Webcomic / Friendship Is 4komagic

Friendship is 4komagic: Same heroines, different bust-sizes!

Friendship Is 4komagic is a Slice of Life webcomic, normally in Yonkoma format, by Taiwanese artist Han Jan, also known as Shepherd0821. The webcomic is obviously based on My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.

Originally only available in Taiwanese, it was picked up by a group of fans, collectively known as Retired Pyramid Head Scanlations, and translated into English, with the approval of the artist himself, which he himself later posts on his own deviantart and tumblr.

The comics can be read on the scanlation group's tumblr, Shepherd's own tumblr, and Shepherd's deviantart gallery.

The first fanbook can be read here.
The second fanbook can be read here.
The third fanbook can be read here.
The fourth fanbook can be read here Part 1 Part 2

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This webcomic provides examples of:

• A-Cup Angst:
  • Rainbow Dash bristles, in one strip, at being told she could use 20% more breasts.
  • Pinkie Pie as well. In one strip, where Spike mentions she should call herself Flatie Pie, she reacts angrily by summoning Meteor to flatten him.
• A Million Is a Statistic: Twilight references this when she tells Pinkie it's physically impossible to be friends with everyone because brains have an upper limit on the amount of stable relationships it can have at the same time. Cue Pinkie Pie trying anyways and getting stuck in an infinite loop of logical inconsistency.
• And Knowing Is Half the Battle: The Editor usually puts links between the panel breaks to provide more information regarding some of the dialogue that might seem outlandish at times, like the sexual behavior of dolphins or one of the benefits of zebra stripes, or just to expand on some of the references, like the Brothers Grimm and their tales. Of course, at times, it borders on Don't Explain the Joke territory.
• Animesque: Being made in Taiwan.
• Annoying Arrows: Played with. Pinkie has a party in hell with the dead spartans. They seem to be really into the party, arrows and all.
• Anthropomorphic Transformation: The cast, 'cept for Spike, who looks the same as he is on the show.
• Art Evolution: Pinkie's hair has been getting some love.
• Author Appeal: Big breasts on some characters. And Season 1 hairstyle for Luna.
• Beat Panel: How long it takes for Twilight to realise that things don't unspawn in real life.
• Berserk Button: Luna gets sufficiently riled up about Superman 64 and the infamous Error 37 in Diablo III (inability to connect to the game) to switch to her Nightmare Moon persona.
• Beware the Nice Ones: Fluttershy keeps a diary that resembles a Death Note. So far, she has included Rainbow Dash and the Cutie Mark Crusaders in it.
• Big-Breast Pride:
  • Celestia takes great pride in her two miniature suns. This is understandable since she is the biggest in the whole comic.
  • Aj to a lesser degree. She doesn’t flaunt them, but does views them as a sign of her great strength and fertility.
  • Luna displayed this in Celestia's nightmare, even referring to them as "We".
  • Fluttershy is a downplayed example. She never brags about her bust and sometimes complains about them, but she is still shown to be fond of them and secretly takes pride in being bigger than most of her friends.
• Big Ol' Eyebrows: AJ has the thickest eyebrows of all the characters, including Big Mac.
• Black Comedy: One time when Pinkie Pie reenacted The Little Match Girl for comedy purposes.
• Bland-Name Product: Starbooks as a Starbucks knock-off.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: Pinkie has no concept of a Fourth Wall, to the point that in one instance Pinkie Pie decides to learn Japanese, so she could voice herself after hearing that FIM was gonna be broadcast in Japan. She does.
• British Royal Guards: Well, Equestrian Royal Guards, but the intention is the same, specially with Rainbow Dash trying to make them laugh by dancing like Twilight.
• Butt-Monkey: Silver Spoon faces a lot of slapstick abuse, often from nowhere.
  • Sonata for the Dazzlings.
• Cannot Tell a Joke: Applejack. She's told to leave the lame jokes to Pinkie.
  • Although her joke about Twilight's horn does get an Actually Pretty Funny reaction out of Rainbow Dash.
• Catapult Nightmare: One strip where Celestia was dreaming that Luna is not only more popular than her (which is true even In-Universe), but also her breasts have grown larger, thus making it impossible for Celestia to send her back to the moon ever again.
  • This is getting to be a trend for any nightmare, sometimes two at once!
