My Little Pony: Equestria Girls has been the center of controversy over the last few months off and on, starting in February and boiling over with the trailer and again with the prototype dolls. If you've followed it, I don't think I need to remind you of the drama, so I won't write it again.

For a while, I actually kept myself rather mum about it. If you wanted me to give my viewpoint for Equestria Girls, I probably would've said nothing, because I didn't have much out there except the pretty bad character design.

Then this character concept poster was leaked…

…and I came close to flipping the damn table because of how FUCKING SEXIST the designs were!

*sigh*

Okay, Now to back up.

After researching and reviewing everything Equestria Girls has demonstrated to me, I have to declare that what's been shown to me over the past several months have not only been underwhelming, but also demonstrated that Hasbro and DHX — not one or the other; both are equally at fault — apparently aren't communicating to me, as a consumer, that I should pay twenty dollars to watch it at this point.

What both have done wrong are the following:

• The plot summary is hideously shallow and doesn't sound sensible or plausible.
   
  Once you have the mumbo-jumbo down, the summary is basically this: "A crown was stolen from the Crystal Empire. Twilight goes through a portal to become human. She's forced to study and experience in High School with an alternate dimension version of her friends while the fate of two worlds hang in the balance." The plot summary is way too simple, cliché with no effort to really twist it up, and predictable. Fantasy doesn't excuse implausibility, and a target audience is no excuse to discriminate the periphery demographics.
  
• As a concept, it does NOT fit the scope of what My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic IS.
   
  There is a reason why any kind of TV medium has a show bible: It provides the structure and purpose of what the medium is about. It's a reference guide for people to refer whenever they need. Here's the Wikipedia page of what a writing bible is.
   
  One of the rebuttals I've seen when it comes to Equestria Girls is during season one of Friendship Is Magic, there were several episodes that dealt with "girly" things: a sleepover, dressing to impressing, and the gala. But there's a HUGE difference between the two.
   
  1. For the episodes like Look Before You Sleep, Suited for Success, Green Isn't Your Color, The Best Night Ever, and Hearts and Hooves Day, these are individual episodes that are within a central concept and really twisted things up to make it not the cliché it sounds. My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is about exploring and growing the magic of friendship in methods that don't conform to the typical "girly" fashion. (In Friendship Is Magic, instead of the setting being in a study hall, its central setting is a small town with some exceptions.)
   
  2. Equestria Girls is much more different, for the movie's central setting is in a high school. Friendship Is Magic is about straying away from the typical, cliché central setting that's plagued family-friendly entertainment for the past several decades. FIM wasn't intended to be like this, and it's completely disrespectful to what Friendship Is Magic's core is all about. I'll be explaining (and reitering) more about the core throughout this editorial.
   
  Just because it's a spinoff doesn't mean you stray the roots of the generation this far off, especially in a conceptual point where, throughout the series, we've seen Twilight struggle with several societal moments: saving Ponyville, keeping herself composed, and genuinely fitting in Ponyville in Winter Wrap-Up.
  
• The leaking of the extremely bad character design concepts shows no quality control.
   
  Regardless whether the character designs are prototypes or not, they should not have been leaked this early in the trailer development for this spinoff movie. Hasbro is a billion-dollar toy/media company (although Hasbro still claims to be toy first and "screw-media" second), and they have the money and ability to instruct those who are working on Equestria Girls (DHX, the marketing department, and other Hasbro employees) to keep the concept art secure and private. They have the resources to keep it all confidential, and the fact that so many concept art styles were released so early prior to the trailer is inexcusable.
   
  The concepts for the horrid character design shouldn't have been conceived in the first place. Right from the beginning, Equestria Girls' character design had undergone several extreme changes in the anatomy, clothing, hair, and details.
   
  Furthermore, the design atop of this blog is disgustingly sexist because it implies a message to their target audience — adolescent girls between the ages ten and fourteen — that the only way to be good and happy with yourself is to showcase an exaggeratedly thin body (particularly the artificial, model-like hourglass torso), skinny bird arms, and ugly tattoo imprinted on the cheek. With the exception of the cutie mark, everything that's so wrong in "kid-friendly" entertainment today exhibits in that picture. It's using a dangerous form of sex appeal to sell to young adult/"tween" girls: That concept base above isn't "just" skinny. It's scarily skinny.
   
  If Hasbro wanted to genuinely show off the concept art, then it'd be featured under the "Concept Art" menu in the DVD. There is no excuse for Hasbro or DHX to be so lackadaisical in its security.
  
• The official character designs are factually poor.
   
