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Image by Lightning-Bliss. Used with permission.note 

MLP Analysis (also known as "Bronalysis") is the name given to a collection of internet personalities who study and review episodes, fanworks, themes, characters and settings of the popular animated series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, as well as elements of the fandom. In addition, they also review MLP episodes as well as fan projects. Most of them speak through pony OC's of themselves.

The trend originally began from the rise to popularity of Digibrony (now known as Beatrice the Golden Witch)note , in early 2013/late 2012.

There is also an official home on Reddit.

While they are a rather large and diverse group, they do have several well-known members:

Shows involving several members include:


MLP Analysis provides examples of:

  • Added Alliterative Appeal:
  • Aerith and Bob: Some bronalysts have names like AnY Pony, Bronycurious, Digibrony, Ink Rose, and Persian Poetess. Others have names like AntonyC, Robin0928, and KatrinaHood.
  • Affably Evil: ToonKriticY2K demonstrates shades of this at the end of Lightning Bliss' slice-and-dice of the Rainbow Brite reboot (which reduces even her Superpowered Evil Side to a sobbing wreck), when he comes with GoldenFox offering genuine consolation.
  • Affectionate Nickname: KatrinaHood called AnY Pony "Maxie" when wishing him a happy 30th birthday.
  • Ambiguously Evil: AnY, on occasion.
    • Aeon of Dreams as well. He certainly acts sinister. But a surprisingly large number of his actions end up helping more ponies than they hurt. Just... not the kind of help the pony was asking for.
  • Angrish:
    • It's implied that AntonyC devolved into this during the "Technical Difficulties" scene during "Reviewing Is Magic 4", when Luna, after having been absent for the entire conflict, casually asks "Did I miss anything?"
      AntonyC: WHAT!? Di—did you miss anything!? How about EVERYTHING!!! Where have you been you RECALCITRANT BANA—
      technical difficulties
      AntonyC: —Oh you Pompous! Pimpling! PLOTHOLE!!!
    • Saberspark does this during Brony 101: Alicorns.
  • Amusing Injuries: Has happened to several reviewers' OCs, though Silver Quill generally suffers the most abuse.
  • Anthropomorphic Animal: Dr. Wolf, one of the few non-ponies among the collective.
  • April Fools' Day:
    • On April 1, 2014, several brony analysts posted videos regarding their thoughts on some Season Five spoilers that had supposedly been leaked. Lending the whole thing an air of authenticity was the fact that all of them were sharing the exact same news: Princess Luna voluntarily transforms back into Nightmare Moon in order to help fight off another threat, creator Lauren Faust returns to write an episode, Pinkie Pie gets a coltfriend, and fan OC Kimi Sparkle appears in an actual episode. However, it turned out to be part of a collective April Fools' prank spearheaded by AnY Pony. The following day, the joke became downright meta when Kimi Sparkle herself — who is not a real analyst, but a parody of such — posted her own video expressing outrage over being taken in by the fake spoilers.
    • In 2015, Dr. Wolf and Silver Quill switched places, with Silver performing therapy on AnY and Commander Firebrand, and Dr. Wolf presenting a Silver Quill-styled analysis of Snips and Snails. Meanwhile, Brawny Buck presented a review of "The Original My Little Pony", which turned out to be an episode of Mister Ed.
  • Art Evolution:
    • BronyCurious' videos, preferably the art style of his OC. note 
    • Emerald Comet's OC also changed from a Pony Creator OC to an original drawing as his reviews went on.
    • Sapphire Heart Song has gone through 5 changes of her OC, having it be a pointy pony, poorly drawn version from pokemon art academy, a first attempt, a second attempt, and a current 3rd attempt with a different hair colors.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • Atomic F-Bomb: Combined with Curse Cut Short, Saberspark lets one out in "My Two Bits: Lesson Zero".
  • Author Appeal:
    • Tommy Oliver is a HUGE Rarity fan. Beyond that though, he has a strong appreciation for character depth and complexity.
    • Similarly, Beatrice has a massive fondness for Applejack.
    • Any allusions to religion or classical literature is greatly appreciated by AntonyC.
