Produced by: Aaron Horvath, Michael Jelenic, Peter Rida Michail
Written by: Emily Brundige
Directed by: Peter Rida Michail
Two of the most hated Cartoon Network shows join forces…?
There was this awesome 2003 anime-esque cartoon based on the Teen Titans from the 80’s. It was really popular, so popular that when new shorts were going to be made for the DC Nation block, people were ecstatic. Sure, they were more comedic, but if they were popular, they might revive the Teen Titans as a new TV show!
Good news, they did! Bad news, everything else. The show was a random flash-animated comedy show in the vein of Johnny Test, with the superheroes not being involved with story arcs, and acting nothing like they did in the show they loved. Much like Johnny Test, Cartoon Network loves to air it all the time. I guess it isn’t as bad as Johnny Test, but tell that to the massive amount of haters the show has gotten.
I should point out that Teen Titans Go has been very successful for Cartoon Network, much like the original Powerpuff Girls, so it’s not like this crossover came out of nowhere. Not to say this will help the PPG 2016’s rotten reputation, either.
The episode starts with the narrator! Sure, he doesn’t say “the City of Townsville“, but it’s unmistakably the Narrator actually playing a role in this episode. He talks a lot in this episode, too, a far cry from his usual absence in the PPG 2016.
We see Mojo Jojo doing what I should say is his usual shtick, but he isn’t in drag or doing anything girly. He says “I, Mojo Jojo” a lot and talks really fast. This is closer to his usual shtick in the original. This is going to be a theme here. The Powerpuff Girls fly towards Mojo Jojo for the also-not-so-usual-in-the-PPG-2016 beatdown, but he sprays his Powerpuff Repellent on them, a spray that stops the Powerpuff Girls in their tracks.
While the Powerpuffs are dealing with that, Mojo Jojo runs into a dimension transporter, to what he calls..
Mojo Jojo: …a universe where superheroes do not fight villains.
Oh, speak for yourself, PPG 2016. The good times end when we go to Jump City, home of the Teen Titans, and the first Teen Titans we see are Cyborg and Beast Boy…
…farting out the alphabet. Classy. Mojo Jojo teleports in and Cyborg and Beast Boy gasps in wonder at the magical monkey. Mojo asks if Cyborg and Beast Boy are superheroes, and they get even more excited at the idea of a magical talking monkey. It’s no wonder one of the nicknames for these guys are the “Toddler Titans“.
Mojo Jojo, with the power of being a magical talking monkey, convinces Cyborg and Beast Boy, seriously, they do the same thing so much that they might as well be one character, to make a robot monkey army. Hey, kind of like the Powerpuff Girls movie!
After CyBeast leaves with Mojo, the Powerpuff Girls teleport in to see Robin, Raven, and Starfire. One of the running jokes throughout the episode, and a not so bad one, is that Robin can hear the Narrator. This actually becomes a plot point later on in the episode!
Aside from the Narrator being interpreted as Robin having voices in his head, the Titans’ first reaction is to notice how cute and adorable the Powerpuff Girls are. This is the biggest problem with the episode; while CyBeast is just being CyBeast, the other Titans have been relegated to just being jerks.
I do find it curious to see Raven making fun of Bubbles in this scene. For the few people who don’t know this, Raven’s voice actor is Tara Strong, who was the original voice of Bubbles. She outright said that she felt stabbed in the heart when she wasn’t going to voice Bubbles in the reboot. Pretty much nothing is made of this outside of this scene, which is probably for the better.
Meanwhile, CyBeast and Mojo Jojo prepare the monkey army. This comes complete with a random song number, which, by the way, is still far better than any of the random song numbers in PPG 2016. Even if it only has two words repeated over and over again, I’d still take that over the beatbox grandma solo. With CyBeast’s help, he completes the monkey army and a new lair in the zoo.
Meanwhile, the Powerpuff Girls question the Titans’ abilities to fight crime. The Teen Titans see this as a challenge. Each of the three remaining Titans challenge the Powerpuff Girls in their own way. There was a terrible episode of TTG where the male Titans did this exact thing to the female Titans, only to have the male Titans get destroyed in every competition. Pretty much the same thing happens here.
The other Titans find a note saying “Help! Monkey!“ But, why would they want to be saved from a magic monkey they’re actively helping out? Unless this is their way of saying, “we’re going to help out this magic monkey“, which wouldn’t be beyond this show.
Robin uses his investigative skills to find out where CyBeast went by using CSI techniques on the paper. To myself, I thought “Yeah, it’s going to be written on the paper.“ Sure enough, Blossom just picks up the paper and sees “P.S. We’re at the zoo“ at the bottom of it. Blossom wins!
