- Released: 11 March 2019
- Amount of seasons: 2
- Seasons watched: Episode 1-13 of season 1
- Rating: 1.5/5
Synopsis
In the realm of Funtasia, a magical equine race known as the Fillies attend a magic school, all the while the sinister lord Wranglum is trying to break free of his prison.
My Thoughts
This is an...interesting series to say the least. Not only is it obviously made to cash in on the success of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, but it also has been in production hell for literal ages, to the point it still doesn't have an official English release sans a few episodes. And by ages, I mean since approximately 2014 when it was first announced.
However, the series has been released in several locations worldwide in other languages, and the Spanish variant just so happens to be found online with English subtitles so I can understand what's going on. So, until more episodes drop or, god forbid, an actual full English dub, I'm going to be doing my review of episodes 1-13 of season one.
In many ways, this is kind of just a kiddie high school show in a magical setting. Think Winx Club or something. There's these horses who learn magic (regardless of race, by the way. Earth Fillies can use magic as well as unicorns and pegasi) by using their conduits known as magic mirrors. Each episode they face an obstacle or get up to hijinks, all the while a dark warlord known as Wranglum is trying to escape his mirror prison to take over Funtasia. He is aided in his goal by his bumbling minion Battiwigs, who just so happens to be a bat.
The overall show is honestly kind of lame. The writing is rather bad and forced, I didn't actively enjoy any of the episodes, and the characters are just not strong at all. They do have basic personalities (Rose being the nerd, Lynn liking pranks and scaring others, etc.) but they're all very standard and the characters hardly ever develop beyond their current selves, which is actually one of the things that made Friendship is Magic so successful: the good and rounded characters.
Then there's Wranglum and Battiwigs. For a main villain for a series, Wranglum is honestly one of the lamest examples I ever could've imagined. Aside from how boring and "stock standard villain" he is, there is also way too little establishing of him. We don't learn his name until late into the series, we don't know how he got imprisoned until late, either. The fact that he's consistently bested by these lame horses also doesn't make him very intimidating. His schtick is also very repetative: each episode he tries to find a different way to get out of his mirror prison. He succeeds in his goal a total of One times in these thirteen episodes, and even at the end of that one he's back in the mirror again, pretty much at square one once more. Also: his English voice. It sounds like a teenage boy whose voice only just started deepening trying to sound intimidating. His Spanish voice is way, way better. So, yeah, a very lame excuse for a main villain.
Battiwigs is honestly just your standard bumbling villain minion. Again, with him we know almost nothing about him. Why is he the only animal that can talk? Why does he help Wranglum even when he's consistently being abused by him? Is he even truly evil? None of that answered. We just know he is the bumbling villain sidekick, that's all there is to him.
Funtasia is also not a very well-established setting. In Friendship is Magic, we got all this interesting lore, developed locations and cool idea. Funtasia instead feels like any generic fantasy realm you can imagine. It has dragons, it has magic, but there's very little establishing of rules or lore. Heck, the only thing we really know about the realm is that it's located on a flying continent. But even that doesn't get developed. Why does it fly? Nobody knows? Heck, even the Fillies all being different kinds (Earth Filly, Elf Filly, Witchy Filly, Pegasus Filly, etc.) doesn't mean jack shit since they all have access to the same magic. So even non-winged Fillies can learn how to fly using spells, for example. There's nothing really that makes any of them unique aside from the Mermaid Fillies I guess, since they can live underwater.
The animation is very standard TV animation and while I like the hair textures, that's really where it stops. The environments often look cheap, the textures on the grass are either nonexistent or look bad, and the Fillies themselves just have this weird anatomy with these huge legs. I know not everyone is a fan of the G5 My Little Pony animation style, but in my opinion those horses look way better in 3D because their anatomy isn't so damn weird. Also: none of the Fillies have a nose. I just thought I should add that. They literally just would need to add two dots on the textures on the muzzle, but they didn't. No noses. Then there's also the fact that pretty much all Fillies share the same base model. There's I think one or two exceptions, but other than that all horses look the exact same, just with different colors, manes, eye shapes and optionally stuff like horns/elf ears/wings. Friendship is Magic at least had some different body types, this is just so dull to look at.
So, yeah, this series didn't sway me. At all. I wanted to see it desperately to see how it compares to My Little Pony and even just what it was like in general. But I was very disappointed. When the next batch of episodes drops, I may check it out and add more thoughts here, but so far it's nothing great.
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