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INTEREST: New Powerpuff Girls Gets Japanese Dub Starring Aki Toyosaki, Sumire Uesaka, Tomo Muranaka

Kougeru wrote:

lol after hearing the rather awful new English voices maybe I'll watch this in Japanese. I can never get enough Aki Toyosaki

pikopika wrote:

I may actually watch the Japanese dub over the English.

Are you two serious? You do realize Powerpuff Girls isn't an anime, right?

Just pondering from a curious standpoint here, but I wonder what the Japanese see in the Powerpuff Girls. I'm sure the obvious joke answer someone will give me is "well they're big-eyed, cute little girls so it makes sense".

I hope you don't watch anime dubbed; you know anime isn't American, right?

Anyway, I too will probably watch this subbed since it's not like the American version has the original voice actors.

Hooray! Now even the weebs can watch The Powerpuff Grills and feel superior about it!

Although yes, to be fair, it is a shame what happened with the original voice actresses. Not that these new ones aren't talented (they sound fine), but it is odd that they weren't even approached for the reboot. I mean, they were in the 15th anniversary special.But then again, that also had McCracken's involvement, which this does not. But they got the rest of the cast to return, and that's what has me stumped.

Just pondering from a curious standpoint here, but I wonder what the Japanese see in the Powerpuff Girls. I'm sure the obvious joke answer someone will give me is "well they're big-eyed, cute little girls so it makes sense".

Regardless, I'll probably end up watching some of this new series if not just because of my unabashed love for PPG. I do think the animation of the new series actually seems a bit too good. There doesn't seem to be much of the impact or immediacy of the original's style present in this reboot. So more than anything else I'm assuming this version won't have much artistic merit behind it and will mostly be used as a surrogate for the opportunity to flood the stores with new Powerpuff Girls merchandise again. People who grew up with the show will think "hey, I remember these cute things" and buy a plushie or shirt at Hot Topic, and the cycle continues. If I recall correctly, merchandising for this series was absolutely huge in the early aughts.

I've watched quite a few American cartoons in Japanese and it might be 'weeb' to say this I think the voice acting is better. Two examples I can think of is Mysterious Zone: Gravity Falls and Devil Buster: Star Butterfly. I like how the kids actually sound like kids rather than middle-aged men and women.

Besides, Japan just defaults to having women voice act almost every little boy character in existence. They make boys sound like little girls, so I wouldn't call it an improvement.

Simply airing on in mainstream channel doesn't make a show popular, nor does paroding or being influenced by anime. Totally Spies aired on a mainstream channel in Japan and is influenced by anime but it wasn't popular there. Airing on a mainstream channel is a huge risk for American cartoons in Japan. Satellite channels run similar to how American channels are but mainstream Japanese channels don't. That leads to cases like Transformers Prime and My Little Pony only airring part of their series due to timeslot demand and cancellation. I'm not sure if the entireity of the Powerpuff Girls cartoon even aired in Japan. Since Western shows usually have long hiatuses during certain episodes no new episodes would mean they would have to pull the plug on it since they're not going to show reruns. Japan may have only gotten the first 52 episodes on a mainstream channel and had to wait until aired on Cartoon Network Japan to see the rest of the series

Personally, I prefer prepubescent boy characters "sounding like little girls" over boy characters sounding as if they're 35-year-old adults any day.