YMMV / Tokyo Mew Mew

• Americans Hate Tingle: Aoyama Masaya used to be the poster boy for Die for Our Ship (until New boosted his popularity by a lot), but he gets none of that in Japan.
• Audience-Alienating Era: Once Reiko Yoshida left the project, Mia Ikumi tried to write a sequel incorporating the retcons made in the TV show and replacing Ichigo with a new character named Berry. Ichigo herself lost her powers except as a living accessory to the new heroine, her origins and family life were completely ignored in favor of sending her to Europe, and she became a washed-up hero. It's no surprise Tokyo Mew Mew a la Mode has a high degree of Fanon Discontinuity amongst fans who also really dislike Berry. Berry herself has been Mis-blamed, though; the real blame lies in the publishers, who, among other things, restricted the series to just two volumes when commissioning the sequel.
• Complete Monster: The anime version of Deep Blue forsakes the good intentions of his manga counterpart and becomes a cold, self-concerned sociopath. The leader of the aliens who come to reclaim Earth, Deep Blue creates a human alias named Masaya to stay hidden and oversees his flunkies' attacks. In the climax of the series, Deep Blue overtakes Masaya, and the very first thing he does upon awakening is stoically torture his former identity's Love Interest, Ichigo, with electrical energy, unleashing a burst of energy that obliterates the nearby city. Deep Blue kills anybody who gets in his way, not excepting his own loyal servants, and is interested solely in wiping out all humanity so that he can have Earth to himself. Deep Blue's callous nature ends up turning even his own servants against him, and he shows himself to be thoroughly exempt of any humanizing traits that flesh out the other villains of the show.
• Crack Pairing: Masaya/Berii had a small following just for being widely hated characters.
• Die for Our Ship:
  • Aoyama received a lot of hate from western fans solely for the fact that he's Ichigo's eventual canon Love Interest, though it's quieted down since New. As mentioned in Fan-Preferred Couple, most would rather see Ichigo end up with Shirogane or Quiche.
  • While it's not as bad as all the Masaya hate, some Ichigo/Ryou fans bash Retasu for having a crush on Ryou, as seen in some YouTube comments. Never mind that Ryou doesn't seem to be aware of her crush and that she is way too shy to tell him anyway.
• Draco in Leather Pants:
  • Quiche. Many fans seemed to forget that his "OMG TWU WUB" for Ichigo is Stalker with a Crush played dead straight, complete with "I'll kill you if I can't have you" and "I'll kill him just because you like him better than me" moments.
  • Even if Deep Blue is a Complete Monster, fans have even bought him leather pants as well. It may have to do with the manga version apparently intending to help the aliens.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Masaya/Ichigo fans are a small minority, despite that being the Official Couple. Pairing Ichigo with Ryou or Quiche are much more popular.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans refuse to acknowledge the existence of the sequel series, A la Mode.
• Foe Yay Shipping:
  • Pai/Retasu is semi-canon if you squint.
  • While not as common, there are people who ship Ichigo/Deep Blue.
  • Not to mention Zakuro/Pai. It's still overshadowed by Pai/Retasu, though.
• Friendly Fandoms: Received some fandom overlap with Turning Red due to both main protagonists having the ability to sprout the ears and tails of their respective animals, being able to transform into said animal (albeit in reverse and moreso unwittingly in Ichigo's case) and being set during the early 2000s. In addition, fans of both works have noted that Mei would immensely relate to Ichigo regarding her initial situation of keeping their animal sides a secret from their loved ones and Turning Red premiered in the same year as the reboot series, Tokyo Mew Mew New.
• Gateway Series: For many in the mid-2000s, this was both their gateway into Magical Girl works, and perhaps into anime as a whole.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The series is popular in Serbia in spite of the dub's low quality.
  • It was also huge in Korea, where it was called Berry Berry Mew Mew. They got the whole series on VHS and many pieces of exclusive merchandise.
• Harsher in Hindsight: When the manga was written, it's stated there were 2,500 species that were endangered or threatened with extinction. Twenty years later, this is uncomfortably updated with the current stats and the reasons why.
• Les Yay:
  • Anime-only, Ichigo turns into a cat a few times, and with nary a bat of an eye, she kissed a few female animals (even chased a female dog down an alleyway at one point) to turn back to normal.
  • When Minto and Ichigo first meet, the latter is suspiciously in awe of the former and their interactions can easily be read as Belligerent Sexual Tension. Throughout the series they continue to have a lot of "moments."
  • One scene from the anime involved the girls all imaging their ideal guy, with Mint's being a generic male ballet dancer. The 4Kids dub of all things had him replaced with an image of Zakuro.
• Macekre: 4Kids changed the setting from Japan to America, despite it being probably the most Japanese show they've ever dealt with. It was initially touted by 4Kids as "Hollywood Mew Mew" (which eventually became an episode name). CEO Al Kahn is quoted in a press release for this as having said "By the time we localize the programs, kids won't even know they're from Japan any more." Case in point, they erased many Japanese texts and either replaced them with English words or left them entirely blank. They went far as to make other nonsensical changes to mundane things like cell phone screensavers and computers. They even made episode 12 in Japan into episode 1 in America and threw it straight into Canon Discontinuity, not to mention the ending of that episode in the dub.
• Never Live It Down: The manga's infamous scene where Aoyama puts a collar on Ichigo and calls her "his cat" caused him to go down in history with manga readers as a possessive Yandere who treats Ichigo like Property of Love, which isn't helped by the fact the scene right before it has him yelling at her for going missing. In the manga's actual context, the "cat" metaphors are obviously being Played for Laughs, and outside a few Crazy Jealous Guy moments Aoyama actually values Ichigo very deeply and is saying this as a way to express that he's afraid of losing her.
