けいおん! / Keion! / K-On! (season 1)

When I first entered the anime fandom, it was very popular to detest Dragonball Z. All those prolonged fight scenes and stupid cuts of characters just yelling at each other and powering up. Much better to watch this quirky little shounen about ninja called Naruto. Of course, the time for hatred for Naruto came along, and Dragonball was ever more associated with the halcyon days of childhood and is now well-loved and its deficiencies ironically celebrated. I expect the same to eventually happen with Naruto. The next trend was to ignore big shounen titles and to only watch late-night anime, which were often shows about young girls that were usually based on pervy visual novels – things like Da Capo and Kimi ga Nozomu Eien. This trend melded with the successes of cute, funny slice-of-life shows like Azumanga Daioh and Ichigo Mashimaro and suddenly, the moéblob trend was everywhere. It perhaps reached its pinnacle in the season when Lucky Star, Manabi Straight and Hidamari Sketch all came out at the same time, but the show that has become emblematic of the subgenre is K-On!

The life-cycle of a notable moé anime seems to follow this pattern: great immediate success where the pretty art and likeable characters endear themselves to almost everyone watching the newest anime; a swelling fanbase of more casual fans; a lot of the original audience realising that (a) the show is going to meander along and nothing interesting is going to happen and that (b) people they feel oh-so-superior to are now latching on to the same show; a backlash in which people get on their soapboxes – often the same ones who were so keen at the beginning – and decry the series as dull, inconsequential, annoying. Then after that comes a sudden and final drop in popularity, where the more fickle fans move on and the more vociferous ones pretend to never have liked the show in the first place, leaving only a hardcore who have fallen somewhat in love with one of the characters and the casual fans who occasionally get reminded of that show they watched a few months ago. This happened with Lucky Star. It happened with Kanon and Air, and to an extent with Haruhi. But emblematic of the concept of ‘moéblob’ – syrupy cuteness with a loose art style – is K-On!

You may notice that all of those shows are from Kyoto Animation. This is certainly true, and their shows have suffered severe backlash, but that’s more a result of their success than anything else – moé shows like Kyou no Go no Ni and C3 would get at least as much vitriol if they were as wildly popular to begin with, but because they’re more obscure, people care less and thus complain less. The iDOLM@STER got off lightly because by the time it came out people who disliked shows like K-On! knew to avoid it. Other shows like Ika Musume noticed that what allowed Azumanga Daioh to be cute, have very little happen and still be well-loved was a lot of quirkiness and a lot of laughs – something Kyoto have taken notice of with Nichijou. The moéblob fad is passing because frankly, its appeal was always limited and there are better alternatives already being mined that don’t mean the cute girls who look good on body pillows disappear.

To K-On!, then – explosively popular at first, now much-derided. I watched episode 1 when it aired in 2009, and then didn’t continue until about a month ago, three years later. The fact was that it didn’t hook me in. I knew what to expect, I more or less knew how it would be treated by its fanbase, and I didn’t particularly like the art style, which was far looser than Kyoto’s best. When I came to watch it, I knew very well that it was a show about cute girls doing cute things – and not a whole lot else. I had no complaints about that – after all, so are Azumanga Daioh and Ichigo Mashimaro. But K-On! makes two big mistakes – firstly, it ignores its gimmick, which is music. Music is the reason the five central girls get together and become friends, and one of Kyoto’s strong points – the concert scenes and dances in Lucky Star and Haruhi were highlights, and K-On! has great opening and ending themes. But other than short diversions to have band practices and a school concert, the music club does very little music-related and more time is spent on things like shopping, agonising over love letters and going to the beach. It’s not until the OVA that the focus turns to music performance, and it’s a real shame that this strong episode wasn’t in the series. But that’s rather the point – the music club is just an excuse to get the funny little girls together in one place and have them interact. But therein lies the second flaw – so little happens that it just doesn’t matter. Apart from possibly Ritsu when she wonders about her love letter, the girls never get any depth, keeping them always on the surface – Yui is the ditzy one with the adorably responsible little sister, Mio is the slightly stuffy one who is cute when she gets scared, Ritsu is tomboyish and irresponsible and Mugi is classy and elegant but with a cheeky side. Later, Azu-nyan is…just sort of there.

