Rank the MLP gens.

[CastletonSnob 3,074]

How would you rank the MLP gens, from best to worst?

[Fluttershutter 2,453]

I haven't seen a lot before four but I'd say 4-5-1-2-3

[ToastedScone 396]

In terms of toys: 1, 3, 4, 5, 2.

In terms of shows/media: 4, 1, 5, 3...did gen 2 even get animated media?

[J.J 923]

4,2,5,1,3

1 really is a beast of its own because some are really good and some are really bad 

It's like if I had a comprehensive chart of comparison there are some episodes of earlier gens that are MUCH better than some g.4 crappers, just like everything else it's hit or miss but there really are some g.4 episodes that are literally cartoon hall of fame, it's not a question as to which is the best generally...

Edit: accidentally counted Tales as G.2 again 

Edited November 24, 2022 by Uncle Bumper

[Theautisticrebel 304]

1 hour ago, ToastedScone said:

did gen 2 even get animated media?

No it didn't

4,5,3,1 I have no opinion on G2

[Misty Shadow 7,862]

4=5, 1.5, 3, 3.5. Yes, I do like Gen 5 that much and I'm proud of it. Didn't watch anything from the original first generation cartoon of MLP, just Tales (1.5), but Gen 3 easily takes the cake as the second worst gen for having too many plots where nothing of substance happens with incredibly bland characters. No explanation should be needed for why 3.5 with the Newborn Cuties is dead last. I do honestly believe it is one of the worst cartoons I've ever seen, take what I said about Gen 3 and combine that with awful animation, voice acting, and script writing. 

[Splashee 28,563]

I have no opinion on the shows i haven't watched.

I haven't watched G1 or the Specials/Movies.
 

I rank FiM the highest.
Then My Little Pony Tales.
Lastly, G5.

You can see a trend here, that I like story and character development. G5 should have been higher but it is mixing its story and characters over multiple media which I think is hurting it.

[Octavian 5,421]

Just judging on the animated media here. For the lower ranked ones I do get kinda sassy. Caution reading if you don't wanna here your fav gen being sassed. They can take it though, they're all strong ponies, and what do I know anyway  

#1 G4 first obv, including EQG, but not Pony Life or the Stop Motion stuff. Sassy, innocence without lies, characters which are magical <3 Its theme song is a bit meh though.

Spoiler

#2 G1. High fantasy. The pony lore that inspired G4 (pegasi, unicorns, earth ponies). Silly stories. Good movies. Some surprisingly compelling characters, like Wind Whistler. Yes, it is occasionally insultingly dumb, and yes I probably wouldn't watch this without the G4 gateway. But I'm here now, and I do like it - enough to write fics about it.

#3 G1 My little pony tales. Even though I rank G1 proper first, I would actually watch this happily without being a pony fan. In fact, being a pony fan probably hurts you if you want to watch this thing. This s not about ponies. This is about 80s school kids dressed as ponies. It is early 90s kiddie cartoon hilarious and I love it for totally different reasons to every other pony things. The characters pop in their silly late 80s way and it brings me back to my foalhood :3

#4 G5. The most mixed generation IMO. The movie was better than most FIM stuff, while TYT is just about Pony life+ (I didn't hate Pony life) while MYM is decent but is just too friggin soft. Ultimately G5 has more in common with the next lower ranked gen than with G4.

#5 G3 is MLP trying to be an animated brand again. But this gen doesn't really have a clear storyline. Some surprisingly cute moments here, but super softy-softy - Faust was right to be so critical of this gen.

#6 G2. G2 didn't have stories, but it does have comics, and oh boy are they ridiculous  (find them here). No attempt at a story so I can't really judge it for that, but what was there was consciously trying to be the softest most airheaded little girly nonsense that is scientifically possible. Now, the G4 gateway means that's not necessarily a bad thing, and this was a toy gen... but still.

 

  

  

5 hours ago, Splashee said:

I rank FiM the highest.
Then My Little Pony Tales.

 

19 hours ago, Uncle Bumper said:

4,2,5,1,3

1 really is a beast of its own because some are really good and some are really bad 

It's like if I had a comprehensive chart of comparison there are some episodes of earlier gens that are MUCH better than some g.4 crappers, just like everything else it's hit or miss but there really are some g.4 episodes that are literally cartoon hall of fame, it's not a question as to which is the best generally...

