Thanks to the K-pop group NewJeans, the Powerpuff Girls have never looked better.
The globally successful and groundbreaking girl group released a music video titled “New Jeans”. In it, the members of the group transform into animated character versions of themselves intended to look like the Powerpuff Girls. As the video progresses, we see the group of girls we envision as the Powerpuff Girls morph from 2D animated characters into pixelated characters fit for a video game. The video is an absolute delight as it blends simple pop sound with an aesthetic that celebrates the colorful joy of ’90s animation and the early console era of video games.
NewJeans consists of five girls: Minji, Hanni, Danielle, Haerin and Hyein. Founded by ADOR, Hybe’s label, NewJeans debuted in July 2022 with the single “Attention.” Since their debut, the group has only released a limited number of releases — NewJeans have released a single EP and a handful of tracks — but that hasn’t halted their rise to become one of the most well-known K-pop groups in the world. According to Billboard
Now the fans are eagerly awaiting the release of their second EP. Stand up. On June 18, the group a 17-second teaser of a title from the EP and Powerpuff Girl’s visual and audio shorts drew hundreds of thousands of fans to post about it online. A fan has a filter called “powerpuff me” where fans could create their Powerpuff Girl personas and it was used over 628 hundred thousand times at the time of publication.
The video aligns with larger trends showing the resurgence of Y2K media and fashion. The music video conveys a cozy “hanging out with the girls” vibe and combines it with a variety of nostalgic digital aesthetics. Over the course of a few minutes, we see the girls as cartoon characters and then take on video game-inspired forms like nostalgic, pixelated characters and edgy, igamesnewsal 3D graphics reminiscent of early PlayStation games.
The music video leaves me with just one important question: When are we going to get a NewJeans video game?
