5 Eras of FIM

[mlpbronyyyy 21]

Season 1-2: Faust Era, This one was iconic, well... The animation wasn't the best... but still nostalgic! It even got Lauren Faust!

Season 3-5ish: McCarthy Era, This one was nostalgic as the last one, The animation has improved and the storyline is more entertaining!

Season 5-6ish: Decline Era, Ehhh... Ain't the best, the animation starts to downgrade and look boring, and will start to look like an average kids show.

Season 6-7: Starlight Era, Season 6 and Season 7 isn't bad........ But it's not good either.

Season 8-9: Friendship School/Major Decline Era, I hate it, get it away!!! No but seriously, It's boring.

Ah yes... a show that starts to downgrade each season.

[Metemponychosis 1,236]

Sounds fair. Season one was my favorite for several reasons. I liked Celestia more in that season and the cartoon hadn't grown so self conscious yet.

It's not as though I don't like the other seasons, but they started growing... I don't know exactly how to call it... It felt the cartoon lacked a unified direction. I started to really dislike the way writers treated Celestia, who was my favorite character along with Luna, Cadance and Twilight. I loathed those ponies from the past. They should be legends, like Star Swirl was. They should have stayed legends and we should have gotten lore dumps, spin offs. I absolutely hate the last season though. It makes no sense whatsoever to me. Which I hate because the last season had some great moments and I really liked the young 6.

The biggest problem, to me, were a series of creative decisions that started piling on each other. 

[Props Valroa 26,050]

I agree with this. While the later seasons were not all bad, the school of friendship and the finale were definitely the worst parts in the entire show. Starlight's backstory and reformation was rather hastily redone, but, I agreed with the spirit of it - but not the execution of it. I hate how they didn't expand on the lore, oh, so much wasted time and filler towards the end. MLP: FiM deserved better. The older seasons were really nostalgic and well done, there wasn't anything significantly wrong with them and they had a good sense of unity in the storylines. Season 6 is where parts of the show really started to decline.

[Iforgotmybrain 3,517]

I’m rewatching season 6 now and you can definitely tell the overall quality of the episodes tends to dip a bit. There’s still some great ones but you also start to have episodes that are either just pointless/boring or just straight up bad with the mane 6 acting OOC/like the past 5 seasons of character development didn’t happen.

[Cash In 21,517]

I can agree with most of this analysis. I'll bat for S7. I felt that it had a boost in quality and handled the characters a lot better overall.

[Megas 27,068]

I liked the Faust era but I feel the show really peaked during the McCarthy era. Only thing that ever came close to that was S7, and that was carried entirely by its incredible first half

[mlpbronyyyy 21]

 

23 minutes ago, Captain of Fun said:

I can agree with most of this analysis. I'll bat for S7. I felt that it had a boost in quality and handled the characters a lot better overall.

Damnit, I forgot, Also I haven't watched Season 7 in 6 years, so yeah.

Edited December 22, 2023 by mlpbronyyyy

[Metemponychosis 1,236]

2 hours ago, Props Valroa said:

I agree with this. While the later seasons were not all bad, the school of friendship and the finale were definitely the worst parts in the entire show. Starlight's backstory and reformation was rather hastily redone, but, I agreed with the spirit of it - but not the execution of it. I hate how they didn't expand on the lore, oh, so much wasted time and filler towards the end. MLP: FiM deserved better. The older seasons were really nostalgic and well done, there wasn't anything significantly wrong with them and they had a good sense of unity in the storylines. Season 6 is where parts of the show really started to decline.

The part I highlighted in bold. This. So much this. And I would add that I think the entire cartoon suffered from this. It often had great ideas that fell flat, or at least never were as effective as they could have been because the execution seemed careless. I'll always complain about Celestia because I think that hers was the biggest problem in this regard, but it was not only her. Starlight Glimmer too. Twilight becoming an alicorn was never a problem to me, but they never did anything with it. It was always the same thing to the point her speeches became trite.

[Props Valroa 26,050]

16 minutes ago, Metemponychosis said:

The part I highlighted in bold. This. So much this. And I would add that I think the entire cartoon suffered from this. It often had great ideas that fell flat, or at least never were as effective as they could have been because the execution seemed careless. I'll always complain about Celestia because I think that hers was the biggest problem in this regard, but it was not only her. Starlight Glimmer too. Twilight becoming an alicorn was never a problem to me, but they never did anything with it. It was always the same thing to the point her speeches became trite.

