YMMV / Filly Funtasia

• Angst? What Angst?: In "Farina, the Fire Dragon", Rose finally learns that her great-grandmother Lilly was the one who made the all powerful Dark Crystal by means of The Power of Hate, which inavertently aided Wranglum, all because she got her heart broken. After a lot of self-doubt and crying at just about any mention of what wrongdoing Lilly did, she then learns that her great-grandmother atoned for her actions by helping Farina the Dragon get back to health. However, this still doesn't really excuse anything that she did prior to that, only just implying that she regretted doing it, but Rose surprisingly gets over her dilemma too quickly by the end of the episode. Not helping is that all of this only came up in this episode and not before, despite how it feels like it should've been a longer Character Arc.^note The fact that it's placed as episode three in the Singapore-airing order surely does not help.
• Awesome Art:
  • The show itself may not look polished, but the Concept Art is absolutely gorgeous.
  • The 2D book illustrations in episodes 12 and 13 also look pretty.
• Awesome Music: The music in this show is just so awesome that it has its own page.
• Bile Fascination: Big time. After the first trailer had dropped out of nowhere, many bronies were genuinely curious about what they had initially perceived as some foreign Friendship Is Magic knockoff. This lessened after it actually came out, as it proved more than just a knockoff and garnered genuine fans.
• Broken Base: Is the show's animation passable (or just excusable), or should they have stuck to a 2D style that's more accurate to the beautiful concept art mentioned above? Maybe both? A third group is willing to give them the benefit of the doubt given the Troubled Production and the show having to change animation studios midway through production. This third group was seemingly vindicated with the season 2 trailer, which shows noticeably improved animation over the first.
• Cult Classic: The show has a very small, but vocal fanbase, despite the show itself being fairly unknown outside of MLP spaces (and nostalgia for the franchise it was based on).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Petunia, Wranglum's gender-bending fake Filly form in "Wranglum in Disguise", was pretty well-received for being quite cute, with some actually fanonizing "her" as a permanent character.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With My Little Pony fans (mostly just Friendship Is Magic fans, though many fans of that are also into Filly Funtasia). Before it had its own TV show, the Filly line was/is generally not well regarded among MLP toy collectors. Equestria Daily reported on the show in October 2013 when the first trailer dropped, and continued to do so for two more times with other trailers of the show, and let's just say that bronies were not amused each time. It was essentially the start of a rivalry.
  • With the show finally premiering in March 2019, right on the cusp on the announcement of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic's ninth and final season. Fans have noticed the coincidence, with some going so far to say the long delay was all a deliberate and calculated attempt on part of the producers for Filly Funtasia to step in while Friendship Is Magic ends.^note Turns out the actual reason was that Dracco was going through financial and legal battles, and tons of production company changes were made, hindering the time spent on the show in the progress. Not helping is the case is the show's sudden disappearance once Friendship Is Magic's Season 9 premiered, then the sudden re-surface of the English version's trailer in October 2019, well after Friendship Is Magic aired its Series Finale weeks earlier.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The bits and pieces that we know of the cancelled TV specials from BRB ("Filly Butterfly" and "Filly Stars") leave a lot to the imagination, such as:
    • The origin of how Rose met the rest of the Filly Five, and even how they met each other.^note Thanks to the Anachronic Order of this series, the first episode of season two actually answers the former.. sort of.
    • The long running feud between Zach's tribe of Star Fillies and the rest.
    • The cataclysmic 'dark moon' that would throw the setting's magic into chaos.
  • The toyline also has a massive amount of lore surrounding it full of this, including each Filly race's homeland with their own culture.
• Fanon: Cedric is usually regarded as an autistic-coded character (to a similar degree as Peridot or Entrapta^note Who were both later confirmed to be intentionally autistic-coded by Word of God), due to him being a very intelligent Gadgeteer Genius, yet not as understanding to some emotions and social cues and willing to question anything that doesn't seem logical.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Despite the history of Funtasians and bronies, the latter fandom has recently been kinder to the former after finding that the series wasn't as bad as they perceived from the initial trailers. It is very much helped by the fact that 4chan allows you to post about Filly per /mlp/'s rules, so these two fandoms were bound to cross paths eventually. With Friendship Is Magic confirmed to be ending in 2019, a few heartbroken Bronies have latched onto Filly as a Replacement Goldfish show.
