My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic Season 1

The story of my love for this show is a complex one. I watched the original My Little Pony as a kid because I had two sisters and was the only boy. To me there was nothing strange about watching Lady Lovely Locks, Rainbow Brite (the movie rocked!), and Strawberry Shortcake. It was just what we were watching. It wasn't until much, MUCH later that I discovered Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the like (my mother didn't like all the violence). Fast forward to my 30's and a funny thing happened at work. Discovery A co-worker of mine had a name that sounded a bit like "pony" so people so some teasing occurred based on his last name. Then another co-worked mentioned that there was indeed a growing phenomenon of "bronies" watching My Little Pony. Knowing only the original show from the 80's and it's immediate sequel shows (having completely missed the brain-dead recent ones) I assumes he was talking about the originals. I looked it up on search engines and started to read article after article on the phenomena. My reaction was immediate "I must watch this show and know what this is all about." Backlash I couldn't believe how good this show was. Just watching the first two episodes, which were clearly heavily influenced by Sailor Moon, the circuits in my nerd brain were blown. It was so incredibly well done! I begged and pleaded with my wife (a big Sailor Moon fan) to watch JUST THE FIRST TWO EPISODES. She resisted, then relented. Eventually she ended up watching every season so far (four as of this writing) with me. While she enjoyed watching the show ONCE, she's no fan-girl or brony. And my friends and acquaintances are even worse. I don't really understand why so many people have such a strong aversion to things that target a different demographic, other than perhaps that propaganda has thoroughly washed their brain. Rejecting something ONLY because it appears childish...is a mark of immaturity (Or as C.S. Lewis once said "Now that I am an adult I have put away childish things such as the need to appear very adult."). So ironically, many people appear to be too childish to give a kids' show a chance. Go figure. Genius I've been a fan of animation from all over the world my entire life. I grew up watching every Disney animated feature and every cartoon on the Disney Channel in the 80's. As an adult I discovered anime classics animated shows and films from the 80's that I missed as a kid. I'm here to tell you, this show is not good. It is a work of genius. I can't count how many people I told to watch this show said they "can't stand the singing". It's hard for me to choke down my gut reaction, which is to call them all sorts of intelligence insulting names. This show has songs that rival the best Disney ever put in a show or on film. Its songs are better than ANY songs currently on the radio. The lyrics are downright brilliant. The melodies are infectious. The song structures are brilliantly executed and wildly inventive. Even songs that I wasn't crazy about at first slowly embedded themselves into my brain until I wanted to listen to them on repeat for hours. And yes, I have finally gotten to the point where I listen to "At the Gala" in French and "Winter Wrap-Up" in German. The songs are that good. The only music with lyrics I can think of recently that is that good would be the soundtrack from the Disney film Frozen (which I also have international versions of songs for). If you strip away the iconic characters, gorgeous flash animation (yes, that is possible), catchy songs, adult and pop-culture references, etc, you still would have an exceedingly clever show, which is thoroughly self-aware, and tells an absolutely wonderful story. Our real world is filled with negativity, sex, violence, and hate. I can't watch shows on TV designed for adults that aren't based on cooking or some everyday activity, because modern TV drama for adults makes me sick. The explanation for this programming has always seemed to be that people are simply dark, evil, twisted creatures who crave nothing but these base things for their amusement. But then, out of nowhere something like Friendship is Magic emerges which exceedingly proves that no matter how dismal and dark things get in our modern world, good things come from within the hearts of good people, and simply cannot be suppressed. This is not mindless entertainment. It is a show about growing, and showing love for others on a very deep level. It encourages embracing your identity, cherishing the things that make us different, and true loyalty (to name only a few of the reoccurring themes). The world NEEDS shows like this desperately to teach children (and adults) the life lessons that are constantly being undermined by the screams of mainstream media to be selfish and self-centered. Aside from that, the characters really are truly outstanding archetypes with amazing depth and goodness, even to the point of being profound. Through the course of the show into the later seasons, you'll see a tomboy who loves sports embrace reading a good book, a refined woman get dirty to make a child happy, a shy mousy animal-lover overcome her fears, an independent spirit learn to rely on others, and an extreme attention-deficit character learn to focus on what truly matters in life. There is something deeply moving about a protagonist who sacrifices for others, a person who gets their entire self-worth of seeing others become happy, and a character who creates art but is only joyous when the creation is for the benefit of others. This is great stuff people. Conclusions This is where it all starts. Watch this show and fall under the spell of something truly good that springs from a love of people and everything that makes friendship the wonderful thing it is. If like me you are a shy nerd who struggles to make friends, this show may make you feel like more as a person. If you have no interest in such things and appreciate a good cartoon you will at the very least find it wildly entertaining. And if you think cartoons are for children, singing is stupid and only weirdos and perverts would want to watch a show for little girls when they are an adult male, I feel deeply DEEPLY sorry for you. Read more

