My Little Pony - Generation 5

Because execs like deciding these things with metrics and such, and those are generally shown on spreadsheets, so I have no doubt that that was how it was decided.

As for why the spreadsheet thinks that, how would I know? Ask the people who make those decisions.

But all the material we have on their spreadsheets/decision making process said they were planning to release weekly. What changed between then?

The six-month gap between MYM Chapter 3 and 4 as opposed to the normal three (they stated 4 was originally planned to be before Bridlewoodstock hence the odd gap and post-redemption Misty being in the adds). That's why I get the impression this is due to production difficulties not present in G4.

I don't know, man. I'm not part of the production team. None of us are, so it's kinda pointless to keep asking us, because we know just as much as you here.

But we can speculate. Isn't that part of what these forums are for?

And if you're uninterested in such speculation and cynical to G5, why frequent this forum? Do they sometimes offer something of worth? I only post here when something of interest/worth discussing comes up, about every other weak.

I'm not cynical about it, I'm just a bit disappointed.

Has talking about things here helped?

I find asking questions and speculation about why things went wrong is a effective way to alleviate such/adjust expectations so it can be enjoyed for what it is rather than be disappointed at what it should have been.

Do you like Gen 5 and think it's great?

I do. :)

What do you like about it?

I love the music and the comedy, and the new ponies are great. :) (And Woobie-ish in some cases)

I'm glad you like it. The music hasn't really grabbed me so far, though the songs have been getting better where I am now.

From what I recall, the Youtube series does seem better at the comedy than the CGI series, right?

Zipp and Pipp are one of my favorite cases of Tomboy and Girly Girl.

Oh yeah, speaking of the CGI series, from the clip I saw, the dragons in Gen 5 seem more dinosaur-like than they were in Gen 4.

I don't find Zipp very interesting in the CGI series, but that's mainly because the show doesn't give her much to do most of the time outside of researching the season arc, and that arc moves so slowly that that research doesn't really amount to all that much either.

What do you think of her in the shorts?

And the shorts are "better" in they did less of what the main series did poorly, a story following up on/measuring up to FIM, as opposed to do its own thing.

By the time the series Grew the Beard and became the more engaging, Hasbro has decided to end it in favor of TYT.

Anyway, found this showing comparison between the G5 and G4 main characters. They're not 1-to-1 substitutes.

Surprised there isn’t any connection marked between Misty and Starlight Glimmer in that pic. Both did start out as antagonistic forces and were both the Sixth Ranger to the teams.

I haven't watched the shorts beyond the first batch, but from what I'm hearing, I'm not that surprised the shorts did much better overall. This series clearly tends to do better when it sticks to light-hearted comedy and slice-of-life stories rather than Lore and Myth Arcs.

I mean, that was always Fi M's strength, too. The big two-parters were certainly great, but the show's bread and butter really was what was in between those.

I don't disagree, but I don't think it's that simple. Why then was it that "A Canterlot Wedding" and "Twilight's Kingdom" were so popular and seen as the peaks in the show’s popularity/quality? Why then did lore/action/such become more common if it wasn't seen as fit? (Are these more questions for the G4 forums?)

The biggest issue I think is that the industry has specialized since FIM's premier. Its success with older audiences led to more mature works specializing in their appeal that MLP which had to balance appeal with younger fans couldn't compete with. Thus MYM failing to make its mark and TYT having greater success.

They were popular precisely because they were confined to two-parters. This keeps the narrative focussed and viewer attention solely on that particular story. Do you think those beloved two-parters would have been as successful if they had been smeared out over an entire season, tacked onto regular episodes that had little or nothing to do with those stories? I don't think they would have.

As for the shifting focus on lore, many critics identify that as part of the decline in quality of the G4 show. It was often done just for the sake of it, and often poorly tied into the actual show. The Pillars are a prime example of the poor way lore has been used on that show.

Serialized cartoons with long arcs are the hot new thing this past decade or so, but that's not always a winning format. Not every story benefits from being told piecemeal over the course of a season. I have seen plenty of seasonal arcs in cartoons that I felt would have been better served as single episodes, or two- or three-parters.

The same goes for lore. It can easily be too much of a good thing, and can be a poor fit for a slice-of-life show.

Objection:

• The S4 finales was the best, only non divisively received, finally because it had so many prior episodes that season directly build up to it.
• The problems with the S5 finale (Starlight's rushed redemption, weak backstory) and S6 finale (Starlight's Informed Attribute progress, how the others were captured) might have been fixed if it had more lore in prior episodes address it/build up.
• The S7 finale had the opposite problem, the lore being so self-contained it didn't come up/effect later episodes to justify itself. More lore about it in later ones might have fixed that.
• The lore behind the Young Six is why they're the one somewhat well received part of the School of Friendship. And more lore on Cozy could have fixed complaints about her.
• S9, the Grogar twist was reviled in large part for being a subversion of the lore built up over the season, the opposite problem.

Without lore, what could the series do to stay engaging once the man cast have had enough character development to plausibly have their old conflicts? Later seasons haven them regressing without explanation (lore might have fixed that) to do so was far more widely reviled than the lore thing which was merely divisive.

I'm not outright saying lore isn't a fit for MLP, but saying why it isn't requires addressing why the increased lore that made it popular at first became problematic later, why it's bad despite so many liking it that's what kept FIM relevant in later seasons which at their weakest were still had far more fans than G5, and why writers were tempted to add it despite the problems.

Maybe it was just the attempt to split the appeal between lore and Slice of Life rather than focus on one or the other that alienated fans of either?

Edited by Ferot_Dreadnaught on May 14th 2024 at 8:18:28 AM

Yeah, I think part of it is lack of commitment. The Pillars were basically dropped and forgotten the moment the lore aspect of that was over. The Students fared a bit better, but were still way underused due to an unwillingness to shift the focus of the show away from the main cast.

I don't find it working very well on this show either, because it is often put in the c-plot. I feel it would work much better with some dedicated episodes that don't leave it feeling like butter spread too thin on toast.

So, any thoughts on this interesting behind the scenes information regarding how Gen 5 was originally intended to be produced by Boulder Media and to have aired on Discovery Family had COVID not lead to Netflix making a deal to make the movie and all of Gen 5 exclusive to them?

Yikes, between that and the rumors that Discovery Family stopped the G4/G5 connections being properly set up, G5 has some real Troubled Production stories.

Yeah, that sure explains a lot about the current situation, doesn't it? Man, things could have been very different.

That looks like a YouTube comment. Where's the primary source for this information?

The Zephyr Heights Mystery video game is out.