I can't believe it. I can't freakin' believe it! Almost immediately after the sweet and bitter goodbye to FiM, Hasbro followed it up... with THIS?! Are you... are you serious, Hasbro? This is how you honor the end of MLP's most successful and iconic era? THIS?! You're literally spitting and taking a dump on the very thing that resurrected this franchise, broke the "it's just a show for little girls" stereotype AND made you a gigantic fortune. This is insulting!
First off, the animation is cheap. It's literally a rehash of the same bland, boring CalArts visual style that i'm sick and tired of seeing! Hell, they don't even do anything new or remotely good with it. They just shrunk the characters down to chibi-style without any changes, and gave it some of the laziest backgrounds i've seen in a cartoon in a long time. Seriously, these backgrounds look like they were drawn by a 4-year-old in the span of 10 minutes. Remember the beautiful visuals and backgrounds FiM had? well, Hasbro literally said "Screw all that!" and gave us something that's so flat and lifeless to look at.
Then comes the characters.... oh boy! Remember how i said FiM went against the cutesy, lovey-dovey stereotypes most girl shows before it suffered from, and actually made it enjoyable for all ages? That was completely thrown out the window here! Instead, what we got here are grotesque caricatures of the original Mane 6 we all know and love. And they're not even likable or interesting in this show! These clones literally have only one single trait to them: Twilight is the psychotic nerd, Pinkie is annoying, Rarity is the hoarder, Rainbow Dash is overly competitive, Applejack just breaks the fourth wall for no real reason, and Fluttershy.... oh my god, Hasbro! What the hell did you do to her?! as for the others, they're no better either. They even got rid of Luna and Cadence, and Twilight doesn't have her princess status anymore. What were you thinking, Hasbro?
As for the comedy.... again, going back to FiM: the original show had jokes that actually landed and were legitimately funny. It didn't focus on the juvenile aspect to insult the audience's intelligence, because the writers knew what they were doing, and went outta their way to make it legit funny. It even found ways to make slapstick funny, which is pretty rare in cartoons nowadays. And it also had heart to it. It made sure the audience cared about the characters and what they went through. What does Pony Life do? COMPLETELY THROW THAT IN THE TRASH! Like it meant nothing! Now, we're stuck with what Hasbro THINKS is "comedy", but in reality, it's the Teen Titans Go-kinda humor: all the jokes are surface level, the slapstick is way too overused, it focuses way too much on modern technology (something that SHOULDN'T EVEN EXIST IN THIS WORLD!), and worst of all: it's never funny! the best this show has in terms of humor are the occasional small chuckles, but even those are few and far in between. But then again, the pacing in this damn thing is so break-neck fast, it's almost impossible to catch a good joke (if there even is any).
And all this brings me to Pony Life's biggest sin. The one thing that pulled me outta it entirely. After watching a few episodes, this is the thing that - at one point - made me go: "Ya know what? I'm done. I'm done with this show". It has no soul, heart or even a reason to exist. The basic things that made FiM so entertaining and so worthwhile, they got rid of them here! It's all a corporate downgrade to what was once a great show. The charm and heart of FiM is completely gone. We're left with a soulless clone that offers us little-to-nothing to enjoy until G5 eventually comes around, and that's NOT something to be proud of. That's NOT how we should honor G4 and everything it brought us, and how it literally started one of the best decades in animation. You can erase Pony Life entirely from the MLP lore, and nothing would change. I'm telling you, it would all stay exactly the same. That's how pointless Pony Life is. It only exists because Hasbro wanted to make more toys and more money.
What a turd! Despite a few bright spots in some episodes here and there, this is nothing more but a shameless downgrade to what was the best era of My Little Pony. It might not be as bad as Teen Titans Go or G3.5, but it's pretty close. Like i said, i'm officially done with this show. I seriously waited for it to hopefully get good at some point, but with how it's turning out.... probably best to abandon ship and wait for G5 and the next pony movie. Just skip this thing and stick with FiM. I promise, you're not missing anything worth your time here.
