With Tokyo Mew Mew New, however, we, unfortunately, have the exact opposite problem. While the original 2000's series had a lot of fillers, "monster-of-the-week" episodes that weren't in the original story, none of them were bad, all the episodes were very well done, and all of them added something important to the story, and to the character's development, and the main plot was adapted well and smoothly in harmony with these episodes. The art style was also remarkable, you could SEE Ikumi Mia-sensei's (R.I.P) style in every character and location.
The reboot, however, already failed in this on the teasers. While the art style isn't ugly or bad per see, is nothing exceptionally notable, and most importantly, you can't see Ikumi Mia's soul in it at all... I'm not particularly fond of the new hair designs and the changes on their clothes (I prefer much more the puffy, cutesy looks on their transformations in the manga and the original anime than these new spikey clothes, my friend told me it looks like those kinds of pointy fabrics that keep scratching you and I totally agree), but it could be something passable were it the only problem with the new art style. (The new transformations are cute, I have to give it to them, but they're not exactly extraordinary as well, the original anime had much more glam and beautiful sequences and poses that this reboot doesn't have). But the fact is that the reboot looks like a totally brand-new series, not a remake of a well-loved series.
When it comes to the plot as well, it looks terrible. It's nothing sacrilegiously different from the original story, however, the changes they made plot-wise are at least questionable. Why did you decide to make Mint already aware of the Mew Mew Project and cooperate with Ryou and Keiichirou if you're not giving it a proper explanation? Just to cut off her transformation arc? To make things shorter? And then they cut off these well-loved scenes (like Ichigo falling from the roof) to make it (apparently) more concise, and YET, keep pacing the episodes weirdly. Like, Lettuce's episode was great, the reasoning and the final confrontation of why she lost control of her powers were better than in the original manga in my opinion. Yet, Zakuro's episode was a fucking MESS. So many things happened so quickly, there was no explanation at all, they barely talked to her, barely had a confrontation (and what the fuck, what a LAZY battle that was), and in the end, she just turns around and says "yeah, not interested in this Mew Mew shit" out of nowhere when they barely had any conversation, like WHAT?? That wasn't what happened in the story AT ALL, they didn't even give her a proper background before presenting her powers to us like in the original manga/anime. Just there, take it.
The fact is I was hoping I'd be proved wrong when I saw those teasers and got an uneasy feeling about this. But unfortunately, I was right to feel like this. Tokyo Mew Mew New has proved so far to be a lazy reboot much more focused on marketing (like, they even launched a girl group) than on actually staying true to the spirit of Ikumi Mia's work and I'm very disappointed with it. Maybe, if you've never watched the 2000's anime or read the original manga, then you'll perhaps enjoy this series. However, for long-time fans like me (whose first anime was actually Tokyo Mew Mew), this is nothing but a stain on our precious memories of this show.
