General / Off-Topic MLP:FiM - Final Season

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Season 9 will be the final season of FiM. Celestia and Luna are retiring. Villain-of-the-week Grogar is creating a 'suicide squad' of baddies to take over Equestria. Twilight, having been unceremoniously dumped on the throne, has a nervous breakdown when she's forced to deal with a resurgent King Sombra without the help of the Two Sisters.

I won't spoil the opening two-parter. Suffice it to say that Sombra didn't have a good day. o7 Sombra. It was fun.

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So what do y'all think is going to happen in this final season? My kiddo can't decide on anything other than the bad guys won't win. (She's probably right, so I'll give her points for accuracy if not for predictive boldness). Me - I'm half thinking Hasbo will find a way to shoehorn in Gen5 into the final part of the season. What I hope they don't do is a Magic Mystery Cure Part Duex when some handwavium transforms everyone into whatever form they're going to be in the next show. I hope they at least finish off FiM with a bit more dignity than that, but we'll see. I'm pretty sure that Twilight will wind up the ruler of Equestira too. Too bad....I'd have preferred they'd keep the Sisters in charge but they've been building up to Twilight assuming the throne for a long time.
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Mid season hiatus now. Second and final half coming in August if I'm not mistaken.

Sombra is toast. We've had several really good episodes and a few 'meh' ones. Luna and Celestia had one of their best episodes together ever.

So, pony fans.... (I know there are a few around). What did you think so far?
 
Mid season hiatus now. Second and final half coming in August if I'm not mistaken.

Sombra is toast. We've had several really good episodes and a few 'meh' ones. Luna and Celestia had one of their best episodes together ever.

So, pony fans.... (I know there are a few around). What did you think so far?
I haven't even started with the last season. :LOL:
Good to hear about Luna, though
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
I haven't even started with the last season. :LOL:
Good to hear about Luna, though

Last season's favs for me:
Fake it Till you Make it (awesome Flutters ep)
Horse Play (One of the best Celestia focused episodes ever)
The Parent Map (Good Starlight episode, and with a good twist on the usual Friendship Map plotline)
The Mean 6 (Great Chrysalis ep, and really funny)
Road to Friendship (Trixie!)

Season 9 favs so far:
Sparkle's Seven (Written by some of the voice actors. This is a really fun and bananas ep).
The Point of No Return (Always fun to see an ep focused on Twi doing her Twi freakouts when she's stressed)
Common Ground (Return of Patton Oswalt as Quibble. Mature subjects of (implied) divorce and difficulty bonding wtih your partner's child of a previous marriage)
Frenemies (Tirek and Chrysalis get some character development).
The Last Crusade (CMC ep. Finally get to see Scoot's parents.)
Between Dark and Dawn (Celestia and Luna go on a vacation together, only to get on each other's nerves and start fighting like they did before Luna's banishment. They eventually make up and learn a lesson about sisterhood. Good stuff about Luna feeling bossed around all the time by Tia and being stuck in her shadow, Tia feeling like she's not only keeping Equestria afloat but also her sister's fragile ego, etc.).
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Never will understand this "adult" fandom but whatever makes you happy :)

It's good. That's really the long and the short of it. I don't like many cartoons nowadays, but MLP:FiM is quality.

Try it sometime. Even if you hate it, what have you lost aside from 20 minutes? ;)


 
Try it sometime. Even if you hate it, what have you lost aside from 20 minutes? ;)
I had a friend sit me down and watch an episode. Something about a birthday cake or something. Just not for me, it is just too damn bubbly for me to the point I associate it with Barney and Tele-Tubbie levels of cuteness shudders

For cartoons i'll stick with my South park, Archer, Boondocks and Mr. Pickles.
Thanks though 😉
 
I had a friend sit me down and watch an episode. Something about a birthday cake or something. Just not for me, it is just too damn bubbly for me to the point I associate it with Barney and Tele-Tubbie levels of cuteness shudders

For cartoons i'll stick with my South park, Archer, Boondocks and Mr. Pickles.
Thanks though 😉

Your friend didn't think it through. Episodes with Pinkie Pie are the most shouty and in your face of them all. I would never choose one of them if I wanted to get somebody interested. Tactical mistake. :LOL:
If he at least started with the FIRST episode. Or any of the good ones...
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Your friend didn't think it through. Episodes with Pinkie Pie are the most shouty and in your face of them all. I would never choose one of them if I wanted to get somebody interested. Tactical mistake. :LOL:
If he at least started with the FIRST episode. Or any of the good ones...

