My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

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Part of a series on My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. [View Related Entries]

About

Equestria Girls is an animated film series set within the universe of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. The films are centered around humanized versions of the Friendship Is Magic characters in a high school setting.

History

In December 2012, several Brony-centric sites including Equestria Daily^[1] and Derpy Hooves News^[2] reported Hasbro filed two trademark applications for “Equestria Girls,” noting it would be used on merchandise related to Friendship Is Magic. The February/March 2013 issue of industry magazine Kidscreen^[3] confirmed that Equestria Girls would be a companion series in which the main characters from Friendship Is Magic would be sent to a new world, taking on human forms. While rumored leaked images from Equestria Girls depicting humanized ponies began to appear online in February 2012, the first official image of the characters (shown below) was published in a New York Times^[4] article on March 1, 2013.

Threads discussing the spinoff were posted on a number of forums including Funimation^[5], the MLP Forum^[6] and the deviantART^[7]. On March 9, 2013, Redditor BryanBoyko submitted a post to the /r/MyLittlePony^[8] subreddit discussing the design quality of the humanized ponies, comparing them to previous fan art works. Many similar discussions also took place on Tumblr^[9]. On May 1, 2013, The Round Stable^[10] shared a synopsis of the film, noting that it will trace the challenges that the Mane 6 would encounter in a high school setting. They also noted the film would be shown in a number of select theaters in the US beginning on June 16th, followed by its official release at the San Diego Comic Con in July.

On May 12, the trailer for Equestria Girls was posted to the Round Stable's YouTube channel:

Rainbow Rocks

My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Rainbow Rocks, is the 2014^[11] sequel to My Little Pony: Equestria Girls. A series of eight animated shorts were released on YouTube to help promote the sequel. Rainbow Rocks follows the story that Twilight has to return to CLH to defeat the villains of the film The Dazzlings. The Dazzlings took the place of Sunset Shimmer, who is now considered by the fans to be the newest member of the group, thus fans have dubbed them The Mane 7. The movie was largely focused on the music, specifically pop/rock ballads which tied into the movie's title.

Friendship Games

The third installment of the Equestria Girls franchise, Friendship Games, was first teased to be in production on December 12th, 2014, by Rainbow Rocks co-director Ishi Rudell.^[12] Further confirmation was given by Hasbro during the 2015 American International Toy Fair. Though later receiving a limited theatrical showing in the UK, the movie was release as a direct-to-video with an initial airing on Discovery Family September 26th, 2015.^[13]

Future Releases

On October 3rd, 2015, Stephen Davis, president of Hasbro Studios, announced that a fourth installment of the Equestria Girls franchise was in development.^[14]

Reception

Despite receiving mixed reactions from the bronies, official review websites have given some of the films positive reviews and praise. The first film of Equestria Girls received a score of 3/5 from Common Sense Media,^[16] 6.1/100 from IMDB^[17], and 77% from Rotten Tomatoes.^[18] The second film, Rainbow Rocks, received a 3/5 from Common Sense Media^[19], 7.3/10 from IMDB,^[20] and an 88% from Rotten Tomatoes.^[21]

Impact

Criticism

Some fans opposed the idea of anthropomorphizing the main characters and placing them in a school setting, due to it greater appealing to the younger demographic of the fanbase and is completely inconsistent to the title animal, as well the original idea of the new generation of My Little Pony being slightly higher in quality than the previous generations. Now though many of the fans have come to be perfectly fine with Equestria Girls, especially after the release of the 2nd movie.

Online Relevance

The search bar on the art-sharing website DeviantArt yields 46,781 results for 'Equestria Girls'.^[15] The official Hasbro channel on Youtube uploaded multiple shorts that take place in-between movies. These shorts have an approximate average of 5,000,000 views, with the most famous amassing nearly 20,000,000 views.

Fandom

The Equestria Girls fandom is essentially comprised of fans of the television series, My Little Pony Friendship is Magic. However, due to a number of the fans disapproving the creation of the movie series in the first place, the Equestria Girls Fandom remains as a fraction of the much larger brony community.

Fan-Art

Cosplay

Twiscream

Twiscream is an exploitable scene in which a humanoid Twilight Sparkle reacts in horror upon entering the alternate universe. It became a popular exploitable image on the brony site, Derpibooru. Many photoshopped images with different captions referencing scenes of a character from different movies, shows, and books screaming dialogue or just doing incoherent nonsense.

Inside The Cake

Inside The Cake is an exploitable image series spawned from the 2015 MLP movie Equestria Girls: Friendship Games. The original scene from the movie (below left) depicts Pinkie Pie cutting a freshly baked cake in two and sliding one half away to reveal a reproduction of The Mona Lisa. Variations of the meme use images with three panels; characters Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy are shown in the first two panels displaying the inside of a cake, while the third panel shows the reactions of Celestia, Luna, and Cadence.

Flash Sentry

Flash Sentry is largely considered as the 'punching bag' of the brony fandom. He is the main love interest for Twilight Sparkle in the first movie. Before his name was released, he had already been given the name 'Brad' due to his generic and typical appearance. Many of the fans are indifferent to Flash due to his lack of character in the three films. Fans have stated that he is a useless character who really serves this purpose. Dubbed "The Waifu Stealer," Flash has been mocked since his only purpose is to be the love interest for Twilight.