My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, the latest show in the
long-running My Little Pony franchise, is a rare example of how to update a retro cartoon the right way: with clever, self-aware humor, a more streamlined art style, and strong characterization.
The show starts with a two-parter, in which main character Twilight Sparkle,
an asocial bookworm pony, comes out of her shell and bonds with five other ponies in order to use
The Power of Friendship to overcome a
prophecy of doom. After saving the world with the
magic of friendship, the show takes on an episodic adventure-of-the-week format, where Twilight relays daily reports to her mentor on how friendship helps her and her friends.
The show proved an overnight sensation on the internet, and even before the first season was over, it had spawned
image macros and countless forum threads full of speculation and discussion; it also led to
lots of males having existential crises about enjoying a "girl's cartoon" so much. It also provides one of the best examples of
Troper Critical Mass in action: one season of a show ostensibly for little girls contains hundreds upon hundreds of tropes, a Characters page, fanfics, and legitimate fanbases for every character under the sun.
In addition,
MLP: FiM has spawned a
variety of music compositions and enormous quantities of fan art, enough to flood most of the
image boards on the 'net throughout 2011 (starting with cartoons, but swiftly spreading to message boards devoted to topics as diverse as violent video games, wrestling, and heavy metal, with
Team Fortress in particular becoming seen as a fortress of
brony-dom.) It has even spawned an unofficial
fighting game currently in production,
My Little Pony: Fighting Is Magic, which is
making waves in the industry.
Other spinoffs produced by the fan community include a
Rainbow Dash-mod of the
Adult Swim game
Robot Unicorn Attack, which preceded ponies by a few short months, helping to establish the
inherent manliness of all things rainbows and unicorns.
Despite such ironic remarks, the show was cited by Wired as an example of "the new sincerity" in 2010's culture, with adult fans honestly defending the assertion that it took self-confidence to appreciate the show on its own merits as a celebration of innocence, friendship and tolerance. Others
watch it for the plot.
This video from
Know Your Meme explains this evolution in better detail. Friendship Is Magic did not penetrate the mainstream consciousness until Summer 2011 when Fox News issued a series of critiques of the
"bronies" phenomenon, with William Kristol declaring it to be "worse than terrorism!" (the other people on the Fox panel were supportive of the trend), and other commentators comparing it to the adult fanbase of
SpongeBob SquarePants, another cartoon known for its good writing that appeals to
children and adults. Of course, America has a long and storied history of
producing and marketing animation exclusively for kids. The resulting fan response led to a series of
Shout Outs by other media figures, including
Stephen Colbert (who gave a
brohoof "to all my bronies!")
Much like
Trek or
Doctor Who, the MLP fandom has spawned
its own cult with distinctive lingo and code phrases. The writers even
make references to these fandoms and
Ascended Fanon, such as
Derpy Hooves. While the phrase "brony" originally referred to the male audience, it has since come to mean any adult fan of the show — male or female — to a certain extent.
The high-profile fansite
Equestria Daily, which went online on January, 19, 2011,
has visibly shown the surprisingly quick growth of the fanbase. To compare, it took 57 days for the site to reach 1 million hits.
Now the site racks up a million hits every 2 days.
The episode "
The Best Night Ever" can be viewed
on Hasbro's official site, and other episodes can be viewed
on the Hub's official site in the US. All of the first season's episodes, as well as all of the second season's episodes that have already aired, can be bought on iTunes if you're lucky enough to live somewhere in the one-third of the world where iTunes sells videos, and viewed through
other (less official) sources.
On July 4th, the show began airing in the UK on Boomerang, and premiered on Boomerang worldwide soon after. The show's second season premiered on September 17th, 2011, with
26 new episodes scheduled for the run.Fortunately for its prospects, the show has proven very successful with its target audience as well.