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After crossposting this on Reddit's Tip of My Tongue, it seems I might have found the movie. It's likely The Humpbacked Horse, also known as The Magic Pony, hence the confusion with MLP.
I misremembered the tone (it's a pretty jovial fairy tale, I guess anything's scary for a 4 year old), the fire (there were phoenixes, though) and the "shadow horse" (there were black horses with glowing manes). But yeah I'm positive that's the movie!
Edited by ninjamitsuki2 Call me "Heruru Meruru". http://blue-star-above-me.tumblr.com/
Back in the 90s when I was four years old my mom rented me a movie and said it was "My Little Pony", but... What I remembered was pretty different from My Little Pony.
For one, the horses had more realistic proportions, and the protagonist was a young human boy. There was a medieval European fantasy setting with thatched roof cottages, and the tone was not as cloying. I distinctly remember a black, shadowy horse, and a fire. Also flying horses, not pegasi, but sort of walking in the air like Santa's reindeer.
Now... It could very well have been My Little Pony and I just have bad memory/my mind playing tricks on me. I was only four afterall. I know the first gen cartoons can get surprisingly tense and maybe I mixed up Megan and Danny, but there is still the possibility it was a completely different movie.
But I don't know of any uh, animated fantasy horse movies from that era other than The Last Unicorn, which matches the proportions and setting I remember, but there isn't a young human boy in it or a shadow horse from what I know.
Sooo, is there some other 90s or earlier animated fantasy movie with horses I could have watched? Or was it indeed My Little Pony or The Last Unicorn and my memory just sucks?
Edited by ninjamitsuki2