Thanks to K-pop group NewJeans, the Powerpuff Girls have never looked so good.
The globally successful girl group has released a music video titled ‘New Jeans’. In it, the members of the group transform into animated character versions of themselves designed to look like The Powerpuff Girls. Over the course of the video, we see the girl group introduced as Powerpuff Girls transforming from 2D animated characters into pixelated characters fit for a video game. The video is an absolute delight as it blends easy pop listening 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. NewJeans was created by ADOR, the label under Hybe, and debuted in July 2022 with the single “Attention.” The group has had a limited number of releases since their debut – NewJeans has put out a single EP and a handful of songs – but that hasn’t stopped their rise to become one of the most prominent K-pop groups in the world. According to Billboardthe group was the fastest K-pop group to reach 1 billion streams on Spotify in less than 219 days.
Now fans eagerly await the release of their second EP, Stand up. On June 18, the group released a 17 second teaser of a song of the EP and the short Powerpuff Girl visual and audio prompted hundreds of thousands of fans to post about it online. One fan created 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 ties into larger trends showing the resurgence of Y2K media and fashion. The music video gives a cozy “hanging out with the girls” vibes and combines it with a variety of nostalgic digital aesthetics. Over the course of a few minutes, we see the girls as cartoon characters taking on forms inspired by video games, such as nostalgic pixelated characters and angular polygonal 3D graphics reminiscent of early PlayStation games.
The music video leaves me with one major question: When will we finally get a NewJeans video game?