Re: What is with all of this "My little pony" stuff? (The unofficial official MLP Thr
I was into it (watch some of an episode) for like a week or so then got over it. Played a game called Pony vs Pony for awhile during that but that died soon as well, I don't get why it's so popular it's a kids show when Spongebob came I didn't see everyone jump on his bandwagon.
I'm going to try and explain why it's popular with so many people:
1) It brings proper values and lessons to a TV show, which is rarely seen nowadays. It teaches about friendship, trust, and all that jazz, whilst being entertaining at the whole time. Because the plot (NO, BRONIES.) of each episode is based around these values, it doesn't feel cheap and forced, as with a lot of kids shows nowadays.
You mentioned Spongebob, and that's a show with some gags, maybe a "I learned this today!" sprinkled in, but it's mostly just to provide quick and easy entertainment for children. It makes them laugh, that's pretty much it.
As teenagers/adults, you want to at least have gathered
something from what you've just watched, besides a 30-minute collage of one-liners and 'pie-in-the-face' gags. MLP: FiM not only includes a whole array of jokes and references that we love and laugh at, but reminds us what the key values in life are. We act on these values, having been reminded of them.
I don't think many other kids shows, much less normal TV shows can boast that the fandom behind them is not only so large and unexpected, but also raise hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of dollars each year for various charities around the world.
2) It also appeals to us because of various things that would not typically exist on a kid's show, things like the breakage of the fourth wall, various references and the like. This is because from the very start Lauren Faust attempted to direct the show with not only a female child/young teen audience in mind, but also an older teen and parental audience.
Now, of course, there are a lot more references because the show writers have realized by now they've gathered a massive teen/adult male following, and wish to entertain them as well as the children.
3) The animation and voicework is fantastic. The show has some of the most talented VAs around, the likes of Tara Strong and Tabitha St. Germaine, and an amazing animation team behind them, over at DHX. You see videogames being heralded as amazing because of their visual appeal, and the same most certainly translates over to television.
4) I'm giving this a completely separate reason because I think it's a huge one, and a personal reason why I love the show so much.
The music.
Daniel Ingram, and all the others who work on the show's music, not just songs but sound effects and etcetera, are some of the most talented people in the business. The songs are not only wholly original (With some inspiration drawn from other songs sometimes), they usually have a full choir of people and an orchestra behind it. I don't see this much in other kids shows, past the theme song or the rare "Musical" episode. Pretty much every two episodes there's a song, almost always of the full-length variety.
And lastly, you say you watched some of an episode. Ask anyone who's a fan of the show which episode you should watch to determine if you like the show or not, and most often than not, they'll say all of them. Because each and every episode is different. One may have more gags and funny in it than another, while another has a greater emotional feeling behind it, and another we can relate to a lot, and so on and so forth.
What I'm not trying to say here, is that there's no way you shouldn't like this show and you have to watch every episode now, that's not the message I'm trying to convey here.
I'm trying to explain the best I can, why I think so many guys from teenaged years and above love the show.
And if you don't like it, that's fine by me. To each his/her own.
Hopefully after reading this, you can at least vaguely understand why people like the show, even if you don't like it yourself.
/Lengthy Explanation
