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The next episode is still being edited, and considering that this weekend is the Florida Anime Experience (featuring a video room programmed ENTIRELY BY US), we’ll instead brighten your days using Gerald and Clarissa’s guest appearance on the Greatest Movie EVER! podcast where they discussed…
…well, they didn’t discuss any movies at all. So incensed by the notion that someone on the Internet didn’t like the cartoon for 5 year-olds was Paul that, after letting it eat at him for days and days, he organized his own gig to tell ya’ll what’s WHAT. We may not yet have reached “peak MLP” just yet, but other forces are hard at work to remedy it.
The link to the show itself is here.
A whole hour on My Little Pony. Has anime become so bad that this is the best thing to talk about?
I’ve seen maybe five seconds of the show just to check out what it was. But I generally don’t care for flash animation. It comes across as a cheap substitute for real animation. Samurai Jack was good because it came out just as flash animation was getting started and it experimented with the medium, but I prefer the more traditional animation.
It was actually an hour and twenty minutes before I chopped it down through the editing process. That should give you some idea of how highly the three of us think of the show. Five seconds isn’t going to give you a very good impression of what the overall show is like; as Gerald pointed out, the flash animation is excellent in MLP:FiM, and given the choice between well-done flash with solid writing and mediocre anime with tons of cheap digital animation tricks, I’d have to go with the former.
A medium is only as good as the work that people put into it; there’s plenty of traditional cel animation that is terrible, too. Please don’t dismiss it just on that account.
it actually is a pretty fun show, I saw the first few episodes not to long ago, and I do enjoy the characters, and their interplay, I do intend to watch more of it when I get the chance.
Also I would also totally buy this on blu-ray
More nitpicking: Inky and Blinky are fan-given names for Pinkie Pie’s sisters. In the show they’re yet-unnamed.
“the general character design [has] almost a Panty & Stocking style influence”
P&S superficially copied its character designs from Dexter’s Lab and Powerpuff Girls, so uh, hm. [That was literally the next sentence spoken, so uh, hm!] Plus, there’s a mix up between G3 and G3.5 a few times. Slightly more research would have gone a long way.
Nitpicking aside, great podcast.
Stop. No. Wrong. I grew up in the 80s and like the rest of us I happily watched girls’ cartoons along with Transformers, GI Joes, He-Man, etc. Although I was never young enough to mess with My Little Pony, I wasn’t
particularilyparticularly against men watching the new series. As the Internet refused to shut up about it I tried out the first 2 episodes — and its awful. Sadly, the Internet appeared to care less about my views than it does about its own lack of taste; therefore, I will offer it again.The characters in MLP are stunningly cardboard to the point of being robotic. The plot was simple-minded, as if it was meant for…6 year old girls. I don’t remember the soundtrack, meaning it was trash. I’m too old to judge the humour and honestly so is everyone posting here. The only entertainment value I can see is that which is invented by adult neckbeards — ie, the popularity of MLP is simply a cultural social distortion and I’m very sorry if you refuse to face that fact. [But this entire podcast was recorded in response to people watching the first two episodes and not liking it. That was the point of the recording; that the post-pilot episodes go in a different direction…]
There really is no point in responding to a “guy under the bridge”, but I’ll just state I like the show for its own merits and not as result of some Internet hive-mind. Other people liking something – for reasons either valid or poor – doesn’t somehow magically translate into me liking it, too. I like what I like, and you’re free not to like it. But if you go so far as to call it a bad show, you need to support that assertion with evidence or you’ve over-stepped yourself.
tl;dr version: Obvious troll is obvious.
Paul, I grok but ya know?
The defense seems alot like the lolicon and MOE otaku defense.
Just sayin’.
The difference here Steve is that My Little Pony isn’t predicated entirely on the sexualization of young girls. I think it’s kind of annoying when we spend a decent chunk of time explaining what we like about the show and why and people still want to lump us in with the /b/tards. That’d be like judging the merits of Harry Potter based solely on the behavior of its most insane fans.
The plot of the first two episodes of MLP is indeed a bit simple in its message of friendship, but I think the thing that hooks people in those two episodes and that persists throughout the series (even when the initial premise does not) is a sense that the characters in the show are fleshed-out characters with fully developed personalities who can also act as good role models for not only the target 6-year-old girl audience but even the adults watching.