  • There's a bit of overlap with My Little Pony: Pony Life fans aswell, due to both shows being infamously despised by the Friendship Is Magic fandom despite being considered harmless by fans of both. However, there is still a group of Filly Funtasia fans that hate Pony Life.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The toyline is massively popular in Germany and other German-speaking countries. In fact, there's a general misunderstanding that a German toy company (Simba) created and owned the brand, when they were only licensed to distribute it until that deal fell through.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • While Principal Sparkle already sounds familiar to a certain purple alicorn, in season 8 of that show, Twilight Sparkle actually becomes a teacher, and at least most the season is dedicated to a school setting.
  • It's purely coincidental, but Fabian actually predates Maud Pie by at least one year. Both are misunderstood nerd-type ponies that have a fascination with rocks.^note Well, specifically geology and mineralogy in Fabian's case, but same thing.
  • It finally properly debuted in America March 2022 mere months before the latest MLP series, having a surprising number of similarities (an All-CGI Cartoon about multicolored horses finding their magic, that features an episodic dark, powerful villain who is unbeknowest to our main characters, gives the show a cheesy 90's cartoon vibe, and who needs to be aided by their pushover Minion with an F in Evil, who has a huge soft side and eavesdrops on our main characters, unbeknownest that the Minion is working on the side of evil) despite being announced nearly nine years prior.
• Lost in Medias Res: The show immediately thrusts you into this magical academy attended by colorful equine friends who already know each other (the main one of which is only shown in the Theme Tune to be a new student in such), and a weird tree creature trapped inside a mirror with his bat assistant trying to take over said academy... for 13 episodes. The first episode is about Bella accidentally eating one of her friends' cupcakes, much to the confusion of so many people who were just starting the show. It isn't until the second season, the first episode of which acts out as the first episode of the show (no flashbacks involved), that some kind of explanation for a few things is given: Rose, along with the rest of her friends who she's apparently already known at this point, move into the academy, and a proper enough introduction to the series villain Wranglum is shown. Though it should be obvious by now that this wasn't deliberate, the show's major Troubled Production caused for the show's episode order to be incredibly messed up.^note This has since been fixed, as Singapore started airing all 26 in their own, uniform order; the first episode in their order is the first intended episode of the show.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The entire show's existence had gained this status in the brony fandom back in October 2013, where the show's relevancy was at an all-time high, and many bronies were bewildered by it.
  • A quick scene in the first episode where Bella kicks with her hind left leg and yells "haaaa!", causing four other fillies to follow suit, became a short-lived meme within the brony fandom. Here's a cute drawing of Fluttershy doing it.
  • "NO FROM SIMBA!"^note Viva Reverie made a video making fun of a German toy commercial for Filly. It's also a popular joke to point out that the distributor for the toyline (who is sometimes mistaken for creating it) shares the same name with Simba from The Lion King.
  • The logo to the Ukrainian channel that has aired the show, PLUSPLUS, has been memed by the fandom for how unintentionally hilarious it looks◊, especially if you pause at the right part.
  • Jokes about the show premiering in unlikely and/or impossible places before it ever airs in English were frequent among the fandom. Of course, they've died out once episodes in English were released.
    • Similarly, jokes about the Italian dub of the show being canon to the lore of the show. This is thanks to the Italian dub itself being met with the highest praise among fans, to the point where many can't fanthom a world where the Fillys don't speak Italian.
  • CHILDREN CAKE.
• Moe:
  • A necessity for a show like this, all of the Fillys look adorable despite the somewhat unpolished CGI animation. But Bella especially qualifies.
  • Battiwigs looks adorable, even for a villain.
• Moral Event Horizon: Wranglum was sealed away because he crossed it long before the show began with his invasion of Aquatica that nearly caused their extinction.
• Narm: Wranglum's Pirahna minions first introduced in Episode 11 are called Jaw Jaws, in both English dubs. For a scary-looking bunch of evil henchmen that are supposed to be taken seriously, the name Jaw Jaws just doesn't fit.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: If it weren't for Equestria Daily reporting on the show three times before its premiere (with additional help from 4chan!), most people wouldn't have even known that this show existed. Sure, it helped kickstart the "ripoff" complaints, but it also helped the show gain a cult following, and to some bronies, it was just pure Bile Fascination.