  You can erase the details and color and you still can't recognize them on first glance. The colors and little details in the clothing show who each character is, but what makes the design strong is when the details are erased and making the character designs a black silhouette.
   
  Look at the ponies:
  
   
  You can recognize them immediately by the shape of the hair and tail. The fact that you can insert distinguishable hair and tail on a simple base design shows how strong it is.
   
  With the Equestria Girls, they're much harder to identify because without the hair, the designs blend a bit too much. Crop off the head and hair and analyze them that way. Unless you can really study the anatomy, it's nearly impossible to tell the difference. Poor identity from a simplistic perspective is a great method to producing objectively bad character design.
   
  As for the girls' clothing, erase the colors and details, leaving only blocks of solid white or black. Layer the shirts, skirts, and boots on top of each other in three separate columns. They're almost exactly alike, and when you really want to demonstrate good character design, subtle changes are what you can't do.
   
  The perception that Flash can't handle complicated, varying anatomy is untrue today. Five to seven years ago, Macromedia Flash was much more primitive and couldn't handle animation as smoothly as it does today. But with Flash run by Adobe and receiving several huge upgrades over the past couple of years, it's since become an important application that can literally program animation akin to hand-drawn ones from Disney.
   
  And if you want to know how important graphic design is, read my excerpt of this post (particularly my response to the sexist concept art atop this editorial):

  
  When it comes to selling a product, design really matters. As a graphic designer, one important lesson that I've been taught is to visually communicate in a way that hooks consumers in. Graphic design's purpose is to sell; it's supposed to hook people into following the product. When you have really GOOD graphic design, it instills a sense of trust. But when you have BAD graphic design, then it results in people not following or buying the product.
   
  Two big examples of bad graphic design that I used (one from another user on EQD) are the old Pontiac Aztec and the old Tropicana repackaging.
   
  The Pontiac Aztec can have as many fantastic features if GM wants. But without a great exterior, then it's purposeless. The overall design and grill are ugly and indicate that GM's trying too hard to sell the crossover. The car only lasted into the fourth year.
   
  In 2009, with the help of Arnell, PepsiCo underwent a complete brand revamp for many of their products, including Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Tropicana. Tropicana is the poster child for bad repackaging.
   
  To show you what I mean, here's a comparison:
   

   
   
   
  
   

   
  Above is the old packaging. The most iconic part is the red-and-white straw inside the orange, symbolizing high-quality, all-natural orange juice.
   
  Here's the updated carton:
   
   

   
   
  

   
   
  Tropicana's repackaging flopped so badly that PepsiCo changed the package back: No one could spot it. It looks like a generic carton from a supermarket chain.
   
  What does this have anything to do with the difference between Equestria Girls' and FIM's character design? Like I wrote before, great design hooks people in and creates a sense of trust from the consumer and forms expectations that the consumer hopes the company holds up.
   
  One of the biggest reasons why we have such a big fandom, besides the abundance of fantastic art, is the good character design. The target and periphery audiences are treated with respect before they even got the chance to watch the series. The ponies in Friendship Is Magic are clean, beautiful, creative, original, individual, and intelligent. The good character design hooked the unsuspected viewer in because the good design created a great first impression; the characters' designs told them, "We have quality control, and we have a high-quality product." The quality of FIM is self-evident right there, and that led to many people trying it. Combined with the highly raved reviews and community, we see the results.
   
  Equestria Girls's graphic design doesn't have one iota of quality control in the character design. The overall design for the characters at this point is DISGUSTING, and I see no need to not mince words for it. There are SO many humanized designs for the Mane Six that are factually one thousand times better.
   
  And if anyone's curious, character/graphic design is a MAJOR indicator of the quality of the final product. I see poor quality character design in so many product previews. How many final executions are factually good? None. Likewise, when the graphic design was GOOD in the previews, most of the final products actually came out rather decent at least. When an important hook like graphic design is more worn out than a ship's rusty anchor, then regardless of the team's track record, there's no good reason to believe they'll pull these design out from the pit of hell and make it not sound like a Monster High ripoff.
   
  And it's a shame to see the character design be so awful. If the characters were left in the beginning like the first "leaked" version or something like this, then maybe I could give EQG a small benefit of the doubt.

• The trailer dumps so much information for this movie.
   
  In sixty-eight seconds, we're told basically what the plot of the movie is from beginning to nearly the end. A trailer's responsible for promoting the movie the best they can. When you have that much information shown, Hasbro and DHX are telling everyone that they have no confidence in it. Good trailers wouldn't spill that much information every half-second and would keep important plot-centric spoilers away from the public eye. If they have faith in the overall quality of the movie, then they would've shown it in the trailer by keeping it simple and not spoil key plot points.
  
