This is probably my favorite musical number: (I’m putting it in a spoiler because it’s not safe for work)
To each his own. I think the art direction on Adventure Time is amazing. And it’s better written than any adult show I’ve seen on TV.
*
Secret Mountain Fortress Awesome* though … that’s a lot harder to like. Still, I have to admire Cartoon Network for being willing to go there.
Right, because the average denizen of the internet in general is such a paragon of good looks and personal grooming. Have you seen pictures of meet-ups of any sort? They look, amazingly enough, pretty much like any MLP meet-up. In any case, nice to know that you’re the sort to completely ignore direct responses to your posts in favor of further snide remarks. :rolleyes:
It’s tough to encapsulate what makes the show work in a five minute snippet, but here are some options to consider, depending on where your personal preferences lie:
If you like musical numbers: Art of the Dress (aka Rarity’s Song)
If you like character-driven comedy: Revelation of the curses from “Bridle Gossip” (8:30-11:00)
If you like animation: Montage from “Winter Wrap Up”
If you like Star Trek: John de Lancie effectively reprising his iconic role of “Q,” this time in the form of a chaos demon named Discord (10:26-12:00)
That should be enough to get you started. 
Seriously, almost every modern cartoon is like this. “My Little Pony” is nothing unusual. Hell, “SpongeBob Squarepants” has been putting quality stuff out there for ten years.
Cartoons these days are far, far, far better than they used to be. Kid’s animation these days is, with few exceptions (Fairly Oddparents is retarded) very clever and vastly improved over the stuff that they were making when I was a kid. All the stupid has been moved to tween live action shows like “iCarly” which seem to be ongoing experiments in how many minutes of programming you can air without telling a single funny joke.
I’m not precisely sure why this happened, but it did.
What’s puzzling about “My Little Pony” is why people are fixating on it. It’s not really better than many of its animated brethren. The stories and characterizations are 21st Century Children’s Animation 101 stuff; some of the stories are just lifted whole from Strawberry Shortcake. Of course, I suppose the other really good toons have their fans too; I see more Perry the Platypus shirts around all the time.
Many thanks for doing the work to put those clips together.
Fairly Odd Parents was good when it started. It’s just been on too long. (Although somehow Sponge Bob still manages to be funny after more than a decade on the air.)
But it’s true that we’re living through a cartoon golden age right now. Kids programming is the best its been in 50 years. It’s clever, original, well-written, well-animated. There’s an occasional clunker like Johnny Test, but even that’s better than the dreck that was on when I was a kid.
(I actually showed my kids some episodes of Super Friends on YouTube just to prove to them how lucky they are.)
Dexter’s Laboratory was the start of it. That was the first new show in years that wasn’t:
[ul]
[li]A cynical excuse to sell toys[/li][li]A poorly dubbed Japanese import[/li][li]A rip off of the Looney Tunes theatrical shorts[/li][/ul]
I’m willing give some props to Alf, Mighty Mouse, Ren and Stimpy and Freakazoid. Those were beacons in the darkness. But they didn’t have imitators. Dexter’s did.
Dunno, I also liked Super Gals!, which is sort of the next age group up from MLP, dealing with subjects like suicide and being hit on by older men, and so on.
Ironically, MLP:FiM was intended as a cynical excuse to sell toys. They just gave it to a showrunner who wasn’t cynical about it.
And forgot to update the toys, to boot. Most of the MLP figures available now look like the older, 80s cartoon figures – which my niece and her agemates refuse to accept as the real thing. (and I don’t blame 'em: those things do look sorta freaky)
I recall coming across an amusing picture somewhere of a horrified looking Princess Celestia being presented with her official toy.
I wonder how long it takes to get a production run going? Bronies tend to be men aged 15-35 and that demographic is attractive when it comes to selling merchandise. You might not be able to sell 20-30$ statues to little girls but you most definitely can to men in their 20s.
