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.