• Older Than They Think: Some people, like Dr. Ashen here, think the Filly toyline was created as a direct response to the success of Friendship Is Magic, when it predates that show by four years.^note As does the My Little Pony franchise in general. To be fair, he didn't specifically say "Friendship is Magic", at which point he would be correct that Filly is merely a cash-in on the success of MLP in general. That said, it's clear by the context that the comment was referring to the present iteration of the franchise.
• Periphery Demographic: Filly Funtasia instantly caught fire, with a fansite springing up just a short time after being revealed, that was still going with updates even when the show hadn't debuted yet. Of course, being similar to a certain other show about colorful equines could have something to do with it.
• Rooting for the Empire: Some people actually want Wranglum to win, because he's just so damn awesome.
• So Okay, It's Average: Those that were curious about the show, expecting something on-par with the later seasons of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, were a bit disappointed, while others expected just as much from its trailers. Some just think the show is nothing more than inoffensive. The dialogue may be cheesy and the animation may look unpolished at times, but it's not enough to outright call the show bad. For those that actually gave the show a chance (that weren't already fans), the general consensus is that it's not as awful as everyone once made it out to be, but it's not the best thing ever either.
• Superlative Dubbing:
  • People vastly preferred the Italian dub of the show, supported mostly by the fact that it is the first version of the show that ever surfaced. The acting and fitting voices for the characters was heavily praised, and enhanced by an active fandom ready to subtitle these episodes, and many jokes about how the Italian dub is canon were made. When any trace of an official English dub finally came out, people were not pleased by the results (unenthused voice acting, lackluster script, lip syncing not matching or in some cases missing lines entirely), claiming that the Italian version will always be better.
    • It's important to note that it didn't start there, however, as people were even displeased by the English trailers that were released much before any official English version came out. The last trailer to come out featuring clips of the first dub was the most polarizing, with people fearing these wouldn't be the finalized voices. Wranglum's voice in this version was met especially with the most criticism, as he sounds much more adolescent, scratchy, and whiny than in any other dub.
  • While not praised as much as the Italian dub is, the second English version that was released in Singapore was much better received than the first, as it is more polished. It offered more than just three episodes (with all 26 of them being released in a uniform order), and it has far better voice acting than the first.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: A show about incredibly cute horses having fun and being friends in their school is bound to be this in spades (much like the show it's usually compared to). However, unlike that show, even the villains in the show (both being adorably cute in their own ways) retain a cheesy 90's cartoon feel, as does the show itself, and one can always feel comfort in the fact that they lose in the silliest of ways. Some might even say that the show downright borders on saccharine. How good or bad that is depends.
• They Copied It, So It Sucks!: The general reaction by the brony fandom (which is not unusual).
• Ugly Cute: Wranglum's real form might somewhat qualify to some, but his "mirror face" is this trope in spades, being very expressive (even moreso than Wranglum's real face) and pulling a lot of comical, or outright cute expressions. This is enhanced by his voice in the first English dub, which makes him sound a lot more soft and adolescent than one would expect from such a threatening villain.
• Watch It for the Meme: Because of the Memetic Mutation status of the show in the brony fandom, along with the Bile Fascination some had, once the show finally premiered, some bronies would watch it just simply because they thought it'd be So Bad, It's Good. For most that actually watched it, either it ended up being So Okay, It's Average, or they stayed because they genuinely liked it. Or maybe it was So Bad, It's Good.
• Win Back the Crowd: When the initial trailer for the series back in 2013 was released, bronies were... not amused, to say the least. But ever since it was announced that it would finally air, it's safe to say that while some were skeptical, others were pretty intrigued and more open to the idea of another pony show. More heads started to turn as the first episode was uploaded to YouTube and shared on Equestria Daily, and even more people were on board once the subtitles for it came out. It helped that the show itself, while clearly inspired by MLP, has its own setting, magic system, lore, and unique races and thus wasn't the straight ripoff many expected.

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