I might like it, I concede, if I did actually watch. I mainly hear it from the other room while I’m cooking. When I say the animation is repulsive, I mean I dislike how the characters look. I’m not commenting on the quality. He watches something called Regular Show, too.
There more money in selling $10 Applejack dolls to the parents of little girls. I should know, because the Small Girl has many My Little Ponys. Her Princess Celestia is one of her most treasured toys. Little kids exert tremendous buying power through their parents, and believe me, we pay attention; when Christmas rolls around I buy the Small One the brands she wants, not just random toys.
24-year-old guys might occasionally watch My Little Pony but few are going to buy the toys. Some, maybe, but few. But millions of little girls want Santa to bring them My Little Ponys.
True. I want for there to be MLP stuff to buy for my niece – anything other than Disney Princess stuff. Since her little friends like MLP, that would be acceptable… if the toys were acceptable.
Actually, we’re all kind of bemused as to how my niece decided that she liked MLP. They don’t get the Hub, and she hasn’t seen it online (yet)… so apparently it was by kiddie-word-of-mouth.
I totally disagree, unless your idea of a “golden age” stretches back to include the last 20 years.
Batman: TAS is still the best kid’s cartoon ever made. The animation was superb and unique, the stories were mature and exciting, it had the now-legendary Mark Hamill Joker.
Animaniacs, Dexter’s Lab, and Powerpuff Girls also started or completely aired in the 90s. From what I’ve seen of current shows, they are far worse than these “old” shows.
Speaking of Powerpuff Girls, I’ve only watched one episode of MLP and that was the show I compared it to. The comparison was not favorable for MLP. MLP seemed like Powerpuff Girls minus what made it work. So I’m a little confused by its popularity, but not that confused because as you can tell I like cartoons too.
What made the Powerpuff Girls work?
Depends on what aspect of Powerpuff Girls “made it work” for you. I’ve never been a fan of the superhero genre, and don’t really care if what I watch fits the “action-packed” descriptor or not. So the appeal of PPG for me was in the writing, characters, artwork, and voice acting. My favorite episodes were the quirky character-centric episodes where we see the PPG interpret events according to their distinct personalities, or where we see what their normal daily routines are like. Similarly, Mojo Jojo was, for me, a fun villain not because of his superpowers or giant robots or dastardly plans, but because of the wordplay that ensued every time he came onscreen (that episode where Bubbles thinks she is Mojo Jojo being the apotheosis of the form).
If those are the elements that brought you to PPG as well, I think you’d find that MLP:FiM compares quite favorably. It has the same quality of writing, and IMO even more depth of character (you have to create a lot more nuance with six main characters than for three, if only to distinguish those with “similar” base personalities). And the shows share in their art direction the capability to be cute without being cloying, colorful without being garish.
If, on the other hand, you enjoyed PPG for the action, or the good-vs-evil themes, or the spectacular monster designs, I don’t think MLP:FiM would “work” for you.
This is worth a read
[QUOTE=Chuckg]
And, my own essay on what I love about My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic so far, even if a lot of it is stuff you’ve already seen critics saying before.
- The characters are unbelievably well-rounded for a kid’s show, and at least adequately well-rounded for ANY show.
They straddle the line that makes the inner DM and NPC-designer in me go ‘squeee!’. They are all solid archetypes while still being enough against type to totally avoid being stereotyped.
For example, let’s take the first pony of the Mane Cast we see and the one who is essentially the Buffy of this ensemble cast, as it were. Twilight Sparkle, apprentice to Queen Celestia.
Twilight loves to read. Did we mention she loves to read? She lives in a library for pete’s sake. She is first seen living in the Princess’ palace at Canterlot, with the high status of personal apprentice to the Solar Queen Of All She Surveys, and she has no social life at all. Her episode 1 signature line is “I am her student and I will do my royal duty, but the fate of Equestria does not rest on me making friends!”