Agreed. Dropping someone in on a Pinky episode isn't the best introduction. At the very least it gives you a false impression of the show's tone, which is far from over-the-top zaniness. Much better to just start with the pilot - "Friendship is Magic". Get introduced to the mane 6 and their personalities, and to the world. One of the big strengths of mlp is in its world-building, and the stuff in ep 1 with the two alicorn sisters who rule Equestira is one of the best examples of that.
 

Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
Only a handful left now.

Some stray, spoiler-y observations:

-Ok, so it seems that the Tia & Luna are indeed 'retiring and Twi will be taking their place. I guess that's not totally unexpected, but I still would rather they stick around. Twi now is in charge of the sun & moon via this amulet thing that the Sisters gave her. That's a pretty lame plot convenience if you ask me. Takes away some of the mystique of our two favorite pony demigods.

-Man so many ponies are doing that 'three legged walk while the fourth leg gesticulates' thing this season. Every time I see it the physical impossibility of it smacks me right in the face.

-Writers seem to want to squeeze in a ton of last minute character development & tying of loose ends but it all feels a bit rushed as it's coming in one season. Starlight is totally redeemed now (she's the head of the friendship school), Twi has her worry and freakouts largely under control & is assuming the throne, Rarity finally has come to realize how she's been taking advantage of Spike and their friendship took a hit as a result, Sisters are saying 'peace, out!'....
 
Yell, they're cramming the thing with late-stuff and tying lose ends which can result in kind of a mess. But hey. It won't be as bad as GoT. :LOL:
 
The end.

I was planing on posting in this thread for the series finale. But since the last episodes have been leaked, now everyone knows how it ends, so I better start now.

In the current generation, it is widely accepted that there where 2 series that dominated in popularity over all the others.

Game of thrones, and you guess it. My little pony....

Now when people hear the name my little pony, the first thing they think off is the poor and ill conceived series produced in the late 80's and early 90's. They where filled with cliches, poor story telling, ridiculously one dimensional characters, a very small plot, and so on.

So it comes to reason that when talking about this series, people in general tend to perceive it through this negative lens. And for Hasbro, it must have been quite the gamble in resurrecting this franchise. After all, there was quite the steep hill to climb.

But they succeed, and it even went beyond anything they could have expected. How? Well, its only fair to point out that the current success of the series is thanks to the hard work and skill of a single woman.

Lauren Faust.

Who is she you may ask?

You may better know his husband, Craig McCraken. Together, they have worked on some of the most successfull children's TV series of recent date, namely "Dexter's lab", "Powerpuff Girls", and "Code name Kids Next Door".

And before that, she worked in several successful animated movies such as the "Iron giant", "Quest for Camelot", and the underappreciated "Cats don't dance".

As you see, quite the pedigree.

When given control over the series, Lauren introduced a formula that resulted in a light mood, self-critical and overall comic series. She adopted for the main characters a very anthropomorphised, simple and colourful design that would allow her to put the equine characters in situations and doing actions that would not contrast with their fundamental nature, and avoid making them look ridiculous.

This combined with a very clever and well thought out story telling resulted in a series that would stretch to an incredible life span of 9 whole years.

Alas, as of the 3rd season, and for unknown reasons, Lauren's contribution to the series would come to an abrupt end. And the following result is easy to see. Episodes that end up contradicting with past established lore, as well as the introduction of redundant and expendable characters will soon become the norm. Arcs that where imagined to span for several seasons where brought to an end, and therefore the rest of the series suffered of a lack of proper silver lining. Lauren's main formula was still applied, but much of the rules that where introduced in the first two seasons were ignored or outright broken. Like the introduction of modern technology like cameras and trains where it became clear that Lauren imagined the series in a pure Fantasy set.