But, uh oh, the zoo is guarded by gorillas!
Bubbles: I’m going to kill them with kindness!
They can have the Powerpuff Girls say “kill“? What’s next?
Bubbles: I’m going to tear their spinal cords out and *dolphin* kill those skull-*dolphin* *dolphin*…with love!
Starfire: …
Nah, that doesn’t happen. They do, however, get into an argument over who should go first, which leads to Starfire shooting her eye lasers. Bubbles picks up Starfire and aims her at the gorillas, burning them into a crisp. Bubbles wins…even though it was Starfire’s anger that lasered them to ashes. Whatever.
After that, the zoo is guarded by laser robots! Buttercup flies in to destroy them one by one, while Raven just watches. In her words, she realized she doesn’t care. Buttercup wins! The Titans shrug it off by still being jerks to the Puffs. I can understand Robin, and I could understand Raven considering her voice actor, but Starfire? Maybe she felt she should have got the victory, too.
CyBeast completed Mojo’s monkey army, but it turns out to be a monkey party army more interested in partying than taking over the world. Angered, Mojo locks up Cyborg and Beast Boy while devising another trap: a giant dispenser of the aforementioned Powerpuff Repellent to trap the girls again. Because it worked so well the first time!
Robin hears that this is a trap from the Narrator talking about it, and plans accordingly. Seemingly, the Powerpuff Girls fly right into the trap, getting covered in the repellent. How do the Teen Titans and Puffs get out of this one?
The people in the smoke were actually the three Titans dressed up as the Powerpuff Girls. So yeah, Narrator, you can thank the Teen Titans. Avoiding the repellent, the Powerpuff Girls give Mojo Jojo the beat down we would usually see in the original. That is, the original Powerpuff Girls from 1998. The Teen Titans congratulate them, and the Powerpuff Girls say that the Titans deserve credit too, which leads to more gloating from the Titans. Yup, good ol Teen Titans Go at its’ “finest”. At least it ends with the Narrator, something the reboot often fails to do…
Narrator: And so the day is saved…no thanks to the Teen Titans! What’s wrong with those guys?!
Even I’m a little upset on how the Teen Titans were put on the whipping board throughout the whole episode. Stop hitting yourself, Teen Titans Go, at least you actually have a purpose besides making Cartoon Network money.
I didn’t think I was going to like this because I thought this was going to be a crossover between Teen Titans Go and Powerpuff Girls 2016. While I can definitely see the Teen Titans Go, I don’t see the Powerpuff Girls 2016. Blossom isn’t the overly nerdy character gushing over pop quizzes, Bubbles isn’t the meme queen who makes “no me gusta” jokes, and Buttercup isn’t that much of the rascally little green princess we have come to know and hate!
Part of this might be due to how early it came out. The Powerpuff Girls 2016 have only been airing for just over two months, or about a fourth of the time it takes to make a new episode of Adventure Time. Teen Titans Go probably takes less time, considering it’s Flash animated, but it’s likely they couldn’t see any PPG 2016 because it wasn’t finished, so they had to base the Powerpuff Girls on episodes that were. As in, the original. At least, that’s my theory.
No matter what theory, this episode wasn’t satisfying, though not in the way I thought it would be. A lot of it felt like a joke against the Teen Titans, which, while not undeserved, feels more like they’re putting down one show to make another show look good. If I can count my blessings, at least it wasn’t an episode of the Powerpuff Girls 2016.
Remarks:
- The trailer lied: Unlike every other episode of Teen Titans Go, and despite the promos saying otherwise, this episode is rated TV-Y7-FV. Considering this episode actually delivers on that fantasy violence, it’s just more proof that the reboot has no excuse being as non-violent as it is.
- Credits trivia: The producers and director are TTG regulars, but the writer was only involved with the PPG 2016. That could explain all of the jokes at the Teen Titans Go’s expense, though the Titans being considered the worst is a running joke with TTG recently. Fun fact, Chris Battle, one of the people who worked on TTG, actually worked on the original Powerpuff Girls. Maybe that’s why the action felt so good compared to PPG 2016.
- Random question: Shouldn’t a repellent make the Powerpuff Girls fly away from it, not make them stand still? They could have called it Powerpuff Poison. It’s alliterative!
Final Verdict:
Remember that Cartoon Network promo where the Powerpuff Girls saved Aquaman and Wonder Woman from the Legion of Doom? If not, Youtube search “Powerpuff Girls Superfriends”. That will give more entertainment than this will.
Next, the return of that lovable Donny character everyone loves!
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Fly! Pow! Bye! 