So, Twilight Sparkle is a book-loving socially awkward nerd. Filling in the rest of the mental blanks, this means she’ll also be shy, lacking in leadership skills, and either bravely timid or just timid…
… wrong. Twilight Sparkle doesn’t hide in the library because she’s unable to deal. Twilight Sparkle lives in a library because she likes books more than parties, period. Twilight Sparkle is the team leader, the one who takes charge, the one who can organize an entire town full of ponies on a massive complex terraforming project (“Winter Wrap-Up”) and make it look easy when the ponies who have been doing it all their lives have lost the plot. And Twilight Sparkle is the one who, when confronted with the legendary Nightmare Moon, the dark goddess who once plunged the world into Eternal Night and is like a billion times more powerful than her, doesn’t even blink before putting her horn down and charging straight at that bitch. Twilight Sparkle is a badass.
And yet she’s the same pony who will spend an entire episode having an anxiety attack about knowing various things about her friends that she promised not to tell her other friends, even if life would be so much easier if her other friends knew about the misunderstandings with her friends, but she promised not to, and if she breaks that promise then (gasp) she won’t have any friends!. When, of course, real friends entirely don’t end friendships over things that petty, but how would Twilight Sparkle know? This is the first time she’s even had friends. So yes, Twilight Sparkle, smartest pony in Ponyville, can still sometimes be spectacularly dumb and yet in believable fashion… and yet still totally subverts her trope.
And then there’s Rarity. On a girl’s show, Rarity is the girliest of the girl characters. She doesn’t willingly step hoof out of her house without having spent oodles of time curling her mane and arranging her make-up just so. She’s the resident fashion plate who obsesses on clothes and shoes. (In fact, she’s also the town’s tailor, dressmaker, and fashion designer, and makes fancy clothes professionally.) She can’t stand dirt, she’s obsessive-compulsive, and she’s all about bringing elegance and beauty and refinement.
So, she’s the Libby, right? Wrong. Rarity is one of the most generous people in Ponyville. At least two episodes have their plots driven by the fact that Rarity sometimes goes overboard trying to do nice things for her friends. She doesn’t snub anyone for being poor or un-fashion-conscious (except maybe that one time with Applejack), she doesn’t look down on anyone, and she’s not too ‘important’ or ‘refined’ to work; Rarity spends multiple occasions pulling obsessive all-nighters to make her business run, and when she commits to deliver you X # of dresses on time and to spec, she will deliver X # of dresses on time and to spec or die trying. Even if her customers are insane.
For the love of God, one of the episodes I mentioned above (“Suited For Success”) is about the girliest member of a girls’ show cast trying to sew enough dresses in time to give to all her friends so they can put on a fashion show for a famous designer and help Rarity live her dream while at the same time giving all her friends free dresses for the upcoming Grand Galloping Gala, and by this point you think anybody with a Y-chromosome would be dying from the pure girly overload, and yet its one of the show’s more critically-acclaimed episodes, especially by those segments of the brony demographic that you think would be most violently allergic. I don’t even know how the fuck that works, yet it does.
- The characters are flawed, human people… who happen to be ponies.
Nobody’s perfect on this show. No one. Rarity is a hardworking generous soul who just genuinely wants everything around her to be beautiful, but if she loses her perspective re: priorities she’ll spend half a day trying to tweak a single birds’ nest to be ‘just so’ and ignoring every other aspect of the project going on. Or she’ll get so caught up in the rush of a new experience that she’ll completely forget she was there to support someone else in the first place, and instead starts competing with them. Twilight Sparkle has the cojones to try and solo the Dark Goddess herself, but can mentally lock-up at the thought of even minor embarassment or failure in front of her mentor and/or start thinking that she’s so smart that nobody else can be smart too. Applejack is the epitome of hardworking and down-to-earth, but she’s also stubborner than a mule and too proud to let other people help even when they want to. Rainbow Dash is a genuinely loyal friend, a total ace at what she does, and has balls of steel… but she also has the tact of a lead softball bat wrapped in barbed wire and her signature quote might as well be “LEEROOOOOOOOOOOOOY! JEEEENKIIINS!” Pinkie Pie is the happiest person anywhere and knows everybody and just wants to spread happiness and joy… but she’s so hyperactive even her friends can only take her in limited doses, and she has issues. And Fluttershy is the most lovable and adorable thing ever… but that doesn’t mean she’s immune to either errors of judgement, or that epic stress-induced blowout in the season finale that cannot be described, only witnessed.
