I hate you. I hate you so much.Originally Posted by Hypoallergenic Cactuar
I hate you. I hate you so much.
I have one thing to say.
The 90's animation was better.
But it was an 80s cartoon!
Well I watched it in the 90's so that's the animation I want back!
The My Little Pony movie was great. This is the best song.
There's fans of older generations here too? Awesome - I love every MLP now.
It's okay Moonflower. We all already believe you to be criminally insane, you do not need to make a special effort with posts like this to demonstrate your mental defectiveness.I have one thing to say.
The 90's animation was better.
If my crime is having nostalgia for the cartoons I grew up with, so be it
If my crime is having nostalgia for the cartoons I grew up with, so be it
It's okay. We're all friends here. In fact FIM made me check out the older generations, and like I say I love them all now. In fact I'm kind of sad I didn't grow up with them.If my crime is having nostalgia for the cartoons I grew up with, so be it
sarah get out of the pony thread and never ever ever look back
baw
Here are my opinions on each generation of My Little Pony I have been meaning to post this here for some time now.
Generation 1: A long forgotten memory of mine that was finally brought to the surface while I was watching Friendship is Magic was of me watching the very first episode of My Little Pony when I was just a kid, and while I only saw part of it (I got up to the the part where a group of ponies where being captured) I loved it. I dunno if I was aware of the toyline at the time, but I don't think I was. The reason I didn't see all of it was because I had to go to school for the first time, and after that school overlapped the ponies. So I somehow ended up forgetting about them (even though that episode was in my mind for like ages - I kept thinking about that one pony; where was she going? Did she save them?) I was around eight when I finally heard of My Little Pony and that was the toyline, and I was at the foolish age where we cared more about what was boyish, and what was girly. So I avoided My Little Pony.
However, I realize now that I shouldn't have! Generation 1 was initially made to be a TV Series for whoever wanted to watch it - they didn't have a target audience other than simply "children" in mind, but they tried to aim it for girls more when they found that they were watching it more (though they never succeeded in making it "girly"), but they did manage to soften it up a bit (which is how they interpreted a girl's show). The earliest episodes (which is what the first episode of Friendship is Magic was based on in a sense) are awesome in my opinion; They have a nice sense of adventure to them, and it really feels like something that I would have loved as a kid, and I can easily see them happening in FIM or the FIM cast being there, but at the same time - I love the G1 ponies as they are. When I watched G1 on YouTube, I was surprised to see that humans were included in the show (I was forced to stop watching as a kid just before the first human was introduced), but I didn't mind it - the fact that humans existed in the show was introduced from the get-go, so it never seemed out of place to me. The only thing I didn't like was how the humans became in the later episodes - they were just there to be the ones to solve the ponies’ problems, rather than be characters themselves, but they at least started out okay for me.
Rescue at Midnight Castle (that's the episode I saw as a kid) is by far my favorite episode, and contained some of the best characters. I am actually regretful that I didn't get to see all of it as a kid, because like I say I loved what I saw as a kid. I'm not sure what suddenly caused it to come flooding back, but it was something I saw in Friendship is Magic - which contains allusions to all the previous MLPs. I knew that I was supposed to be a fan of the franchise for much longer when I saw this episode, because as much as I was fascinated with what little of it I saw as a child (I made a guess at which pony was the one saving them, and I was right - she was meant to be in Friendship is Magic). This is actually one of the episodes that I actually like better than Friendship is Magic, although for the most part I find the first generation to be my second favorite, but there are episodes that actually work on equal footing, or even superior to Friendship is Magic. There is an nice adventure element, that Friendship is Magic had in its adventure episodes, and I find the ponies to be likeable, some of the villains to be cool, and the episodes to be entertaining, though some of them kind of start off promising, and then don't deliver the goods at the end. The animation and acting is still pretty good for the most part, especially for its time - anytime I found the acting bad it was usually from a guest character, though there are some moments where Spike sounds like Chicken (as in Cow and Chicken) on a bad day (there's a reason for that...)
There are some problems I had with G1 though, the one that got me the most is, while the show clearly had enough going for it to be more than just a marketing ploy for toys - Hasbro where still very interested in the sale of the toyline and in order to do so, they would often either push ponies into the background, or remove them all together for no reason in storyline. The reason for this was because they wanted to sell the toys and they thought the kids would only buy characters they knew. The problem is we end up not knowing certain characters as much as we should have done (though that doesn't stop me liking them, I just wish they could be in more) what if Friendship is Magic was like this? What if the six ponies we've become fans of where only in the first episode (I count the two-parters as one episode) and where then replaced by six other ponies? Another thing that I saw as a flaw was that certain things aren't really explained - they never actually say why a human was needed, or why they chose the one they did. In the pilot she is shown to have a "regular" pony, so I actually thought they were going to expand on that. I thought they were going to have it so that the magical ponies saw how she was with everyday run-of-the-mill ponies, but they never explained it. While I loved the Sea ponies’ introduction, they underused them in the rest of the show. They made them look like they were going to be characters that the ponies summoned when they needed help, but they're were just there all the way through. The final thing I didn't like (other than that guy who kept losing things) was that baby ponies were just smaller clones of the other ponies, and I'm not speaking metaphorically here.
