The Rowdyruff Boys: Classic and Anime

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We are now on the next-to-last picture I am making where Powerpuff Girls characters are compared to their equivalents in the anime Demashita! Powerpuff Girls Z.

This time, we take on the Rowdyruff Boys.

ORIGINAL CARTOON

Mojo Jojo created the Rowdyruff Boys after figuring that it would take another trio of superpowered kids to defeat the Powerpuff Girls.

He made them by gathering snips, snails, and puppy dog's tails, which he did by cutting off an inmate's armpit hair, ordering escargot from the prison cafeteria, and yanking off the tail of the Talking Dog, who was working as a prison guard for some reason.

For Chemical X, he simply shoved the ingredients into the toilet. The male equivalent of Blossom was named Brick, Boomer was the counterpart for Bubbles, and the Rowdyruff equivalent of Buttercup was named Butch.

After they were created, Mojo had them break him out of jail and he tried to get them to kill the Powerpuff Girls, but the girls managed to destroy their evil male twins by kissing them.

They remained destroyed until Him resurrected them in a later episode, this time making them immune to kissing and actually liking it, to boot. This time, the Powerpuff Girls defeated them by embarrassing them.

ANIME

One major reason why the anime version was divisive is that there were a lot of changes from the source material.

For starters, the anime versions of the girls were not a trio of artificially-created five-year-olds, but were now three unrelated 13-year-old girls who originated as normal human beings before they gained their powers.

Professor Utonium and his son Ken experimented on Chemical X and ended up turning it into a new substance called Chemical Z. Ken then fired Chemical Z at an iceberg to try and fix Tokyo City's weather problem, creating a burst of white and black Chemical Z rays that spread throughout the city.

Momoko, Miyako, and Kaoru were exposed to three of the white Z rays, which turned them into the Powerpuff Girls. The only power they shared with their American counterparts was flight, with the more conventional powers replaced by weapons that they gained because of the circumstances through which the white Z rays hit them.

Momoko, aka Hyper Blossom, gained a yo-yo because she protected a kid playing with a yo-yo from the Z ray that struck her. Miyako, who became Rolling Bubbles, shielded a little girl playing with bubbles, so she has a giant bubble wand that can create multipurpose bubbles. Kaoru, also known as Powered Buttercup, gained a giant mallet because the kid she protected from the white Z ray was playing with a toy hammer.

The black Z rays struck various people, animals, plants, and inanimate objects, creating the Powerpuff Girls' enemies as well as several one-shot antagonists.

The Rowdyruff Boys, however, had an origin closer to their American incarnations.

Like the original cartoon, the Rowdyruff Boys were male clones of the Powerpuff Girls created by Mojo Jojo, but the circumstances under which they were created were very different (one being that in the anime, the villains never seem to go to jail, so Mojo was free when he created them).

Mojo once sneaked into Professor Utonium's lab in an attempt to steal some Chemical Z that he could use to create a monster to fight Powerpuff Z. Along the way, he found Momoko's heart-shaped drinking straw, Miyako's used cotton swab, and Kaoru's sweaty gym sock.

Mojo took the opportunity to steal the girls' belongings so that he could use their DNA as well as his own body hair to make his monster more powerful. The end result, however, was a trio of obnoxious brats who were very disrespectful to their creator.

Brick used Blossom's straw to shoot spitballs, Boomer would use Bubbles' cotton swab to fling his ear wax at opponents, and Butch would use his own sweaty gym socks as projectiles since he was created from Buttercup's sock.

Now there is only one character left to compare to his anime counterpart: Him!

Powerpuff Girls (c) Cartoon Network