In Which I Determine Whether Friendship Really Is Magic

I recently took a fair amount of criticism online – from both left and right – over a series of retweets I posted from BronyCon, a gathering of fans of the television show My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. I’m usually pretty inured to criticism (I get a lot of it in this gig, as you might expect) but this time, there was a certain ring of truth to it. After all, it really is rather unfair of me to offer an opinion on something I’ve never actually seen. Beyond this, I do understand the fact that, especially with “genre” shows, a property cannot always be fairly said to be represented by its fandom. As someone who is well-known as a longtime anime fan, I have seen myself that some anime fans can be a bit, well… excessive. And so it was in this spirit that I sat down to give My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic a fair shake by (in old-school anime fan tradition) watching the first four episodes of the show, with the movie My Little Pony: Equestria Girls thrown in for good measure. Below are my scattered impressions of each episode, written down in my notebook as they occurred to me.

Episode 01 – Friendship is Magic, Part 1:

• This show seems more monarchistic than I might have expected. Two sisters ruling a kingdom?
• The “Elements of Harmony” – this speaks to the feminine value placed on group consensus. What does it say that this was used to shun a misbehaver?
• “Spike”? There’s a male character on this show?
• So the main character is a bookworm. Explains a lot.
• So the male character is physically tiny, and a servant. Typical.
• So there is a princess! This demonstrates the truth that women, deep down, do totally grok hierarchical monarchy.
• Spike – the little male dragon servant has the most masculine name ever – definitely a metaphor for the subjugation of masculinity.
• The ponies who drag the chariots are “sirs” – again, subjugated male servants.
• Twilight Sparkle is a “geekgirl” – quite telling. The people who created this show know their audience.
• So this show is basically a monarchistic, hierarchical matriarchy. It is weirdly simultaneously reactionary and progressive. This brings up a question: Do women not object to hierarchy, as long as it’s *they* who rule it?
• “There are only two kinds of women: Feminists and masochists” say feminists. In that vein, male MLP:FIM fans are surely masochists.
• Fluttershy – the Tomoko Kuroki of Equestria.
• There’s a definite femdom aspect to this.
• I’d smack Pinky Pie.
• Soooooo much matriarchy.
• Nightmare Moon is definitely a villain of the animesque “Ufufufufufufu…” variety.

Season 01 Episode 02 – Friendship is Magic Part II:

• UFUFUFUFUFUFU…
• Predictably, the male is useless.
• This show is rather Sailor Moonish. Expected from two shows based on feminine values.
• So the females encounter a roaring lion, and engage in the fantasy of “fixing” a dangerous male.
• Ever heard of a “testosterone-soaked” action movie? This is estrogen-soaked.
• SOMEBODY FUCKING SMACK PINKY PIE!!!
• Ah, the dragon who is the middle class white woman’s illusion of what gay males are like.
• Shadowcolts! They’re, uhm… dressed like they came from a gay S&M club.
• YMCA… Shadowcolts come from the… YMCA…
• If you believe in yourself, anything can happen!… and other things that nobody over 30 believes anymore.
• “Now, young Jedi, you will feel the pow-wah…”
• Yes, yes… they each have a crystal that makes up the Ginzuishou… I’ve seen this before.
• Yay! And everybody gets jewelry!
• It’s like the end of the Sailor Moon R movie… but not as good, and twenty years later.
• And they bow to their Princess. Very hierarchical. Very monarchstic.
• The queen as healer (which is how all women see themselves). See? Females really do grok monarchy!
• …as long as males have no effective power, that is.

Season 01 Ep. 03 – The Ticket Master:

• Whatever this is, it could’t be worse than the actual TicketMaster!
• And here we see that the male incessantly needs correction by the females.
• Ah, an excuse to dress up. Females love that.
• Applejack: My Capitalist Pony
• Speaking of which, do any of these ponies besides Applejack have, you know, a job?
• Females jockeying for social position. I am amused.
• SOMEBODY GVE PINKY PIE RITALIN!!!
• So Rarity dreams of meeting a man at a high society ball… in other words, to mate with a high status male.
• Women in social competition sure do get vicious.
• How does all this speak to the degree of manipulativeness among women?
• This episode would be impossible among males. There is too much status-seeking and social jockeying in it.