• Christmas Episode: The X-mas special.
• Corner of Woe: Rarity uses her couch from "Lesson Zero" for this on at least one strip.
• Cosplay Otaku Girl: Rarity, when she dresses Fluttershy as Fiona in one strip.
• Crossover:
  • With Adventure Time at one point.
  • Fluffle Puff appears too.
• Cute Clumsy Girl:
  • Derpy in every Derpy-related strip.
  • Rainbow Dash plays this accidentally, in the second fanbook, when she loses her glasses after bumping into Spike.
• Deadpan Snarker: Sweetie Belle, specially when dealing with Silver Spoon and her seemingly useless cutie mark.
• Death Glare: Fluttershy's "The Stare" gets quite a bit of mileage.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: As Luna warms up to the rest of the cast.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • As one strip shows, AJ likes to pop bubble wrap by squeezing it between her breasts, basically like if she was doing paizuri.
  • And then there's other examples mentioned under Lampshaded Double Entendre, which clearly imply sexual stuff.
• Dope Slap: Spike gets a few fists atop the head, mostly when he's perving over Rarity.
• Dream Walker: Luna is this, then Pinkie Pie walks into her dream!
• Eating the Eye Candy: Cherilee ogling over a photo of shirtless Big Mac.
• Enforced Method Acting: Invoked In-Universe with Rarity, when she's told she will be the Wicked Stepmother and says that she'll have to kill Snow White/Fluttershy. Spike remarks her acting is really natural. Twilight mentions Rarity isn't acting.
• Exact Words:
  • One strip has Luna at a party, asking to be treated like anyone else, which earns her some pleasant conversation. Celestia enters, asks for the same thing, and immediately gets punked.
• Fanservice: Occasionally. And invoked In-Universe in one strip where AJ uses this to sell more grape juice.
• Farmer's Daughter: AJ is depicted like this. At one point, she uses her assets to advertise her farm.
• Fetish: Spike really likes Rarity's hair, even when it's other ponies sporting that hairstyle.
• Flanderization: Some characters' personality quirks get exaggerated, but it's Played for Laughs.
• Formula-Breaking Episode:
  • "Episode 0", an 8-page special in proper manga format, depicting the alternate debut of this series.
  • Celestia's Nightmare is a full page comic that in part parodies "Mega Milk".
  • A couple of one-shot pages focus on Twilight and Pinkie in the library.
  • There's also Shepherd's levels-of-anthro series, which covers the Mane Six and several canon characters before dipping into fanmade OC ponies, from Fluffle Puff to lesser-known ones. The latest of these? Princess Unikitty.
  • The Halloween Episode is still technically four panes, but they're all in widescreen to help the gag.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Pinkie gives a rather not safe for work and downright insane explanation on why male pantless cartoons only have four fingers.
• Frame Break: Fluttershy's breasts tend to, where they're shown to alter the shape of the 4koma panels.
• Gamer Chick: We find out later that Luna loves gaming. And has developed some rage issues towards a couple of them.
• Genki Girl: Pinkie, in most comics. Lampshaded on a strip where The Mask had no effect on her.
• Girl on Girl Is Hot: Flash Sentry's other reaction to TwilightXSunset.
• Green-Eyed Monster:
  • Celestia towards Luna, because Luna is more popular/affable with the rest of the cast.
  • Rarity towards Fluttershy, once, when Rarity was selected to be the Evil Queen whereas Fluttershy was selected to play Snow White.
• Grimmification: Invoked and Inverted In-Universe. Fluttershy asks Twilight for a book on fairy tales, as she wants to read cute things. Twilight gives her a Brothers Grimm book instead, which obviously shocks her.
• Halloween Episode: This.
• Harmless Villain: Silver Spoon's nightmare involving Ginosaji.
• Hating on Monday: One strip has several characters voicing their hatred towards mondays. Celestia even delay rising the sun on a monday.
• Hot Teacher:
  • Cheerilee is depicted like this, although Big Mac seems uninterested.
  • Celestia, being Twilight's mentor, also comes across as this.
• Hypocritical Humor: The Halloween Episode is about Twilight calling out the factual inaccuracies of everyone's costumes. Then the editor's note throws in another one. In the editor's defense, he had Twilight refer to Pinkie's costume as "The Monster", not as Frankenstein, since the note was actually for people's benefit.
• I Can't Dance: Twilight. Everyone mocks her for it, specially because she danced in the first place and was awful at it.
