Pony Cartoon Keeps on Trotting

[frith]

It's not over for the My Little Pony community ponyville_trot. The new series is set in a post-apocalyptic Equestria and it's pretty bad. There are two concurrent and overlapping animated ventures in this horse play, a high end 3-D Netflix release, called Make Your Mark, featuring models that look like a cross between paw patrol and Planet of the Apes, and a low end 2-D YouTube weekly release called Tell Your Tale, which is in full bean mouth design without much of anything else going when it comes to style or art. Any overarching story line, motivation or common journey companionship plots have been totally thrown out the window. Stuff just happens and the two series contradict each other.

Curious but loathe to waste time actually watching the latest eye-candy advertising brushable horse toys? Come to ponyville_trot and read the write-up on each episode as they appear. There will be snark.

ponyville_trot also features the best fanart, music, games and books because that ride never ends.

Comments

[jeweledeyes]

Yeesh, the pony snouts have been shrinking more and more over the years but that's not even a snout anymore? It's just an upturned nose on a purple humanoid face

[frith]

I know! The 80's pony toys were cute and horsey and while the cartoons were Filmation abominations, the designs were still cute. In 2010 Lauren Faust batted the cartoon lore out of the park but her designs were stylized Powerpuff Girl anime approximations of horses. Bug eyes and hardly any muzzle, but at least every last detail was both indicative and supportive of a character's aptitude. This 2020's iteration has none of Faust's magic and even worse design. It's like I don't even know where to begin trying to figure out what's wrong. It's nearly Annoying Orange tier bad.

[havocthecat]

Post-apocalyptic Equestria what?

[frith]

The setting is many years into the future, so far forward that only vague legends of what happened to magical pony society remain. The series starts out with no magic. Unicorns are a bunch of depressed hippies living in a forest. Pegasi have high tech electronics and multimedia but can't fly. Earth ponies get by with 20th century machine tech. Each race lives in fear of the other races.

The apocalypse was the elimination of magic from a world that was literally rendered functional by magic. Apparently no ponies live outside of the three population centers, suggesting a substantial population crash.

Then through a token but sincere gesture of unity, magic comes back. After that, everypony just goes back to living their lives while magic just happens.

[havocthecat]

That is...so weird. And strange. I would like to know what happens, but no, not enough to watch. I'm actually really glad you posted about the summaries.

[frith]

I live in hope that eventually the ponies will get their act together and (1) promote unity (2) do some amateur archeology or at least explore the ruins of old Equestria and (3) reveal just what went wrong and to what extent we can expect this world to revert to what it had been pre-apocalypse. There is an Evil Alicorn named Opaline who is in a castle in an undisclosed location and who is working on grabbing all the magic, so something will happen eventually. There are also the IDW comics, but until the story there mirrors the action in the broadcast series, I consider them to be little more than official fan fiction.

Enjoy the summaries! I have fun writing them.