoru Matsubara (v.b. Machiko Kawana in Japanese, Kelly Metzger in English; E.G. Daily / Yukiko Ikeda in the Japanese dub): The third and final member of the Powerpuff Girls Z with dark grey hair with two green hair clips, and green eyes who uses a giant mallet as her signature weapon. As the original Buttercup, she is a tomboy and is the most easily enraged of the three. Kaoru is known at school for being the most athletic girl as she plays tennis, practices martial arts, and numerous other activities, and spends a great deal of time watching sports on television. She is especially good at soccer due to her strengthened determination after receiving new soccer cleats when she was younger. She is disgusted by anything girly, especially skirts, which makes wearing the Powerpuff uniform a bit more awkward. She speaks with a hard and masculine edge and rarely uses honorifics when speaking.
• Professor Utonium / Yūtoniumu-Hakase (v.b. Taiten Kusunoki in Japanese, Louis Chirillo in English; Tom Kane / Motomo Azaki in the Japanese dub): In Powerpuff Girls Z, Professor Utonium has a son named Ken Kitazawa, who is responsible for all those affected by the Chemical Z lights, especially the Powerpuff Girls Z. Professor Utonium was originally experimenting with the substance Chemical X and strove to find a way to change its chemical properties. Professor Utonium has created several inventions throughout the series; the most important one being his Chemical Z Particle Ray, which allows him to transform those affected by the lights back to normal (although it doesn’t prevent recurring transformations nor is it able to work on all black light victims). He seems to be aware of the effect Ken’s lack of a mother has had on his son, assuming that it had caused him to be a bully to the girls.
• Ken Kitazawa (v.b. Makiko Ohmoto in Japanese, Cathy Weseluck in English): Professor Utonium’s eight-year-old son who is somewhat responsible for turning regular girls into the Powerpuff Girls Z and numerous other characters into villains using Chemical Z. He used it to blast a glacier in order to set the weather back to normal, but the impact resulted in the explosion of several lights, which affected all those who came in contact with it. Despite being younger than the girls, he acts a lot more mature and the education he receives from his father is considered more advanced than what the girls learn in their school, earning his PhD at an early age. (Note: Ken Kitazawa was made exclusively for the anime and is not seen in the original cartoon.)
• Mayor Mayer (“The Mayor of Townsville” in the original cartoon; v.b. Hideyuki Tanaka in Japanese, Alec Willows in English; Tom Kenny / Akihiko Ishizumi for the Japanese dub): The mayor of New Townsville (Tokyo City), whose design is distinctly different from his American counterpart, as he is of normal height and has no monocle or top hat. While less extreme in comparison to the Mayor of Townsville, the Mayor is very childish and has a very short attention span. He seems to worry quite a lot when the girls are fighting and wishes that they could cause a little less damage.
• Ms. (Sara) Bellum (v.b. Youko Kawanami in Japanese and Nicole Oliver in English; Jennifer Martin / Rei Takano in the Japanese dub): Mayor Mayer’s assistant, who has blonde hair compared to the original’s red hair. Usually, Sara Bellum covers her face with a tablet computer, which has lipstick imprinted on it. While the mayor is different from his original counterpart and is more competent, Sara Bellum in the anime still does most of the mayor’s work for him in a manner similar to the original Sara Bellum, and still appears to be the brains of the operation.
• Miss Keane (“Ms. Keane” in the original cartoon; v.b. Tomoko Akiya in Japanese, Tabitha St. Germain in English; Jennifer Hale / Junko Komiyama in the Japanese dub): The girls’ teacher who is very pretty and loved by her male students, although the female students don’t like her as much, especially Princess Morbucks. Miss Keane, like the original, is kind and incredibly patient.
• Mojo Jojo (v.b. Masashi Ebara in Japanese, Michael Dobson in English; Roger L. Jackson / Koji Ishii in the Japanese dub): An ordinary zoo monkey who was made fun of by people and decided to seek revenge on humanity after the ray from Chemical Z made him intelligent. He is physically more powerful than the original version of the character, able to fly and lay a dozen punches at one time. This version of Mojo frequently displays an immature attitude and makes the most childish flaws throughout his plans. While the original Mojo was portrayed as one of the most competent and genuinely threatening villains in the series, the anime version is more of a rather inept comic relief and is seen by the Powerpuff Girls Z as more of an annoying nuisance than a dangerous enemy.

There was a manga adaptation, which was illustrated by Shiho Komiyuno, was published in Shueisha’s Ribon magazine between July 2006 and June 2007 and it features original characters in the manga like a pair of androids called Alpha and Beta who are the main antagonists of the manga and a boy named Natsuki Urawa who Momoko has a heavy crush at her middle school. Unfortunately, the manga never left Japan. Unlike the original cartoon, the narrator (Tom Kenny / Kazuki Kosakai in the Japanese dub) is not present in the anime.

This website and this website (both in Japanese) are still alive with no updates. I used to have Max (then HBO Max) but not anymore despite Warner Bros. Discovery having its own Japanese branch. See you next Anime of the Childhood.