My Little Pony Tales: This is actually another part of G1, not G2 - G2 was just toys, but this is also separate from the rest of G1, so it's best to view it as its own show. Not my idea, blame the writers.
This was for the most part an experimental version, I was a little skeptical of it when I first heard of it - in all versions of My Little Pony the writers have humanized the ponies to some extent, most likely to help the kids identify with them (even the G1 ponies slept in human beds). The MLPT ponies where a little too human in this show; they had cars and TVs, and they were basically just ponies living in a human-ish world, and only really covered the magical side of the series on rare occasions (even unicorns and pegasi were scarce). I do however, like this show. I like how the main cast (and there is a main cast this time) are handled, and they all have clear personality traits. The episodes are fun to watch, and look like an early version of the tamer episodes of Friendship is Magic to me. While by this time the writers were aiming it towards girls, there was nothing really girly about the episodes - the basic point of the episodes could have easily have involved a boy in the central role. The only thing ruining this, is that there are three boy ponies in as secondary main characters - and in my mind they were pretty poorly written as characters, not only were they very stereotypical at times, but they just couldn't decide on what their relationship was with the girls... For the most part I love this show.
Generation 3: This is the generation that most Bronies love to hate, and while this is the only generation I find to be in your face girly... I actually kind of like this now. Some of it was a bit jarring having watched FIM first, but I looked at it positively, and it was okay. I do find it the weakest, but I also find it kind of cute, and entertaining in some way. I look at it as a nostalgic view as when I was a child - there's still enough character in the characters to take seriously, but it is also just a nice show to watch, an relax to. Feel young again. The constant criticism that the G3 ponies have no separate personality is an exaggeration - they do. You can't put a pony who likes fashion, and a pony who likes games in the same show, and say they have the same personality. Some of the episodes are a bit uneventful, but they are taking the step to be entertaining. I realize it's the most girly, but I just don't care about that - I think the ponies themselves are cute, and the show is nice to watch when you just want to watch a simple, but not childishly stupid show. It also has an excellent theme song - I love it
Ironically, while the first generation allowed the sale of the toys to interfere with the show, and thus dominate which ponies stayed on the show and which didn't, the third generation did the opposite, and not in a good way. Pretty much all the merchandise was just updated versions of the main characters, and they really thrust it in your face at times.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: The generation that not only made me a brony, but also convinced me to take a look at previous generations. This is my favorite generation of My Little Pony I couldn't believe that I loved it so much, after watching only episode (and thinking it wasn't a real show, as I think I've mentioned before) and as I had completely forgotten ever being fascinated with any other My Little Pony as a kid, but I was so pleased to see that it had such a warm and caring fandom (there are exceptions, but nobody's perfect) - I became a fan of the show for my own reasons, but I love being a part of the fandom, and will miss it if and when it dies down. However, I love how very well written this show is, I love how the characters appear to be very real, they have personalities, they have flaws, they change but still seem like the same character the way people do in real life, there's only been one episode I've hated so far (Putting Your Hoof Down) and though some episodes are better than others, I find myself enjoying them the more I watch them. Out of the main characters, there is not one pony that I don't like - most of the secondary characters (such as the CMCs) are very likeable too.
Friendship is Magic was a surprise to many people who would never give My Little Pony the time of day in the past, as they suddenly became much more interested in it. Lauren, who was a fan of the show in the 80s, aimed the show at kids first, but fans of the first generation second. Because of this, people who never noticed how the first generation was more than just a show based on a girl's toyline got a second chance to see a show that was aimed at whoever wanted to watch it, regardless of the age or gender, hence we have bronies. What I also like about FIM (now that I have watched the other generations) is that it basically takes the best quality of the previous generations, and places them all in one place - while it was mostly meant to follow G1 (more so than it actually did, many episodes are based on fanfictions of Lauren's - she did the story not the scripts, in case you’re confused, that she based on G1) but FIM does what a good remake/new version should do, and that's respect its predecessors - you can see several allusions to previous MLPs if you look for them. Like I say it was made for fans by fans - the fact that it gained new fans, who were old enough to have watched the old version, but didn't was a bonus, and a really cool one.
There are flaws with it, but they are pretty minor; most of which are Hasbro underestimating the children watching the show, and dumbing certain things down - which ironically makes things more confusing, even to the some of the older viewers; They refused to use the word "Alicorn" because they thought that it was such an old term little kids wouldn't understand it, so they made it "Pegasus Unicorn" which makes no sense, because they're supposed to be all three pony types, not just two. They cut out the explanation Celestia's nephew isn't her nephew at all, but a more distant relative, because they thought that that would be too heavy going for kids, but it makes no sense because there's only two sisters, and he's certainly not Luna's son. They refused to include Sea Ponies (Sea Ponies!!!) because they thought kids wouldn't understand what they were... Hasbro really needs to show faith it its main target audience. The reason FIM has survived so long is because it doesn't treat kids like morons - the same way most kids shows of yore didn't treat kids like morons.
So, there you go that's my opinion on each generation of My Little Pony.
Last edited by MJN SEIFER; 08-03-2012 at 12:15 AM.
Sorry about the lenght of the above post, my fellow bronies; I just really wanted to share my growing love of the franchise. Hope you're okay with the wall of text, but if not I applogise.
Unrelated note, I may do a Let's Play of the Pony Fantasy VI!
Just a screenshot and commentary one, but YES!
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