Not-Sucking Is Magic: My Little Pony

[the_gneech]

Well, I binged on the first five (six? I lost count after the Ursa Minor) episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic via YouTube last night, while workin’ on various stuff. It was enjoyable and I can see why it’s popular, although it didn’t cause me to squee with the light of a thousand suns the way it has some others.

I can see the Powerpuff Girls influence in it, and that can be nothing but good. I also wholeheartedly applaud a Very Girly Show For Girls That Is Girly that has things like well-defined and likeable characters, plots with conflict, and themes of self-reliance and personal development, without actually being a show for boys where the characters all have long hair and squeaky voices (a pitfall PPG could occasionally fall prey to).

In the episodes I watched, it never quite reached the level of awesome, although it did have moments that approached it, such as “I cannot tolerate such a crime against fabulosity!” and “But … the rainbow one kicked me…” With a few nudges in the right direction, it could easily become awesome, but my gut feeling is that Hasbro wouldn’t tolerate it.

So what’s my analysis of the whole Brony thing? Well, some of it is the same “breath of fresh air” phenomenon that made the original Star Wars such a hit after a decade of sci-fi movies that made you want to kill yourself. My Little Pony is a well-written, enjoyable, decently-animated show, which means it blows the doors off of anything else happening right now. Since the collapse of TV animation in the late ’90s, there’s been painfully little that wasn’t outright crap, and since it’s not crap, MLP shines like gold. And while I don’t want to belittle the quality of the show, I do think the lack of competition has a lot to do with the sheer enthusiasm of the fandom that’s building up around it.

Fans are gonna glomp onto something, and if there’s only the one thing around worth glomping onto, it wins. Once upon a time, animation fans could geek out about Animaniacs, Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers, Powerfpuff Girls, Balto, Cardcaptor Sakura, Dexter’s Laboratory, The Lion King, even the good old-fashioned Looney Tunes, and all still be fairly current. But all those things are old now (sorry, but it’s true, people like the New Hotness), and even if they weren’t old, they’re not being broadcast. You have to already be a fan of those for them to still be relevant to you.

If MLP was going up against the WB at its height, or even Cartoon Network during the Space Ghost: Coast to Coast era, it would have had a harder time of it, true, but on the other hand, it is a show being made right now that could stand up to those and give them a run for their money, and in the current climate that’s an accomplishment in and of itself.

-The Gneech

Originally published at gneech.com. You can comment here or there.

Comments

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

There is a lot of "been there, done that"-ness going on right now. :)

-TG

[kylet.livejournal.com]

I've still yet to see MLP so I can't say much about it specifically. But I DO believe there's always nostalgia filters about older cartoons. I think it's telling that MLP has middle-aged adult fans *concurrent* with its airing. Animaniacs, Freakazoid, and certainly Looney Tunes were adult-friendly, but most of the older toons people geek out over still probably maxed out at teenaged audiences, even at their peak. I've revisited a few on DVD sets and they do NOT age well.

So I think a better equivalent is if people can say their parents enjoyed Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers when it was on in the 80's. I can safely vouch for a NO there.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Which ones have you revisited that didn't age well, just out of curiosity? A lot of the ones I've gone back to re-watch I've been pleasantly surprised at how well they held up. (Freakazoid for instance...)

-TG

[kylet.livejournal.com]

Most of the Disney Afternoon ones (except Gargoyles and, oddly, The Gummi Bears) and Tiny Toon Adventures come to mind. Cartoon Network was not offered by my cable company so I never saw most of those when they aired.
I admit I think I might be skewing the timeframe since we were talking the context of the fandom; most the senselessly fanwank ones are more 80's-ish. I don't think that's quite what you're referring to...

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Tale Spin holds up reasonably well, if you go in thinking of it as a cartoon and not Great Art. I never really watched the other Disney ones, so I can't really address those.

When it comes to fanwanky series, I would expect Swat Kats and Road Rovers to hold the least appeal to me now -- Swat Kats because it never had much to offer to begin with, and Road Rovers because it was just such a paint-by-numbers affair.

Going further back, I used to enjoy Inspector Gadget once upon a time, but I know I wouldn't be able to watch it now.

-TG

[rowyn]

Recently, I watched Batman: Mask of the Phantasm -- a feature-length film using the same voice actors and art style as the animated cartoon. It holds up quite well -- the animation isn't as smooth as high-budget fare, but I'd match the story against any of the live-action films.

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

I have to agree. It's pretty much the only game in town.

I also have to admit, I got a laugh out of a Benny Hill chase scene parody in one of them.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Speaking of animation, did you ever catch this show? I thought of you every time it came on.



-The Gneech

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I saw a few episodes.

Some of it was funny, but somehow it just didn't click for me.
It seems odd, because theoretically, it should be right up my alley, but it missed.

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

I gave it a bit more thought:
In Duck Dodgers, Daffy really needed a proper foil. A Bugs Bunny, rather than a Porky Pig.

In the end, the show ended up as if it were an episode of Futurama, starring Zap Brannigan with Porky as Kif. Zap was funny in small doses. 30 minutes of Zap would be really tiresome, and so was Daffy. He needed a Bugs to take him down a peg from time to time.

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

I do think the real moment of awesome came at the very end of the first season, when everything went off the rails. Not many kid's cartoons from *any* era are willing to cross into Monty Python territory quite like that, and the creative team pulled it off pretty well. Lots of folks that weren't bronies before became that way after the finale.

There's one other thing that I think contributed: a very timely message. These are *really hard times* for alot of people, and 'friendship is magic' is not a bad message for the day. One that alot of fans, I think, needed to hear.

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Haven't gotten there yet ... through the 10th episode currently. :)

-TG

[archteryx.livejournal.com]

Quite honestly? I'd skip to the end, then, once you've seen the setup episodes: "Ticket Master" (where the ponies get their Grand Galloping Gala tickets), "Suited for Success" (where their formals are made by Rarity) and "Sonic Rainboom" (where Rainbow Dash finally gets to meet the Wonderbolts).

Lots of stuff in between isn't all that great; a good bit of it is Cutie Mark Crusaders stuff. Lauren Faust was going for a preschool-aimed spinoff show and it didn't quite take, so it was integrated into the regular series. There are still some priceless moments, but alot of it is just 'meh'. (Stare Master being a VERY notable exception).

[dbcooper.livejournal.com]

I completely agree, though I think perhaps I like the show a bit more. I think what the bronies are getting out of it, much like the intended audience, is a show where characters are all nice to each other until they have a really good reason not to be--and even then, they're still not terribly mean--and conflicts are resolved with very little violence and a whole lot of cuteness.

The show strongly emphasizes the value of friendship at a time when many, many media products not only de-emphasize it, but seem to treat it as a liability. Also, cute.

Plus, as you rightly point out, there's a lot of really rubbish animation on these days, particularly some of the stuff aimed at the guys who have become bronies. The new Looney Tunes half-hour show is a waste of classic characters and mostly makes me look for other shows to watch (though some of the filler shorts and music videos are fun).

[the-gneech.livejournal.com]

Haven't seen any of that one, so I can't say. Duck Dodgers was surprisingly good, but of course got yanked all around the schedule so you could never find it.

-TG

[rowyn]

Your first paragraph covers my favorite things about the show. There are some episodes that cover Dealing with Great Danger, but there are just as many where the stories are about simple things that happen to be important to the characters. The fantasy/sf genres don't get much in the way of small stories, so it's a nice change to see some.

I find the show likable and fun, but the plots are too simplistic and formulaic for me to really think of it as Made of Awesome. It did grow on me the more episodes I watched, though. n.n