Watching MLP G1 and G2. There's Definitely Ideas In Here To Use For Stories. · 4:27am April 11th
Finished watching the entirety of the G1 series (84-87) and halfway through G2 series (93)
I have to say I really like all the designs of the G1 and G2 ponies but G1 has fun or creative ideas most of the time and the other part of the time are more forgettable parts where it feels like a general fantasy story with the My Little Ponies grafted on. In general the songs were either forgettable or not very good (the voice direction for like half the cast didn't help- I see you Gen 1 Spike) Personal favorite pony is Wind Whistler or maybe Fizzy. That or the Big Brother Ponies, those dudes are pretty cool.
Gen 2 feels like Gen 5 without magic. "Modern" times and everyone so far is an earth pony. More grounded and after the wacky nonsense of some Gen1 episodes, I like that each episode so far is a one off. Current favorite G2 pony is probably Patch or Bright Eyes.
When G5 didn't have enough ponies to flesh out some ideas for later I went "hey there's probably something there to use or reference and I definitely got ideas from G1. They really put everything they could in that series and when it worked it worked and when it didn't it felt terrible.
Does that mean I'll be putting penguins and pannas and an evil octopus or bushwoolies in later G5 stories? No.
But it doesn't mean I won't think about doing that. Though the bushwoolies and furbobs are definitely on the lower half of "possible random G1 fantasy races to slot in" cause boy "The End of Flutter Valley" dragged like crazy.
Um ackshully G2 was a toy only run so Pony Tales is actually G1.5 🤓.
On a more serious note there's definitely a reason G4 used so much stuff from G1. It's genuinely a really interesting world with a lot of fun fantasy races.
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Funny cause I never would have guessed that- the second series feels so incredibly different (not to mention a six year gap in time) that it really feels like it’s completely different generation. I mean there’s no Pegasi or Unicorns- it feels like Canterlogic made the series lol. “And here we see the utopia of a world where we don’t have magic.”
Doesn’t help that derpibooru itself sometimes uses G2 as a tag to showcase the second series. Not always but the confusion is real.
But for me actually watching G1 and MLP tales- for the first time all the way through- I liked most of the episodes- though going back from now to then was incredibly jarring cause the voices were all over my place.
Doesn’t help that the last time I watched G1 was more than twenty years ago when I was a kid and I never watched MLP Tales- facing how it actually was paced out and sounded compared to how it feels like to watch today- G4 and G5, even at their worst, kind of spoiled us lol. The highs of the first series definitely make up for it though.
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Yes, because Lauren Faust was a little girl when G1 originally aired and based G4 on the stories she made up about her My Little Pony toys. Even after she left, she probably wasn't the only one on the staff who was in that age bracket. It's like how Batman has been basically pure fanfiction since before either of us were born because it's written by people who grew up idolizing Batman.
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And on the things G4 used from G1- its primarily from the Tirek episodes and maybe a few others and primarily Lauren Faust's favorite ponies from G1 used as a base for the Mane 6. I mean take the four main ponies just from the Rescue from Midnight Castle and we already have G1 Twilight, G1 Applejack, and Firefly- which Rainbow Dash is primarily based on.
What surprised me was what wasn't adapted into G4.
G4 doesn't have Bushwoolies or Furbobs. Sure Capper from the G4 movie looks like Catrina from G1 in that he's a humanoid cat. But there was lava demons and ice orcs, a race of talking penguins, a pig queen that could turn things into glass and her raptorian henchment (dog-headed bird creatures), the shapeshifting Pannas and their peacock selves, the episode which had the ponies interact with the Land of Legends where they met Hercules and Robin Hood and Aladdin. And the episode where they help Kid Don Quixote become a burgeoning knight. Or the one where the ponies help a gnome get into a floating castle. Or the multiple times they went to see the Moochick and his rabbit living in their Musroom Ashram (or Mushram) to help out in multiple episodes.
There were surprisingly more episodes than I imagined were just "ponies interacting with fantasy humanoids" cause G4 nearly cuts out the human factor besides Equestria Girls. G1 had both Mountain Elves, Goblins, Sentient Ostriches, and like Hedgehog/ Badger? things in just one two parter episode. They really threw the fantasy kitchen sink at G1 and while I love the overall tone, it led to some episodes that just don't jive with like any other MLP gen.
Things like the Changelings, Kirins, Yaks, and Gryphons weren't anywhere in G1. Seaponies were all over G1 but it took until after the G4 movie to fully integrate them into G4. So going back to "the original series" felt good, but off. In both that G4 has races that just do not exist- at all in G1 and G1 felt like the writers had little clue that they were building a cartoon that would set off a whole series of things.
G1 was a very, very interesting fantasy world but there's just so much that G4 didn't use.
To be fair, G4 sometimes feels like that too.
And when they do realize it, they have a tendency to actively disdain the concept. (Fame and Misfortune)
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Lol fair. I sometimes forget how silly later seasons of G4 got. That's at least a funny episode which makes fun of taking things too seriously.