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[Sowelu]

Okay, let's try that pony thread again, only this time with no picspam or image macros (yeah that was mostly my fault the first time, and it was fun but just no).  I still think it's a relevant topic.

...Seriously.  I don't get it.  "My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic" is somehow actually a good show.  How?  Just...How?  It's reasonably complex.  The characters are a lot of fun.  Bad guys, when present, are reasonably unsettling and cool-looking.  And the animation is really very good.  I like the character designs.  (It's oh-so-heavily Powerpuff Girls inspired, and I didn't even like that show, but I adore this.)  Even the mandatory song-and-dance numbers are good, especially when you consider that the main character is genre-savvy enough to basically facepalm (facehoof?) the first time she notices that a song is on the way.

I just...It's wonderful and I'm not sure why, it's not even an ironic thing.  And you can find it on Youtube.  What other remade shows have I missed in my misguided pursuit of masculinity?  Although, for what it's worth, this show has some of the manliest mustaches in the history of everything.

If flight pathfinding worked properly in DF, I would totally make a MLP mod with different castes for the unicorn-type and pegasus-type ponies.

EDIT: And no sexual topics either, because srsly, kids' show.  You can have those discussions on 4chan.

[Cheese]

What is this unicorn-pony thing you speak of? It sounds like the stuff of legends!

[Sowelu]

Some ponies have wings.  Some ponies have horns.  Some ponies have neither.  The deity-level ponies have both.

[CJ1145]

(comment removed)

[Euld]

(reply to comment removed)

Looked it up on Youtube, and apparently the OP isn't the only older male drawn into the show.  Even a 16 year old guy with the username HomelessGangster posted about how much he liked it o_O

edit: watched the first half of the first episode... it was well, intriguing o_o  It was a little lame for the first three minutes or so, but suddenly got good when the sidekick was introduced, and even better when the country bumpkin ponies were brought in.

[Sowelu]

Spike is just awesome.

And yeah the show tends to have the silly moral messages like "Friendship is great!" and "Loyalty is great!" and "Kindness is great!" and stuff.  And they club you repeatedly with them.  But so what?

...God, the mustaches in this show.  It's also very strange how males are basically the servant class.

[Max White]

I can't help but think this was a major factor.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[Rilder]

I believe in Hellenism there is a group of flesh eating horses. (Can't remember the story off the top of my head)

[iceball3]

Ack. I, just, can't, force myself to watch this show. I just can't and I don't know why. It looks like It could be good... But I can't do it. If I am saying this and somehow still managed to push myself through every single episode of Lucky Star, then something must be wrong. I will try to figure out how to watch this. I just need to stamp out the annoying thing in my life called EGO. Please also take not that there was no sarcasm in this post. I'm being dead serious.

[Sowelu]

Like any new series, there's a lot of bad AMVs, but there's also some real gems.  This was a key factor in getting me into the series.

[scriver]

God. It's ridiculous how many of the ponies in that video I recognise from my childhood. At least their appearance and manners, somewhat.

[Aqizzar]

I first heard about the Ponies from /co/ on 4chan, and I figured people were just spamming the stuff around ironically.  I was all like, "C'mon guys, when were My Little Ponies ever cool?"  And now I find myself asking, "when did My Little Ponies become cool?"  Well, it hasn't and didn't, but God help me if that cartoon isn't genuinely funny.

I'm not old enough to remember the supposed "Golden Age" of cartoons in the 1980s; I grew up in the early 90's, which I will defend to the death was better.  Like, y'know, everyone will defend what they grew up with over all else, because your youth is always the last Golden Age.  I thought the last great cycle of cartooning died around 2004, when all in one year or so, the Powerpuff Girls were finally overplayed; Duck Dodgers, Samurai Jack, and Megas XLR all got the axe in one season, and Dexter's Lab was adopted by another studio who threw it in the toilet.  Sure, there were a few stalwart holdouts like Foster's and Billy and Mandy, but they quietly died in their own turn.  I figured the great American animation tradition had finally been crushed under faux-anime and the return of cartoons that serve as little more than elaborate commercials for their own toys.

Then all in a couple years, we get Billy and Mandy: The Movie, The Misadventures of Flapjack, The Brave and the Bold, Adventure Time (which I caught a day-long marathon of and was blown away), and now this Ponies thing.  It took me a while to figure out why it was that I loved all these new shows so much.  The slick and recognizable animation, the top-notch character driven joke plots written with anal attention to detail, the superlative voice-acting, the complete disregard for FCC standards and practices, and jokes and references clearly written for people years (if not decades) outside the supposed target-audience.

In other words, the exact same qualities that I loved about the cartoons I grew up with.  Hell, I can see a little DNA from Ren and Stimpy and Rocko's Modern Life in each of them.  Which stands to reason as the staff from those shows have their own studios now, staffed by people who grew up watching them.  It's like 1994 all over again; it's almost a shame I don't have a kid.

[Fayrik]

I can't help but think this was a major factor.

Yes.
I think it's just the enevitiblity of people realising that Rainbows and Unicorns are actually very manly things. In a very heterosexual manly way. </silly joke>

And, on a more serious note.. I would look this up on youtube, but I can't get the niggle out of the back of my head that I'm going to watch it and just disagree with you guys.

[Sowelu]

Bah, just watch it.  The longer you put it off, the more disappointed you'll be when it doesn't live up to your ever-growing expectations.  Or if you DO like it, the longer you put it off the longer it will be before you start enjoying it!

[Akura]

I believe in Hellenism there is a group of flesh eating horses. (Can't remember the story off the top of my head)

Thracian Horses? At least, that's what Age of Mythology told me.