G5 - Make Your Mark (Episode 1) - The death of ponies (my commentary) · 10:44pm May 26th, 2022
When I heard G5 will transition to 3D, I was hipped. I've seen a lot of fanmade good 3D animations, and I was sure it could have been done well.
Then, the G5 movie came out and all my high expectations were fulfilled. The movie delivered. Sure, it had some problems, nothing is perfect; but all in all, it was good.
Then Tell Your Tale shorts series came out and I was reminded of Pony Life.
Yet there was still hope.
But today, I watched G5 3D series - Make your Mark - Episode 1 (and 2 I'm guessing since it was 40 minutes long).
The animation is a step down from what we've seen in the movie, but I give it a passing grade.
Everything else, though...
To sum it up, it all just feels forced. It wasn't made with heart and soul as was the case with Lauren Faust who had a fetish for ponies since she was a child.
It felt as if some random writer got payed to make it happen, and we got quite a generic plot, bad pacing, bad characterisation and bad execution overall.
There was so much potential. The crystals could have been the next Cutie Map, constantly under threat of falling apart. Every good deed could have real and lasting consequences in the world. They would have the opportunity to gain Heaven while they would also stand to lose everything. Every mission could have been meaningful.
We see none of that. It's like the writer had 5 minutes to write a synopsis and that's what they went with. And don't even get me started on the ending. Can you even get more generic than that? Can you even be a more lazy writer? Did you just open TV Tropes and copy-pasted the first thing that showed up?
What I'm mostly sad about are the opportunities wasted. G4 wasn't just another random show. It was something new and special. G5 is not. It's just another show. It's not the worst show, I'll give it that, but it doesn't try to be more. It feels as if it's actually trying to be meh.
And you know that peeve that all the fandom had when animators of G4 got lazy?
Well, strap yourselves in everypony, because it just turned into a shitshow. Practically every scene is done lazily. What, were you here for ponies? Forget it. These are just regular humans with a pony filter glued on top of them.
Remember ponies writing with their mouth? Well, that's not how it works anymore. The G5 hooves are supper sticky whenever the writers want them to be and the pen just sticks to it and that's how the ponies write. It's like watching Powerpuff Girls. They don't have fingers because animators were lazy, but they do everything as if they had fingers. Same in G5.
G5 will be a grind. Not many will make it to the end.
Neat
5660101 I wish I could say the same for the show.
I feel like Pipp.
, just that it was Hasbro who pressed the delete button on everything that made MLP good.
5660102
Gen 5 has some potential
I'll do my part in my internship to make G5 worthwhile.
Wish me luck!
5660104 5660106 I wish I could still share your enthusiasm.
5660106
Intership
5660110
You can
5660114 Can I? Have you even seen the first episode? I cringed every time they picked up an item with their hooves.
I just know they'll keep on doing it because they just don't care.
5660116
It just a holster
I watched the trailer and I had to pause the TSM video I had going and rewatch it so I could process with I was watching
5660120 I hope you are right and I pray to Celestia that I am wrong.
5660129 So, what's your take on it?
5660131
Ok
I personally loved it. G5 has a ton of potential and just because they didn't do what you wanted doesn't make it bad. Making those crystals be like the cutie map would be recycling an old idea. And what is so bad about them picking items up with their hooves? I personally like it over having to do things like writing with their mouths like they did in G4.
5660131
Haven't watched it yet but I'm deciding if I even should honestly
5660133 I disagree with everything you said.
In the first episode, they threw like 10 unconnected stories at us. Nopony stood to lose much. They were all just doing their own thing.
It would be far better if everypony did their part for the common goal.
And come on...
preview.redd.it/u9rau6z89pn71.png?auto=webp&s=70f9c15d1872928e312d9c9ff0b421d14d845a55
If that isn't the laziest animating, I don't know what is. You can't really be alright with this.
5660144 My recommendation is to watch the first episode as a final nail in the coffin. After that, you'll never have to look back.
5660156
I get it, you didn't like it but I thought it was great. Regarding the animation, what is wrong with it? I read about you bitching about ponies not writing with their mouths anymore. I personally think that is a major upgrade for the other tribes. You seem like the type who is going in the same direction as MixMaster226, oh it ain't G4 or they're not doing it G4 style anymore, OMG it is the end of the world! I sit back and enjoy it rather than going out and bitching about every single little thing. If you don't like it, that is your right but when it comes to things how the ponies pick things up with their hooves, it is so trivial to me that I don't even pay attention to it....it isn't something real big like the shitty design of the characters in Tell Your Tale....the whole hoof thing is minor and insignificant to me.
5660166 Here's a question for you: Why are they ponies?
Seriously, what's the point? They act as if they have fingers. They do everything the exact same way humans do. It's like watching a show about humans, but someone painted ponies over humans.
One of the reasons why I watched this show was escapism. A different world. Different rules. Something new. They threw all of that out the window with G5.