Edit: accidentally counted Tales as G.2 again 

yay MLP Tales fans! /)  

[Splashee 28,563]

36 minutes ago, abrony-mouse said:

yay MLP Tales fans! /)  

(\

14 years ago, I was imagining a MLP Tales show that was completely soap opera oriented, and it would work. Now, it took FiM a long time (5 seasons) before it got to that state where I felt the characters and story was good to top that idea. Like how Starlight Glimmer was really evil, for real, but at the same time was a real character with feelings.

 

[J.J 923]

5 hours ago, Splashee said:

(\

14 years ago, I was imagining a MLP Tales show that was completely soap opera oriented, and it would work. Now, it took FiM a long time (5 seasons) before it got to that state where I felt the characters and story was good to top that idea. Like how Starlight Glimmer was really evil, for real, but at the same time was a real character with feelings.

 

She was by far the LEAST "evil" of all the MLP villains, her reformation means a lot to me as a person, but no, the experiences Starlight went through as a pony genuinely made her believe that what she was doing was for the greater good of all ponies. We don't get direct context as to how she persuaded the ponies that she did to partake in the project of "Our Town" but there is a lot to be said about why she wasn't honest to begin with,

1. Can a unicorn really even remove her own magic? Or would Starlight have to teach some spell to another unicorn to be able to accomplish doing this? We know that Starlight is LITERALLY the only pony who has ever been able to accomplish doing this? How long would it take her to teach this magic to anyone else? In doing this, that would suggest there be a never ending chain of unicorns teaching new unicorns how to perform this spell so that they all in fact could be equal? Well it's gonna be awfully hard without having magic in general to teach the spell...? How do we know all unicorns would even be capable of such a complex spell? Eventually you would hit a wall in terms of magic capability/comprehension...

2. Starlight NEVER, "enslaved' anypony, she manipulated them, again there is lacking context, but there is nothing to suggest she was threatening them into staying in the community with their lives, they were brainwashed, we don't have all the context as to why they decided to join "Our Town" to begin with, but obviously their lives were indeed lacking if they chose to leave them behind in trust of a unicorn they have just met... The way that the ponies of Our Town rationalize their conformity and the way they neglect to ask any questions or look for these answers despite being long term residents of the town itself says just about as much for their competence as it does for Starlight's manipulative tendencies, they were conceptually "happy" not asking these questions....

3. Starlight's "control bit" and quite possibly her entire obsession with magic as I have explained MANY times comes from a direct result of her understanding as to how the world prioritizes those that wield it effectively and in her mind, (since I actually do headcanon for good characters) She thought that if she could use this magic effectively at it's conception she may have been able to catch up with her long lost friend or that her being able to use the magic in general was the end all for how the social structure of pony importance worked in general, she got deep into using it because she genuinely disagreed with the sentiment that made her so obsessed with learning it herself, this sentiment is about the social hierarchy and importance of "magic wielders" more or less and not the magic itself, she wanted to genuinely seperate others from having to make personal concessions for not being as "up to snuff" as other ponies, because that is what she knows is capable of happening because of these "special talents"...  She uses magic to control because she doesn't want to feel helpless herself, and if she can keep others under control she won't have to make these personal concessions ever again.

4. If there was EVER a pony deserving of her successes and vengeful vindication through the destruction of these, it was DEFINITELY Starlight, Starlight never invited the Mane 6 to "Our Town" they show up randomly via instructions of some little magic map,  and start to begin investigated it's political infrastructure based off their own intuition, there really is nothing to prove that if they had not been looking for answers themselves that they wouldn't have not just initially been allowed to leave... Yeah we know Starlight sees Twi and it becomes her goal to confirm an alicorn, but they asked to see the vault, they made it their mission to try to get to the bottom of what was going on there, and up to that point they were welcomed as guests and given crappy muffins to enjoy, not force assimilated by some brainwashing film or whatever, yeah AFTER they tried to step on Starlight's toes, Starlight put them in a room for seemingly causing anarchy in Our Town by making her followers go against the towns philosophy.. who knows what would happen if Starlight just let these ponies go? They would probably come back with an army to destroy everything she worked so hard at building?

5. When Starlight seeks revenge against Twilight and her friends she doesn't do this with the intention of "ending the world" she does this with the intention of ending a single friendship circle? So they can feel like she did when 1. She lost Sunburst (obviously) which makes her backstory make MORE sense in this situation bc she's proving part of her point about special abilities ending friendships by ruining friendships with special abilities. 2. So they can understand the loss of everything that matters most to them and EVERYTHING that they covet being taken away from them, but even this isn't even completely true, because if Starlight had succeeded at altering time in any one if these dystopias, they would have no recollection of what they had even lost, it's not like they get to keep all these memories? It's not like they have to feel the hurt from losing their true friendships? She's just preventing them from ever happening... At the end, when Twilight takes Starlight with her, to this dystopian wasteland that is left of Equestria, DO YOU NOT SEE Starlight's reaction? She doesn't want to end the world? She wants to make it better in her mind? She didn't want that to happen, she just wanted to remove Twilight Sparkle and her friends from being an ideological threat in concept in part of this new world? She wanted to make the world better through equality, not destroy it...? 

