>>42741065
if we, as a collective, laid down on the copium as to see how faust jumped the shark all the way back to the literal SECOND episode of SEASON 1 when she completely undermined nightmare moon's backstory and twilight's conflict of making friends in just a single fucking anime flashback powerup asspull that was neither earned, properly setup nor build up in the slightlest but instead just given to her by the writers because she happened to notice the strangers she just met being useful to her cause and thus, realizing"huh, having friends can be useful, never before in my whole life did I never stop to make that connection despite being characterized as the autistic nerd".
problem?
Nightmare Moon's struggle with being overshadowed by Celestia?
Boom, gone! She was just being a whiny bitch that needed some rainbow tasting spanking to be set back on the right place.
problem?
Twilight's inflated ego and lack of social skills being the very things keeping her from making friends?
Boom, gone! Friends just... come to her...willingly! She is actually flawless and just needed to learn how friends can be useful.
problem?
Celestia's failure with her sister being the cataclysm to her corruption and the error of the past that had to be corrected somehow if Celestia were to ever hope to get things back to normalcy with her sister?
Boom! Gone! Thanks to floaty magic rocks going YEEE, Luna gets back with Celestia just fine, in fact, it's Luna who feels any kind of guilt or remorse for her past, as if she even had the opportunity to do anything wrong before being sentenced a 1000 years on the moon with no trial.
They don't even attempt to make a connection between the main conflict and the protagonists, Twilight just wants to stop Nightmare Moon because hurr durr she is evil and eternal nights are bad, that's it! Nothing about that motivation relates to making friends or learning about friendship. What about Nightmare Moon's backstory relates to Twilight in any way? There's nothing! It's just generic evil backstory for generic evil villain that generic protagonist must defeat by overcoming their generic problem and save the day.
The show only shines in the isolation of single episodes of contained narratives because it couldn't really go beyond that, it was, in fact, made primarily to sell toys and done so in a restrictive budget reflective of this fact.
Lauren Faust did not revolutionize girl's media, she just struck gold in a time where there wasn't much competition and internet hype culture was up for grabs, all she really had to do was make a cute show with cute ponies in wholesome moments with nothing too annoying to scare the adults away and she would've won!
Had she done nothing beyond the bare minimum of this formula, the results wouldn'tve differed.
If you pay close attention, you would realize just how unremarkable the show is at everything else it tries, including comedy. It's a show made to be enjoyed, not really thought about.
