It has begun.

Yesterday, the long-awaited and much talked about reboot of The Powerpuff Girls made its’ nationwide debut on Cartoon Network (though clips and snippets of the show have been leaked across various places on the net prior to that). Let’s examine what’s changed in Townsville since the Girls’ original series ended in 2005.The Girls sport slightly modified designs; Bubbles now sports barrettes in her hair, Buttercup now has a cowlick and Blossom has a more rounded bow.

• The titular heroines have new voice actresses: Amanda Leighton voices Blossom, Kristen Li voices Bubbles and Natalie Palamides voices Buttercup.
• The Girls are a little older this time around, attending elementary school rather than kindergarten.
• The series sports a new opening title sequence and a new theme song, “Who’s Got the Power?”, performed by Tacocat.
• And of course, as is the natural order of things, 90’s kids who grew up with the original PPG series are losing their collective shit over this reboot.

Predictably, the Retro-Snobs and 90’s brats are relentlessly trashing this new version of PPG, shouting the rallying cry of the stupid and falsely entitled:

“CHILDHOOD RUINED!”

So your childhood’s ruined now, eh? How, exactly? How has this one new iteration of a children’s cartoon show that wasn’t made for you and that you’re not required by law to even look at ruined your childhood? ‘Splain this to me. The producers of this show didn’t travel back in time to mess with you when you were a kid, nor has Cartoon Network locked away any and all copies of the original PPG into their vaults vowing to never release them and are forcing us all to accept this new iteration as the One True Canon, so precisely how has your childhood been ruined, Precious?

The following are actual quotes of reactions to the PPG reboot:

“Sorry, but it turns out to be a really cringey cartoon with terrible jokes on the same level as Teen Titans Go!”

Were we watching the same cartoon? Because I’ve seen both shows and I didn’t get a TTGO! vibe from this at all. This new PPG series does have something in common with TTGO!, though; the fact that the new series tends to cloud fans’ memories of the original. It amazes me how people seem to remember the original Powerpuff Girls as being this serious action cartoon when it was never that. News flash: PPG has ALWAYS been a comedy! So how is the reboot insulting the franchise by having comedy in it? The PPG reboot didn’t remind me of TTGO! We’ll just have to agree to disagree on that one.

“I’d enjoy this new show more if it had the original theme song and the original voice actors.”

TRANSLATION: It’s not a carbon copy of the original series, so I hate it!

In regards to the intro, PPG’s producers most likely gave the reboot a new theme song and intro so that kids would know that these are new episodes. If CN had just recycled the original opening title sequence, kids would likely have seen it, thought “Geez! These are just the same old reruns that I could see anytime on Boomerang!” and switch it off. In regards to the new voice actors:

People SERIOUSLY need to stop having puppies over the fact that the original voice actresses have been replaced for this show. For whatever reason, it happened, and guess what: the planet hasn’t spun off its’ axis as a result. The Powerpuff Girls are voiced by different actresses now, deal with it, nerds. For anyone who’s still butt-raged about the new PPG voice actors, I suggest you read this.

And then there’s this gem from a YouTube commentor in response to the new theme song:

“I feel like killing myself sometimes.”

Seriously, dude? After reading this sentence, I wanted badly to drop kick this loser to someplace with some actual pain and suffering. If the theme song to a kids’ cartoon show is enough for you to contemplate suicide, I’m surprised that you haven’t offed yourself a long time ago. If you’re that resistant to change, I’m guessing that people had to talk you down off of a roof when Google changed it’s font.

People are also wanking on the show because the producers aren’t bringing back all of the original villains! (Blasphemers!) Several of the episodes deviate from the old show’s formula! (Why, God, Why?) The Girls use cellphones! (GASP!) And…horror of horrors…

In one episode they were shown to be fans of a BOY BAND!!!

Allow me to address each of these heinous crimes individually:

1. Regarding the story structure: I don’t mind this because the standard “The City of Townsville/And the day is saved!” formula was, quite frankly, getting a little old. Nothing wrong with a little variety here and there.
2. Regarding the cellphones: it actually makes sense, given that the Girls are the protectors of Townsville, as such, they can be called into action from anywhere at anytime, so it’s only logical for each of them to have a mobile device as opposed to just one single land-based hotline. Besides, it’s really not that unusual, since kids play with tablets. Lots of kids these days own a portable electronic device of some kind. The reason why you never saw anyone using a hand held mobile device in the 1990s show was because hand helds weren’t a thing back then. Yeah, there were cell phones, but they hadn’t progressed to the point that they are now.
3. Regarding the boy band episode: Yeah! How dare those writers depict these young girls doing things that plenty of young girls do! The nerve! Let’s just tar and feather the sods!

The thing that these 90’s brats and nostalgia-tards need to keep in mind is that this reboot, like everything currently airing on Cartoon Network, is for THIS generation, not THEIRS. You had your time to be coddled by CN; right now the channel’s target demographic is people who are kids now, not people who were kids 20 years ago. Franchises like Scooby-Doo and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles get rebooted every few years, this is no different. And whenever a project gets rebooted for a new generation, there are going to be some changes. Did anyone honestly think that PPG was going to come back after an 11-year absence without the original creator and there’d be absolutely NO changes made to it? The irony to all this so delicious that it must be fattening. Nostalgia-tards beg networks like CN to reboot something they grew up watching, they do, but since it’s not a 100% rehash of the original, these same wankers brand it a failure, accuse it of raping their youths and declare it not worth watching.

If this new series isn’t to your liking, simply DON’T WATCH IT. If you prefer the original PPG series, WATCH THE ORIGINAL SERIES. Really, CN doesn’t care what you do, since this series wasn’t made for you anyway. Getting back to Teen Titans GO! for a second, I know that TTGO! has now become adults’ go-to reference whenever anything on CN pops up that they don’t like, and I’m no TTGO! fan either, but there’s something these folks are forgetting: the reason that TTGO! stays on the air is because, wait for it….KIDS LIKE IT. I know that’s a really hard concept for some 90’s brats to grasp, but you guys aren’t kids. In the end, it’ll only matter if kids take to this new PPG. If the show does badly with them, then and only then will the bad, bad reboot go away.

Personally, what I’ve seen of this show so far hasn’t rocked my world, but I didn’t hate it either. I could see myself watching this for a half-hour (or quarter-hour) and not complaining about it, but at the same time I understand that this series wasn’t made for me; it’s just like whenever 90’s kids hear me say that I wasn’t a fan of Hey, Arnold!: the show didn’t appeal to me personally, but I was already an adult in the 90’s, so I was too old for it. Plus, I generally prefer zanier cartoons, so a grounded show like Hey, Arnold! was never going to do anything for me anyway. FTR, I was a Tiny Toons, Animaniacs, DuckTales, Darkwing Duck and Rocko’s Modern Life guy.

My advice: forget that it’s new. Forget that it’s a reboot. Try to detach yourself from your precious memories of the original. Just watch the show for yourself, judge it on its’ own merits and draw your own conclusion. I give the new PPG a B-. Nothing mind-blowing, but still pretty good in it’s own right and by no means a blasphemy on the original, which, lest we forget, wasn’t always that good, especially the post-movie episodes.

The changes don’t bother me, and I’m personally digging the new theme. Crank it up, man!