    • KP loves "reformed" Discord to borderline fangirl levels, not to mention his voice actor, Johnde Lancie (she even has a video dedicated to him!). Any episode review with Discord in it easily clocks in at least twice the length of her other episode reviews!
    • Silver Quill's favorite Mane Six member is Fluttershy, and he also has an inner Luna fanboy.
    • Voice of Reason states in his Camaraderie is Supernatural review that parody is one of his favorite genres of comedy. This helps explain his reaction to Friendship is Witchcraft (detailed below).
    • References to Greek mythology make Josh Scorcher very happy.
    • Robin is a huge Cutie Mark Crusaders fan.
    • Ink Rose absolutely loves Celestia. Even to the point of having the ability to make a spot-on voice impersonation of her.
    • Cell Spex seems to be a big fan of Spike.
  • Badass Boast:
    • Saberspark gives one for the entire Brony community:
      Saberspark: We have been baptized by fire! In the pits of 4chan!! If we can make it there, we can make it anywhere.
    • There's also something strangely badass about AntonyC's last words when he's apparently Driven to Suicide.
      BronyCurious: The HELL!? Don't do THAT, there's no coming back from THAT!!!
      AntonyC: Well, then I guess we'll dance together, forever. In pony HEEELLLLLL!!!!!
  • Beam-O-War: The climax of "Flight of Blight" is one between Lightning Bliss and Thunder Blight. Bliss wins by coming to truly understand her rainbow magic and using it to kill Blight and reabsorb her.
  • Berserk Button:
    • Do NOT mention "A Canterlot Wedding" in AntonyC's presence. More specifically, do not bring up Luna's suspicious absence.
    • He was also quite ticked off by Equestria Girls turning the Mane Six into high school students.
    • Don't show Sapphire Heart Song a white OC with two-toned blue hair or she might murder it.
    • Don't ever mention Friendship is Witchcraft in the presence of Voice of Reason if you value your life (this also extended to Mr. Enter, albeit to a lesser extent).
    • The mere hint of a reference to the episode "Bridle Gossip" or "Rainbow Falls" or "A Matter of Principals" will send Voice of Reason into a rage.note 
    • "Rainbow Falls" also irritates Cell Spex, though to a lesser extent. And do not mention Flurry Heart to Cell Spex. She does not like that baby. At all.
    • Brawny Buck absolutely detests Flurry Heart.
    • Ink Rose absolutely cannot stand Celestia's portrayal as a tyrant and a troll. Downplayed by the fact that while she doesn't get enraged when people portray her as one, she does find it annoying.
    • If you value your life, then it's best that you do not tell Lightning Bliss that she's cute.
    • Absolutely, do NOT make a slightest mention of Double Rainboom (as well as anything related to it, such as The Powerpuff Girls) in front of Firebrand. At his worst, he even held Voice of Reason at gun-point with an M-16 twice!
    • For the love of Celestia, STOP breaking into Emerald Comet's channel!
    • Zaid Magenta was quite upset about the Grogar twist in "The Ending of the End", not just because it wasted all of the potential that Grogar had as the final villain of the show, but also because it completely ruined Discord's character development since "Keep Calm and Flutter On". He also went absolutely BERSERK when he found out about the death threats that Amy Keating Rogers received.
  • Big Bad: Several specials have them:
    • Baron Tall Tales for the 2014 Halloween Special.
    • Silver Quill ironically turns out to be this of the Valentine's Day special due to arranging the whole thing as a sacrifice to his girlfriend, the Dragon who caused the Hearts and Hooves Day myth to begin with.
    • Thunder Blight, Lightning Bliss' Literal Split Personality, serves as this for the three parter "Flight of Blight"
    • Cartoonz serves as one in the Cartoonz Arc, although unlike Thunder Blight, he also invades other videos.
    • Nightmare Shadow serves as the primary antagonist for Emerald Comet's "Horror Month" arc.
      • Occulus looks to be setting up to be one for the current "Hole in the Rift" arc/
  • Big Damn Heroes: Tommy Oliver pulls this in "Thoroughly Fanboying: The Return of Harmony" to restore a recently discorded Beatrice; by reminding her of her love for the franchise.
  • Breakout Character:
    • Silver Quill! Despite being fairly recent compared to most of the other analysts (having only just started in late 2013), he has quickly risen in popularity to the point where he is considered a nominee for the analysis community's unofficial leader.
    • Tyandaga has quickly gained over 15K subscribers within a year of being in the Bronalysis community.
    • Sapphire Heart Song got her break when it was displayed that her favorite analyst, Silver Quill had liked her content with over 200 subscribers within a night, and then got more breaks when appearing on AMWDW and collabing with Lightning Bliss.
    • Manga Kamen also quickly rose to popularity and in spite of being a griffon and not a hippogriff, gained nicknames such as "Diet Silver Quill" and "Silver Quill 2.0", which is partially due to his similar style of comedy. Silver Quill himself is of course quite fond of using the former.
  • Caustic Critic: Zigzagged. While they are nice people for the most part, they all can be extremely hate-filled towards any episodes and fan-works they don't like. Though Byter definitely takes the cake. AntonyC often parodies these kinds of critics, acting snobbish only to do something to immediately make himself look foolish.
  • Christmas Special: A Very Brony Hearth's Warming
  • Cloudcuckoolander:
    • AntonyC, as well as KP and Saberspark to a lesser extent.
    • Beatrice sometimes comes off like this since her style shift.
    • MasterCode.
  • The Comically Serious: Whenever you have several analysts interacting, Dr. Wolf generally ends up in this role. The others can get pretty nuts and easily overreact, but he always stay grounded and serious, creating a hilarious contrast. Just look at "Analyst Bronies React to Season 6 Finale" for a very good example.
  • The Conscience: Brawny Buck tends to act as this in his "A Buck to the Face" videos, repeatedly acting as a voice for morality and telling other analysts to get their "mind out of the gutter." He even has a "Moral of the Story" series which discusses the Aesop in each episode, and has noted that he has been nicknamed "Moral High Ground" (both maliciously and endearingly).
  • Cool Sword: Emerald Comet gets a purple, alicorn-themed one during Horror Month. It turns out to be a fragment of the deceased Alicorn goddess Amicitia.
  • Curse Cut Short:
    • Paleo during his review of "Wonderbolt Academy" when he realizes that the writer for that episode also wrote "The Mysterious Mare-do-well"
      Paleo: Son of a bi—!! (cue opening theme)
    • Saberspark also does this at one point, see Atomic F-Bomb above.
  • Darker and Edgier: Beatrice's redesign, complete with her smoking a cigarette.
  • Darkest Hour: In 'Flight of Blight': Lightning Bliss has nearly faded into nothing, her channel has nearly been completely taken over by her, and the other analysts attempts to defeat Blight didn't go well.
  • Deadpan Snarker: Many of the analysts play to this to varying degrees, but Brawny Buck's "A Buck to the Face" series is almost entirely made up of him poking fun at various things in the episodes, usually with another analyst along for the ride.
  • Driven to Suicide:
    • Played for Laughs in "Reviewing Is Magic 4" when Tommy's statement that he finds "A Canterlot Wedding" to be ingenious seemingly drives AntonyC to shoot himself in the temple. Turns out he was just transforming into pony mode..
    • It's played completely seriously in Emerald Comet's "Cupcakes" review when Nightmare Shadow's Breaking Lecture culminates in him trying to convince Emerald that the world would be a much better place if he was no longer alive. According to Word of God, Nightmare Shadow's words reminded him of the thoughts that actually suicidal people go through in Real Life. That they're worthless, that people would be happier without them, ect.
  • Face Palm:
    • AntonyC does this in "Reviewing Is Magic 3" after a fan points out that he misspelled mortgage.
    • The other analysts do it from time to time as well, with AnY and Silver Quill being frequent examples.
  • Fountain of Youth: The plot of "Dr. Wolf Day Care": KP, Silver Quill, Golden Fox, Keyframe, Toonkritic, Firebrand, and Lightning Bliss get turned into babies (and a child in Silver's case) due to a spell of Bliss's and end up in Dr. Wolf's care.
  • Fusion Dance: Lightning Bliss and Toonkritic do one in their joint review of "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?", becoming "ToonBlisstramon". The process is a direct Shout-Out to the DNA Digivolution from Digimon Adventure 02. They later figure out how to do it for real.