• Impossibly-Low Neckline: Celestia.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • Pinkie Pie. She claims Fluttershy is clearly Russian because she's big breasted, can be very assertive and fights bears.
  • Twilight also delves into this in one strip, using the existence of griffons as proof that interspecies unions should be possible.
  • Pinkie ends up trolling herself when she analyzes Yoshi's anatomy.
  • After being told about the brain limitations on the number of stable relationships one can have, Pinkie Pie decides that forgetting things might make it physically possible for the brain to hold more friendships. It backfires as Pinkie actually ends in a logic error loop of making friends and then forgetting about them in order to make room for more friendships.
• Interspecies Romance:
  • Lampshaded by Rarity in one strip, where she asks Twilight if its possible for ponies and dragons to crossbreed. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy proceed to have some fun at her expense, much to her chagrin.
  • Lampshaded in another strip, with griffons.
• Lampshaded Double Entendre:
  • In the second fanbook, Applejack mocks Twilight's floppy horn, mentioning it shoulda been hard in the morning instead.
  • Celestia trolls Luna by asking her to describe what Celestia is doing. The scene explicitly makes it look like Celestial is giving someone a handjob, while in reality, she's pretending to be button-smashing at an arcade.
• Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Not-Mickey and Not-Donald appear to illustrate Four-Fingered Hands.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Spike.
• Malfunction Malady: Invoked on the third page of the second fanbook when we see what happens when Spike tries to send letters with the flu. It doesn't turn out THAT badly, but still.
• Medium Awareness: Pinkie Pie, as part of her Fourth Wall powers, can read thought bubbles.
• Merchandise-Driven:
  • The comic parodies the series and its need to sell toys by having one strip be about all the Mane Six pitching products and Celestia collecting all the money from the sales.
  • Another strip has Pinkie Pie mention that ponies are born whenever Hasbro needs new merchandise, after Sweetie Belle asks that very same question.
• Meta Guy: Pinkie Pie. Able to break into panels, reading others' speech bubbles, jump into real life situations and realizing ponies come from a toy company.
• Moe: Invoked in page 2 of the second fanbook. When Rarity gets a wet mane (re. "Sisterhooves Social"), she turns out hot, but when Dashie tries it, she just gets a cold; Fluttershy sneezes later on, but comes out as cute as a result. Later, in the same fanbook, Dashie comes out as cute when she loses her glasses.
• Mr. Fanservice: Big Mac, at least on Cheerilee's eyes.
• Ms. Fanservice:
  • Celestia. She is the bustiest and curviest girl in the comic and loves to flaunt her figure
  • Applejack once, although she was doing for in order to sell Juice.
• Mythology Gag: Several events of the show get a nod in this series.
• Never Heard That One Before: Twilight laments that people will approach her at the library, and ask to borrow Twilight.
• No Guy Wants to Be Chased: Big Mac. Then again, Cheerilee comes out as a stalker.
• Not What It Looks Like: Invoked once by Celestia, by doing a Double Entendre, just to troll Luna.
• Physical God: Both Celestia and Luna. One strip have them playing a sort of air hockey by smashing celestial bodies against each other, mainly because they're bored. Celestial simply calls it "Playing Catch with my Sister"
• The Prankster: Celestia messes up with Luna in several strips, and in some occasions going straight into troll territory.
• Product Placement: One strip lampshades the commercial nature of the show.
• The Ojou: Rarity always seem the classiest in every strip that she appears in.
• Passionate Sports Girl:
  • Rainbow Dash, as expected.
  • Scootaloo to a lesser degree.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Big Mac appears in this comic with Smarty Pants.
• Royal "We": Luna. In the early comics, she grows out of it quickly. It is Played for Laughs once in one comic when Luna uses the Royal "We" to describe her breasts in one of Celestia's nightmares.
• Running Gag: Rainbow Dash' flatness has been referenced at least 4 different times.
  • Fluttershy hates Dolphins.
• The Scrooge: AJ comes off as on several strips, where her main concern is making money, above everything else.
• Sexy Packaging: AJ resorts to this, once, to sell juice, with herself as the model.
• Shout-Out:
  • 300, Uzumaki, Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Toy Story, Nicolas Cage, The Little Match Girl, Doraemon, Death Note, The Powerpuff Girls, Dragon Ball Z, The Mask, Pokémon, QWOP, Life of Pi, The Horribly Slow Murderer with the Extremely Inefficient Weapon among other stuff!
  • The ponies sometimes get rage faces, Celestia is more in line with the infamous Trollestia and Molestia, and Luna loves Gaming.
  • invokedA particularly obscure one in "Episode 0" references a commercial that only spawned a Memetic Mutation in Taiwan.
• Sibling Rivalry: A friendly one between Luna and Celestia. Luna lampshades in one strip that the reason it's friendly at all is because they spent 1000 years apart in the first place.
• Silent Snarker: Angel Bunny
• Slice of Life: Pretty much every comic strip. Although every now and then something really unusual happens, like having Gundam Heavyarms in the middle of the town.
• So Bad, It's Good: Invoked In-Universe. One page has Pinkie suggesting a "recommended terrible books" shelf for Twilight's library. It's emptied in no time.
• Split Personality:
  • The Nightmare Moon side of Luna appears occasionally, but only when dealing with video games, like the infamous Error 37 that afflicted Diablo III in the early days of its release.
  • Pinkamena also appears on one strip, when Pinkie Pie is not allowed to enter a private party.
• Stalker with a Crush: Cheerilee, towards Big Mac.
• Statuesque Stunner: Celestia. The tallest character in the cast. Her Fanservice dress helps a lot.
• Story Arc: Although most 4komas can be read in any order, there has been at least two stories, the "Episode 0" and the crossover with Adventure Time.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: Luna's initial appearance in the comic comes out as aloof. Turns out she's just shy.
• Take That!: One strip shows different versions of Spike: normal, humanized, anime... The last one is Michael Bay and looks absolutely hideous.
• Team Pet: Sonata is this for the other Dazzlings, but that's because they consider her to be about as bright as one.
• The Peeping Tom: In the Christmas strip Applejack takes her turn as Santa climing down the chimney, blissfully unaware that Rainbow Dash is lying with her head in the fireplace, eagerly looking up A.J's skirt.
• The Talk:
  • A variation. Spike asks Twilight why its customary to give flowers to the one you like. Twilight replies that it might unconsciously do with flowers being the reproductive system of plants, so its a symbolical offering of your sexual organ to your partner as an indication you want to mate, at least from a biological standpoint. Spike chastises her for ruining the romantic mood...
  • Played with. Rarity is shocked when Sweetie Belle asks her where ponies come from. Pinkie Pie intercedes and explains that ponies are born whenever Hasbro needs new merchandise.
• Things That Go "Bump" in the Night: Under Big Mac's bed... It's Cheerilee.
• Trickster Mentor: Celestia, towards Twilight. Like telling Twilight if she's gonna be reading something, she should be reading PlayPony instead of a book for once.
• Trolling: Celestia as mentioned above. And now Luna's getting a piece of the action!
• Truth in Television: Fluttershy's disdain for dolphins as she judges them to be rapists and murderers, a behavior some scientific studies have confirmed.
  • To a lesser extent, Rarity's claim about cold showers, in the first fanbook, has a ring of truth. Hot showers remove the natural oils in your skin, making your skin dry and appear aged, as such, some dermatologists suggest cold showers as to minimize dry skin.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: A strip lampshades this about Super Mario World. Spike, the one playing, is absolutely horrified.
• Viewers Are Geniuses: Some of the dialogue might seem random at times unless you actually know a lot of things. Of course, the Editor doesn't seem to have faith in the readers.
• The Voiceless: Octavia does not speak at all in this comic. One comic has Fluttershy admit that she is not the the World Champion at "The Quiet Game", Octavia is.
• Weight Woe: Fluttershy. And how she deals with it...
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Sweetie Belle lampshades this on Silver Spoon and her useless Cutie Mark.
• With Friends Like These...: Twilight comments this when others mock her for her inability to dance.
• Yandere: Cheerilee borders on this, with her creep factor.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Lyra and Bon Bon, and they're big fans of Sherlock×John.
• Yonkoma: The format of the comic, for the most part.

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