• With each update and leak, Equestria Girls screams that this movie is merely commercial-driven with complete disregard for the roots of the product.
   
  One indication why Friendship Is Magic is so good is how it's not so explicitly toy-driven. These characters are developed to make us as an audience focus on the characters instead. For the most part (Cadance, Shining Armor, the Friendship Express, and the Twilicorn being exceptions), the toys didn't become the characters. The characters became the toys. Friendship Is Magic, from the concept to the episodes, show genuine heart and effort from all parties, particularly DHX, who had to do whatever they could to get the stupidity known as the Twilicorn to blend in the canon (only to fail badly).
   
  Hasbro, however, remains stuck in their mindset that to promote new products, they shove sudden, contradictory concepts into the canon with hopes of getting people suckered enough to buy them, a practice with mixed results, and Equestria Girls is an even more blatant example than the Twilicorn. Unlike FIM, I've yet to see one bit of that heart in EQG. The fully-fledged sexist character concepts are an indication to this, as those designs shouldn't have existed, either as dolls (which you'll see below) or drawings. You couldn't offend a periphery demographic, even many people from the target audience, enough by displaying such demeaning ideas that merely harm our youth. The plot summary gives a lot away and demonstrates nothing to make it feel like Friendship Is Magic. Hasbro is inorganically shoving the inane concept into the canon to make it sell, and that's not you create great characters or great plots.
   
  That lack of heart is demonstrated even more in the prototype dolls, seen here:
   
   
   
   
   
  
   
   
  Those prototype dolls SUCK, and when offensive concepts like this is released to the public, you're asking for them to be judged, unsolicited or not! "Wait and see for the final product" is a stupid excuse and says you have no clue about genuine, objective quality or understanding of the design process, from the creative brief to the final execution. These prototypes do nothing except enforce two things:
   
  1. That EQG is merely a promotion for a new toyline in an extremely thin, lazy disguise, only to have the MLP:FIM logo slapped on the front to make it "appear" to be related to the main product. It doesn't matter whether the characters will be in character or whether the beginning of the movie will be set in the FIM universe. The FEEL of MLP:FIM and its roots must match in the alternate dimension and be appropriate with the spinoff inside the animation and products. FIM's roots are about not enforcing the clichés that plague the little-girl/family-friendly entertainment industry. The pilot itself criticized this cliché by relocating Twilight into a town. Currently, EQG is conceptually enforcing the typical girly cliché that goes against what FIM stands for.
   
  2. The sexist stereotype that adolescent girls need to be borderline anorexic and extremely girly to look good, well-mannered, and beautiful. A major problem in the toy industry is how girly characters are "princess-ified" or dangerously sexualized to sell toys and dolls. Monster High — EQG's competitor — blatantly uses that sex appeal and artificial beauty to sell to adolescents, but EQG's prototype dolls use a dangrous form of sex appeal to separate themselves from the competition. Recently, Disney redesigned Merida with an evident hourglass body, finer hair, exposed shoulders, and makeup, sparking fierce criticism from people of all ages, including Faust and former Brave director Brendan Chapman. These prototypes use these sexist figures to sell to young adults, and that's intellectually offensive! It sells out for the target demographic by making the prototypes all lazily uniform, artificially pretty, and so anorexic.
   
  The fact that these designs exist at any point should elicit anger, and just because it's a prototype doesn't mean it doesn't deserve justified scrutiny. Prototypes or otherwise, the anti-feminist, sexist figure these dolls share reinforces a scary culture that merely hurts our youth and instills this awful stereotype. The anger throughout these branches in the fandom (including 4chan and Faust herself) is loud and justifiable.
  
• At this point, Equestria Girls has shown to be blatantly anti-feminist, straying so far away from the roots and framework of Friendship Is Magic.
   
  How is Equestria Girls anti-feminist?
   
  1. It sticks Twilight Sparkle and "copies" of the Mane Six in a high school setting, a common cliché in family-friendly entertainment, with no honest-to-God effort to connect it to Friendship Is Magic. I already explained why EQG's central setting contradicts FIM's mission statement several times already.
   
  2. The production of the movie has sucked from the ground up on all parties. Reiterating what I wrote previously, each concept art that was leaked to the public occurred so early and so quickly for several months, indicating poor security on Hasbro's behalf and sending messages to people that this movie has no quality control. This movie underwent several serious changes since the beginning, particularly the bad character design (including that sexist bullshit atop), when both Hasbro and DHX should've communicated better and agreed to a design concept during the sketching and researching stages of the movie. Once again, the prototype dolls reinforce and promote the scary, sexist culture that Western society still instills into girls from ages two and up.
   