  • The Gadfly: Tommy occasionally demonstrates this trope, most noticeably in "Reviewing Is Magic 4", and his referral to Fluttershy as "Cheesy Gordita".
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Saberspark in his Brony 101: Alicorns video.
  • Halloween Special: Oh, there are PLENTY of these
    • Lethal Aurora Mage's Lethal Halloween, which was the biggest pony related collab in the brony community (Before the TF2 Analysis project) and featuring many well known members of the analysis community
    • Voice of Reason's PONY.MOV review with the introduction of his Alter Ego, Horror Score.
    • KP's review of "Luna Eclipsed", complete with redone bat pony faces and Thriller PMV ending.
    • The "This is Halloween" parody by most of the entire Rift community!
    • Nightmare Night 2014
    • Emerald Comet's "Horror Month" arc. The experience actually leaves him so traumatised that he flat out refuses to participate in a Halloween special the following year. Even having Flashback Echoes to his experience.
  • The Heart: Arguably Saberspark, whose videos have a tendency to inspire pride in the Bronydom, as well as keeping them from devolving into Fan Dumb.
  • Height Angst:
    • Lightning Bliss is a midget alicorn. She dislike being called cute, but her true Berserk Button is being called short. Which happens about all the time. She usually responds by unleashing her magic at the offenders, sicing her pet rainbow monster Twink at them, or — mostly in the TF2 Analysis series — going ballistic with her heavy weaponry.
    • Keyframe has the reverse problem, being a quite tall and lanky unicorn. While not as touchy as Lightning Bliss, she still doesn't like being reminded that she towers over most ponies, and can get nasty in response to too much mockery.
  • Hypocritical Humor: Done by AntonyC in "Reviewing Is Magic 4", when he tells Tommy to leave the fourth wall alone, then immediately looks at the script.
  • Ink-Suit Actor: Robin0928, Heartsong, and KatrinaHood's OCs closely resemble their real-life counterparts.
  • Jekyll & Hyde:
    • Voice of Reason and Horror Score. Until Horror Score became sentient in Voice's "Castle Mane-ia" review
    • Mage and Lethal Aurora are a gender-swapped version of this trope.
    • Cartoonz was thought to be the Hyde to ToonKritic's Jekyll, until Toon's Real Life skeletons in the closet came to light.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: AntonyC as well as Voice of Reason and Tommy Oliver. Beatrice can appear as this after her redesign.
  • Knight of Cerebus:
    • Lethal Aurora in "A Lethal Halloween". While most antagonists the Analysis Ponies face are simply jerks or troublemakers, Lethal Aurora is both a Physical Goddess and a sadistic mass-murderer.
    • Thunder Blight. While she has some campy elements to her, she's easily one of the most powerful antagonists in the entire rift and very nearly succeeded in erasing Lightning Bliss.
    • Nightmare Shadow. While at first he seems like an Inversion of this trope, being revealed as a high pitched, melodramatic foal after weeks of build up, he quickly drops the act and proves himself to be a Not-So-Harmless Villain. By the time he attempts to drive Emerald Comet to suicide (and very nearly succeeds), this trope is in FULL effect.
    • Occulus. While the "villain" part is currently ambiguous, he's certainly threatening and is perhaps the first antagonist to have NO comedy whatsoever, being a straight-faced, No-Nonsense Nemesis .
  • Large Ham:
    • AntonyC, easily one of the most melodramatic reviewers.
    • Exaggerated by Saberspark in his "My Two Bits" series. He does know that there are other drinks besides red cordial, right?
    • Though not as much as the above, Tommy Oliver does fall into this at times, especially when asked in his first "BronyCurious Replies" video how he feels when he converts someone's "Best Pony" to Rarity.
      about to get loud:
      BronyCurious: YEEEESSSSSSS!!!! THEY SEE THE LIGHT!!!!
  • The Leader:
    • Beatrice was the one who gave the reviewers their official home on Reddit, and has admitted to taking on this role in her social circles. She's since publicly disavowed this status with an edgy new style. Fan reaction was mixed. After that, though, she abandoned that style.
