Is PPGZ any good?

Eh...good is hard to define. It has moments. The good parts: Any fan of the magical girl genre will enjoy the transformation scenes. The music is good, upbeat and catchy. The animation is bright and colorful. There's hardly a quiet moment, it's very fast paced. Because the girls are now teenagers, are friends instead of sisters, and Professor Utonium is not their dad, it does allow for character development differences and changes in relationships from the original. Blossom's personality is a little different, (but it's not bad), and the girls have weapons now (I love Buttercup's hammer.) Unlike the original, not a lot of people know they are superheroes, (using magical girl logic, they can't tell it's the girls after the transformation), so there's some fun with them trying to keep the secret from their families and trying to leave the school when there's a fight in the city

The bad parts: compared to the original, it is extremely childish. PPG I would say is good starting at 8ish, while PPGZ is good starting at 5 or younger. One of the more disappointing moments for me was when the Rowdyruff Boys Z appeared. In the original, their first confrontation is written and drawn as a serious fight scene that lasts a while, with the girls getting their fair shots in, but slowly loosing the fight. The Rowdyruff Boys were presented as serious challengers to the girls. But in PPGZ, it's all for laughs. They're used for gross out humor, mooning them, and flinging spit balls, ear wax, and smelly socks. They don't have powers. They can't fly and they don't have super strength. They just try to gross out the girls. It's written almost like 5 year olds think of girls and boys, with girls being clean and neat, and boys being into gross stuff. And then it gets odd because they are all 13 in this series, but they still use the fear of kissing and touching that was used in the original. I kind of get it there, because they are all kindergarten age, but I'm pretty sure teenagers have outgrown their cootie phase. I don't know why that works here

That's probably my biggest complaint with the show: it's all comedy, even the bad guys. There is not 1 serious moment until the last 2 episodes. PPG had joke villains too, like the Amoeba Boys, but they had semi-serious ones too, like Sedusa and Princess. In PPGZ, Princess does gain the ability to transform, but only at the sound of a cat screeching and then she doesn't remember what happened. It's a far cry from the Princess of PPG, who was so desperate to be a PPG, she boarded on homicidal ("If I can't be a PPG, nobody can!" kind of thing.) Even HIM in PPGZ is given a downgrade in tone

I saw it one time and have never felt the need to see it again. I enjoyed it once, I don't feel like I wasted my time, but I would not go back to it. There's not a lot of staying power to the series. It's something you enjoy in the moment and then move on.

It's pretty good. Some parts are different from the cartoon version.