My Thoughts On My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (Is It Worth the Hate?)

Okay, so I wanted to share on my thoughts on this subject. This show... yet another cartoon for little girls has boggled my mind for quite some time. Now we all know these kinds of shows; Barbie, Bratz, Littlelest Pet Shop, blah blah blah, constantly get hate and for good reason, but then MLP jumps into the scene and, out of freaking nowhere, it just blows the hell up! But what really confused me is that even men, yes GROWN ASS HETEROSEXUAL MEN actually like this show. Like, who ever thought that this would come about? Men liking a little girl's cartoon? That's insanity! So, me being me, I had to find out what the hell was the big deal with this show. I decided to watch an episode one day... yep, couldn't finish 5 minutes of the sh*t. Girly overload. I've tried this multiple times but it was the same result each time: my manhood took over and I just couldn't do it.

So, I thought that now men have just fell off. I don't know what happened, but I guess we changed somehow, but there still had to be some kind of reason that men like this cartoon. It just didn't make sense. There had to be something, but I just put it off to the side and hopefully would run into an answer one day... and I did. I saw a movie for Equestria Girls (oh jeez, here we go) on TV and it was about the characters singing in some kind of competition. With nothing else to watch on TV, and with nobody else nearby to see me watching, I decided to have some mercy on it. I was only able to watch sort of the last few segments of the movie and I saw part of my answer. The songs they were singing were... actually pretty well-made, for a kids show that is. The final singing battle near the end of the film also was a big turnaround. It kind of shocked me actually, and if I were female, I would say that that scene was pretty cool. It didn't make much sense, but it was still well-made. I'm actually heavily attracted to musical scenes that put on a heavily good show, no matter how cheesy it may be. Let's think of Happy Feet 2, for example. For those of you who have seen that movie, yeah it was pretty mediocre compared to the first one, but what almost made up for the entire film was the final musical scene at the end. They sang UNDER PRESSURE by Queen, that right there is already a plus, and the scene itself had such a powerful vibe to it that it gave me goosebumps. That's basically what they did in the MLP movie, except it was more girly and cheesy, but still not too bad.

Okay, so they make a good musical scene. Big deal. What about the story? The characters? The comedy? Is there anything in this cartoon that can actually make me forget about my manliness? Bear with me here. This post should be read by people who both like this cartoon and hate it. As for me, I'm neutral with it, and why? Let's start by getting into the elements of the show...

Keep in mind that I've only watched a minimal amount of this cartoon to know what the hell it's really about, so don't expect me to get into a bunch of lore and sh*t. I'm just here to explain what makes this show attractive. I got on YouTube and decided to watch some episodes. Now, the thing I had to do was pretend that this wasn't a girl's cartoon, which was not easy but it was good enough. Thank God I ran into some of the better episodes of the series, then again, if there are any "bad" episodes. The first thing that I must say about the cartoon is that the developers definitely work a lot of aspects correctly. MLP surprisingly brings back some of the elements that made cartoons good back in the day. One major element is its execution on top of simplicity. This cartoon takes heavy inspiration from anime in every obvious way. From the fights (which are literally almost DBZ carbon copies) to the dark plotlines, this actually heads in the right direction for a certain audience. MLP takes a lot of cheesy morals, just like anime does, and turns them into some decent entertainment. Now, since this is an American kids cartoon, the morals are still a bit cheesy, but remember that we're talking about a cartoon for kids. It ain't gonna super dark and violent, but it has just the right amount of those elements. There ARE plenty of annoying aspects of the show (i.e. Pinkie Pie), as expected, but other aspects can overwhelm the annoying if done right. Some of the episodes are actually enjoyable and exciting and this ties into the character quality.

The characters in this cartoon are surprisingly very diverse and the development of each character is fleshed out. Each character, even supporting ones, can even have their own episode, and this provides some insight on characters that watchers may hae wanted to know more about. Supporting characters and even villains can play major roles in the series and make them likable. Characters are also very fleshed out in terms of personality checks. Throughout the series, as far as I know, the characters are met with different situations, which in turn can change the way the audience thinks about them. This gives good reason as to why this show is still running. On a downside, the personalities of each character range from very cool to downright annoying. Very cool would be Rainbow Dash and Applejack, and downright annoying would be Pinkie Pie. I swear, every time I saw Pinkie Pie on the show, it made me want to just stop watching, and not because the character is bad in a sense because she had her moments here and there that were pretty funny, but because she's way too eccentric for me to keep up with. It's like she's legitimately on speed. I also must mention that she sings, like, 80% of the songs in the entire series, and most of them aren't that good. Let me just take a second to talk about the music quality as a whole...

Like the characters, the songs in the cartoon range from very good to downright annoying. There are a handful of songs with too much simplicity in them to where all we get is sort of basic nursery rhyming and randomized wordplay, but other songs can have the catchy "kick" to them where the wordplay works well. This can eliminate the cheesiness of the situation in certain scenes. The last aspect I wanted to talk about in this cartoon is the animation. A lot of MLP haters will say that the animation on this cartoon sucks, but I'm pretty sure that they're talking about the art direction. The art of MLP is nothing really unique. The drawings are colorful and pleasing, but very simple. Now if we're talking about the overall animation, it's actually pretty good, or in other words, it's very smooth. The detail in the animation is digital 2D, but I think that works better than if this show was completely hand-animated.

Now what keeps me from watching this show on a regular basis? You probably already know the answer: it's very, very, VERY girly, almost feminist actually, but as a whole, I now realize why this cartoon is attracting. I'm not a Brony and I don't watch this cartoon at all, really, but I have to say that it's one of the better cartoons of today compared to others, and believe me, I've seen a lot of piece of ass hole cartoons to know what I'm talking about. So is MLP worth the hate? I would actually say yes AND no. If you have a very fragile masculinity, it would be very normal to hate on this show and I'm not mad at that, but since this show has a high-quality basis around its aspects, I'm also not mad at the males out there who actually enjoy this show. But you know the funny thing about this sh*t? I'm a black dude (also mixed with Spaniard), and black guys from Cali have, like, EXTRA fragile masculinity. If one of my friends found out about what I'm writing right now, they'd call me a punk ass bitch ass Brony n*gga (yup, that's how we talk to each other) for cutting this cartoon some slack. Still, I completely admit that MLP is a well-made cartoon. It's just socially controversial.

Comments

Good reciew - ProPanda

say review - visitor

I haven;t watch it and I don't want to.
Good review. - Skullkid755

Thanks - visitor

It's normal if you don't want to watch it. I just gave it a solid chance and I came out surprised - visitor

Pony are not good. it deserves hate - visitor

So your forcing your hatedom down my throat? Hell NO! - visitor

I used to have a strong serious hate for this show. I still don't like it, but I don't hate it as much as I used to. - cosmo

Well I do know that you made the list on reasons to hate the show LoL - visitor

I'm still scarred by what happened to MlpYes, I'll miss her - visitor

Yeah, I agree Neonco31. mlpyes did nothing wrong! I remember when she made the list of reasons to love mlp, and pony haters came just to bash on every Item. I felt sorry for her :'( - MLPFan

I wish she come back - visitor

Nice - TwilightKitsune

I kind of agree with this post, very well done. I do not watch MLP because I find it a bit too girlish for my taste even though I am a female, but anyone can enjoy it though and I respect those who watch it. - visitor

I find it pathetic that people say bronies are a bad fanbase, because anti bronies are clearly worse. Has no one heard of Michael Morones? - visitor