Just watched the first episode. One thing I'm struck by is how much the characters are like characters in a fantasy story that was written with a more specifically male audience in mind. Why? Because most of the principle characters spent little if any time talking about or thinking about the opposite sex. Consider Lord of the Rings, for example. In that, the majority of main protagonists, i.e. the Fellowship, are male. How many times do anyone in the Fellowship even mention females when there are not females specifically present? Aragorn sings a song about an elf lady, and Gimli pines over Galadriel for a little bit, but only immediately after leaving Lothlorien, and that's about it. Well, and Gollum mentions Shelob before they meet her, but since Shelob is a spider that eats people, she doesn't really count.
Anyway, back to My Little Pony, (which is a sentence I never thought I'd ever write), in fact the lead characters don't talk about or do a lot of things that are stereotypically female. I don't recall any of them mentioning shopping, and there's only one character who talks about things like clothes and fashion and makeup and that kind of stuff, and that's only because she's that kind of character, and probably would be that kind of character even if she were a male. It's an intelligent, witty fantasy series with a group of strong* three-dimensional non-stereotypical female characters. I like it, but the cynic in me wonders how long it'll be before the writers are forced to dumb it down and make the characters more stereotypical and shallow, all for the sake of "appealing to a larger audience".
*Even Fluttershy has a sort of quiet strength when she needs it.
Yup, it's a show that passes
The Bechdel Test quite nicely. The characterizations work best because they make actual, you know, characters out of them. They show a very wide range throughout the series (Fluttershy definitely included; she's actually pretty badass on several occasions), and it really makes you stick to them. They can also be
quite crazy, but that just adds to the charm.
Keep with the show, and do tell us what you think of it all!
Topic: That One Little Girl's 'Pony' Cartoon that's Slowly Devouring the Internet (Read 112395 times)