My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

2 comments

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  Sweet Deals

  June 9, 2025 at 9:40 pm

  Shockingly, despite my love of cartoons, I actually skipped watching Friendship is Magic entirely when it aired on TV. (I personally have a low tolerance for hyperactive screaming and comical overreactions because I’m not a prepubescent boy). During those years, I wasted all my television hours watching Transformers Prime and Rescue Bots instead. What can I say? I dig giant robots.

  I’ll “take this one” if others would like me to, but nine seasons and several Equestria Girls spin-offs is a lot to review. In the interest of honesty and fairness, I’d like to invite the loyal fans who actually watched the show over the course of ten years to weigh in first. I’m willing to take a wild guess and say that if a show lasted nine seasons, it probably changed a lot over the years and it likely wasn’t the same show in the last season that fans adored in the first one. Somewhere in between it may have passed a “best before” day.

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  Sweet Deals

  June 26, 2025 at 4:11 pm

  I just rapid-binged ten years worth of pony shows in the span of a few weeks. I’m surprised I didn’t throw up.

  From the beginning, Friendship is Magic really hits the ground running. This modern version of My Little Pony creates a rich, functioning fantasy world brimming with mythology and magic. The characters are clearly differentiated individuals with unique personalities and vocations, making them easy to identify and identify with. The main idea that “Friendship is Magic”, is that when you have a group of ponies with different talents working toward the same goals, you can accomplish more together than you can working on your own, it’s always good to know that there are others who care about you and have your back in your time of need, and friends can find a way to get along in spite of their differences or their lack of common ground. Many of the show’s morals are generally rooted in common sense problem-solving, and that it’s always important to make the right choice, even when it may seem difficult to do. Because “Friendship is Magic”, most of the major villains in the series are reconciled, redeemed and befriended by the heroic ponies. The choice of friendship (and the other virtues represented by the Elements of Harmony such as Honesty, Kindness, Loyalty, Generosity and Laughter) is depicted as morally superior and inherently desirable, so only the most wicked and hard-hearted of villains would oppose it and are defeated standing alone.

  I noticed over the course of the series that the roles of Executive Producer(s) and Story Editor changed hands multiple times from season to season. The continuity is generally solid, with later episodes frequently calling back to earlier ones, and with each advancing season the scope of the series grows bigger along with the characters’ powers and responsibilities. However, as the seasons go on, I noticed that in the later seasons that plots become increasingly gimmicky and far-fetched, characters tend to scream and overreact a lot more, and there’s a greater reliance on mid-2010s “cringe humor”, where everypony intentionally behaves awkwardly and the heavy atmosphere of discomfort is supposed to elicit laughter in lieu of actually telling a joke. As a sensitive viewer, I have to admit that constant screaming and cringe humor tends to make me cringe more than laugh, and over time the show became less of a joy to watch and more of a matter of endurance. While the ending morals are still relatively sane and based in common sense, I wasn’t too keen on sitting through 20 minutes of characters shouting, running around, freaking out and doing all the wrong things to get to a 2 minute resolution warning about the dangers of overreacting, overthinking, overdoing, and finally getting to the point that you can get by with a little help from your friends, it’s better to let others lead their own lives rather than forcibly control them, or not letting a fear of failure prevent you from trying new things even if you might not be excellent at them right away, or not letting a fear of rejection cause your old friends to drift apart or prevent them from spending time with new friends. (I think the mid-to-late 2010s must have been a time of needlessly heightened anxiety. The issues at hand have always existed, but we didn’t freak out this much over them).

  With regards to Equestria Girls: Magical ponies are cool, but unfortunately, they’re not humans. Therefore, we should travel through a portal into an alternate universe where all your favorite brightly-colored ponies are now brightly-colored teenagers who attend high school, use smartphones, have magical superpowers that turn them into superheroes, join a rock band, make music videos and go backstage on movie sets, luxury cruise liners and amusement parks. I’ve watched my fair share of Barbie flicks back in the day so I know what a cheesy toy commercial movie looks like. What frightens me the most is how well-targeted the tween girl fan fiction dopamine hits are, along with the aforementioned screaming and cringe humor. Hasbro clearly knew how to get their target audience so obsessed with something that they can’t help but geek out and buy as many toys and merchandise as possible. Equestria Girls may be loud and colorful, the plots are frequently contrived, the songs are generic and the villains a little too easily defeated/reconciled, but for the most part it’s still safe and not woke.

  Now, let’s talk about “lesbian ponies”. A little background first: from the very first season we are introduced to three young fillies known as the Cutie Mark Crusaders: Applebloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo. Applebloom is the younger sister of Applejack, and Sweetie Belle is the younger sister of Rarity. Scootaloo doesn’t have an older sister, but she attaches herself to Rainbow Dash as her mentor to round things out, and no other family is established for her because there was no need for it. Midway through the ninth and final season (“The Last Crusade”), the show suddenly reveals that Scootaloo’s Mom and Dad are field scientists who travel a lot for work and they’re never home, so Scootaloo is occasionally looked after by her two aunts who previously did not exist. The show intentionally keeps the aunts’ relationship vague and up to interpretation, but viewers may see the implications because one of the two aunts resembles a lesbian stereotype. These characters don’t return in any later episodes. Even when the Cutie Mark Crusaders need to find an adult chaperone to escort them on the train to the fair in Appleloosa, they only ask their big sisters and don’t even bring up the aunts when the other ponies claim they’re all too busy. I’d say that in 2019 it became a requirement for corporations to check the queer box, and this is relatively tame, considering a big chunk of the show’s audience includes adult males who might have gotten very angry if they learned about queer grooming in a show intended for little girls. Back then, Hasbro’s biggest woke sins were likely being concealed within the pages of their comic book tie-ins that older kids would read and where grown-ups were less likely to look.

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