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animation Why didn't DC Superhero Girls take off like MLP?

CastletonSnob

By CastletonSnob, User

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Jesse Terrence

Jesse Terrence

Because is not ponies, but a reheated concept using DC characters and breaking many things about the DC lore instead of aknowledging them.

You can't just throw the mane 6 for a third time in the same decade. Besides, they lack the charm FiM had. They don't feel new because they are not new.

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Sparklefan1234

Sparklefan1234

2 minutes ago, Jesse Terrence said:

You can't just throw the mane 6 for a third time in the same decade. Besides, they lack the charm FiM had. They don't feel new because they are not new.

 

 DC Super Hero Girls feels like Lauren Faust wasn't allowed to come up with original ideas because CN were trying to capitalize on FiM's success. 

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Jesse Terrence

Jesse Terrence

Another big mistake Faust did was picking the Harley Quinn look from the Suicide Squad movie. Most people hated that movie, and having that design slaped on that show feels like a huge ad trying to sell the worst part of DC's cinematographic universe. If a project went bad and the public genuinely dislikes it, you must avoid advertising it on your other projects. Is like if they decided to shove the green lantern from the Ryan Reynolds movie onto the animated cinematographic universe (kinda tricky in there because they are technically the same green lantern the last time I checked as of identity, but you can tell them apart from each other anyway).

That happened with Harley Quinn on this show. Most people didn't want to keep up with that look after the fiasco Suicide Squad was. But there you have her with that look instead of an actual redesign.

It doesn't help either that they picked known villains for the group when literally there were hundreds of female super heroines to pick from in the DC universe.

And there's a whole lot more things that helped that show to be ignored both by DC fans, the general public and the target audience. Is not that it is not good, it just is forgettable and inconscistent to the source material.

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TheAnimationFanatic

TheAnimationFanatic

(edited)

I think @Megas and  @Sparklefan1234 have pointed out most of the big reasons, but I'd like to add one as well: Cartoon Network does doesn't treat shows that aren't Teen Titans Go well. 

12 hours ago, Megas said:

Because Cartoon Network doesn’t like shows with female leads

Except for Steven Universe. But even that show suffered from Cartoon Network's poor and inconsistent scheduling.

Edited by TheAnimationFanatic
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Megas

Megas

2 hours ago, TheAnimationFanatic said:

Except for Steven Universe. But even that show suffered from Cartoon Network's poor and inconsistent scheduling.

Eh, main character was still a boy in that one

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Misty Shadow

Misty Shadow

As much as I don't like Cartoon Network's management today, I have to add that this is a very common phenomenon with creators in general making a mega-hit show and then making another show that doesn't take off at all. Matt Groening made The Simpsons and Futurama and no one cares about Disenchantment. 

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Evil Pink One

Evil Pink One

I guess lauren faust wasn't the one that really made mlp famous...

I guess hasbro made the right choices after all.... Good thing mlp didn't end up only on season 3..... Who knows really?

Well itwas quite boring and.... Lacking....

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Jesse Terrence

Jesse Terrence

58 minutes ago, CloudMistDragon said:

As much as I don't like Cartoon Network's management today, I have to add that this is a very common phenomenon with creators in general making a mega-hit show and then making another show that doesn't take off at all. Matt Groening made The Simpsons and Futurama and no one cares about Disenchantment. 

I guess the disenchantment case is more about terrible comedy and sluggish rhythm on each episode. Was watching it yesterday on netflix. The show is... meh. I guess is not meant to be funny at all. Else they are failing horribly at comedy. They attempt to use absurd humour every now and then, but it just don't really work because the "absurd" is totally hinted minutes before they perform it. Is not funny as a brick joke, either, because they constantly remind you about the upcoming joke that will address the situation they showed you before. You don't make a brick joke saying "oh yeah, don't forget the brick we threw into the air before. Is still there, about to fall when we start this exact joke. Expect the brick right there".  That's why they fail at their absurd humour. Because absurd humour bases itself on no forshadowing most of the time. Things happen without expectation. They just happen and the characters either hold the stupid ball at the time to react in a disonant way, or take the absurdity as a common situation, making the absurdity scale up.

Then the characters are uninteresting. The princess falls short on what is supposed to be her archetype. Too short to be an action woman like Leela, for instance. We see her getting caught and become a damsel in distress when she's trying to be independent and run away from the system she's stuck at. Bart -ahem- Elf is... stupid and plain. And not in an interesting way. Elf is an attempt at a polyanna that doesn't really work. Rather than innocent and pure he's merely a push over. We see him intentionally do ill actions, but he hardly stands against others (not even to defend his beliefs). Finally, the demon is... ugh. A missed chance. He lacks a personality on its own. Is like a housecat following you around not interacting with the enviroment nor with you. You just see him eating things at random and smoking (the big difference it has with a house cat, lol).

