I've made no secret of the fact that I grew up with Tokyo Mew Mew and have a very sentimental relationship with it. So when the news dropped that a new TMM anime was going to be made, I was hyped as hell. Granted, I had a feeling that due to the constraints set by the modern anime industry, it would probably be hit with a lot of issues that would lead it to be inevitably compared to the 2003 anime. It didn't help that during production, the original mangaka, Mia Ikumi, tragically passed away from a subarachnoid hemorrhage in March. But the fact that TMM was coming back into the limelight at all made fans very happy, me included, so I still tried to be optimistic about this new anime, especially in light of Ikumi-sensei's passing. Plus, with the fact that a second season of this is due to come out in April 2023, I didn't want to forget some details about it down the line, so I figure I might as well speak my thoughts about it now. Furthermore, since I own and read the manga, I figure it'd be interesting to compare this new series to both the manga and the 2002 anime and analyze the changes the three of them made.

As far as its premise goes, TMM New is still the same as the manga and the 2002 anime: Ichigo Momomiya is a girl who really, really wants to get with the most popular guy in school, Masaya Aoyama. But just as she manages to ask him out, a mysterious light envelops her and four other girls, imbuing them with the power of endangered animals, allowing them to change into magical superheroes. They are recruited by two men, Ryou Shirogane and Keiichiro Akasaka, as part of a movement to fight mysterious aliens whose actions are threatening the planet and all life itself. It's up to the Mew Mews to purify the monsters known as Chimera Anima and put a stop to the aliens' machinations. Being a teenage girl, Ichigo isn't too happy about this, as she'd much rather be going on dates with Aoyama, but she's got bigger problems on her hands now.

Before I go into stuff like the animation and the music, I'd like to highlight some changes that New makes compared to the manga and 2002 anime. For one, the character of Mint is shown to already have become a Mew Mew long before the other four girls have, something that doesn't exist in the original manga or anime, where she joins the Mew Mews not long after Ichigo does. Plus, her hair always stays wavy and let down compared to her original design, which had her hair tightly tied into dango buns. One of Ichigo's friends, Moe, also goes through a design change: In the 2003 anime she had short poofy hair that reached down to her chin, whereas the 2022 anime makes it much longer, having it reach down to her back and having it be more straight, curling at the ends. Oh, and for some reason they made Miwa really tall. Interestingly, how Ichigo meets Aoyama is significantly different from the manga and 2002 anime. In those, Ichigo already knew Aoyama and had met him before the series began, but in New, that doesn't exist, as Ichigo and Aoyama are explicitly shown as meeting for the very first time in episode 1, with Ichigo's asking him out happening later in the episode rather than as soon as the episode starts. There's also the fact that the girls' Mew Mew outfits have adopted some changes as well, from having the triangular spikes on just about everything, to Lettuce's outfit losing her signature antennae and looking less fanservicey. The only change I admittedly don't like was that they changed Pudding's romper to a dress and left Ichigo's hair red even as she's in Mew Mew form. Not sure why they felt the need to do that, but oh well.

Now, the original TMM anime was animated by Studio Pierrot over the course of 52 episodes. TMM New was animated by Yumeta Company, which was responsible for shows such as Cannon Busters, Destiny Child, and will be producing upcoming Digimon Adventure 02 movie. The original TMM was made very early in the era of digital animation and digipaint, which looked pretty good for its time period, though during its broadcast, many of its episodes were plagued with errors, as this Twitter post can detail, and you can blame that on animators being forced to rush through very tight deadlines just to get episodes finished, which is sadly still the norm these days. It didn't always look the most consistent, but that's not to say it didn't have its strengths. TMM New, which came years later, has a slightly more refined look to it that fits a lot of modern anime nowadays. That being said, TMM New doesn't always look the best either. There are several off model shots of the girls from time to time, and the backgrounds are pretty dull, too. It says a lot that the 2002 anime makes to make the Mew Mew Cafe look more lively and colorful than this version does. The magical girl transformation scenes are pretty good, and while not as dynamic as the 2002 anime was, they have their own charm. If there's one thing TMM New did manage to do well, compared to, say, early Sailor Moon Crystal, its that it kept the cartoony chibi faces for the comedic parts. Because you can't go wrong with dynamic, early 2000s chibi faces if you want some levity! Plus, it's great that Lettuce finally got her own full transformation sequence for once.