    • In Beatrice's absence, Silver Quill, Josh Scorcher, and Dr. Wolf have more or less come to act as the group's unofficial leaders. Each could respectively be described as primarily charismatic, headstrong, and levelheaded.
  • Major General Song: Dr. Wolf and Silver Quill sing this during their "Hooffields and McColts" review, the Doctor starting to sing it while in a drug/fever-induced delirium with Silver picking up the second half.
  • Me's a Crowd: Played for laughs in various reviews of "Power Ponies", as Mane-iac's henchmen bear more than a passing resemblance to AntonyC's avatar.
  • Nice Guy: Most of their personas. Mostly.
  • Not So Above It All: Despite hating "A Canterlot Wedding", AntonyC frequently admits (rather reluctantly), that there are elements of the two-parter he enjoys. Not to mention he does the Sunshine Sunshine dance with BC. Lampshaded by Tommy Oliver:
    Tommy: Don't look now, somepony's being entertained!
    AntonyC: Well... OKAY, that Was kind of cool.
  • "Not So Different" Remark: During Diamond Tiara's therapy visit, Dr. Wolf sympathizes with her when it comes to her mother's controlling nature, as it's very similar to how the Master treated him. Diamond appreciates it.
  • The Pollyanna: Ink Rose in "A Lethal Halloween".
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: From AntonyC, see Angrish above.
  • "Psycho" Strings: These play whenever "A Canterlot Wedding" is mentioned in "Reviewing Is Magic 3".
  • Rage Breaking Point:
  • Reactive Continuous Scream: AntonyC and Tommy Oliver do this in "Reviewing Is Magic 4".
  • Real Men Wear Pink: Dustykatt, often dubbed the "Manliest Brony in the world", who has no trouble loving a little girl show... or even eventually crossdressing.
  • Red Oni, Blue Oni: AntonyC and Tommy in the "Reviewing Is Magic 4" video. With Antony being Hammy and emotional, and Tommy being calm and thoughtful.
  • Remember the New Guy?: In this BronyCurious vid he responds to Kimi Sparkle as if she'd always been a major member of the analyst community.
  • Ruined FOREVER: In-Universe. Saberspark frequently parodies this facet of the Fan Dumb.
  • Say My Name: AntonyC does this as a Skyward Scream in "Reviewing is Magic 3", when he finds out that his TMNT poster is missing.
  • Self-Parody: Voice of Reason as Horror Score in his "Castle Mane-ia" review:
    Voice of Reason: Come back here, you ponified jack-o-lantern!
  • Serial Escalation AntonyC's attempts to open a TF2 Heavy box set. Ranging from scissors, to hedge trimmers, to running it over with his car. None of these attempts are successful.
  • Shared Universe: The Bronyverse.
  • Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism:
    • Most members of the group tend to fall more in the middle of this trope, although some tend to fall squarely on the side of either idealism (Dr. Wolf and Persian Poetess) or cynicism (AntonyC and Tommy Oliver).
    • In-Universe, Nightmare Shadow is completely on the "cynicism" end of the scale. To the point where he cannot even conceive of the idea that someone might not be evil.
  • Species Surname: Dr. Wolf.
  • Story Arc:
    • The Rift Saga, started by Voice of Reason and AnY Pony with their "Magical Mystery Cure" review and ended by them with their "Twilight's Kingdom" review.
    • There's also the "Horror Month" story arc that ran on Emerald Comet's channel from October 2014 to November 2014.
  • Synthetic Voice Actor: Cell Spex uses her computer to "talk" during the "Analyst Bronies React" season 6 premiere video due to a throat infection caused by her flu.
  • Tag Along Kid: Storm Analysis, Robin, KatrinaHood, and Ink Rose are only twelve, fourteen, fifteen, and sixteen respectively while most of the MLP Analysis community (and most of the brony community) is in their 20s.
  • There Are No Therapists: Adverted by Dr. Wolf, who, in his videos, plays a licensed therapist who often looks at the psychology of the characters. He's even had a therapy session with Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rarity (and Rainbow Dash, but she doesn't want anybody to know).
  • Totally Radical: Dude Antony.
  • Tranquil Fury: AntonyC's reaction to "A Canterlot Wedding" during "Reviewing Is Magic 3".
    AntonyC: Season two finale? What is this of which you speak? [death glare]
  • True Companions: The reviewers seem to be a very tight knit group.
