The following is the actual recommendation for the new My Little Pony cartoon that one of my cohorts gave me last week:
"So imagine if Invader Zim were set in Ponyland and Dib was the main character only he was reincarnated as a girl unicorn named Twilight Sparkle but still with Dib's personality and he I mean she is the only one who sees the REALLY OBVIOUS SIGNS that there is an Evil Thing threatening Ponyville but all of the other ponies are too stupid to listen to her and this leads to both nonstop hilarity and magical-girl tag-team ass-kicking and Benny Hill parodies and a whole lot of cultural references that are going to fly right over the heads of the target audience for this show but that's okay because IT'S FREAKIN' INVADER ZIM AS A CARTOON ABOUT MAGICAL PONIES."
So this turns out to be an 100% true description of the series.
Also, THIS IS AN ACTUAL SCENE FROM AN EPISODE:
Context does not actually make that any less insane or any less completely awesome.
No but on a serious level this show is all kids of amazing. It takes everything that was crappy about the original MLP cartoon and turns it squarely on its head, with a lot of surprisingly smart writing (the ponies have complex personalities! the protagonist pony is a hyperintelligent bookworm who refuses to downplay her smarts just to be more girly!) and neat animation (look, the character design even gives the ponies individualized faces!). So yeah, it's kind of awesome. I really wish that there were more cartoons for girls like this on air right now. I wish that this had been the MLP cartoon that I had grown up with. And y'all should check this out because all of the episodes are on Youtube.
ETA: Oh, and also much in the vein of Invader Zim, there is also some amazingly inappropriately dark humor in a couple of episodes of this show, most notably an episode in which Applejack commits EARTHWORM GENOCIDE. No seriously, there's a part in episode 4 that involves Applejack attempting to bake muffins while severely sleep-deprived (long story), so she instead of adding wheat germ to her batter she instead digs up all of the earthworms in her garden, folds them into the muffin batter, and bakes them alive. And then she feeds the muffins to the other ponies and they eat them. Spike takes a muffin too, and although a barely-alive earthworm suddenly pops out of the top of his muffin and attempts to wriggle free of its doughy coffin, Spike apparently doesn't mind eating worms so HE EATS THE MUFFIN ANYWAY. With the worm still in it.
This show, you guys. This show.
"So imagine if Invader Zim were set in Ponyland and Dib was the main character only he was reincarnated as a girl unicorn named Twilight Sparkle but still with Dib's personality and he I mean she is the only one who sees the REALLY OBVIOUS SIGNS that there is an Evil Thing threatening Ponyville but all of the other ponies are too stupid to listen to her and this leads to both nonstop hilarity and magical-girl tag-team ass-kicking and Benny Hill parodies and a whole lot of cultural references that are going to fly right over the heads of the target audience for this show but that's okay because IT'S FREAKIN' INVADER ZIM AS A CARTOON ABOUT MAGICAL PONIES."
So this turns out to be an 100% true description of the series.
Also, THIS IS AN ACTUAL SCENE FROM AN EPISODE:
Context does not actually make that any less insane or any less completely awesome.
No but on a serious level this show is all kids of amazing. It takes everything that was crappy about the original MLP cartoon and turns it squarely on its head, with a lot of surprisingly smart writing (the ponies have complex personalities! the protagonist pony is a hyperintelligent bookworm who refuses to downplay her smarts just to be more girly!) and neat animation (look, the character design even gives the ponies individualized faces!). So yeah, it's kind of awesome. I really wish that there were more cartoons for girls like this on air right now. I wish that this had been the MLP cartoon that I had grown up with. And y'all should check this out because all of the episodes are on Youtube.
ETA: Oh, and also much in the vein of Invader Zim, there is also some amazingly inappropriately dark humor in a couple of episodes of this show, most notably an episode in which Applejack commits EARTHWORM GENOCIDE. No seriously, there's a part in episode 4 that involves Applejack attempting to bake muffins while severely sleep-deprived (long story), so she instead of adding wheat germ to her batter she instead digs up all of the earthworms in her garden, folds them into the muffin batter, and bakes them alive. And then she feeds the muffins to the other ponies and they eat them. Spike takes a muffin too, and although a barely-alive earthworm suddenly pops out of the top of his muffin and attempts to wriggle free of its doughy coffin, Spike apparently doesn't mind eating worms so HE EATS THE MUFFIN ANYWAY. With the worm still in it.
This show, you guys. This show.
