It did screw over the original. I've watched most of the original Japanese episodes with subtitles.
(mercurius: This episode was a preview. Next week they're going back to the first episode and beginning the series.)
Main problems:
1. Ayoama (aka 'Mark' x.x) sounds like a creepy 30-year-old, where in the original he sounds like a 12-year-old.
2. Ichigo ('scuse me, Zoe...) and the rest of the Mew Mews now sound like Valley Girls. The voices are high and stupid. And Lettuce, the green-haired one whose American name I can't remember, has a voice WAY too outgoing for her character.
3. The aliens, in the Japanese version, were originally from Earth and
we were the ones who took over thousands of years ago- the American version says "They don't have a planet of their own, probably because they used up all their natural resources."
This totally screwed up the fact that, in the original, you could relate to their cause more, rather than them being just the "big bad meanies".
4. Too many puns on the word "mew".
And Zoe's slogan, "Mew mew style, mew mew grace, mew mew power in your face!"...
what the heck????
In the Japanese version, it's "For the future of the Earth, I'll be of service, ~nya!"
5. At the end- major plot hole. When Mark is all "oh, it's cool you're a mew mew so don't worry about it"...
He's not supposed to find out she's a mew mew in the Japanese version for the next like 30 episodes or something idiotic like that. In the Japanese version of this one he just has Mew Ichigo confused with Ichigo, and he apologizes for thinking it was her.
6. They've turned it into a teenybopper show. The Japanese verison is more dramatic in parts, Ichigo is less of a ditz (which I didn't think possible) The aliens don't sound female and the plot isn't so chopped up into bite-sized pieces.
I am not happy. And I know I sound like a rabid fan, so sorry!