    • We have Voice of Reason and the Rift to thank for that. See Story Arc above.
    • Less so now that Beatrice has gone off on her own.
    • Even less so now that the Rift Cafe's skype group has been divided in half with some reviewers such as Dr. Wolf, KP and Silver Quill no longer being in the skype groups, though they still appear in larger collaboration videos, such as Channel Hopper's "Meanwhile 3" (which was posted to the Rift Cafe YouTube channel) and "A Serpent's Tale" and Looney is currently trying to make a video to emphasize the fact that "The Rift" is not limited to any skype group. Some people in the "Secret Rift" in particular seem to view the split as a competition while the people in the "old rift/The Rift Cafe" do not and generally find the division to be rather immature and/or pointless. It's probably for the best though as a lot of people in "old rift/The Rift Cafe" do not get along well with certain members of the "Secret Rift".
  • Valentine's Day Episodes: The Shipping Game.
  • Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Nightmare Shadow. In a series full of villains with campy, melodramatic (or merely annoying) plans, Shadow is a sadistic, manipulative Ax-Crazy, EquiniodAbomination, Knight Templar who calmly and cruely uses a continuous Breaking Lecture to convince Emerald Comet that he's a monster and that the world would be better off if he just killed himself right now. All while making it clear that he intends to do this to every single Brony in the rift.
    "It's not your fault. The world is full of scum. You just happened to be one of them. Don't blame yourself too much. You were nothing special. Just the first Brony I could find."
  • Violent Glaswegian: Mad Munchkin sometimes shows a few shades of this, especially in TF2 Analysis.
  • Violently Protective Girlfriend: Quite a few of the female ponies are shown to be extremely protective of their boyfriends, to the point they'll go Ax-Crazy. Notable examples include Keyframe, Harmony Dancer, and Aramau the Fiery Secretary.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: AntonyC and Tommy Oliver. They bicker Like an Old Married Couple in their co-review, but they obviously have a ton of respect for one another.
  • Wham Episode: "Flight of Blight" for Lightning Bliss: she tries to De-power herself of her Alicorn status... but only succeeds in creating a literal Shadow Archetype named Thunder Blight who nearly pulls Kill and Replace on her. However, while crazy events like that are kinda common, this ends when Bliss gaining an understanding of her rainbow magic to destroy Blight, overcoming a large part of her Power Incontinence she'd been suffering all this time.
  • Wham Line: Invoked. AntonyC gets one partway through "All About That Drama," surrounding the controversy of ILoveKimPossibleALot using show assets for her video "Let's Go Meet John de Lancie." Antony eventually reveals how KP got her hands on the show assets in the first place. After he does, "Ode to Joy" plays while bombs explode in the background for added effect, complete with AntonyC conducting the music.
    AntonyC: When the rest of the world giggles in wonder as to why she chose to use the damned assets in the first place. Why? (Beat) Because I told her to.
  • Why the Fandom Can't Have Nice Things: Beatrice made this video to completely slam the amount of immature and ridiculous YouTube comments she got from her video, "Your Anime Sucks: Sword Art Online S1", and she is frustrated to the point where she proclaims, at the end of the video, that the replies on the next "Your Anime Sucks" videos will all be disabled.

 
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A Gross Misunderstanding

Due to his background as a member of the US Marine Corps, Brony analyst and reviewer Josh Scorcher aka "Firebrand" has a number of gripes about the nature of the Militaries Are Useless Trope and how Armies are portrayed in most forms of media because of it, along with focusing on how even Friendship Is Magic keeps falling into the same pitfalls that most other cartoons have in-regards to the effectiveness and competency of armed forces by listing the numerous issues regarding both the Royal Guard and The Wonderbolts in the episode Rarity Investigates.

How well does it match the trope?

4.64 (22 votes)

Example of:

Main / MilitariesAreUseless

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