Disenchantment doesn't jab at medieval fantasy as it should, doesn't play absurd right, has uninteresting characters, a bad rhythm and doesn't even refer to social commentary. Looks like Groening just didn't care and merely slapped his art style on a tasteless show for the munniez.

Not the case with DC Superhero Girls. The problem is rather different. Is just Faust is stuck on the same characters over and over again.

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Denim&Venöm

Denim&Venöm

A couple of other issues to point out:

  • Cable is falling out of favor with kids
  • DC fans don't want their shows to be straight up comedies
  • DC cartoons have a high bar to clear in comparison to what came before, from the DCAU to Young Justice. Good isn't good enough. FiM never had that hurdle, thus more people were pleasantly surprised.
  • Only Bronies who happen to also be DC fans will get the connections. Superhero girls may not offer enough to hook too many of one fantasy or the other. 
  • Is Superhero girls doing anything new? FiM kickstarted the deep kids show renaissance that programs like Steven Universe, She-ra, Gravity Falls and Duck Tales arguably followed. SHG might just be a decade late to the party. 
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Misty Shadow

Misty Shadow

12 hours ago, Denim&Venöm said:

A couple of other issues to point out:

  • Cable is falling out of favor with kids
  • DC fans don't want their shows to be straight up comedies
  • DC cartoons have a high bar to clear in comparison to what came before, from the DCAU to Young Justice. Good isn't good enough. FiM never had that hurdle, thus more people were pleasantly surprised.
  • Only Bronies who happen to also be DC fans will get the connections. Superhero girls may not offer enough to hook too many of one fantasy or the other. 
  • Is Superhero girls doing anything new? FiM kickstarted the deep kids show renaissance that programs like Steven Universe, She-ra, Gravity Falls and Duck Tales arguably followed. SHG might just be a decade late to the party. 

Very good breakdown, the big key point for me being the fact that FiM was an accidental masterpiece. Faust straight up admitted that she wasn't trying to make the show anything super special during its conception. My Little Pony is the kind of thing that no one ever expected to be good. DC is the kind of thing that has always been looked at as something that has to be great in order to please even a decent majority of its mixed, rabid fanbase. :adorkable: There was never a prayer of this show's key adult demographic flocking to it just because it had Faust's name on it when all the trailers for it just made it appear average. 

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TheAnimationFanatic

TheAnimationFanatic

17 hours ago, Denim&Venöm said:

A couple of other issues to point out:

  • Cable is falling out of favor with kids
  • DC fans don't want their shows to be straight up comedies
  • DC cartoons have a high bar to clear in comparison to what came before, from the DCAU to Young Justice. Good isn't good enough. FiM never had that hurdle, thus more people were pleasantly surprised.
  • Only Bronies who happen to also be DC fans will get the connections. Superhero girls may not offer enough to hook too many of one fantasy or the other. 
  • Is Superhero girls doing anything new? FiM kickstarted the deep kids show renaissance that programs like Steven Universe, She-ra, Gravity Falls and Duck Tales arguably followed. SHG might just be a decade late to the party. 

Cartoon Network in general feels like it's been suffering with an identity crisis in the last 4-5 years. Especially now that their original cartoons are moving to or premiering exclusively on HBO Max.

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Stardust

Stardust

(edited)
On 12/3/2020 at 1:22 AM, Jesse Terrence said:

Another big mistake Faust did was picking the Harley Quinn look from the Suicide Squad movie. Most people hated that movie, 

I enjoyed that movie tho, mainly cuz I found Harley Quinn so hawt haha. I like that look more than the other one. Tho not sure it translated well to cartoon. It wasn't the most exciting movie but it had it's good parts. 

After that movie I swear I saw a ton of ppl dressing up as her and the Joker like as a couple often. I honestly haven't seen a lot of dc movies compared to marvel tho. 

Still i think they coulda made something with original characters rather than dc but ay. I haven't watched this new show or whatever but might do. 

Edited by flurry
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TheAnimationFanatic

TheAnimationFanatic

11 minutes ago, Sepul-Coloratura said:

It’s just an ok show and the characters are rehashed mane six. In MLP, characters being ponies helped, in DCSHG, the characters being already well known DC characters was a double edged sword.

A double-edged sword in that making a show about teenage girls has a lot less novelty than a show about pastel colored horses. And also, since you're using characters that are well-established in the DC Universe, there's a certain expectation for how they should be portrayed.

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  • 7 months later...
Paleopony

Paleopony

On 2020-12-13 at 6:35 AM, TheAnimationFanatic said:

A double-edged sword in that making a show about teenage girls has a lot less novelty than a show about pastel colored horses. And also, since you're using characters that are well-established in the DC Universe, there's a certain expectation for how they should be portrayed.

Spot on!

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