Thoughts of the overall show after the end

[Sepul-Coloratura 756]

I'm bittersweet not because 'it's a good show but sad because it's over' kind of way. I'm glad that it ended before it turned into even a bigger mess. I somehow wish it should have ended a little bit earlier.

My final thoughts of the show is mixed. Overall it was a good experience watching the show, it was better than nothing, that's why I kept watching it. But I feel like I got handful of good characters, good moments, good episodes, good settings, but not that much of a great story after all. I didn't focused on the 'big picture' while watching the show because it was mostly not what the show was about, I only focused on the individual episodes. But after the story has reached the end, I can't ignore that aspect anymore.

The show wasn't thinking it through when constructing the big arcs. It's like drawing a picture not knowing the end result and handing it over to the next person. I can't help but thinking of all the missed opportunities more and more. And one of the reasons why people, including me, liked the show so much was because of those opportunities we saw in the show that was yet to come. I think the show runners were aware of that aspect, but they only teased it to get a short term response, not for a long term solid story.

The future of MLP I pictured when watching the ealy episodes was far greater than what it eventually become. Still it's a special show to me. (EQG shorts should have lasted longer IMO.)

Good bye MLP and thank you for all the good memories. Pinkie Pie will always be my spirit animal.

Edited December 21, 2019 by Sepul-Coloratura

[Megas 27,050]

I quit before I made it to the very end, and I hate that. At this point I would have preferred the series to end at S5, the second half of the show's run(barring most of S7) has some of the most hackneyed bullshit they've put out, it often felt like it was handled by people who either didn't care or outright hated the show and characters they were working on. S7 is my favorite season and I hate that it's sandwiched between some real shit. It upsets me that a show I loved so much at the beginning made me completely resent it by the end.

S1-5 and S7, mind you, I still love them, I still think they're great TV, but unfortunately that's all I really want to believe exist(as well as the Movie, and specials).

Sorry

At least the worst thing I could say about Equestria Girls is that they should have had actual episodes or at least longer content instead of just a measly 2-3 minute shorts

Edited December 22, 2019 by Megas

[fare67t 242]

As someone that enjoys EVERY season, and has watched the whole thing, I can say that I'm glad that it ended the way it did, and was as long as it was.

For one, I'm one of the only people alive that enjoys s8 / the school / the Young Six characters, and I'll always stick by those opinions.

Was the Baby Cakes episode super stupid? ofc

did they go too ham on Flurry Heart? yeeeeep

Spoiler

Am I one of those weirdos that thinks Chrysalis should be reformed? hell yes

But overall, I really enjoyed every little bit of it, and im glad the show lasted as long as it did

Otherwise, I may not have ever come back to the fandom~

[Latecomer 438]

i loved the whole first season, and it's a pity that the rest of the show couldn't stay that consistently good. But on the other hand, later seasons added continuity and more developed plots, as well as a whole load of cool new characters, places and ideas to play with. Sure. there were plenty of wasted opportunities, fumbled morals and just plain poor episodes - but I don't think they came to outnumber the good parts of the show till the last season, and even that had strong points.

(Even though I'm usually one for planned plots, I actually like the show's "toybox"  style of making it up as it goes along. Certainly, it probably worked better with the show running about three times as long as anyone expected than a more serial one would.)

Now as for how it stands among this decade's cartoons, I have to say it's strong at the beginning but weaker as it goes along. Not just because it got worse, but because this decade saw a boom in high-quality kids animation -  while FIM didn't really grow to match. But it was still wortth watching to the end, IMO - and of course, the massive and productive fan community has to count for something too.

 

 

[fare67t 242]

15 minutes ago, Latecomer said:

but because this decade saw a boom in high-quality kids animation

You say that

but like...every single cartoon of the 2010s (or at least a lot of them) were in that crappy Calarts style.

Yes, I'm one of THOSE people that doesn't like Gravity Falls / HATES Steven Universe, so what?

[Latecomer 438]

8 minutes ago, fare67t said:

You say that

but like...every single cartoon of the 2010s (or at least a lot of them) were in that crappy Calarts style.

Yes, I'm one of THOSE people that doesn't like Gravity Falls / HATES Steven Universe, so what?

Well, FIM wasn't, was it? Which is one reason it might have attracted people even when there were better written shows out there.. 

