My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (seasons 1-2, 4-5, 9)

Who said boys can't watch shows considered to be for girls?

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is a TV series that on Discovery Family (originally The Hub) from 2010 to 2019. To date, it had 9 seasons, 221 episodes and a 2017 movie based on it. Sometime in 2020, it will be succeeded by My Little Pony: Pony Life, which will feature the same voice actors and the same writers. In the same year, a clip show series called Friendship is Forever was released, taking place after the events of the Season 9 finale "The Ending of the End".

Summary

The series follows the adventures and exploits of a studious purple alicorn (previously unicorn) named Twilight Sparkle as she and her small purple and green dragon assistant and friend Spike, along with 6 (previously 5) other mares, travel through Equestria to fix and spread friendship.

Why It Rocks

1. Despite using Adobe Flash animation (which is usually not a good choice for cartoon shows), the animation and backgrounds are clean, detailed, and great looking.
2. It has great morals but also deals with morally complicated situations, such as xenophobia, colonialism, bullying, standing up for yourself, and forgiveness regardless of how much wrong someone does to you.
3. Its characters are awesome and cool including Celestia, Cadance, Luna, Applejack, and Twilight Sparkle herself.
4. The role-models for all the characters are pretty good and memorable:
   • Twilight Sparkle is the likable, natural-born and intelligent alicorn (previously unicorn) type of pony and the leader of the Mane 6, who can be OCD at times.
   • Fluttershy is the calm, kind-hearted, but shy pegasus type of pony who takes care of many kinds of animals, but can be easily frightened sometimes and uses "The Stare" to get bad animals under her control.
   • Applejack is the down-to-earth type of pony who helps on her farm called Sweet Apple Acres, kicking down many trees to get the apples, and is well adjusted but can sometimes be stubborn.
   • Rainbow Dash is the well-meaning, loyal, but speedy, tomboyish, and sometimes irresponsible pegasus type of pony, who can go fast and has a dream of joining the Wonderbolts (Equestria's version of the Blue Angels), which she officially gets to do so.
   • Pinkie Pie is the hyper, wacky, but joyful and happy comic relief earth type of pony who always throws parties and is the one who breaks the fourth wall a lot.
   • Rarity is the artful, creative and generous unicorn type of pony who enjoys making fashion, despite her vain and melodramatic tendencies sometimes.
   • Spike, who is a dragon, is a loyal, loveable and faithful assistant to Twilight Sparkle. He even gets the ability to fly later like Twilight in Season 8.
   • Starlight Glimmer, a skilled unicorn type of pony, started as a villain in season 5 (due to losing her friend Sunburst as a filly), but reforms in the season finale after realizing her actions change the future, reunites with Sunburst in the Season 6 premiere and becomes a protagonist and a friend/ally to the Mane Six.
   • The Cutie Mark Crusaders (Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo) are three awesome and sympathetic fillies who wanted their cutie mark so badly until the episode "Crusaders of the Lost Mark". They also had great musical numbers such as "We are the Cutie Mark Crusaders", and "Hearts Strong as Horses".
5. It has phenomenal acting. Tara Strong, one of the voice actors of the show, previously voiced Timmy Turner from The Fairly OddParents and Bubbles from The PowerPuff Girls. It not only has Weird Al as the voice of Cheese Sandwich and Star Trek actors William Shatner as Grand Pear and John de Lancie as Q-inspired character Discord, but also Maurice LaMarche, the voice of Egon from The Real Ghostbusters, various characters such as Kif Kroker from Futurama, and Brain from Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain.
   • The Japanese opening & the dub itself is great, as it goes for a more magical girl anime-like feel and stays 99% faithful to the original.
6. There are a lot of interesting episodes. Some also make nods to the fanbase, such as Slice of Life (the fan-favorite characters in the show), Fame and Misfortune (tackling flawlessness), and Honest Apple (dealing with fan criticism).
7. The villains are excellent and villainously threatening (in a well done way). Tirek, King Sombra, Grogar, and Chrysalis, in particular, are great examples.
8. It can be pretty hilarious at times, especially from the comic relief Pinkie Pie, who can do many cartoonish feats such as hanging upside down on the ceiling or appear in random places.
9. They finally brought back Applejack for the first time since the first generation of the franchise (not counting the third generation, in which Applejack was only in toy form). Other characters in the Mane Six are also inspired by G1 characters, such as Rainbow Dash using traits from Firefly.
   • Also, Minty returned on the final short in 2019.
10. The musical score and musical numbers are both awesome to listen to, such as "BBBFFs" and even fan favorites such as the "Smile" song.
11. It has some emotional stories such as in the episode The Perfect Pear, which deals with Applejack's deceased parents.
12. It has decent character development. Discord, for example, started as a chaos-making villain, but then got reformed in season 3, and later became an ally (though reluctantly) among the Mane 6 and a friend of Fluttershy, despite occasionally making humorous trouble along the way.
13. It spawned a movie, which was pretty good (despite the mixed reception).
14. The action and fight scenes are awe-inspiring and great.
15. While there are pop culture references, they aren't forced down your throat, unlike most other popular shows in later seasons. They're also fun pretty fun to point out, such as Neighsay being similar to the Marvel Comics character Doctor Strange, or many of Discord's costumes being similar to movies such as Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas or Harry Potter, or references to other Hasbro properties such as Transformers or Jem.
16. Speaking of which, the season 9 two-parter known as "The Ending of the End" is pretty good, as it has a fight scene that almost references the final battle from Avengers: Endgame.
17. The last episode "The Last Problem" is an excellent, but very sad, and the emotional montage of the Mane 6's adventures and is easily a good send off to the series.
18. While most of the character designs use the same body proportions, they look great and cute and can sometimes have some creativity nonetheless.