I don't care about G4. If I was making G5, I'd make a whole new universe. They don't have to do it like it was done in G4, in fact, I'd prefer if they were original. But nothing that they did thus far was original.
In the end, I think we'll just have to agree to disagree.
5660175
Agreed. I love G5 and you seem to hate it. I won't agree with you any more than I did A Man Undercover.
5660166
I totally did not cringe at the mention of MixMaster226 lol
5660183
That guy was more comic relief than anything else.
5660175
You've gotta remember that MLP alone was meant to advertise Hasbro's toys back in the 80's and it's grown a lot since then
5660133
Speaking from a director's point-of-view, having them pick things up with their hooves kinda destroys the realism and charm of the characters' limitations.
I don't really know how to explain it, but I remember them addressing this in the audio commentary for the movie WALL-E, if you're willing to hunt for it.
5660199 MLP grew with G4. But with G5, it did not grow. It took a step back.
5660225 Their hooves are a story of its own. A story that should have been told to convince us that we're actually watching ponies. Yet they skipped this story because they were lazy. It was a big opportunity that could partially redeem the show, and they missed it.
The sad part is that they try being more realistic in everything else, but when they pick up an item with a hoof, everything they worked on for so long flies out the window.
The quality is measured by the worse execution, and picking up items with a hoof is the worst execution one can imagine.
5660246
Honestly, I think you're the only one that cares
5660254 I'm not the only one; 5660225 cares as well.
5660133
I don't think there is anything wrong with the concept, but the execution was... just lazy. For example, compare how they showed ponies handling their smartphones vs. other stuff:
Such details are important. Ironically, it was an easy fix too. If during the pencil scene, they showed something, anything connecting the pencil with the hoof (a pair of magnets, a circular piece of metal with a pencil handler - anything), that would work just fine. Ironically, Maretime Bay is a city of earth pony inventors, so it would make perfect sense they made stuff to make their lives easier. But instead, a lazy shortcut was used.
To be clear, I'm not as radical about the show as Bad Dragon; to me, the episode was 'OK.' But the fact that the production staff used a shortcut such as this tells me there is no one there who cares about the quality of the show as much as Lauren did in case of FiM. And that doesn't bode well
.
I'm suddenly feeling marginally better about Filly Funtasia. Yes, the show sucks harder than an illithid at an astrophysics convention (well, past episode 4, definitely), but at least they got creative with how magic mirrors were handled.
5660501 Haven't watched it yet. Wasn't the show canceled due to legal reasons?
So, how were the magic mirrors handled?
5660503
There's episodes of half of Season 1 in Italian, and Chinese. A few of the later ones in English, which are downright unbearable for me, I might force myself to watch them sometime.
Magic mirrors in Funtasia are operated by magic and contain magic of their own. Fillies summon them with a wave of the hoof, and command them via voice. Other than that, there's very simple functionality of following the owner while hovering. Mirrors do, from what I've seen, triple duty as magic wands (one character uses it for a flamethrower spell at one point), Bags of Holding to store items in, and communication devices. When they need to pick something up, it's usually in a mirror's magical aura, too, and uses the same 'hover and follow' logic. That makes it more likely for things to drop if they lose concentration, too, which becomes plot relevant in a few instances.
It's a nice way of equalising the playing the field of magic for all the tribes, while leaving enough room for customisation. One character in particular likes to put add-ons on his mirror like a magical Swiss army knife. Limitations to the mirror magic include what spells the user has been taught and which magical crystals they happen to have access to for the really advanced stuff.
But again, nice concepts, lousy execution. The overall quality of the show drops significantly past episode 4-ish, not taking into account possible issues with the order in which episodes were released. "Teacher for a Day" is a good exception, though, very MLP-esque in its plot and message.
5660507 It's a shame they didn't get a wider release. It almost looked promissing.
5660365
This type of thing is what I noticed immediately beyond the fact the animation seemed worse then some other kid shows (as well as the g5 movie before it even?), especially ones from back in the day. For some reason the very detailed backdrops of Jimmy neutron kept popping into my head every time they were outside and it looked like they were In a lazy textured tf2 map with DOF cranked up. But it is only the first episode and will see how it goes.
I also thought like Dragon said they felt kinda just like humans with pony fascias. I also wasn't a fan of the song but that's preference.
The "Make Your Mark" special did feel like it was more concerned with setting the stage for the series proper than telling its own story. Plus the evil alicorn felt very much like a generic 1980's Saturday morning cartoon villain (though to be fair, so did Chrysalis when she first showed her true colors). Plus the baby dragon with wings kind of felt like a slap in the face to any fan who might have hoped for G5 to make good use of its connection to G4. It would have been better to put G5 in its own universe than hype it up as a sequel and then sweep G4 canon under the rug.
We'll just have to see what happens as the main "Make Your Mark" series moves forward. This could go either way.
5660663 I agree with you. Mistakes were made.