[Here No Longer 5,270]

I think it was a pretty solid show, even if it had a few hurdles, and it nearly jumped the shark, twice... (Once in Season 3 and once in Season 8). Though I really think now, with more retrospective, that the quality of the episodes was a bit less consistent than I choose to reminisce it to be. Sure there's an awful lot of FANTASTIC episodes like The Perfect Pear, The Return of Harmony, Twilight's Kingdom, Pinkie Pride, Lesson Zero, I could go on, but there's plenty of duds actually, and they exist in every last season. The Showstoppers in Season 1, Putting Your Hoof Down in Season 2, Almost every episode in Season 3, It Ain't Easy Being Breezies in Season 4, Princess Spike in Season 5, 28 Pranks Later in Season 6, Hard to Say Anything in Season 7, Fake It 'Til You Make it (and a few others) in Season 8, and 2,4,6 Greaaat in Season 9 just to name some of them from every season. It's not an absolutely amazing or ground-breaking show now that I think about it, but it (for the most part) maintained a solid 8/10 level of quality throughout its run even with the stinkers.

 

At least we got this, now we have to deal with the atrocity that will be Pony Life. I certainly hope it gets canned.

Edited December 22, 2019 by Dustleeshus

[Sparklefan1234 161,633]

Every season of Friendship is Magic had its ups & downs

 

but I feel like the mood of show changed somehow after Season 5 started. 

 

In my opinion, every season since Season 4's finale felt like it ended on a low instead of a high due to the "epicness" of Twilight's Kingdom

 

being too big/difficult to top. 

[Oleks 1,983]

Overall, I think it was a good show, great even. Some seasons were better, some were worse, but I can’t say it really went downhill at some point, as many long-running shows do. It brought me hours of enjoyment, and I just don't feel like nitpicking and comlaining about things I didn't like. The lack of “the big picture” is understandable, considering that MLP was originally planned to last only 3 seasons, and after that new themes were just added one by one. But despite everything for me MLP will always be one of those shows from which I can pick an episode from any season to rewatch and enjoy it as its own thing. Also, for many people FiM is something much bigger than just a cartoon, and, in my opinion, the good things that came from it outweigh its flaws.

[Rushing cash 824]

Its an awesome show, when I started watching it I couldn't have imagined that I will love it so much.

The characters, the stories, it was so enjoyable, I love each and every season(some more than others), the show had a lot of incredible episodes and only a few bad ones, with the majority being a great 8/10. The show had missed opportunities and made decisions I didn't like but it was all worth it in the end. 

[Cash In 21,489]

It's a great show. Had plenty of highs and while there were some low points, that happens with all shows, so let's not kid ourselves. Great animation, characters and world building.

Edited September 5, 2021 by Cash_In

[TheAnimationFanatic 3,543]

It started the decade strong and ended it strong as well.

[FloppyfluffyEars 5]

On 12/21/2019 at 4:55 PM, Latecomer said:

i loved the whole first season, and it's a pity that the rest of the show couldn't stay that consistently good. But on the other hand, later seasons added continuity and more developed plots, as well as a whole load of cool new characters, places and ideas to play with. Sure. there were plenty of wasted opportunities, fumbled morals and just plain poor episodes - but I don't think they came to outnumber the good parts of the show till the last season, and even that had strong points.

(Even though I'm usually one for planned plots, I actually like the show's "toybox"  style of making it up as it goes along. Certainly, it probably worked better with the show running about three times as long as anyone expected than a more serial one would.)

Now as for how it stands among this decade's cartoons, I have to say it's strong at the beginning but weaker as it goes along. Not just because it got worse, but because this decade saw a boom in high-quality kids animation -  while FIM didn't really grow to match. 

 

 

In your opinion, what would you say made FIM so "strong"/ made it so good in its early days? I actually agree with you but I am curious what specific things made it successful as an animated TV shows when it first started?

[Latecomer 438]

6 hours ago, FloppyfluffyEars said:

In your opinion, what would you say made FIM so "strong"/ made it so good in its early days? I actually agree with you but I am curious what specific things made it successful as an animated TV shows when it first started?

Hmm... well I have to admit part of it was the "better than it should be" effect. If it wasn't a toy cartoon, wasn't for girls, if G3 hadn't been as flat as it was... well it would still have been a solid show, but fewer people would have noticed or cared, at least early on. From that perspective, starting with a big adventure/villain two-parter was probably best even if it's both unrepresentative and kind of rushed.

