Thrond

On 2023-12-16 at 3:17 PM, SunsetShimmerStan said:

be fair, Forgotten Friendship did add something with Sunset and Celestia reconciling

But it doesn't mean a whole lot; it's a quick scene in a story that isn't really about it. There isn't a lot of weight to the moment. 

On 2023-12-16 at 3:17 PM, SunsetShimmerStan said:

the idea that there is someone who still has a grudge against Sunset for her previous actions as a bully

You could do something with that, but it's not meaningful for Sunset; she's already proven herself as a hero and a nice person. We already saw her make up with people she bullied in the past. There's nothing for her to learn from this scenario.

On 2023-04-29 at 3:59 PM, FlutterIsBestAlicorn said:

I hope I don't start an argument for saying this, but Fluttershy's voice actor has said that Fluttershy might have a little crush on Discord, and there was that "i wanna marry Discord" thing in "She talks to an angel" so... She might feel the same way

It became really obvious in season 9. They're clearly an item. Makes me wish Discord was a nicer person. 

Looks like only season 1 on Netflix in Canada now. Genuinely confused as to why it's so hard to watch this show all of a sudden. 

Season 9 never came to Netflix in Canada either, which meant there was no way to watch it on-demand, and it's not streaming anywhere else either. Not sure it's even available on iTunes, though cartoons are really confusing there. Crossing my fingers that all nine seasons wind up on Prime or Crave when the Netflix deal is over. 

On 2022-01-07 at 11:00 AM, Justin_Case001 said:

Now, if you really want to go the distance, put every single EG short in there too!

At least those mostly don't reference Friendship is Magic, so you can just put them between seasons if you like. Also, don't forget the Friendship is Magic shorts, which fit between seasons 8 and 9. 

On 2021-11-19 at 6:40 PM, EpicEnergy said:

That means there was a line that was drawn where a pony or creature cannot be befriended. However, when doing so, one must be consistent. So this presents another problem - why is betrayal crossing the line? Another problem with consistency is that Cozy Glow wasn't given a second chance, but numerous others were. Ultimately, I can't find a good reason, in-universe, as to why Cozy Glow wasn't befriended. I would like to believe the mane six were right and justified in sending her to Tartarus and rejecting her, but when you look at the lack of reasons to do so, it's difficult to believe that.

That's not really my point. I mean that Twilight & co. spent a whole season teaching her friendship and got nowhere. Starlight Glimmer was given a second chance because she showed signs of vulnerability, whereas Cozy Glow was just a cartoon villain with no redeeming qualities. 

16 minutes ago, EpicEnergy said:

They saw the good in her and they are also kind ponies, but what I have a problem with is why they befriended her and not Cozy Glow.

To be fair, Cozy Glow didn't seem all that interested in becoming nice. After all, they kinda *did* befriend Cozy Glow, and then the kid went and betrayed them. 

Yeah, I recommend it. There were points where I honestly liked Equestria Girls more than Friendship is Magic. Honestly they're pretty similar to each other; I tend to think of them as the same show. Thankfully the art style of Equestria Girls improves as the series goes on. 

On 2021-10-26 at 11:03 PM, They call me Loyalty said:

And the only special I watched was awfully trite. I think it was the mirror one. So, there is that.

For whatever it's worth, every other Equestria Girls thing is better than that special. 

23 hours ago, The Recherche said:

I have absolutely no affection for the background ponies. The early to mid 10's were a different time for fandoms in general, and a lot of other fanbases had a strange fascination with background characters, but MLP is a particularly egregious example. This became less and less of a thing after 2014 or so, but I still do see quite a lot of people who have background characters as their favorites. This is not a wrong opinion, but it is one I find absolutely baffling.

 

It seems kinda fitting that people like the background ponies so much, because this show is a toy tie-in and there are way more toys than main characters. But honestly I don't get it either. 

Favourite - Rainbow Rocks, but only because Holidays Unwrapped is technically a series of shorts; otherwise it would be hard to choose. Rainbow Rocks is the best of the movies, whereas Holidays Unwrapped is possibly the very best arc of the short series. I wish we got more, but at least Equestria Girls went out on a high note. 

Least favourite - I got basically nothing out of "Mirror Magic" or Spring Breakdown. I think I liked Spring Breakdown more but I don't remember why. 

I basically agree with @Lone Traveler. The comparison to shows like Steven Universe isn't as notable in the first four seasons, because they're a really good little girls' cartoon with a little more depth and edge than you might expect. The later seasons are a bit closer to what the fantasy adventure cartoons of that time were doing, but I never felt My Little Pony was particularly good at that sort of thing; I like many of the ideas and even some episodes from seasons 5 onward, but I would not reccommend them as great television. 

16 minutes ago, FlareGun45 said:

It woulda been better if Spike got a class, or at least tutored.

Wasn't he a substitute teacher at one point? 

I like that she's "the smart one," and I've always found her interest in learning and her anxiety about failure more relatable than the other main characters. And the mane six are the best characters in the show, so that's saying something. 

Reposting a status update from last year: 
 

The School of Friendship may have been an awkward idea but I liked it a lot because

• It was a much-needed change of pace for a show which I felt was stagnating and running out of ideas for its main characters. 
• It seemed like a natural evolution of the main-six-as-teachers trend in the show, and introduced a bit more failure and uncertainty to those stories. 
• It let Twilight work as part of an educational institution, which I had always felt was the perfect line of work for her.
• It served as a symbol of acceptance and let the mane six stand against xenophobia, which was a positive development in the show's depiction of non-pony species. 
• It gave Starlight a clearer purpose in the show, which was especially nice because I felt that season was a major improvement for her characterization. 
• The main student characters are cute. 
   

