YMMV / Powerpuff Girls Z

• Americans Hate Tingle: The show does have an active fanbase in many countries, but its American reception has always been rocky, with many American viewers looking down on it as either a merely inferior version of the beloved original show or a downright awful Quirky Work that should have never been produced. It doesn't help that the English dub has never been shown on American television. That said, its reception in America has softened over time in light of the 2016 reboot.
• Awesome Music: Regardless of what you think of the show itself, you can't deny it has some fantastic music. The openings and endings are underscored by extremely solid J-pop and J-rock tunes, and the group transformation theme is appropriately energetic and dynamic.
• Broken Base:
  • Fans of the original 1998 show either enjoy this take on The Powerpuff Girls for the creative ways it plays with the source material or despise it for changing so much of what they believe made the series great.
  • In the same way, is Z better or worse than the similarly controversial 2016 reboot?
  • Is the English dub good or bad? Should it be redubbed, and if so, with a new cast or the original Powerpuff cast? Was it a good idea for the dub to make the girls civilian names the same as their hero ones?
• Fanfic Fuel: What would concepts from the original series look like here? Things like a version of Bunny are common, but less so are versions of other main series villains like Dick Hardly and Femme Fatale. On the flip side, one could also explore what the anime-exclusive villains would be like in the original show.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: In Latin America, the anime was shown fully (although based on the English dub) there on Cartoon Network. At a time where no anime other than Pokémon and Dragon Ball were being aired on the channel (as shown in these adverts), it gained a sizeable fanbase. At the peak of the show's popularity, it even won against the original series on a popularity contest.
• Growing the Beard: For the first five episodes, Mojo Jojo was the show's main villain, but he wasn't really that much of a threat. Then episode six introduced Fuzzy Lumpkins, the first villain to actually give the girls a hard time; and in turn Himeko/Princess Morbucks, whose take on the original character was very well-received. From then on, more villains began to appear, and the show got gradually better overall.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • First, Craig McCracken, creator of the original series, got married to Lauren Faust. Then, we mentioned on the PPG 1998 YMMV page that Bubbles loves playing with unicorns. And now, since none of the original voice actors returned for the anime, the English dub was provided in Vancouver by The Ocean Group! The connection between everything My Little Pony and everything Powerpuff is more common than ever.
  • The Grand Finale featured a scene where the Powerpuff Girls imagined still being super heroines while elderly while facing the decision of sacrificing their powers to defeat HIM. Years later, the 2016 Powerpuff Girls reboot had an episode called "The Wrinklegruff Gals", where the girls became elderly as the result of consuming too much of Professor Utonium's aging serum, which they asked him to make in the hopes that being older would earn them respect from the other kids at school.
• Jerkass Woobie: Himeko Shirogane/Princess Morbucks, due to her Freudian Excuse (combined together with her Moe-ness.)
• Narm Charm: The show's unapologetic conversion of the Powerpuff Girls into a Japanese Magical Girl Cliché Storm was the reason why many people hated it, but it is also the reason why many other people ended up liking it.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Fans of the original tend to despise this anime for the many changes it makes from the original cartoon, such as making the girls unrelated, the Lighter and Softer tone, the Genre Shift to a Magical Girl show instead of it being a Superhero show, several characters becoming altered from their original selves (such as Morbucks being less evil and Mojo Jojo undergoing Badass Decay) and plenty more. That said, fans have begun to warm up to it over time.
• Vindicated by History: To say this show was divisive when it was first aired would be an understatement, but as time went on, more fans have begun to see it in a more positive light, praising the magical girl take on the franchise as a fun, creative experiment. Even those who still dislike it tend to view it in a better light than the 2016 reboot, arguing that the liberties taken by the anime allow it to more easily stand on its own as a series, while the reboot's closeness to the source material make any perceived faults more glaring.
• Woolseyism: For the international release (dubbed in English); Peach's name was changed to Poochie (not surprisingly), the girls' secret identity and actual names are the same, and Mojo Jojo speaks in the same manner as his Western counterpart (with no added verbal tic, however).

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