Putting aside the whole "brony" phenomenon, this show is still well worth the price, for a number of reasons: - The characters: This is where the show really shines. The characters are all very well-rounded and surprisingly complex for a show aimed at this age group; it avoids lumping the characters into stereotypical roles. For example, in just about any other show, Rarity would be a stereotypical girly-girl, obsessed with boys, shopping, and hair. Here, she's certainly a fashionista, but she's also a competent businesswoman, something of an artist, and knows how to handle herself in dangerous situations. All the cast members have a similar level of development, which lends itself really well to the slice-of-life nature of the show. - The character designs and animation are great. It's cute and endearing, but not to the tooth-rot degree of previous generations, and it's still good for the occasional action sequence. As a bonus it's very expressive and surprisingly detailed for a flash-based cartoon. - Ditto for the music; it doesn't necessarily stick out, but it definitely enhances the show as a whole. - Good writing: On the whole, the show avoids most of the pitfalls of kid shows by using lots of character-based humor and self-awareness that can appeal to viewers of any age and rarely feels patronizing towards the adult audience. You don't need to be a kid to find it funny. At the same time, the plots are generally executed well enough that they don't feel like rehashes of common plotlines, and even when the plots are quite simple they're still entertaining due to the charm that the characters bring to everything. - Good Acting: There's some serious voice talent here; Tara Strong (Twilight Sparkle) is basically the patron saint of voice acting, Andrea Libman displays some impressive range (voicing both Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, two characters who have almost opposite personalities), Ashleigh Ball gives Rainbow Dash and Applejack very distinct voices, and Tabitha St. Germain does a great of job making Rarity into an entertaining and balanced character. This isn't to say that Season 1 is totally without fault; like all things, it has a few rough spots (In particular, the Cutie Mark Crusader based episodes can seem a bit same-y due to the characters having the same motivation in each), but overall it's consistently high quality and well worth checking out, even if you aren't a kid. I've found that it has a degree of quality and subtlety that sets it apart from a lot of other children's programming. EDIT: Now that I have the DVD, I'm just going to throw in a few comments about the physical media aspects. I haven't had time to watch everything yet, but I've watched a few episodes worth on the various discs and they look good so far. 1. The commentaries are very entertaining and interesting. They aren't particularly ground-breaking, but it's fun to hear about some of the behind-the-scenes stuff from the show's staff. There's a good selection of people from actors, to writers, to producers, and they definitely offer some interesting insights into the show. 2. The audio and video quality are great. It's not hi-def, but it's still perfectly good quality that really demonstrates the skill of animators and composers. 3. The physical DVD box itself is sturdy, if without frills. The only things I can really complain about are rather insubstantial, but in the interest of fairness I'll include them anyway: 1. The box artwork. They use some of the same stock vectors that they use for 90% of the merchandise, which isn't bad in and of itself, but having seen it everywhere else it feels a bit lazy when it would have been fairly easy to use something new. Also, one of the DVD's has an image of Princess Cadance, who doesn't actually appear in the series until the end of the second season. It doesn't bug me, but I guess a kid could get confused wondering who the pink pony on the DVD is. 2. The menu music. It's a loop of the "My Little Pony" line from the show's theme song, and if you listen to it for more than about 20 seconds it starts to get a bit annoying. Again, an extremely minor issue, but one that could have been really easily solved by just sticking in some of the show's (excellent) BGM instead of a 10-second loop. So basically, the show itself is awesome, the DVDs maintain the quality, and the only issues are so insubstantial that they're barely worth mentioning. They certainly aren't important enough to knock any stars off the rating. If you were on the fence about buying the DVD, do it, it's completely worth it. (Note: I haven't checked out all the special features, like the coloring pages and whatnot on the fourth disc, but I doubt those will really factor much into the rating either) Read more