Twilight being an alicorn is not an issue to me, but, I hated seeing her in full grown alicorn form. It was so wrong and uncanny to me and I didn't like it whatsoever. I also didn't like the idea of Flurry Heart, or how Cadence and Shining Armor being the leaders of the Crystal Empire never being explained despite the empire being away for a thousand years or so.

[mlpbronyyyy 21]

35 minutes ago, Megas said:

I liked the Faust era but I feel the show really peaked during the McCarthy era. Only thing that ever came close to that was S7, and that was carried entirely by its incredible first half

the only difference is that shrinked pupils have increased during season 7

[Misty Shadow 7,085]

For me, it's four eras. Seasons 1-3 were pretty good, especially Season 2, Seasons 4-5 were awesome, peak FiM to me, Seasons 6-7 were great for the most part despite a slight decline, and Seasons 8-9 were mostly good despite a more noticeable decline. I do not hate the Student 6 and the School of Friendship anywhere near as much as so many fans do, I just think the show was getting kind of same-sy at that point. 

[Castle Bleck 19,167]

IMO, 8 was on par with 6-7.

But 9? Yeah, they lost me there.

[mlpbronyyyy 21]

I think Season 1-3 and 4 is paired together, The vibes feel similar. I mean Early Season 4…

Edited December 22, 2023 by mlpbronyyyy

[Player the FNFL Boi 82]

In my opinion there are 4 eras of MLP

1. Unicorn Twilight/Classic Era (Season 1-3)

2. Princess Twilight/Loredump Era (Season 4-5)

3. Starlight/Mid Era (Season 6-7)

4. Ending Era (Season 8-9)

[DoomBanana 2]

Disagree.

If anything, faust era is only season 1. 2 and 3 feel more like Larson and co.
On that note i feel like as great as they were, 1 and 3 are imo the weakest seasons. 1 has too many 5-10 minute plots stretched into 20 minute episodes and 3 ended up rushed and with a streak of episodes i didn't enjoy that much towards the end.
2 was one of the best though.

4 and 5 are some of the best seasons, slightly leaning towards 5 as being the favourite.

6 is one of my personal favourites because of the more relaxed and for fun episodes, and the great stylized outros they did for several episodes.
7 is, once again, some of the best, competing with 5 and 2.

Not sure why you separate 8 and 9 into it's own era, both were very enjoyable nonetheless, up there with 4 and 6.

In general i don't really see the point of separating the show into eras? There weren't really any major unnatural changes in how the show felt past season 1, maybe a little bit of 2 really. So why highlight S3-5 together or for example 6 and 7, then 8 and 9 separately?


Also big disagree on the decline thing. Maybe it's because i binged it all at once but it felt very enjoyable from S1 E1 to S9 E26. Every single season had episodes i didn't like that much and that's just the nature of the show being as episodic slice of life with many different authors doing different episodes. However, the general enjoyement has been the same throughout.

[Number62 1,247]

On 2023-12-21 at 2:05 PM, Metemponychosis said:

Sounds fair. Season one was my favorite for several reasons. I liked Celestia more in that season and the cartoon hadn't grown so self conscious yet.

It's not as though I don't like the other seasons, but they started growing... I don't know exactly how to call it... It felt the cartoon lacked a unified direction. I started to really dislike the way writers treated Celestia, who was my favorite character along with Luna, Cadance and Twilight. I loathed those ponies from the past. They should be legends, like Star Swirl was. They should have stayed legends and we should have gotten lore dumps, spin offs. I absolutely hate the last season though. It makes no sense whatsoever to me. Which I hate because the last season had some great moments and I really liked the young 6.

The biggest problem, to me, were a series of creative decisions that started piling on each other. 

 

On 2023-12-21 at 5:06 PM, Metemponychosis said:

The part I highlighted in bold. This. So much this. And I would add that I think the entire cartoon suffered from this. It often had great ideas that fell flat, or at least never were as effective as they could have been because the execution seemed careless. I'll always complain about Celestia because I think that hers was the biggest problem in this regard, but it was not only her. Starlight Glimmer too. Twilight becoming an alicorn was never a problem to me, but they never did anything with it. It was always the same thing to the point her speeches became trite.

I don't think the writers ever knew what they wanted to accomplish with the show. Good intentions aren't very meaningful if the executions of the stories are lacking.

Edited January 10 by Number62