I think there are some issues with the execution, but by season 8 I was so bored with the show that literally any gimmick would have made me happy. 

10 hours ago, DPBOX said:

So, what's wrong with new characters? The Main 6 were the spotlight for 7 whole seasons. Give another set of 6 characters a turn. What's wrong with focusing on another set of characters?

Well, the thing we have to remember is that the show never actually did this; seasons 8 and 9 still have more episodes about the mane six than anyone else. I really like the student characters, but the show didn't really have space to really do much with them. 

Ideally the mane six episodes that season would have been a little more focused on their place in the school, but I would have taken more student six material than a lot of what we got from seasons 8 and 9. I mean if the show did end somewhere around there, leading to the student six getting their own show, I wouldn't have complained. 

13 hours ago, DPBOX said:

I mean, Twilight Sparkle first studied friendship, then became the Princess of Friendship, then taught a student about friendship and started spreading friendship to lands outside Equestria. The logical next step would be to make a school where all sorts of creatures to learn about friendship.

This is true, but it's a bit more complicated with the others, who all have other jobs that they don't seem to have given up. Thematically, it fits: all of the mane six had been teaching friendship for a while now, so a school is an entirely sensible evolution of that. It's just that I don't know where most of them find the time.

3 hours ago, CastletonSnob said:

That's not even getting into the "White Man's Burden" undertone of the whole thing. The ponies open up a school to teach the non-ponies about friendship? 

The show was doing that long before the school came about. In fact, I think "we're letting non-ponies come to learn about friendship, even though the authorities don't approve" is a massive improvement over "we're going to foreign countries to teach non-ponies about friendship." Before, it was about getting in people's face and evangelizing. Now, it's about inclusion. 

3 hours ago, Kiryu-Chan said:

Then there’s the mane 6 being teachers at the school, the writers went out of their freaking way to make sure you knew they weren’t good teachers, even though they didn’t need to be.

"Non-Compete Clause" and "The End in Friend" both reminded me a lot of the episodes in seasons 6 and 7 where someone would be a jerk for 22 minutes until someone else finally convinced them to stop. In my mind, that's less the show actively trying to make the mane six look bad, and more the same old formula as always; it just happened that the show needed to do something with the students, so they might as well be the voice of reason this time. It was a waste of the students too. 

2 hours ago, BornAgainBrony said:

I feared it would turn the show into something episodic, with every single story being about student life in the school, but fortunately it didn't do that. 

Well said on most of your points, but this here sounds like it would have been a lot of fun. 

There are many things that the later seasons add that I appreciate, and I somewhat respect their higher ambition, but I still think season 2 is the best, and it's not even particularly close. It has the highest batting average of the lot for me; even the weaker episodes have some charm to them. But compared to season 1 it's also a little darker, a little more mature, a little more cohesive. The best episodes of the later seasons are different in ways I really like. My problem is the middling episodes, which are way less entertaining to me later in the show; something was lost along the way. Season 2 isn't perfect, but it's still probably the strongest this show ever was. 

Season 7. I await your tomatoes. 

I haven't watched much of this season since 2017; there's like seven episodes in the whole season I like, and I would only say two of them reach the heights of the best of the show. So I don't quite remember why I hated this season so much, but the feeling I remember isn't anger so much as overwhelming boredom; people always name the same handful of high points but everything else felt like My Little Pony by numbers. 

4 hours ago, Rushing cash said:

Is there a thread like this with a poll for season 9?

Not exactly; the season 9 one doesn't have a poll. It can be found here. 

On 2021-07-02 at 7:21 PM, Megas said:

I mean there was probably a reason why the Minis ended up doing so much better than the mainline dolls or the rebooted ones lol

Those things are really cute. Even I have a couple Equestria Girls minis and I never buy official MLP merch. 

1 hour ago, ExplosionMare said:

- The End in Friend was a good episode even though it was mainly about Rarity and Rainbow arguing. They seem like characters who would disagree from time to time, so it didn’t feel completely unnatural or “plot driven” to have an ongoing conflict

My main problem with that is that these are characters who presumably have been friends for a while now, and who we had seen get along for seven whole seasons of the show, so it's hard to believe that they have no common ground.

Is it unpopular to say that I like the student six? They're all really charming, and it's a shame we didn't get more of them... especially given how hit-or-miss the mane six episodes were in those last two seasons. 

I don't think so; I actually thought I was mostly alone in whining about that. Though to be honest even I thought "Rollercoaster of Friendship" was one of the more tolerable examples of their dynamic. 

I mean... I guess? I'm not a huge fan of that first movie, but I wasn't expecting to like it at all and it turned out entirely fine, basically a simplified high school comedy filtered through the tone of Friendship is Magic. Then Equestria Girls would go on to do a lot more than I originally expected of it, with Rainbow Rocks and the first season of the short series being particular highlights. 

15 hours ago, Sparkly sparks said:

but who's idea was it to put a farmer and the fastest pony in equestria in skirts to begin with?

it makes no sense whatsoever

It fits the dolls I guess. Neither of them seem like skirt-wearing types to me either, frankly. 

5 hours ago, Sparkly sparks said:

the fact that rainbow dash decides to wear a skirt instead of short/pants still makes no sense to me

she would never

Thankfully she stopped