  • The aforementioned collar scene was replaced with a heavily toned-down Pinky Swear in the original anime, and Aoyama himself was given an Adaptation Personality Change that went into much less detail on his feelings regarding Ichigo, so when Tokyo Mew Mew New carried over the original manga version of the scene mostly as-is, viewers only familiar with the original anime, as well as people getting into the series for the first time with New, were met with a shock (in fact, even staff members from the first anime were shocked to hear that the new anime would be keeping the scene). The version in New adds more dialogue from Aoyama where he apologizes for yelling at her and clarifies that it was Anger Born of Worry, and it adds some cute moments with the cat that lost it to make it seem less creepy, but some people still read him as a yandere.
• Nightmare Fuel: Quiche’s feelings for Ichigo take a disturbing turn in the later part of the anime. While he was mostly playful and flirty with her early on, he becomes dangerously possessive of her to the point where he threatens to kill her because she still loves her boyfriend. During one of these attempts, he wears an insane expression while declaring Ichigo to be his.
• Old Guard Versus New Blood: Mostly when it comes to shipping; the millennial fans who grew up with the original tend to ship Kishigo (Quiche/Ichigo) more, but while in the original's day you'd have a hard time finding a single soul who shipped canon, Gen Z fans who came on during New tend to ship Ichisaya (or Masaichi as it was known in the past). This can be attributed both to New giving Aoyama more character development and to Stalking is Love being a less popular trope than it was in the 00s.
• Questionable Casting: Masaya (a.k.a. Mark)'s deep, middle-aged-sounding voice in the 4Kids dub, especially since in the original Japanese version he was voiced by a woman.
• Refrain from Assuming: The 4Kids songs. This has been somewhat fixed since the iTunes release of the soundtrack. For instance, "Dance Another Day" is not "Remember When".
• Replacement Scrappy: Berry Shirayuki, the new girl as the star of A la mode, is hated by audiences for taking the spotlight from all the other established cast. The fan reaction to her is parodied with Dr. Alphys in Undertale and Mew Mew Kissy Cutie 2, where the mere thought of not-Berry results in an angry, rambling wall of text about how she's "neither kissy nor cutie".
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Berii comes off a lot better in Re-Turn, where the plot is no longer shilling her and Ichigo returns to main character status. Her character was already Vindicated by History for newer fans, but older ones came back onto the Berii train with this, if tentatively.
• Ron the Death Eater: Masaya. Sure, he may be a Stepford Smiler because he hates all of humanity, at least prior to meeting Ichigo, but he wasn't born evil like he's portrayed in a lot of fanworks that ship Ichigo with someone else. (Although most people who hate him seem to not be aware of—or deliberately ignore—that spoilered part, which happens after the American dub ended, and instead demonize him just for being "too perfect.")
• Sequelitis: To say that A la Mode is not as well received as the original series is an understatement. With new characters that are widely considered unlikeable, old characters considered derailed, and a plot widely considered lazily written, many fans don't even acknowledge its existence.
• So Okay, It's Average: The small portion of the fandom who don't outright despise A la Mode generally see it as this, forgiving some of the problems that were the result of Executive Meddling. The general consensus among this group of fans is that if A la Mode was longer, it would have had more of an opportunity to properly explore the story and both new and returning characters.
  • The 4Kids dub of the original series is also regarded as this by those who don't view it as an outright bastardization of the series; definitely inferior to the original, but not as bad as the vocal detractors would have you believe, either.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: The updated character designs for Retasu (more specifically, the anime version) and Bu-ling have a number of detractors, as it makes them come off as generic, with Bu-ling now basically wearing the same type of outfit as Minto, while adding a miniskirt to Retasu's attire takes a lot away from what made her original outfit so unique.
• Toy Ship: Bu-ling and Tart, which actually becomes canon.
• Values Dissonance:
  • One possible reason why Quiche is the fan-preferred pairing for Ichigo in the West is that his Establishing Character Moment, stealing Ichigo's Sacred First Kiss, is far less shocking to Westerners than it is to the Japanese. This is arguably not so much the case in a post-Me Too era, where people now tend to be more sensitive to consent and the pitfalls of romanticizing predatory behaviour.
  • Also, Bu-ling is seen as silly and fun in the West, and that's true to an extent in Japan too, but she also comes off as somewhat of an Ethnic Scrappy. This is lost in translation because the stereotypes she plays into (large family, loud, does ridiculous things, left alone by her lone parent, etc.) are the exact opposite of the stereotypes Chinese people have to deal with across the ocean (only child, The Stoic, suffering under an Education Mama).
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Most people who have watch Tokyo Mew Mew for the first time or never seen it before thought that Kisshu and Taruto were girls due to their pigtails and midriff-exposing outfits while having really long eyelashes. Tart suffers the most due to the fact that he's been voiced by women in most of the international (Italian, Mandarin, Greek etc) dubs. Weirdly enough, viewers found it odd that Tart would be voiced by grown men or teenage voice actors despite being a prepubescent boy and Pie who's the most masculine of the group to be voiced by a woman in the dubs from international countries.
• Vindicated by History: Although Berry Shirayuki's popularity was as in the ground as the rest of A la mode when it was published, reception to her has warmed in recent years, particularly in the Tumblr fandom.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: Quiche having a stalker crush on Ichigo and attempts to kidnap/ stealing a Sacred First Kiss without her consent? Check. Blood, Death and characters strangling each other? Check. Religious references, nudity in Transformation Sequence? Check.

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