Season 01 Ep. 04 – Applebuck Season:

• So Applejack has a brother. Again, I’m actually surprised that this show has any male characters at all.
• The female predictably lets a male suggesting that she can’t do something goad her into foolishly taking on what she can’t handle. Never forget that, ye who seek to use Game.
• Yet more unrealistic grrl power fantasies.
• And magic makes up for lack of opposable thumbs.
• Ah, the fear of social embarrassment. To the female mindset, there is nothing worse.
• Women really can be easily goaded into doing the stupidest shit.
• Pridefulness is the heart of feminism. And that’s not a good thing.
• Complimentarianism is simple, obvious sense. Which means that like all obvious sense these days, it is deeply controversial.
• Surrender to womanly pride, and you get a bunny stampede. Truly a valuable lesson learned.
• Sure, I know – but the actual consequences of giving into feminism are no less bizarre, and far more disastrous.
• And the females discover the male ethic of helping with hard work… after getting dragged into it.

BONUS! My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic the Movie: Equestria Girls:

• So Twilight Sparkle is a Princess now? How did that happen? Silly question – she’s an author avatar (and audience avatar), and all girls, no matter what egalitarian nonsense they may spout on Tumblr, dream of being princesses.
• And again, in this show, males are servants, window dressing, or irrelevant.
• And also, not particularly competent.
• Who is this new pony? She is evil! In this show’s normal “Ufufufufufu” way, of course.
• So monarchistic! I mean… in an utterly matriarchal way.
• This show isn’t really leftist so much as oddly reactionary politically, yet sexist towards males.
• And now she’s a real girl!
• Just about all the girls here wear skirts? Oddly traditionalist!
• Oh! Look! The show just turned into Mean Girls! Again, we see social hierarchy, and the fear of ostracization from the ingroup as the sum of all fears.
• And the males retreat before the powerful female.
• And Twilight Sparkle faces her most dangerous challenge yet! High school cafeteria food!
• Yup – social stratification/separation into thedes rules here as well! See? Females really do understand the basics of reactionary thought.
• Again, in this show, males are useless and stupid, fit only to be simple servants.
• Ah, female signaling and status-jockeying.
• Bookishness to the rescue! The awkward teenage girl’s fantasy.
• The fantasy of female dominance over males is a serious theme here.
• As is status and social shaming – to be honest, I’m not quite sure that females quite exactly understand not responding to social shaming.
• And in this feminized society, a lot of males don’t either.
• Boyfriends are commodities here… as are all males.
• Another song. A time-waster?
• There’s really no hint of “gay rights” in this show. Males – gay or straight – are too inconsequential here to bother spending time thinking about.
• Wow! A male briefly did something mildly important. But only to support a female and become a fantasy boyfriend, of course.
• Dare I hold the brief hope that they’re going to lez out?
• More of the female virtues of consensus and cooperation.
• The dress-up montage! The female equivalent of the 80s action movie training montage!
• Uh oh! She’s got the HHH sledgehammer!
• GIRLFIGHT!!!
• Predictable climax! Yay!
• Heavy hangs the head that wears the crown!
• “A true princess in any world leads not by forcing others to bow before her, but by inspiring others to stand with her.” Wow… so the principal/queen declares that there’s no power without noblesse oblige! Very reactionary!
• “You know what Spike? I am a little more comfortable wearing it!” I’ll just bet you are!

Wrapup/Overall thoughts:

This show is far less doinky, and also far less egalitarian than I thought it would be. That said, it is positively estrogen-soaked… deeply imbued with female thinking. As such, I can understand why females like it, but any male who willingly watches this (fathers of young girls excepted) can only be considered masochistic. In short, it isn’t terrible in itself; but Sailor Moon did largely the same things, 20 years ago, and with more sympathy for males. Which may be explained by the fact that Japanese males and females are far less at war with each other than in the West, and especially in America.

If anything, MLP suffers from insufficient respect for the proper balance of male and female essence.

Grade: Not as bad as I feared, but I don’t understand why it has male fans or why it seems to have sparked a movement, and I wouldn’t bother watching it again.

(P.S. The tradition of giving a show four episodes as a basis for determining whether you wanted to watch any more goes back to the days when anime fansubs came on VHS tapes and were very difficult and time-consuming to lay one’s hands on. Recorded at SP, which was the highest quality, a standard VHS tape gave you two hours of recording time, which worked out to four episodes of a show each. So you’d get your hands on the first tape, watch it, and then decide whether you wanted to go through the often-considerable bother of trying to lay your hands on any more of it. Kids these days with their crazy BitTorrent… they don’t know how good they’ve got it!)