In the course of 26 episodes everybody has saved the day at least once, and everybody has been the problem at least once. Because is nobody is right all the time, nobody is perfect all the time, and sometimes your strongest character trait is in fact the least useful way to handle something, and you need to let someone else take the lead against it. Nobody is the writer’s pet (even if some come slightly closer than others), and nobody’s the butt monkey (even if some fans think Applejack could headline more episodes, that’s nowhere near the same thing as Applejack being dumped on, as she ain’t).
And since its inevitable that you will screw up at least once, being mortal, the important thing is… what do you do then?
This show remembers that. And addresses it.
And in line with the less unrealistic expectations it tries to impose on the impressionable little kids, we have…
- There is no One True Way to be either a ‘proper girl’ or a successful or happy person in general.
The producer, Lauren Faust, has been known to vent her spleen on this very thing; so many times, a girl’s show is all about being whatever the show-runner’s vision of a ‘proper’ young lady is, period. And usually that vision is unrealistically saccharine.
And this show explodes the living fuck out of that treatise. All of the six Mane Cast members are presented as successful, responsible young women in control of their own lives and prospering by their own talents, and not one of them is remotely like any other one.
Twilight Sparkle is, essentially, a graduate student on an extended field assignment/research grant, and she’s a type-A organizer and bureaucrat who’s also a giant nerd with little interest in conventional socializing. She’s also the personal apprentice of the immortal god-queen, the effective leader of the town (there’s a Mayor of Ponyville, but when the shit goes down everybody looks to Twilight Sparkle, not to the old gray mare), and one of the most powerful wizards known to ponydom.
And then there’s Applejack. Applejack is a much humbler pony; her and her big brother Macintosh run an apple farm, and take care of their kid sister Apple Bloom. And yet Applejack stands nose-to-nose with Twilight Sparkle, feeling no shame at being ‘just’ a farmgirl… and given that she’s one of the toughest ponies in Ponyville, the steady reliable rock of the group, and thoroughly enjoying the living shit out of a life that some other ponies might find boring and plebeian, the message is clear; ‘This is just as valid as the other, even if it’s not as rich, not as important, not as powerful. Because its not easy either, and its worth doing, and if you like it, then it’s what you like’.
Rarity, who owns and runs a dress shop, we’ve already mentioned. Like Applejack she’s an entrepreneur, even in an entirely different field. And she also loves what she’s doing, and making her own way doing it, even when that means not flinching from a fuckton of hard work.
Rainbow Dash, whose day job (moving the clouds around and managing Ponyville’s weather) actually doesn’t remotely fully engage her talents or her time, is also presented as a role model. Because while she’s a brash cocky jerkass, she’s actually as good as she claims to be, and she doesn’t just loaf at her job (even if she did seem to pick her job precisely because it has so much free time). Because she’s got a huge ambition; to make the Wonderbolts, Equestria’s #1 stunt flying team (think the Blue Angels), and Rainbow Dash knows that she’s not going to make that just by flying around talking about all the awesome she’s going to bust loose next month; she’s got to be training. So Dash is presented as the person just whiling away in a local job while they train and train and dream the Rocky Balboa dream of becoming a star athlete, if they can just ace the tryout… and yet the show neither takes the tack ‘Oh, sure, you’re guaranteed to succeed even at impractical odds if you just believe!’, nor does it take the tack of ‘Oh come on, be realistic and don’t even try something this insane’. Because Dash… well, that’s spoiler territory. Suffice it to say, the message is adequately presented in that while the odds of actually making it to the major leagues are poor, that shouldn’t stop you from trying if you actually have the talent for it… if that’s what you want to do, and you accept the risks. (And if you can still earn an honest living for yourself in the meanwhile instead of just bummin’ around.)