As for what made it a good, maybe great show... well the strong-but flawed, relateable-but-heroic characters were certainly one key. The setting had some interesting points too, a mix of fantasy and everyday with a kind of fairytale feel sometimes. The stories also mixed action and ordinary life, and delivered many applicable morals. And of course, one can't overlook the self-propagating nature of the fanbase, fuelled by love, creativity and maybe some defensiveness too.

Or at least, those are my guesses based on vague memories and osmosis. I'm not an expert...

 

[Thrond 3,257]

I first got into this show when the second season was ending. At that point, I sincerely thought that this show was genuinely great and on track to become better. And then it wasn't. I probably wouldn't have watched it all the way through if it didn't consistently offer up satisfying stories, but after those first two seasons those stories became a lot fewer and further between. There are a lot of ways in which the show became more sophisticated and ambitious as it went on, but I think it also increasingly lost sight of what had made it special in the first place, and became blind to its own limitations. The way I see it, the first season was good, the second season was great, and after that... well, the fourth and sixth seasons were solid. I would really hesitate to call it a great show overall. 

At a certain point, I think the show's ambition led to a sort of rigidity; as the main characters became more and more established, it seemed like many of the writers had less and less affinity for them, to the point that they regularly became simple accessories to moralistic storylines. Plus a lot of the ambitious developments of the later seasons just don't seem to have been thought through very well, and I really do think the increased focus on fantasy adventure was fundamentally misguided. This show has always been inconsistent in quality so all of that is an oversimplification, but I think it's very easy to say that the creative energy of the final season was applied in very different places than the first season, and I don't think it was an improvement. And if nothing else, I can say for certain that I simply did not like the show nearly as much in the final three seasons as I did in the first three. I don't particularly care about "wasted potential" because I don't think the show even succeeded in sustaining what it had. 

Edited December 27, 2019 by AlexanderThrond

[Sepul-Coloratura 756]

4 hours ago, AlexanderThrond said:

I don't particularly care about "wasted potential" because I don't think the show even succeeded in sustaining what it had. 

I think sustaining what it had would have automatically revealed what the wasted potential was, at least when it comes to sustaining the focus and the quality of the show. I was never interested in revealing Spike's parents or Sombra's backstory or anything like that nor thought that was a good idea to put those kind of things in the show. For me, the wasted potential was to see another seasons like season 1 and 2 (and maybe 3), not necessarily meaning that the same things should have happened over and over again, refusing any changes. If they were interested in what made the show special in the first place, the show would have evolved into a different thing I suppose. Lesson Zero, Luna Eclipsed, Too Many Pinkie Pies, Secret of My Excess or even later episodes like Twilight Time and She Talks To Angel shows the aspect what I'm talking about, dealing with pre-established characters and their relationship and moving it forward while keeping it to small Ponyville incidents. But Spike getting wings episode? Yuck. That was done with leas heart and soul.

[Sepul-Coloratura 756]

5 hours ago, AlexanderThrond said:

This show has always been inconsistent in quality so all of that is an oversimplification, but I think it's very easy to say that the creative energy of the final season was applied in very different places than the first season,

I think the worst part of season 9 (and even 8) is that I can't say clearly where the creative energy was focused at. I would dare to say that it was as if they were burnt out and exhausted the creativity itself.

[Thrond 3,257]

5 hours ago, Sepul-Coloratura said:

Lesson Zero, Luna Eclipsed, Too Many Pinkie Pies, Secret of My Excess or even later episodes like Twilight Time and She Talks To Angel shows the aspect what I'm talking about, dealing with pre-established characters and their relationship and moving it forward while keeping it to small Ponyville incidents. But Spike getting wings episode? Yuck. That was done with leas heart and soul.

...I like the Spike getting wings episode a lot more than some of the highlights you mentioned, ironically. 

[Number62 1,246]

On 12/27/2019 at 12:07 PM, AlexanderThrond said:

I don't particularly care about "wasted potential" because I don't think the show even succeeded in sustaining what it had. 

I suppose I would care about wasted potential because the show had many chances to be great, and all that wasted potential sucks even more when you remember that it went on for 9 seasons. And that's not counting the sheer number of tie-ins, animated or not.

[Thrond 3,257]

On 12/27/2019 at 6:36 PM, Sepul-Coloratura said:

For me, the wasted potential was to see another seasons like season 1 and 2 (and maybe 3), not necessarily meaning that the same things should have happened over and over again, refusing any changes. If they were interested in what made the show special in the first place, the show would have evolved into a different thing I suppose. Lesson Zero, Luna Eclipsed, Too Many Pinkie Pies, Secret of My Excess or even later episodes like Twilight Time and She Talks To Angel shows the aspect what I'm talking about, dealing with pre-established characters and their relationship and moving it forward while keeping it to small Ponyville incidents. But Spike getting wings episode? Yuck. That was done with leas heart and soul.

