Hello there pony fans i've reviewed alot of stuff to do with this franchise from the various Equestria Girls specials to the big screen movie but the one thing that i've never reviewed is the series so here is my review of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
The premise of this series is Twilight Sparkle is sent to the village of Ponyville from Princess Celestia to learn all about friendship. This show is for the most part episodic but there are episodes that reference events from past episodes and in the case of the season 5 finale takes place during an event described in a previous episode so in that sense there's no real story which does work for this show but I also wish that there was a story to speak of.
Starring as the mane characters are Tara Strong as Twilight Sparkle , Tabitha St. Germain as Rarity , Ashleigh Ball as Applejack and Rainbow Dash , Andrea Libman as Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie and Cathy Weseluck as Spike. As you can see I didn't name every single actor who's on the show well that was done to save my own sanity so I boiled it down to just the main cast of characters.
The acting in the show i'll admit doesn't start of well but that's to be expected since the cast are only just starting to find there respective characters but it does get better over the course of the series and now I cannot picture these characters being voiced by any other actor each of these actors has made these characters their own.
The animation for the series is handled by Hasbro Studios and to be pretty honest there are times where the animation almost looks like it could in a movie but then again there are a few times where you can tell that this movie was made cheaply and it makes me wish that they would put more money into the animation but when it's good it's great.
I'm trying to be fair in this review since I am a fan of the show and have been since season 6 but tho even as a fan I can say that the show does have it's fair share of problems and so I hope that you respect me for pointing out those problems but the show is still very freaking enjoyable.
Even tho the show is made for little girls the show has a huge amount of male fans who call themselves Bronies and honestly i'm glad that the show has gone against normality since the show is all about friendship and inclusion but tho there still seems to be a stigma attached to being a male and liking this show and I don't understand why since anything that teaches about friendship should be encouraged heck the Brony fanbase is so strong that there are two films made about them the first called Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony and the second called A Brony Tale both of which I recommend.
You guys might not realise it yet but the show will have been on for eight years this October for any show eight years is a very respectful run and the fact that even when we are in season 8 they are still coming up with fresh ideas really does astound me I would have run out of ideas after one season so how these writers keep on coming up with more is truly amazing.
Throughout those eight years the show has had three main executive producers for seasons 1 through 2 it was Lauren Faust who pretty much set the standerd for the rest of the series for season 3 it was Jayson Thiessen and he also did the job for season 4 alongside the shows head writer Meghan McCarthy and I have to say that while I thought the transition would be jarring it actually wasn't and it felt rather smooth.
What I noticed while watching this series was that for the premiers and finale's the episodes mostly featured on Twilight even tho her friends do help out in those episodes Twilight always felt more like the main character in those episodes and I have no idea why why couldn't the main character in say the season 2 two part opener be Fluttershy all you would have to do is switch Twilight out with her and the story would still work.
I actually cannot believe i've not spoken about the character designs yet I honestly think that the designs do work for this show but I have a feeling that they were designed more for the guys who make the toys just because each character is so uniquely designed and these designs cannot be easy to animate but there sure as hell great to turn into a toy.
Make no mistake about it the whole purpose of this show is to sell toys and that's it the fact that it's become a hit show that didn't come from Hasbro that was from Lauren but there were times while watching the show that I went "Now at a store near you" and I mostly did that whenever they made a major change to the series.
This is a kids show which means there are lessons to be learnt but before I get to those I have to say that having a character learn the same lesson over and over again isn't good in fact it makes the character seem rather stubborn like there not willing to change even tho they've just seen how much better it would be I think you can work out which character i'm talking about i'm not going to mention her by name but just see the above picture you'll know who I mean.
The show does a good job of teaching it's lessons none of them feel forced altho I can see people getting annoyed by the fact that the power of friendship saves everything but the lessons that this show teaches are lessons that kids need to learn and there lessons that we as adults could do with remembering especially given how the world is today.
The music and sings for this show are done by the crazy talented by Daniel Ingram this dude needs to do more shows and movies in the future because he is so freaking talented alot of the songs in this show are really good but alot of them are forgettable and that's not something you want in your show but they can't all be good but for me the shows best song is Your In My Head Like A Catchy Song which is you havn't heard go and look it up on youtube.
Overall if your not a fan of My Little Pony I do recommend you at least check out the season 1 premier that's the episode that got me interested in this franchise and i've not looked back heck the show is so popular right now that's spawned various TV specials and a hit feature film but the show does have it's fair share of problems which I have to take into account so it gets a 7.5 out of 10 from me.