In Azumanga Daioh you get the heart-wrenching graduation and the hook of surrealism. In Ichigo Mashimaro Miu’s antics are extreme enough to be hilarious, but her vulnerability and loneliness make for a key scene. In Minami-Ke all the cuteness is broken up by potential romances. Even The iDOLM@STER knows to inject some healthy angst to give the series structure. K-On! stays true to the course set – cute girls do cute things – and ultimately feels utterly inconsequential, even boring.

I quite enjoyed the lightness of K-On!, the easy simplicity and the fact the brain does not need to be engaged whatsoever. But that was over 13 episodes and an OVA. Harsh as the backlash is, K-On! was still a major hit, spawning a 26-episode second season, another OVA and a feature film. I’m not too sure how much I’m looking forward to watching those, especially since the conceit of introducing a new character (usually a way to prolong interest into a second season) was used up before the 10 episode mark – but I will watch. Because, really, it’s simple and easy to do so, and it’s cute. 

Superjail! (season 1)

There will always be room in American animation for shows like Superjail. Crude, ultraviolent, ugly and careful to present any cleverer ideas masked beneath a layer of intentional stupidity, it descends most directly from Beavis and Butthead and shares similarities in tone and humour with other cartoons airing on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim section such as Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Metalocalypse. On the other hand, Superjail! may be the bloodiest, most surreal and most morally reprehensible cartoon to make it onto a mainstream television channel. That said, in the Internet age there are more shocking things on every imageboard, on every flash cartoon site.

Superjail! is the story of an enormous and ridiculous jail. In every episode, a criminal is apprehended by an advanced robot called Jailbot and flown to Superjail past a series of fantastic scenes in a brilliant title sequence that is one of the season’s main hooks. Indeed, it is usually the same criminal, who has escaped somehow or other in the previous episode. The jail is run by another of the series’ main draws, The Warden, a winsome and idiotic master inventor with an effete manner and dress sense that draws comparisons with Willy Wonka. He is helped by officious, neurotic little Jared and amusingly masculine prison guard Alice, while havoc is wreaked by two identical twins with monotone voices I’m sure are an impression of somebody, though beyond Austin-Powers-doing-an-impression-of-Tim-Curry-in-Rocky-Horror, I can’t place it.

Most episodes involve the Warden deciding there is some problem with the jail or getting inspired to improve it somehow, which invariably goes wrong or is sabotaged by the twins and ends up causing a fiendishly inventive bloodbath. As the concepts were often clever or so silly they were very amusing (as when genderswapped versions of all the characters made an appearance), this did not become tiresome over the course of the series – but it was also after all only 11 episodes of 10 minutes each. Plus it was fun to speculate that it was all an illusion, a jail to contain the one criminal – The Warden.

I honestly thought Superjail! wasn’t going to be my thing. Too juvenile, I thought. Too obvious. The amusingly awful moment in the first episode’s intro where Jailbot tries to give the little girl some ice cream would be the only laugh I got from it. Yet there was enough humour, enough clever references and enough fascination in these horrible but compelling characters I found myself really enjoying the show, and happy to watch season 2 – and the upcoming season 3. 

Plus I have to say, slipping in visual nods to the mythological animations in Watership Down definitely didn’t do any harm. 

The Nightmare Before Christmas / Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas

Some of the impressions I’ve been writing lately have been a long time coming because it’s taken me ages to finish watching things. This one is overdue just because I haven’t gotten around to it, deciding I wanted to wait for a repeat viewing – which is also the case for director Henry Selick’s James and the Giant Peach.

What’s that? Henry who? Wasn’t the director here Tim Burton? Well, as a matter of fact, no – it wasn’t. Yes, it has his trademark atmospherics, his cheerfully grim style, music from Danny Elfman (vocal performances too) and even says ‘Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas’ in the posters. But while he was the creative force behind the project’s inception, served as the producer and came up with the story (based on a poem he had written), he neither directed the piece nor wrote the screenplay. After all, he is a director of live-action films, not a creator of stop-motion – though he did go on to co-direct The Corpse Bride. The credit here, however, goes to Selick, later to gain more recognition as the director of Coraline and currently under the employ of Pixar and working on a new film before being lined up to adapt a Neil Gaiman novel.