And Fluttershy, the show’s resident Woobie, Shrinking Violet, and Friend To All Living Things. She’s early Hinata with pony wings. (Except when you mess with her friends, and then you’ve got Team 8 Hinata in your face instead). She’s horribly shy, soft-spoken, diffident, and just wants to cuddle all the cute animals she can. (Of course, since she’s the town veterinarian, forest ranger, and wildlife control officer, she earns a living doing that…) And yet… suffice it to say, the pitfalls of this stereotype are avoided as well.
And then there’s Pinkie Pie, the show’s random incarnation of random, perky, party-throwing happiness.
… actually, Pinkie Pie’s hidden depths stay largely hidden except for ‘Swarm of the Century’ and ‘Party of One’, wherein her tragic past is revealed, so I won’t get into that. Short version; while she is the character who approached closest to the line of ‘Oh, are they ever going to be wrong about anything?’, she avoids it too.
This is how the show rolls. ‘You are not your stereotype, and there is no One True Way’. You can be a successful, useful, self-supporting human being in any one of multiple fashions, and whichever one of those you want the most is the “right” one. This isn’t just a slogan the show says (in fact, they don’t lampshade it explicitly much at all), its just the example the show sets, all day every day.
Hell, there isn’t even any racial stereotypes. The Mane Cast has two unicorns (Twilight Sparkle and Rarity), two pegasi (Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy), and two earth ponies (Applejack and Pinkie Pie)… and each of those pairs of ponies is as dissimilar as the sun and the moon. ‘You cannot judge by race, either’.
That’s the thing about this show. The messages are good. The subtext is good. The writing is good. All of the shallow saccharine brain-destroying crap that used to be known as “girls’ television” is something that the producer absolutely hated, and MLP:FiM is her very subtle, very subversive, very very very determined search-and-destroy mission against every little bit of it…
… while still being a happy, cheerful, genuinely innocent show, instead of some kind of lame-o deconstruction or grimdark.
Friendship Is Magic, what can I say?
[/QUOTE]
Well, I have to say I still don’t understand it, but here’s an article in the WSJ about “Bronies,” or Bro’s + ponies.
Count me as one who was totally baffled. But I decided I should have an open mind and check it out… after all, I like Sponge Bob, Rocko’s Modern Life, and other animation that is supposed to be for kids. I especially like comedy so I tried the “character-driven comedy” link.
It took all I had to make it through 2 minutes. Maybe there is something hilarious after that but I’m sorry I’ll never get that far.
[QUOTE=Namkcalb]
This is worth a read
[/QUOTE]
No, really it isn’t.
Once I read the very first comment… “They straddle the line that makes the inner DM and NPC-designer in me go ‘squeee!’.” I knew I was never going to “get it.” I assume DM may be Dungeon Master… I have absolutely no interest in Dungeons and Dragons and don’t really understand why people get so absorbed into it, and I have no idea what NPC is but I probably am not sorry I’ve made it my whole life not knowing. Saying “Squee” in the first sentence tells me right away this is a person who will likely include LOL and a cute picture of kittens in most of their posts… which is exactly why I know I won’t enjoy My Little Pony.
Count me in as someone who despite all the attempts to convince us otherwise still doesn’t get it.
Having read all of the above, and having looked at some clips–namely the ones I requested above–I am now ready to deliver my official, considered opinion.
I think this show is objectively good in every relevant way.
I also think it is unwatchable.*
I have spoken.
*Though I will be steering my kids toward it in case the overwhelming evidence against me turns out to be correct and it is in fact watchable. Because kids should see things that are objectively good in every relevant way.