I’m not a major MLP fan or anything, and I too scratched my head when it started to take over the internet, but I’ll tell you the first thing that really caught my attention in My Little Pony: the main character. As Paul, Gerald, and Clarissa mentioned, the typical “girl character” in cartoons was always of a certain type, usually liking boys and fashion and being in some way your “average” girl. The main heroine here was not that, and the fact that she had both equally pronounced character strengths (intelligence, desire for learning, a sense of righteousness) and character flaws (naivete, failing to understand the importance of others, being kind of a workaholic) told me that this show was quite different.
As I’ve watched more episodes, it’s clear that all of the central characters in this show are developed to that extent. It’s easy to pin them as the smart one, the athletic one, the fashionable one, and so on, but all of those act more conveniently as basic descriptors instead of actually being a full summary of their characters. And I think that even if some of the fans themselves don’t realize it, this is probably the big reason why it’s gotten so popular. It just fulfills a certain desire for positive, up-lifting characters who are not perfect and also express different ways for a person (or pony) to be a fully developed individual who at the same time can be part of a group.
This show has ruined my football viewing experience….
Explanation:
My favorite college football team is the Oklahoma Sooners. They official team mascot is the Sooner Schooner. It’s a Conestoga wagon that is pulled by two white ponies after every touchdown scored. The show has been burned into my brain and now I can never watch my Sooners play without thinking back to this unholy creation that has invaded our society. I picture poor Boomer and Sooner (pony names) having to work hard labor during the offseason against their will in this horrid land of insanity.
In all seriousness I have seen very little of the show and plan to give a few episodes a shot. All I know is that I will liberate those poor male ponies from their fantasy prison and return them to the safe confines of Norman, Oklahoma where they can return to their true charge in life…pulling the Sooner Schooner during the glorious battles on the gridiron this Fall. BOOMER SOONER!
I will admit that I met the initial Internet infatuation with MLP with a healthy amount of skepticism and trepidation. It seemed like a children’s show being championed by shameless furry-apologists. How good could it possibly be? It’s a throwback to the Saturday morning cartoons of the ’80’s, a period that I have little appreciation for. After this podcast, I decided to check out episode 5 and 6 just to justify my distrust.
I have since watched all 26 episodes, and did so within 4-5 days of watching MLP for the first time. It’s been a long time since I burned through a series the way I did with MLP. The show is funny…FUNNY. The characters are engaging, and almost every episode focuses on a different character, giving them all equal time to be fleshed out and expanded upon. The flash animation is vibrant and clean. To put it simply: I love this show. As a 26 year old male, it can sometimes be difficult to admit it, though.
Those people in the comments who have mentioned watching the first two episode only, know this: the rest of the series is not like that at all. They even mention that in the podcast, that watching only the first two episodes does not paint an adequate picture of what the rest of the series will be about. Watch episode 25, with Pinkie Pie’s total emotional breakdown, and you’ll get a sense of why this show is worthy of attention.
It’s sad that this series could be more readily accepted if the subject was changed from female ponies to…well, almost anything. People, myself included, came to some unjust conclusions about the show without even watching it. People were looking for reasons to hate it. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s not the godawful slop that some make it out to be. I try to distance myself from the “Bronie” extremists out there; they exist in some form for almost any fandom. But don’t make the mistake of believing that what they believe or like is indicative of the show or fandom as a whole. And if you do, I would suggest trolling through fanfiction.net for some of the more depraved fan-fiction based on one of your favorite properties, or GIS fan-art. The unfortunate pursuits of some fans shouldn’t keep you from watching or enjoying something.
Wow, Gerald, and Paul. you guys actually make a really hilarious team. Maybe you should consider starting a podcast with each other. I understand Paul may be busy with his bestiality, unicorn, lolicon. However, if possible I would love to hear what you guys would come up with. Paul has this easy going “I know what I am so what” thing while your “irritated guy” rational with him make a perfect combination that have made me listen to the beginning of this podcast at least 50 times by now, and that’s no exaggeration.
Really nice podcast and good to finally hear an analysis from people who have finished watching the season. As mentioned above, there is just a bit of confusion on the generation numbering, which up until G4 is actually based off discontinuing the toy line/changing toys and rather than TV reboots.
G1: Original 80’s show
G1(.5?): MLP Tales – early 90’s show set in human-like culture that got 1 season
G2: Late 90’s toy reboot based in Friendship Gardens, no associated TV show
G3: Ponyville based reboot in 2005 with a series of DVD specials – I think this is what Clarissa was calling G2, and many of the G4 character names come from here
G3.5: Enormous head Chibi pony experiment, mostly in 2009.