This is not a case of either-or, however: both men deserve considerable credit for creating this very fine piece of work. Along with Aardman, this 1993 work sent new life coursing through stop-motion animation, which had been foundering since 1986’s creepy but iconic The Adventures of Mark Twain. Its brilliantly distinctive aesthetic showed that CG was not going to entirely replace this branch of the art form, and in every way – concept, characters, music, pacing, believable antagonist and even progression of its romance – it is a good, solid, memorable film. And while Burton has always come down heavily on talk of a direct sequel, the world has remained an attractive one, appearing, for example, in the Kingdom Hearts games. For while this was seen as a little too risky to be released as a Disney animation, it comes from the studio’s Touchstone imprint – which probably helped it at the time, for while Disney was making excellent films like The Lion King, they weren’t exactly associated with quirky, edgy, dark work at the time, and if anything the stigma of Disney being safe and cute could have lost Nightmare a chunk of its audience.

The story is based on one of the more popular modern takes on Christmas: someone who is not a typical Christmas figure intruding onto the joy and brightness of Christmas and ruining it. Unlike a Grinch or a rampaging South Park snowman, here Jack Skellington has mostly good intentions. He is The Pumpkin King, leading the horror-themed inhabitants of the gleefully German Expressionist Halloween Town, and once he glimpses the gaudy holiday happiness of Christmas Town, he is infatuated and wants to be able to do the same thing – even going so far as to kidnap Santa himself to take his place. Of course, things don’t go to plan and as it turns out, you can’t just usurp Father Christmas – especially with the chaotic madman Oogie Boogie setting his eyes on Santa and Jack’s love interest Sally. His motivation is ultimately a little dubious, but he’s so charismatic and visually striking that this can only be considered a minor quibble. He is cruel for the sake of cruelty, because that’s the sort of character he is.

Brilliant visually, clever in how it can make characters at one repulsive and appealing to look at, and delivered with great belief and a fantastic aesthetic, it’s no wonder it was such a hit – and has become a neatly alternative Christmas classic. 

ふしぎ遊戯 / Fushigi Yuugi / Mysterious Play

Oh my, I’ve neglected this blog recently. Apologies for that! On the plus side, a few days ago I passed 100,000 views, which is always nice! Anyway, to today’s impressions – which this time are of the classic series Fushigi Yuugi.

Like several other anime I’m writing about at the moment, it took me a long, long time to get to finishing this 1995 series and writing my thoughts. I think I started to watch it in 2006 or 2007, when the first thought I had of this story about two girl transported into a mysterious world by a magical book and ending up leading legendary warriors into battle was of how strange and jarring the rhythms of the humour were. When I saw Teen Titans, it struck me that the sudden goofy swings between realistic and silly SD styles that were meant to be tributes to anime were a little off – but Fushigi Yuugi showed me that I had simply not been watching the right shows, for the same odd, jerky, often ill-timed changes were here, too. But the story was a simple and effective one and I found the characters very interesting – Tamahome with his skilful fighting and that kanji character on his forehead; Chichiri with his mysterious powers, funny way of ending sentences with ‘-no da’ and awesome hidden face; cross-dressing, clownish badass Nuriko and, eventually, adorable little Chiriko. Miaka was a likeable enough protagonist and the rivalry at the centre of the story was compelling. The antagonists also had some good designs and some interesting stories, especially Amiboshi and the psychotic Nakago.

However, by 2010 I had tired of it, finding it quite embarrassing to watch anywhere but in the comfort of my own home: an episode I watched on a train on March 31^st contained ‘attempted rape, girls restrained in underwear, twin boys kissing and lots of clothes getting ripped up’. This may have been a simplification, but it spoke to the reasons I became a little uncomfortable with Fushigi Yuugi and how it was written. I don’t mind the reverse-harem in shoujo action series, especially when the characters are as rich as these. I certainly don’t mind homoeroticism. But more and more, Fushigi Yuugi reminded me, of all things, of Twilight (though obviously predating it by years). The depiction of the female characters did not sit well with me – they were always damsels in distress, needing rescuing or getting abused. Again and again, the spectre of rape rears up – invariably as a horrible fate that is actually quite thrilling when narrowly escaped. Sex is treated as something very special and reserved for just one person, which I thought a positive message, but it is also presented as quite titillating to be treated as an object – if only for a while. Plus, while I liked Amiboshi and his story, the way identical twins were treated came over as very patronising and immature, making them seem at best like doppelgangers who sap the energy from one another, and at worst like sexual curios bound to be thought of as incestuous.

