Was G1 really that dark?

[Fhaolan 4,468]

It all depends on how you look at it. In the 80's there were a restrictions on what you could do in cartoons, but there was a lot of writer/animators exploring how to skirt the restrictions and *imply* a lot without directly stating it. So there's a lot of subtle dark going on in MLP rather than direct dark. Which in many ways made it creepier overall. Direct dark gets bland and boring pretty quickly unless you're constantly ramping it up. The various 'adult' cartoons that exist (and have existed since 1930 or so) suffer from that constant ramping up in order to shock and disturb.

 

Subtle dark gets darker the more you think about what just happened.