- Released: 10 October 2012
- Developed by: Lauren Faust
- Amount of seasons: 9
- Seasons watched: 5, 6, 7
- Rating: 3/5
Synopsis
In the magical world of Equestria, a unicorn named Twilight Sparkle and her friends learn all kinds of lessons regarding friendship.
My Thoughts
So here we are at the third part of my My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic lookback series. I've decided to combine these three seasons together because they're all pretty focused around a new certain gimmick (more on that later).
These seasons came out around the time I kind of stopped watching the show during its original run. Back then I kept up weekly with each episode as it released, but my depression and other stuff kind of just made me stop watching. I also just...stopped being engaged by this show around this time. Some stuff I still liked, but they also went into a direction I didn't care for in the slightest.
So with season 5 and onward, the series seems to go for a bit of a change in direction. Before, the show was mostly about interpersonal conflict with the occasional lore dump or action-filled two-parters. As of season 5, the series seems to be more about traveling to different places, introducing more lore and less action.
The new gimmick I hinted at earlier is the Cutie Map: a magical map in Twilight's castle that'll send a select few ponies on a quest somewhere in (or beyond) Equestria. This can be solving a friendship problem, but more often than not it seems to be spreading Equestria's philosophy on friendship to another race of creatures, such as the dragons or yaks. Which just makes me...kind of uncomfortable.
The ponies are continuously portrayed as virtuous and very friendly, but any other kind of creature 90% of the time is portrayed as brutish, savage and in need of learning Equestria's way of thinking. This just comes off a bit...idk, mission trip-y to me. "Hey, we view these people as savages and they must learn our ways because their ways are objectively wrong" seems to be the philosophy the show pushes sometimes and it does really rub me the wrong way.
As for the traveling to new locations and lore, I don't care much about it. Introducing a new location or some lore every so often is fine by me, but these seasons seem to go out of their way to be as much about going to different places and introducing stuff like history and lore as possible, which just comes across as very fan service-y. Back in the day bronies were all about lore and learning about the different locations of Equestria from what I remember.
And, again, a little bit of this is totally fine! We traveled to different locations and learned about lore sometimes in the old seasons, but it never felt overkill, when in these seasons it's definitely becoming so. It's like the series grew aware of its older fanbase and shifted its gaze to be more focused on them, which I honestly dislike.
Yes, I was a teen/young adult while the show came out, but my favorite seasons were (and still are) always the first four, which were more focused on the original target demographic. Wasn't it these seasons that made us fall in love with the show in the first place, whether one considers themself a brony or just a fan? So I honestly just wish they didn't go this route. The show was fine as it was, being about small interpersonal conflict with the occasional banger scene/episode, it didn't need this much fanservice.
And that's honestly my biggest gripe with these seasons. The shift in focus just doesn't appeal to me. But there's other problems, too.
First: Starlight. As a villain in her first two-parter, she's fine. It's interesting to have a very normal pony threat for once rather than a creature/monster. But even in the finale of season 5 it's revealed that of all the possible motivations she could have for her evil actions, it's a single friendship that got shattered. This feels like the laziest possible backstory they could've come up with for her.
And after her redemption, she doesn't get much better. She constantly has to learn the same lesson (that she shouldn't magically alter people to act how she wants) the same way Fluttershy had to learn to be less shy twenty times in earlier seasons. And then, after only one season of being Twilight's student, Starlight already graduates.'
Reminder: this took Twilight three seasons and she didn't have a disturbing background. Starlight is an ex-cult leader who still very often magically fucks with people, a trait which persists even after she graduates. So she should've been Twilight's student for much longer than this because it honestly just feels careless of the Princess of Friendship to graduate a pony with very dangerous potential in the blink of an eye.
And my second problem: Discord. I don't like post-season 4 Discord. Yes, he's redeemed, and I don't expect him to be a goody two shoes all the time, but he is still just such an manipulative asshole in these seasons, even to people he considers his friends. He's still learning, obviously, but I legit don't consider him a fun or likable character anymore. He by now just kind of feels like a more sarcastic and manipulative version of Disney's Aladdin's Genie. Reminder: I do not find Disney's Aladdin's Genie funny, so having this version of him that has less likable traits isn't exactly doing him any good. There is legit one episode out of all these three seasons where I liked Discord, and it's Discordant Harmony. Again, I don't need him to be perfect all the time, but for him to become such an unlikable character that relies mostly on reference humor when he was previously one of the funniest just sucks. And yes, I do indeed know he only gets worse in season 9.
Honestly, out of these three seasons, there's only a handful of episodes I can say I genuinely like. My favorite is Amending Fences, with others I like being Canterlot Boutique, No Second Prances (the only good Starlight episode in my opinion), The Times They Are a Changeling, Discordant Harmony and A Health of Information. I'm not saying everything else is garbage, but there's just so few episodes I genuinely consider to be a treat to watch with these seasons. Most of it feels like a chore to sit through.
So, yeah, I'm just not a big fan of the direction the series is heading in. The last two seasons I'll be covering are seasons 8 and 9 sometime later down the line. See ya!
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