And, quite honestly, it all got rather dull towards the end, with it becoming increasingly apparent that the antagonists, the Seiryuu Seven, had no hope at all of prevailing, and that Yui was mostly just bonkers – again, rape or the impression of rape the rather cheap catalyst. The art was not terrible but the animation had dated very badly by the time I saw it, and while the voice acting was very strong, several of the voice actors still being very prominent today (Chichiri’s has been in everything from One Piece to Full Metal Panic to Lucky Star. Tamahome’s was Heero Yuy from Gundam Wing. And I find it hilarious that the voice actor for the emperor Hotohori went on to voice Excalibur in Soul Eater), the dialogue was often utter drivel with far too much of Miaka dramatically yelling out various names. It’s also painful when subs don’t get the nuances of ‘okama’ (here: the misleading ‘homo’). Still, I watched to the end happily, and there were tragic moments that were really very well done.

What delayed these thoughts by several years was having to watch the OVAs, which I really didn’t enjoy. The first batch were anime-original stories, and apart from some entertaining omake at the end of the episodes, they were very dull stories about Tamahome living in modern-day Japan and then mysteriously disappearing. Confusingly, the second batch went back to the stories from the light novels and this time, Tamahome is reborn as Taka, and must regain his memories of his old life. The final set of OVAs were a little better – by 2001-2, Studio Pierrot were able to make rather nicer animation, and these episodes, especially in the faces of (older) Chiriko, the young reincarnation of Hotohori and Hotohori’s little brother, reminded me of the character designs for their anime version of Hikaru no Go, no bad thing. The anime also had some rudimentary CGI which didn’t look bad considering the age of the anime (certainly not as jarring as the more recent MÄR adaptation, and not that far behind the gaichuu in Tegami Bachi) and was again based on the stories from the novels. There were episodes focusing on the backstories of particular characters, which were the highlights, but also a central story about gathering the reincarnated warriors to battle a bratty new priestess trying to replace Miaka. This part was rather more ill-judged, firstly because the antagonist girl was so over-the-top and so lacking in backstory she was absurd. And secondly because…well, the reincarnations apart from Nuriko’s were stupid, so we ended up getting a talking baby and a tiny little boy with a booming bass voice. It was all unintentionally hilarious, yet not to the extent it became entertaining.

Flashes of brilliance, strong characters and some very funny moments sadly don’t add up to something that warrants the ‘classic’ status this anime enjoys. 1995 actually isn’t that long ago, and there were much, much better anime out at the time – the most obvious choice being Rurouni Kenshin. 

俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない/Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawai Wake ga Nai! / My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute!

OreImo manages, just by the skin of its teeth, to be more than the sum of its parts.

Because, honestly, it really shouldn’t be very good. It’s actually in the same line of succession as Rosario + Vampire and B-gata H-Kei, the latter of which has a character with a notable amount of similarities to Kirino, the girl at the centre of this anime. But while each of those I expected to be dreadful, only to find myself entertained and liking them whilst knowing that, actually, they were pretty crap, this one I expected to be mediocre, and found that it was mediocre…yet really, really enjoyed it.

At a basic level, this is harem anime with all the usual harem contrivances and awkward need to have the male protagonist not actually commit to any of the girls pursuing him, as that’s when the tension goes out of the story. There’s a veneer of cleverness overlaid in that eroge (the story-based erotic games that form the basis for many harem anime) are the subject of the plot, as referenced in things like choices for key decisions popping up on the screen and the alternate ending given in the OVAs being referred to as the ‘true route’, but that if anything counts against the show: at times it comes close to the smug ‘we’re above these clichés but we’ll use them anyway just to point out how silly they are and because we can’t actually think of anything else’ writing I dislike in shows like Buffy (see my Cabin in the Woods rant). But it’s the self-examining otaku-centric writing that also gives this title its charm.

Kirino is quite the perfect teenaged girl – she excels in academia and sports, has plenty of friends and is pretty enough to be a model. But her big brother Kyousuke knows her as the stroppy, arrogant girl who snubs him and constantly criticises him at home – until one day he discovers her secret. She likes anime and hentai games. A lot. And not the ones you might expect, but the ones known as the domain of the creepiest otaku – she likes moé-moé anime about little sister types, especially ones who get romantically involved with their big brothers. But not because she projects herself onto the little girl – no, no, she wants to be the big brother in the situation. Kirino is a pretty, clever, sporty, fashionable lolicon.