  3. This is a completely new franchise designed to attract adolescent girls, but Hasbro slaps the MLP:FIM logo on the front in order to attract those who've followed the main generation since its inception in 2010. Writing the characters in character and attaching Equestria in the beginning of Equestria Girls aren't enough. Like what I wrote before, the feel of FIM, from the concept to its setting, must match the main series. The atmosphere and mission statement from Friendship Is Magic must coexist with Equestria Girls. Just because it says it's MLP:FIM-related doesn't mean it is related. The info-dump of the trailer, plot summary, horrid production, and poor development of this movie proves how EQG is FIM's antithesis so far, and that's a really bad thing.
   
  Friendship Is Magic, on the other hand, is pro-feminist: It doesn't stick to the norms of "kid-friendly" TV that plagues current-generation entertainment.
   
  1. Its central setting isn't a school and is a town. Part of what makes this animation so successful quality-wise is how its main purpose is to provide plots to characters without having to stick to the stereotypical ideals of girl-centric TV. But when they did, Friendship Is Magic spun them in the other direction the minute you see a preview, editorial, or review. For example, Twilight being relocated from her school to Ponyville in the pilot is an underlying criticism of this stereotypical setting. There were other great concepts that were supposed to break away more like Princess Celestia being Queen Celestia, but Hasbro rejected that one because of the perception that little girls won't buy a fictional, benevolent, off-white, queen pony unless the word "princess" is plastered on the package.
   
  2. The characters are individual, independent, and break away from the tropes in common family-friendly fiction. Sleepless in Ponyville, for example, jabbed at the "common-trope" element when Rainbow Dash cut off Scootaloo's overly sappy campfire story before she could finish it. Each character shares an occupation or activity that both mares and stallions can perform successfully if given the scripted assignment to.
   
  3. As a whole, it sends a message to families that kids, especially young girls, can enjoy quality entertainment without resorting to girly stereotypes; and the writing succeeds in proving this to both the target audience and periphery demographic. G1's MLP Tales, G3, and G3.5 resorted to girly stereotypes that ransacked founder Bonnie Zacherle's vision of creating a franchise accessible to people of all ages and alienated plenty of the original G1's audience. I wrote this in my essay detailing FIM following the roots of the franchise, and it bears repeating: If FIM didn't air and push the concept to its fullest potential, the franchise might've died.
   
  Faust herself, who laid the foundation for FIM before she resigned from being fully invested in the production halfway into season two, is a feminist; and she's very blunt about it in her character design, interviews, and mission statement for quality family-friendly entertainment. Shows she helped work on — Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends and The Powerpuff Girls — are known to deviate away from the norms of traditional family-friendly TV and criticize both anti-feminist and sexist values of female characters. In TPPG, Sara Bellum, Sedusa, and Femme Fetale have exaggerated hourglass bodies to criticize the "perfect doll" culture that so many companies and commercials exploit in Western society to sell.
   
  And the girls don't buy the toys alone nor always see the TV shows or movies without parent consent. The prototype dolls, like the movie, target young adults, but their parents buy them. The movie tries to get the kids excited, but the parents and/or guardians hold the income and determine whether it's appropriate for their kids to see EQG or not.
  

Over the past several months, Equestria Girls's production underwent such a hellish tailspin. Several concepts spilled all over the brony fandom, especially sexist character designs that shouldn't have even been thought of. The plot summary is generic, and the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic logo is lazily hanging on the front of the production and toys to make it "try" to relate to the main series when it's exhibiting the exact opposite. The fact that it's related to MLP:FIM without any effort to objectively try atmospherically and organically is intellectually insulting to myself and the periphery demographic in general. Each time I see an update, Equestria Girls is screaming, "Hi! We don't have quality control! We suck worse than Kurt Angle! But that doesn't matter because we know you want to buy our toys! If you buy me, thank you for giving me your money. To those who dismiss me, you can kiss my plot!"

To those who dismiss the development hell Equestria Girls has gone through, a message to you: When you use the target audience (here being adolescent girls) as an excuse for the product, you're calling the product "weak." Products that are factually good in quality don't discriminate periphery demographics regardless of target audience. And the target audience is no excuse for delivering poor quality products and hooks for them on the professional level.

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic shows genuine heart and respect for their main audience (families, especially families with young girls), and as a result, demographics unite under this show. "My Little Pony": Equestria Girls spits in the face of the periphery demographic, visually scolds its target audience, treats viewership altogether as if the people who see the product are stupid, and disrespects the roots of Friendship Is Magic.