Bad Qualities

1. It can be pretty cheesy at times
2. It’s reboot, pony life had mixed reception.
   • There are even some adult jokes. Examples include the "Are you saying my mouth is making promises my legs can't keep?" line, Big Macintosh getting whipped between the legs by the vines in "Princess Twilight Sparkle", or Maud Pie swooning over the petrified Mudbriar in "Student Counsel," which inadvertently shows off agalmatophilia.
   • There can even be some unneeded gross-out humor sometimes, such as Fluttershy picking her nose (while being controlled by Rarity) in "Green Isn't Your Color", Discord wearing peanut butter jars on his feet in "What About Discord?" and the Cake Twins pooping their diapers in "Baby Cakes".
3. Since it's using Flash animation, animation errors are common everywhere in the show. However, one animation error gave birth to the popular character Derpy Hooves (a.k.a. Muffins and Ditzy Doo), who has since appeared in many episodes as a cameo.
4. The series suffered a seasonal rot in Season 3, and suffered another, but longer seasonal rot from Seasons 6 to 8. With the season 6 premiere "The Crystaling" beginning the downfall of the series.
5. There can be some plot holes, such as in "Luna Eclipsed" where the entire town fears Princess Luna because she could turn back into Nightmare Moon, despite that in "Friendship is Magic," the pilot episode, the town had praised Princess Luna's return after a thousand years.
6. The frame-rate shifting between 30FPS and 60FPS can be distracting.
7. Though funny and awesome characters, the Mane Six can be stupid, foolish, annoying, badly-portrayed or rarely hypocritical sometimes, and has moments of making situations worse due to being innocently insensitive. Not to mention, Fluttershy and Spike can be Butt-Monkey type-characters (characters that get abused, tormented, and mistreated for no reason at all).
8. Some fan-favorite ponies from previous generations, such as Starsong and Kimono, did not return in this generation.
9. There have been some mediocre/bad episodes (many of which tend to have overly heavy and/or poorly-executed messages), like "The Mean 6", "The Cart Before The Ponies", "One Bad Apple", "The Mysterious Mare Do Well," "Putting Your Hoof Down", "Baby Cakes", "28 Pranks Later", "Non-Compete Clause", "What About Discord?", "Princess Spike," "Somepony to Watch Over Me," or the infamous "Ponyville Confidential".
10. Some of the foreign dubs are very bad, such as the Hungarian and Croatian HRT dubs.
11. The final season is poorly-written and very inconsistent with the rest of the series.

Videos

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