Upon discovering this, Kyousuke realises how lonely she has been and does his best to help her. He arranges for her to meet up with some other female otaku, and despite some difficulties she makes two entertaining friends – the hilarious clumsy, awkward old-fashioned otaku Saori, who gives her name as Saori Bajeena (both an absurd, funny-sounding name and a Gundam reference) and is secretly a refined ojou-sama type, and the acid-tongued, standoffish Kuroneko (a nickname meaning ‘black cat’) who is a loli in the other Japanese pop culture sense, ie a follower of Lolita fashion. She’s also a bit of a loli in the former sense – ie, looks like a little girl and is sexually appealing – though keeps everyone at arm’s length. So Kirino and Kuroneko are both tsundere in different ways: Kirino’s tsun side is all aggression, contempt and shouting, while her dere side is blushes and sharing, while Kuroneko is tsun with haughtiness and cruelty, then dere with softness, goofiness and…well, more blushes. And both soon show an interest in Kyousuke while trying to hide it from him, as do just about every other girl he comes in contact with – his spacey childhood friend, Kirino’s two model friends (a brat and a normal but very pretty girl who presses close to yandere) and even comic relief Saori.

Where the series succeeds is the otaku comedy. It’s nothing very new – most of it has been seen in Genshiken and Welcome to the NHK, even Otaku noVideo – but it’s very well-balanced over just a few episodes. Be it the reactions of disgust of the uninitiated seeing nudey transformation scenes a la Nanoha or Kuroneko revealing herself to be gaming goddess by easily beating a pro gamer (like I did today, kekeke…), be it pastiches of the kind of anime Kuroneko likes – the mesh of Code Geass and DNAngel that is Masquera (with a superb outro song made for it) or the obviously-named Rosen Jungfrau – or subtle inclusions of other incest-based anime like the DVDs of Da Capo on Kirino’s pile. More than most ecchi romances, it manages to actually be funny.

But it stumbles in its second half. A big part of this is the anime-only story that Kirino’s terrible fanfiction (which includes the emoticons she uses in online and phone chats) becomes published as a novel and enough of a smash hit that there was an anime adaptation, which leads to some scenes where Kyousuke is given the chance to stand up for his sister and look cool. The trouble is, it all seems like some wish-fulfilment fantasy that someone is going to wake from, or some bizarre Haruhi-like bit of supernatural reality-bending. It seems really jarring that Kirino could make this story, and inconsistent in the way it’s presented as simultaneously hilariously amateur and wildly popular. It all happens too quickly and with too little input from Kirino, and is all over and near-forgotten too soon – quite surprising given that they got premier anime writer Kurata Hideyuki (Uchuu Show-e Youkuso, Read or Die) for the script. It all basically felt tacked on so AIC could pat themselves on the back about fan-pleasing things like changing their intro every episode. And then soon after, it becomes apparent that her attitude isn’t changing. There’s a sweet ironic moment where Kirino finds a little sister character annoying because she’s too prickly and doesn’t show her cute side until much later (when Kirino of course does a U-turn), which she doesn’t see is a direct mirror of her own behaviour. But the trouble is that she’s just hard to like, it’s hard to swallow that her brother really doesn’t understand her actual feelings (which honestly seem unlikely for me for someone who likes little girls), and while I do like her, and enjoy watching her, she’s just not all that likeable and her character progression feels much too slow.

This is if anything highlighted by the OVAs, in which (following the original light novels’ plot) she leaves the country and Kuroneko goes to Kyousuke’s school. The two of them join the video games club and it all gets far more Genshiken as she clashes with a fujoshi and then the two of them work together on a game. The mini-arc is just far more enjoyable than the main anime, and Kuroneko is a rather more interesting central character, especially in a modern school setting rather than, say, as a loli detective in the 20s, Gosick-style. The fujoshi character is hilarious, and the Makabe-kun character I found utterly adorable, especially blushing wildly as he hears the horrible things Akagi the fujoshi has imagined him doing. I wonder what that hint about her brother despising him in the DVD extras was…

Indeed, the DVD extras deserve a mention – I thought ‘animated commentary’ would just be a waste of time, and the horrible basic animation of the SD chibis in the first episode almost bore that out, but ultimately it was less a dull commentary than a very interesting way to get characters discussing the anime from outside it – as well as having some really fun ideas like letting the characters from the anime-within-the-anime do some commentary and having the characters see things that happened in private. AIC Build at the very least know how to please fans with the trimmings.

