My Little Pony: Pony Life

As a fan of the original show, I was quite sad to see it go and wished they could have continued it with a tenth season. When this show was announced, I was skeptical because of how much of a downfall comedic reboots have been since Teen Titans Go!. But, I decided to give it a chance since many of the staff of past MLP shows and movies in the 2010's would be working on this show. My thoughts on MLP: Pony Life are definitely better than what I was expecting. I definitely couldn't call it the Teen Titans Go! of MLP because Teen Titans Go! is bad in so many ways.

My thoughts on the first two episodes: Both episodes had some funny jokes and the animation that had a very energized flow, which is common for comedic shows. The Mane 6 are their usual selves from the original, but there are a few changes like Applejack being able to break the fourth wall and Fluttershy's "dark side" being front and center more than the original. There's also much greater focus put on there more comedic sides of their characterizations from the original like Twilight's crazy overreactions, Rarity's drama, Celestia's goof ball moments, and I actually think that's one of the things that makes Celestia stand out more in the original. The voice acting is phenomenal as usual, and the characters do sound like they usually did in the original show.

I do have a couple of critiques of this show so far. One is the running time. I felt like the first episode was rather rushed with Pinkie's dilemma about being under pressure, and I think the episode could have spent more time to focus on that with her coming to grips of just being herself with a more better pace so that viewers who can relate to messing up under pressing could relate to it more. With a twenty minute running time like the original instead of eleven, I do think that could have made better pacing. Another critique I have but hopefully this will be addressed in later episodes, is that fan favorite characters from the original like Discord, Princess Luna, and "The Great and Powerful Trixie!" aren't in this show. I really hope they will appear in later episodes because they really helped established an identity for the original, and they always had so many great moments.

My overall thoughts: I think it's just okay. Not bad as a start, it's way better than Teen Titans Go!, it will obviously not surpass the original because of how much of the original established among itself with its world and characters, but I do think this show is nice enough to serve as a coping mechanism for a very great show that helped give the 2010's cartoons an identity with its comedy and likable characters. I don't really think it needed to exist since we can simply watch reruns of the original as it had over 200 episodes which is pretty impressive and good for binge watching , but I still think it's good enough and it may probably improve later on hopefully.

People have, ever since the inception of the franchise, debated over whether or not the first few My Little Pony-iterations were actually good. However, it doesn't seem to matter if you were a fan from the beginning or if you found yourself in the 'brony'-end of the spectrum; everyone seemed to agree that My Little Pony Tales (AKA Gen 3.5) was absolute garbage.

Now we have a new 'in-betweener' show, and it seems to go in a similar direction (AKA, it's not very good). After finishing the long-running critical success that was My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, it only makes sense that Hasbro wants to keep the brand alive while waiting for Gen 5 to come out. However, setting it in the same universe as Gen 4 was probably not the best creative decision on Hasbro's part, because those horseshoes proved too big to fill.

Personally, I became a fan of Gen 4 around the second season, and while I didn't expect to get sucked in, there was a certain something about the production that spoke to me. Granted, I lost interest around season 6, and that was mostly because the show was slowly replacing charming character-driven stories with talks about diplomacy, warfare, bland backstories, and other tired storytelling tropes that only people without imaginations would care about.

However, as much as the later seasons sucked, at least the good parts were really good; the slow pace allowed the characters a lot of room to breathe and grow, the animation was very fluid and expressive, the colors were muted yet felt earthy and vibrant in tone, and the whole framing device of learning about friendship and all its nuances was a genius way to move the plot and characters forward. The first few seasons even poked fun of itself a lot by showing how a horse-centric society would look like, all while telling amusing horse-puns.

Pony Life is a whole different beast altogether. Running at half the running time of a normal Gen 4 episode, this show strips the whole character interaction and growth bit from the equation and turns it into strictly a comedy show. That in itself is not a bad move, and there are enough differences in mood and behavior to distinguish this from the better show. For what it is worth, the show is very bouncy, it is animated alright and it is intermittently chuckle-worthy for a younger audience.

However, in terms of the technical aspects, the show feels very sloppy. The muted earthy color schemes and depth of field have both been replaced with more stark colors and flat shapes. Everything's framed on the same level, making the world feel flat and poorly composited. These would probably be very minor offenses had the show been its own thing, but it is a continuation of a show that did all these things a whole lot better; it is not living up to its superior predecessor.

All in all, it is just kind of meh. It isn't awful, but it isn't very good either. It will probably be fun for your kids, but a bit exhausting for anyone else who watches it for too long.

The more i watch this show it seems the more i don't like it as much. Voices have change. Took a little too long for characters to come in. Some characters seem more dull than others and it's just okay now.

Okay lets think when discord showed up. They kinda tried to ship fluttershy with discord. Voice actors have changed. It's just.. Weird

First, let's clarify something here, this show isn't about ponies anymore; they were thrown out of the window in the first few minutes. The characters look and behave more like cats... weird pig-nosed cats, but I digress.

Pony Life is a vacuous and fairly pointless show but then I suppose it is distracting enough and it is worth a look if you want to be overwhelmed with nonsense for half an hour and have no demands for anything that could be considered "good" in the traditional sense of the term.

And to be honest, it's not the most awful show ever made but it's still an incoherent hyperactive mess slapped together without any coherent message, purpose, character development, story or context whatsoever... with the added "benefit" of having potentially harmful affects on its younger viewers.

For example, there wasn't even an explanation as where those potions come from and why the "ponies" are so eagerly chugging them for no apparent reason. It seems that when they get bored, they drink potions that in turn, do something random. The problem is, so far the effects are always completely irrelevant to the plot.

Speaking of chugging potions when bored. These "ponies" don't' seem to know or even care about what they are drinking. It's hard to not see some sort of uncomfortable parallel between this and alcohol/drug abuse and parents trying to teach young children to *not* drink unknown chemicals that can be found under a kitchen sink.

In summary, Pony Life is at best, mediocre. There are much better shows out there that are actually worth watching and where the writers and animators actually put efforts into them.

I would be much more harsh, but honestly, its hard to get mad at, its terrible, but harmless. Its best to ignore it and not see it as canon.