The Sailor Moon Crystal comparison wound up being pretty apt, as that and TMM New have the same composer as well, Yasuharu Takanashi. Compared to the animation, the soundtrack fares slightly better. I mean, it's obviously taking cues from other magical girl shows before it like Pretty Cure and even SMC, what with the occasional female choir vocals and heavy guitar riffs, and even throwing in some heavy metal at times. It's not the most memorable, but the soundtrack does its job nicely. The opening and ending songs are cute too. That being said...some of the insert songs that Zakuro sings are...not the best. Actually, there is one issue that always bugged me about three of the main Mew Mew characters: Their voice acting. The producers hired completely new people to play the Mew Mews and had them sing the opening and ending songs too, which is fine. Love Live Superstar did the exact same thing. But here's the thing: Singing and voice acting require very specific skill sets, and if a person can do one but not the other when both are required, it can cause some problems. Unfortunately, as much as I hate to say it, the seiyuus for Mint, Pudding, and Zakuro are...not very good voice actors. Mint and Zakuro sound really weird and really flat, and for some reason they made Pudding's voice really low pitched, more so than Ichigo, which shouldn't be so because Ichigo is older than Pudding. I know I found 2002 Pudding's voice kind of grating, but at least her seiyuu made her sound her age and fit her energetic personality. Hell, even Pudding's English voice actress in the bad 4Kids dub managed to get that right! In contrast, Ichigo and Lettuce actually sound much better. Ironically, I found Yuki Tenma's take on Ichigo a lot better and less grating than Saki Nakajima's Ichigo voice. Everybody else sounds fine, though, and I definitely appreciate Miwa having a lower pitched voice that doesn't make her sound like a squeak toy. Sorry, Tomoko Kaneda.

I will admit, one of the things I criticized the manga for in my review of it is that the manga seemed much more focused on shilling Ichigo, and later Berry in A La Mode, and didn't seem to want to flesh out the other characters. Ikumi-sensei wanted to rectify this issue when writing A La Mode but was told no by her editors and forced to give more focus to Berry. The 2002 anime rectified this, as it made use of its 52-episode run time to give several characters their own focus episodes that fleshed them out and showed what their lives were like outside of being Mew Mews, with the exception of Zakuro. Since Tokyo Mew Mew New is aiming to be a more faithful manga adaptation, with only a few slight changes, it does suffer the same problem as the manga, as in the other Mew Mews aren't as fleshed out as Ichigo is. That being said, TMM New does make some effort to flesh out the other girls, but with its short length, it unfortunately doesn't have the same amount of freedom as the 2002 anime did, so it isn't able to give the other characters time to develop beyond their initial archetypes. This is in part due to the anime being 12 episodes long, resulting in the pacing being very fast, so it doesn't have as much breathing room to allow the other characters to be fleshed out organically. It has to rush through its material, which really hurts TMM New from a characterization perspective, and I'm not the only one that noticed this either. For all I know, the second season might rectify this, along with probably covering the rest of the manga, but who knows at this point. I do appreciate that TMM New is trying to give Mint more of an arc, so kudos to them for putting in some effort, especially for putting Mint's brother Seiji in here, since he was originally created for the 2002 anime, though his personality here is very different from the old anime.

Honestly, even with all these issues, I still found Tokyo Mew Mew New to be pretty enjoyable, even as someone who prefers the 2002 anime over it. There is one change that really broke my suspension of disbelief though. Remember how I mentioned that I didn't like that they kept Ichigo's hair red when she's a Mew Mew? There's a whole arc where Ichigo worries that Aoyama found out her secret identity, which is present in every iteration of TMM, this show included, and he doesn't recognize her until she's made to transform right in front of his eyes, which hasn't happened in TMM New yet. In the manga and 2002 anime, it makes sense that he doesn't figure it out right away because in those iterations, Ichigo's hair is made bright pink when she's a Mew Mew, not her natural red, so Aoyama would naturally have a hard time putting two and two together. But in TMM New, because the producers made Ichigo's hair still be her natural red even as a Mew Mew, it makes Aoyama come off as being really stupid because Mew Ichigo and regular Ichigo have the exact same face, hair, and voice. He should be able to recognize his own girlfriend on sight, even when she has cat ears and a new hair style, and she isn't even wearing, say, a mask to hide her face! This change really made this whole arc a lot stupider than it should be.

So yeah, even as a fan of Tokyo Mew Mew as a franchise, Tokyo Mew Mew New is a valiant effort to bring new life to the franchise, but still stumbles along the way. The manga isn't exactly perfect, and I personally prefer the 2002 anime because of the time and effort put in to flesh everything out. That being said, I'd still watch this over all the crappy ecchi, isekai, or mobage anime being churned out these days. I'd rather watch an anime like this that, while not perfect, still tries to put in some effort over something that's just flat-out bad or shilled out by a corporation for the sake of selling products. Looking at you, Prima Doll.