My head says that I shouldn’t really like OreImo. Under all the self-referential humour, it’s still dumb harem, and its main character may be sweet but even with just twelve episodes it stretched credulity a little that she could be so blatant and yet Kyousuke remain oblivious. And yet I looked forward to every episode, I laughed at the jokes and the awkward situations, and though I preferred Kuroneko I was pleased when Kirino returned to the series. And I will definitely tune in for season 2. 

フルメタル•パニック!/ Full Metal Panic!

I finished watching FMP! some months ago, but for some reason never stopped to write down my thoughts as I always do. I just assumed I already had until I went looking for what I had written in my archives, only to find nothing!

Full Metal Panic! was a big hit when I was getting into the anime scene, and already had the feel of a bit of a classic, so often spoken of alongside the likes of Kenshin and Trigun that I still have trouble thinking of it as a 2002 anime, rather than late 90s. After Gonzo made this adaptation, Fumoffu? kick-started Kyoto Animation’s rise to their current dominance, and it was really for the sake of Fumoffu? I started watching this. After all, mecha isn’t really my thing and it failed for a long time to grip me. Despite this, however, I’ve yet to actually start Fumoffu?, never mind The Second Raid.

FMP! draws heavily from past mecha series for its bare bones – there’s plenty of Patlabor and Macross Plus here, and none of the heavy symbolism and angst of the post-Evangelion generation, though the heavy-drinking Melissa is more than a little reminiscent of Misato. What FMP! really brought to the fold, however, was the mix of action with giant robots and warships and the small-scale comedy of a high school drama that would later work so well for the likes of Mai-HiME and ROD the TV. Obviously there had been action-based series with light school scenes before, but FMP! made the contrast very stark while everything still remained unified.

The story is that the stoic, taciturn young covert military officer Sagara Sousuke comes crashing into the life of normal schoolgirl Chidori Kaname tasked with protecting her, which gives rise to the memorable first episode title, ‘The Guy I Kinda Like is a Sergeant’. Popular, brash Kaname soon finds Sousuke annoying, though, assuming he is just some military otaku who has decided to stalk her. However, Kaname of course has latent psychic powers and is targeted by terrorists, especially the thoroughly nasty Gauron, who of course has a history with Sousuke. Generally, the series swings between big fights in mecha and fun high school comedy, such as when Sousuke ineptly tries to pretend he is Kaname’s boyfriend. The format works well.

Sadly, though, for me that was about all that worked well. I found FMP! to be so dull as to be reprehensible. Sousuke is funny at first, and some of the glimpses into his past make him more likeable, but ultimately he is even duller than Heero Yuy, the Gundam Wing character upon whom he is clearly based. Kaname’s ‘picked up in America’ acerbic personality just makes her irritating, and Gauron, with all his talk of cutting up and raping everyone, is far too dull and obvious a bad guy to hook me in. I didn’t like Tessa, who was badly conceptualised as a superior officer and was an early indication of the negative pitfalls of what would soon become known as the moé girl stereotype. And the rest of the characters, mostly Sousuke’s military comrades, were left very much undeveloped over a slow-moving 24-episode series.

Indeed, I think the biggest problem is in the pacing during the serious episodes. Nothing at all will happen for protracted periods of time, mostly padded out with the juvenile images of the girls being naked while they use their powers, only for important events to happen far too quickly. The climax of the last episode is plain confusing, which is the last thing you want your series finale to be. It took me quite a while to figure out who was in the coffins and why Tessa was crying.

Oh well. It was well worth watching for its classic status, though I wouldn’t recommend it too highly. Now I can progress to Fumoffu! and see what the fuss was all about there. 

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic season 2

And so unlikely but undeniable Internet hit My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic got through its second season. Not without those typical second-season bumps and hiccups - particularly as head creative honcho Lauren Faust took a back seat and served only in a supervisory role - but overall with enough of its idiosyncratic charm to entertain, amuse and guarantee itself another season, and probably several more. As well as keeping most of its bloated, bizarre fandom on-board.