6. Starlight studied all these spells and had a genuine idea for what she could do to change Equestria for the better, these plots weren't for simply "revenge" or because she "lOvES ChAOs wooo" or because she simply wanted to become more magically powerful? She genuinely did what she did with purpose and conviction not just outright malice? When she says, "everything else I said was true, the only way to be happy is if we're all equal" or when she says "no I stopped them from bullying because we all should be equal, stopping the rainboom is just a bonus". She believes in this philosophy, she just as I've explained before, if she were to adhere to it herself that would add a lot of complications but ultimately contradict the purpose in why she is doing what she is doing. Starlight sacrifices everything BUT her magic to live in this little podunk nothing town in the middle of BFE, and she's sacrificed her time, any luxuries she did have, she's genuinely doing a lot to mobilize for this philosophy she's trying to spread, this did not come without her own hard work and sacrifice, something Twilight utterly invalidated in 2 episodes so she could feel accomplished as the princess of friendship.

I'm not going to justify Starlight's obvious lies, but I'm going to say there were objective reasons for some of them, Starlight is by far THE LEAST evil villain of all of My Little Pony, probably the entire franchise, being cunning doesn't add to the malice of someone's intentions, people act like personal competence always is supposed to be attributed to common sense, ummm Starlight has literally been taught from Filly to full grown mare up to this point that magic is the way, it's how she's taught herself? One could argue by extension she's breaking the chains of others that have her claimed inherently that she can't escape, but the point is her reformation... She just gets even better, we get to see that it isn't flawed intention that causes Starlight to make these mistakes, it's flawed thinking... If anything these mistakes should "humanize her" not start up a witch hunt against her because she's been inherently led to think differently than other ponies? Them giving her a chance makes the most sense, but I can give you all these reasons separately as I'm getting way off topic on the MLP gens post lol...

There's just a lot to suggest that Starlight may have never been "evil" on its face, rather misguided and prone to a different belief system that was self justified and by her own emotional competence and experiences... Starlight knows little of Hearrhswarming or the Wonderbolts yet, she can change one of Starswirls spells? She had her own intentions, her own interests, her own priorities, she didn't do what she did merely for power, she just couldn't give up her power to achieve what she wanted....

 

Edited November 25, 2022 by Uncle Bumper

[EpicEnergy 23,218]

1) G4

2) G5

3) every other generation because I haven't seen them and can't rank them because of that.

[Envy 6,160]

1: G3- I just love the toys sooo much. They're cute and so full of variety - variety is something that is lacking in pretty much every gen aside from G1 and 2 (2 being limited by its short run, probably). The animations are a mixed bag (but still better than most animation targeted at the age it was), but that's fine, the toys carry G3.

2: G4 - It takes this spot solely because I did enjoy FiM quite a bit.

3. G1 - It has great variety in toys, and the animations are fun. For me, personally, though I generally have more G3 toys I like, so that's why it falls below G3.

After that, IDK. Gen 2, Gen 3.5, and Gen 5 are all eh to me.

[Astralshy 26,595]

I would definitely put G4 at spot #1 and then G5. The previous generations I haven't seen, so it would be rather ignored to rank them but from what I've heard Gen1 has more story/world than Generation 3.

So my ranking:

1. FiM, Gen4

2. Gen5

cannot rank Gen 1-3.5

[Lucky Bolt 35,063]

Gen 4 is obviously number one for me, gen 3 being second, as i grew up with g3, then g1, g5, and because i barely know or even seen gen 2...I'll put it last. 

[Steve Piranha 29,424]

1- G4, no discussion 

2- G5

3- G4.5

4- G1

5- G3

[AlbaTross 1,586]

G4

 

 

 

 

G5

G1

 

G3

G3.5

 

G2

 

Spaces indicate a wider margin between the placements in my rankings.  

[Evil Pink One 13,506]

1 hour ago, AlbaTross said:

G4

 

 

 

 

G5

G1

 

G3

G3.5

 

G2

 

Spaces indicate a wider margin between the placements in my rankings.  

Of course G 4 is at the top! Derpy is there hmhmhm