I felt that sometimes the more ambitious approach of later seasons paid off; "Too Many Pinkie Pies," "Twilight Time," and "She Talks to Angel" all strike me as conceptually unsound in some way or another, whereas that Spike getting wings episode - "Molt Down" - seemed to me like a pretty sincere attempt to explore puberty, even if it still showed some of the checklist approach that plagued the show in its latter half. They would have needed to find a new direction for the show at some point, but they could have done that while staying true to the show's strengths. 

14 hours ago, Number62 said:

I suppose I would care about wasted potential because the show had many chances to be great, and all that wasted potential sucks even more when you remember that it went on for 9 seasons. And that's not counting the sheer number of tie-ins, animated or not.

The thing for me is that, around season 2, I think the show was starting to be genuinely great. I think the attempt to double down on more ambitious topics and fantasy mythology exposed a lot of the show's weaknesses while taking focus away from many of its strengths. If the people behind the show were more interested in keeping it grounded and focusing on low-key character comedy, I think we might all be singing a very different tune. 

On 12/27/2019 at 6:50 PM, Sepul-Coloratura said:

I think the worst part of season 9 (and even 8) is that I can't say clearly where the creative energy was focused at. I would dare to say that it was as if they were burnt out and exhausted the creativity itself.

I think season 8 did have some focus in the form of the school, though it wasn't exploited to nearly the extent that it needed to be. I also thought that season had some lingering emphasis on the mythology and on ambitious morals. In season 9 I think all the energy went towards the big seasonal arc. It's just that neither of those seasons had much concern for quality control, so the filler was wildly uneven and often completely baffling, which in turn suggests how little affinity several of the writers had for these characters. I do think the show needed to change at some point, but the way it changed seemed to me like an attempt to ignore the show's problems. 

[Sepul-Coloratura 756]

3 hours ago, AlexanderThrond said:

I felt that sometimes the more ambitious approach of later seasons paid off; "Too Many Pinkie Pies," "Twilight Time," and "She Talks to Angel" all strike me as conceptually unsound in some way or another, whereas that Spike getting wings episode - "Molt Down" - seemed to me like a pretty sincere attempt to explore puberty, even if it still showed some of the checklist approach that plagued the show in its latter half. They would have needed to find a new direction for the show at some point, but they could have done that while staying true to the show's strengths. 

For me, those first three episodes are fundamentally very original, even when considering the show's inherit limitations and it's reliance of archetypes. These episodes are not interchangeable and deeply related to the nature of the characters, or the new situation of the characters. Too Many Pinkie Pies is about Pinkie Pie's character itself, and her nature of seeking fun and her inherit flaw of being indiscreet magnified 1000 times. Twilight Time is one of the rare episodes that tackles the issue of Twilight's position as a princess properly and not lazily. It's very specific and not abstract, while being insightful to the characters. She Talks to Angel is also inherit in the characters and their relationship, it almost feels like a season 1-3 episode. Of course it's not the most original idea to switch the characters' body, but it was a right usage of the trope. For that matter, MLP:FiM itself isn't that much original and it's not the show's strength either.

Like you said, Molt Down's biggest flaw is it's checklist approach. But that also means that the real issue is, at least for me, it's sincerity. That means it doesn't have to offer that much except for the checklist itself. Also the fundamental issue is the execution and the entertainment value. Comparing it to Secret of My Excess, it's a very bland and one dimensional. Except for the fact that the episode is exploring puberty issues, how they are exploring it is not so interesting.

[Thrond 3,257]

3 hours ago, Sepul-Coloratura said:

Twilight Time is one of the rare episodes that tackles the issue of Twilight's position as a princess properly and not lazily. It's very specific and not abstract, while being insightful to the characters. 

It presents that issue in a way that I think is difficult to relate to and generally unappealing, while offering little real insight to what inspires any of the characters. But admittedly I don't find the CMC's efforts to get ahead of Diamond Tiara very appealing. 

3 hours ago, Sepul-Coloratura said:

She Talks to Angel is also inherit in the characters and their relationship, it almost feels like a season 1-3 episode. Of course it's not the most original idea to switch the characters' body, but it was a right usage of the trope.