And never have I seen a show so influenced by its fandom. Sure, Avatar had scenes and whole episodes noticeably affected by the writers discovering online fandom and shipping debates, and Lucky Star’s director even got dismissed as a result of fan pressure in Japan, but MLP has been a whole new level. The most obvious example is Derpy Hooves, a fan-character based on a cross-eyed animation error, actually getting a speaking role and characterisation in this season, but more than that, it was the way staff members actually involved with the production would respond directly to the fans – including one animator expressing disappointment that the fandom detested an episode he liked.

And with that sort of powerful fandom has come analysis just about no other cartoon comes up against. Each individual writer is given a great deal of attention: Meghan McCarthy and M.A. Larson emerged as favourites (something I’d agree with), while a new writer named Merriwether Williams – whose previous work had been on SpongeBob Squarepants and Angry Beavers – got totally savaged after one episode the fandom hated.

I didn’t think the hate was justified, but I fear my emotional response to My Little Pony isn’t as ardent as that of some fandom members (and I don’t mean that in a disparaging way); I was willing to imagine an off-camera scene that made the episode work, but which the writers really ought to have included. With the much-hated episode ‘The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well’, for example, most of the more vitriolic complaints could have been solved with one scene where the gang actually try to talk to Rainbow Dash about her going too far. Similarly, ‘MMMystery on the Friendship Express’ would be vastly improved with a single scene showing the Cakes were actually pleased with the outcome, because it felt like a significant omission, and while at least the falcon got a moment of acknowledgement in ‘May the Best Pet Win!’, I wouldn’t have minded a line showing why Rainbow Dash couldn’t have had two pets, after that much hard work.

But, despite what the fandom may wish for, this isn’t a show that cares much about continuity or consistency. Last season, trains were pulled by stallions; now they’re steam-powered. It’s not quite clear why ponies thought the Sonic Rainboom was a myth when it was seen by so many the first time it happened. Indeed, there’s an amusing image showing that every single story told by the main characters in the season 1 story ‘The Cutie Mark Chronicles’ contradicts something else established in another episode. Continuity is just not that important, and if a joke works on a reference to something in the real world that probably doesn’t exist in magical pony land – or if a reference to James Bond or I Love Lucy will be funny – they’ll include it. 

However, characterisation is. In this sort of sitcom – for it is indeed a cartoon sitcom – that is paramount. I don’t mean that characters ought not to have their foibles exaggerated: that’s to be expected, and very much in-keeping with the first season’s writing, in which the ponies tended to obsess over a problem to the point of having mental breakdowns. That continues very nicely here, most obviously in the hilarious ‘Lesson Zero’, in which Twilight wholly loses the plot and pulls some of the scariest faces you’re likely to see in a cutesy animation. But it’s the little issues that bugged me – and totally ruined the show for others. Would Fluttershy really go behind her friend’s back, ruin something another person worked hard on because it seemed tasty, then deceive her friend? Would Pinkie really bug a stranger who wants to be left alone so much that she is loathed, only able to fix the problem because she just so happened to know the right people? And while I can totally accept that Rainbow Dash could go on an ego trip that makes her lose touch with what’s important, that doesn’t mean she’s some kind of stroppy stereotyped jock: before, she was insensitive, even cruel, but it was balanced by gentleness, kindness and a desire to see her friends improve themselves. Here, most writers got it (see ‘Hurricane Fluttershy’), but Williams definitely didn’t. 

The two-part specials that bookended this season were highlights, although both felt a little disconnected from the larger season. The first two, centred on mischievous god Discord, voiced with aplomb by John de Lancie essentially repeating his role as Q in Star Trek, were very entertaining but with their randomness and fast-paced action seemed rather different from the usual character-based situations, while ‘A Canterlot Wedding’ suddenly introduced two very important characters to Twilight who it seemed ought to have been mentioned before. In itself, that is no bad thing, but for all its awesome payoffs and satisfying conclusion, it felt a bit poorly thought-through: trying to imagine the baddie’s plot makes her seem not to have thought through the best way to accomplish her aims at all.

On the other hand, the songs in those last two episodes were great, and indeed, songs have been a strong point this entire season. Though they moved away from the Sondheim reworkings of the first season and were generally simpler and more pop-based, they were also catchy, charming and adorable.

Season 2 has had its faults and difficulties, but it was still remarkably strong and it remains entirely comprehensible to me why so many adult males would without irony express love and admiration for this show.

Season 3: link