1 Year Anniversary Party

[CoffeeHorse]

Today it has been one year since Generation 5 began with the release of My Little Pony: A New Generation. One year ago Izzy became best pony, Sunny became cutest pony, and I looked forward to seeing them continue to be prominent characters. So what's happened in the year since?

My Little Pony: A New Generation briefly conquered Netflix, becoming the top movie if you combined all its markets. It was also apparently a huge hit on TikTok. I didn't know kids were watching whole movies there, but I guess Hasbro knows what they're doing. I enjoyed this movie a little bit.

We got 28 episodes of My Little Pony: Tell Your Tale. The Pipp and Zipp show. I don't know how many episodes a season is going to be, if this show is doing seasons. We may want to break it down by its continuity between Make Your Mark episodes. I was initially very turned off by the art style, but I can't hate it. It's very cute, and the writing is usually pretty good. I'm actually enjoying it.

We got one My Little Pony: Make Your Mark special, starring Zipp. We are still waiting for the actual show to start, but the wait is almost over.

We got four IDW issues. Unlike G4's comic (which it didn't get until years in) this didn't constitute a four-issue story. We got two issues involving the ongoing storyline, one Friends Forever style issue starring Zipp and Hitch (IDW gets it!), and one Spotlight style issue starring Pipp.

We got an honest to goodness console videogame, something G4 never got. Admittedly it wasn't much of a game. It's only about an hour long, and it's pretty much a series of minigames with a final act. But it happened, and it's in Unity, which is well understood, so it took very little time for the SFM gang to tear it apart. After the 2012 era terrors we saw throughout G4, it's pretty cool that G5 has excellent 3D models available from the outset.

Most recently we got a VR thing, which nobody seems to have played and we're not even sure if it works. Sadly it was made for a phone app, so the graphics are about Dreamcast tier. Nonetheless, the SFM gang is tearing it apart too, and it has potential.

I only BSOD'd once while typing this.

Happy Anniversary.

I'm gonna watch it again.

 

[Guardian Prime]

*sees Fnu's thread*

Hmm, bet he'll watch it again...

*gets to end of Fnu's post...*

 

[ZakuConvoy]

Wow, it's already been a year. And in two days, I think the new season kicks off. Time flies.



It's been a slow start. But, not a bad one.

The movie was great. It did great. It looked beautiful. It helped sell a lot of people on the new generation.

Tell Your Tale has been great. It's fun. It's got the personalities down. It's letting us see the ponies in their day to day lives.

The IDW comics have been...above average. *I* like them. The pacing aside, they've been expanding on the world nicely.

The video game...was a first attempt. Hopefully, they get a second chance to really use the engine and models they've built to do something a little more expansive.

The children's books are fine. They're what you'd expect. Can't really fault them for keeping it simple.

The Make Your Mark Special was...present. It exists. We got Detective Zipp out of it. That's good enough.

The Virtual Magic VR game...was ambitious. Maybe overly so. Still, if someone can get it to work, I look forward to watching someone ELSE play/read it.



Honestly, this whole rollout was VERY ambitious by Hasbro. They're really trying to make this generation work. Shame we didn't get the "main" TV show until a year in, but we've had TYT to hold us over.

We've had highs (Sunny geeking out about finding Canterlot), lows (Izzy swimming in garbage), and squishy middles (Posey's character arc). I look forward to seeing what the Make Your Mark show brings to this generation.

Happy Birthday, Generation 5! You're doing the franchise proud!

 

[CoffeeHorse]

*sees Fnu's thread*

Hmm, bet he'll watch it again...

*gets to end of Fnu's post...*

It's still enjoyable. I'm finding that it doesn't have any early installment weirdness despite all the stuff we've gotten since. There's stuff that was easy to miss at the time but it was there all along. These characters were fully thought out before the writers got to do anything with them.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Instead of doing another round of viewing notes, I decided to respond to my first.

Familiar faces? I wasn't expecting you all. I guess Hasbro couldn't just let them go.

*sigh*

New characters! I immediately love them. They are just so cute.

I'm still not prepared for how precious filly Sunny is.

Sticky hooves. Oh no! It really doesn't fit when so much more effort was put into getting their limbs right this gen.

This remains my main complaint with the movie. If they hadn't taken the lazy way out there, I'd say this movie would actually deserve a proper theatrical release.

This is technically post apocalyptic. G4 happened but something went wrong and tore their world apart, and they don't even know it happened.

And this is before meeting Zipp and the dystopian nightmare that was her life.

Modern looking city. As long as it's consistent, it could work.

It works. I love Maretime Bay. G5 has been treating its setting with respect. Maretime Bay successfully seems like a livable place.

This company's projects are as bad as the ACME Corporation.

Canterlogic is more interesting after seeing some concept art. They spent an unnecessary amount of time developing parts of this building we never see anyway. It lost a lot in rewrites, but even after its role was reduced they kept working on it as a setting,

Sunny is way more of a Minty than I expected.

And way less of a main protagonist than I expected. Hasbro is taking a different approach to the team this time around.

IZZY!

And then Pipp and Zipp shoved her into the background.

I'm not taking as many notes as I expected

Lmao.

 

[CoffeeHorse]

Depooty.

Why is he so likable?

Everyone in this movie is incompetent.

And that's a good thing!

The tennis ball!

Then this became a running gag that's been run into the ground. I am still waiting for it to be run so far into the ground that it comes out the other side.

And we have our plot devices.

Surprisingly they are still our plot devices.

Is no one going to question how Izzy did that?

One year later. Still no explanation.

Izzy's song. This movie's music isn't doing much for me, but, you know, good luck to me on that.

The music still doesn't do anything for me. Too corporate.

Oh no Biff has taken over.

On my original viewing I felt Sprout was a lame and uninteresting villain. Obviously that changed on a rewatch.

Sunny's getting M.A. Larson'd!

But it wasn't permanent. That's just her magical girl transformation.

That was okay. It was consistently pretty good and well paced until the very last few minutes. It seems like they realized they were running out of minutes and didn't want to cut anything so they skipped straight to the resolution.

We now know some stuff did get cut, but nothing that would have made the resolution less abrupt. Oh well. That's my secondary complaint with this movie, and at this point I'm not sure I have anything else. Sprout was more interesting on a rewatch and Pipp and Zipp have gotten fleshed out elsewhere, making them retroactively more interesting here. There is not much to complain about at this point.

As an introduction to a new gen it was good. This can work.

I still like it.