But, as the series did suffer from Lauren's departure, the series kept receiving undisputed praise from its fans. The reason for this I believe must be found at the very heart of it.

Its main characters.

Throughout the whole series, it is without a single doubt the one thing that kept the whole thing together, even as the quality of the series started to decay.

And this is thanks to the commitment as well as incredible talent of the cast, which includes renowned names like:
-Tara Strong (Ben 10, Teen titans, Lolipop Chainsaw among others)
-Andrea Libman (Duck tales, Reboot among others)
-John de Lancie (Star Trek)

As time went by and word of mouth started to spread, the fandom who are better known as the "bronies" began to grow.

Who or what are the bronies?

Allow me to let the main man do the presentations.


As you may have noticed, soon enough Bronies form all countries started to drown the internet with tons and tons of content, whether it is music:

Memes:
25dacc9af1c820fdbee15028d48de880efb9abfer1-680-382v2_hq.jpg


Comics:
1203004__safe_comic_water_marble+pie_wet+mane_underwater_cloudy+quartz_artist-colon-pencils_comic-colon-anon%27s+pie+adventure_cavern.png

Or even animation.

As you may have noticed, many animations depict known franchises that have been "ponified".

What is "ponified"?

In short, you swap whatever character or species in a given set with ponies.

In my opinion, these are the best of the bunch.



The phenomenon is so widespread, that a new rule was introduced to the famous internet rules.

"Rule 85, if it exists, there is pony of it"

Among all the art, you could find good, bad an horrible creations. But sometimes you may stumble upon a gem.

I was personally drawn to the series because of all the fan art that surrounded it, and not because of the series itself.
After all, a series that has such a dedicated and creative fandom can't be that bad isn't it?

I stopped watching the series after season 3, as I began to feel the beginning of the ongoing alteration of everything that Lauren Faust wanted for the series. And simply decided it was no longer to my taste.

It seemed as if Hasbro had decided not to capitalise in the growing adult fanbase. Or maybe they didn't know how.

Only now that the series is coming to a close I watched some episodes again. Some of them were very heart warming and really fun to watch, others simply drowned in what I felt was mediocre at best.

But at least I'll be able to say that I was there for the end of an era, and keep wandering "what if..."

As of October 19th, this series will come to and end. But I have the feeling that the fandom is here to stay.
 
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Jenner

I wish I was English like my hero Tj.
The end.

....

But at least I'll be able to say that I was there for the end of an era, and keep wandering "what if..."

As of October 19th, this series will come to and end. But I have the feeling that the fandom is here to stay.

It was definitely something special, and I'll always remember it fondly. I stumbled into it almost by accident as I just threw it on one day for my daughter to watch as I was sick of seeing Clifford endlessly repeated on our TV and suggested she try something else. I was hooked, and we've enjoyed watching the show together ever since. Like you I've been floored by the enormous creativity of the MLP fandom. I've enjoyed those fan derivative works about as much as the show, really. I don't think I've ever seen that level of fan love outside of the big live action franchises (Trek, LotR, Star Wars, etc.). Certainly no cartoon show.

The end of season 9 was as good a send-off as could be expected, although I agree the show definitely changed a lot since Faust's departure. What it became was certainly different than what it started as, but in a way that just goes to show the strength of the concept itself. Every so often you'd watch an episode where the writers would actually acknowledge those issues with winks and nods to the audience, which was fun. Without spoiling anything for those who have not watched the end yet, the whole idea of 'change' and how we deal with it was central to the last episode or so. The entire series was really story of Twilight's coming of age and of her reluctant ascension to a position of leadership. You can't tell that kind of story without winding up in a different place than where you started, so I don't begrudge the change per se. I still miss the initial vision of the show that Faust seemed to have, and I wonder what could have been had she stayed on. It's the same story with any long-running creative project though.

Hasbro will make a new generation in a couple of years. We'll see how that goes. I don't think they'll manage to capture lighting in a bottle a second time, though.

 
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