My main gripe with this one is that the sheer quantity of responsibilities Fluttershy seems to have absolutely would not have been in a season 1-3 episode. The world of this show became very convoluted by the end. 

3 hours ago, Sepul-Coloratura said:

Like you said, Molt Down's biggest flaw is it's checklist approach. But that also means that the real issue is, at least for me, it's sincerity. That means it doesn't have to offer that much except for the checklist itself. Also the fundamental issue is the execution and the entertainment value. Comparing it to Secret of My Excess, it's a very bland and one dimensional. Except for the fact that the episode is exploring puberty issues, how they are exploring it is not so interesting.

I honestly think it explored that issue in a way that is true to the characters, and I found its writing quite witty and entertaining. I honestly think it's one of the episodes which justifies the season 7-9 checklist approach to an extent, because the earlier seasons would never have approached that topic so directly. It's very refreshing, and I think that it has both humour and character details which live up to the show's past. I would not be complaining if My Little Pony had always been like that in its last several seasons. 

[Latecomer 438]

14 hours ago, AlexanderThrond said:

I felt that sometimes the more ambitious approach of later seasons paid off;

The thing for me is that, around season 2, I think the show was starting to be genuinely great. I think the attempt to double down on more ambitious topics and fantasy mythology exposed a lot of the show's weaknesses while taking focus away from many of its strengths. If the people behind the show were more interested in keeping it grounded and focusing on low-key character comedy, I think we might all be singing a very different tune. 

I think season 8 did have some focus in the form of the school, though it wasn't exploited to nearly the extent that it needed to be. I also thought that season had some lingering emphasis on the mythology and on ambitious morals. In season 9 I think all the energy went towards the big seasonal arc. It's just that neither of those seasons had much concern for quality control, so the filler was wildly uneven and often completely baffling, which in turn suggests how little affinity several of the writers had for these characters. I do think the show needed to change at some point, but the way it changed seemed to me like an attempt to ignore the show's problems. 

So what does it say that my favourite part of the late seasons was 7, which mixed ambition and low-key character stuff without much of a seasonal focus (at least till the last minute)?

Quote

My main gripe with this one is that the sheer quantity of responsibilities Fluttershy seems to have absolutely would not have been in a season 1-3 episode. The world of this show became very convoluted by the end. 

Some would say that reflects the nature of growing up.

As for Molt Down, I don't think it's a bad episode (which is an acheivent of it's own in that season, I'm afraid) but I don't think it's an especially great one unless graded on a curve. Basically, it should be an average ep at best, but Season 8 has a pretty low average. Compare Frenemies, which isn't just good compared to the even weaker Season 9 but stands among the shows best eps IMO.

[Thrond 3,257]

13 hours ago, Latecomer said:

So what does it say that my favourite part of the late seasons was 7, which mixed ambition and low-key character stuff without much of a seasonal focus (at least till the last minute)?

Probably nothing, but season 7 was my least favourite in the whole show. I don't think my opinions are objective facts about the show's quality, and I don't begrudge you for liking season 7, but I don't get it. To me the "low-key character stuff" often seemed like it was going through the motions in that season, even in some episodes I didn't mind; a lot of episodes in that season have a somewhat ambitious moral but almost no character nuance that doesn't actively confirm that moral, and therefore not a lot of drama. It seems to me that season 7's creative energy was mainly focused on moralizing and ambitious concepts. I found it very dull. More power to everyone who likes it, which is apparently everyone other than myself. 

Edited December 31, 2019 by AlexanderThrond

[Thrond 3,257]

13 hours ago, Latecomer said:

Some would say that reflects the nature of growing up.

Sure, but I mostly just mean the fact that she has to juggle the animal sanctuary with the school, which leaves me wondering what her schedule looks like. It's easier to ignore that in most other episodes. In any case that didn't ruin that episode for me. 

13 hours ago, Latecomer said:

 As for Molt Down, I don't think it's a bad episode (which is an acheivent of it's own in that season, I'm afraid) but I don't think it's an especially great one unless graded on a curve. Basically, it should be an average ep at best, but Season 8 has a pretty low average. Compare Frenemies, which isn't just good compared to the even weaker Season 9 but stands among the shows best eps IMO.

Honestly, I graded most of seasons 7-9 on a curve; of those 78 episodes, I'd say that only 6 or 7 are really on par with the show's best. But I thought "Molt Down" had its charms, and I enjoyed how direct it was.