A thread to discuss My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and the tie-in media.
All of the usual forum rules
apply. In addition, please remember that the thread is discussing a kids' show, and it's primarily focused on the work itself, not the fanfic — in particular, we don't want to see lewdness creeping in.
Edited by Mrph1 on Aug 26th 2024 at 10:24:26 AM
Haven't seen the movies besides End of Evangelion. And yeah if you re trying to find actual symbolism in Eva, you are doing it wrong, all that religious stuff? it's just pretty colors and shapes with no actual meaning. And all the religious naming for things is just the result of Selle trying to force the whole thing to be some kind of biblical prophecy/destiny thing.
@Kegisak: As somebody who's actually studied Biblical symbolism I can confirm that like 98% of NGE is Faux Symbolism.
As for Shinji, I can see what they're trying to do, namely Deconstruct the whole Fighting Robot genre by making Reality Ensues when a kid would get put in that sort of situation. Namely that most teenagers would crack under the stress. The problem with that is that for most people, having the protagonist be unrealistically competent and confident is one of the Acceptable Breaks from Reality because it makes for a more enjoyable story. On one hand, there's a valid in-universe reason for why he acts the way he does, but that doesn't necessarily mean that people will enjoy a story about such a character. Personally, I think the series is okay. I respect what it was trying to do and how much influence it had on the genre as a whole, but I think the Faux Symbolism just ended up being too much, and as a result the story never really got a resolution that made any sense because like Kegisak said, the symbolism is so random that trying to make it coherent would be impossible.
@CDRW: For what it's worth, Part 1 of JBA is almost universally considered to be the weakest part of the series.
As for the whole literature analysis thing, I think that at some point there can be some validity to some of the points, as just about every work is something of a reflection of the social circumstances in which it was written, but a lot of people tend to take it way too far and get obsessed with looking for the "deeper meaning" to the exclusion of any other element of the work, which is just dumb, doubly so when they latch onto their own interpretation of it and ignore that everyone will read it differently. And they assume that it's the only aspect of the work to be considered and ignore the fact that there are other reasons to read beyond "theme".
edited 3rd Aug '15 9:03:24 PM by JapaneseTeeth
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I don't think it's bad, but it's clearly still in the "finding itself" phase. Part 2 ramps up the more absurd elements and forgoes most of the drama stuff.
I have serious Hype Aversion to Jo Jo. It's starting to irritate me whenever I see it now, and NO ONE will shut up about it.
That said, I'm totally cool with people liking it, and I don't mind if someone talks about it once and a while. It only bothers me when it's all they talk about and act like its the best thing to happen to anime. Because it isn't.
you know, I seem to have heard something like that said to another colorful fandom that I know of...
"There's not a girl alive who wouldn't be happy being called cute." ~Tamamo-no-Mae
I honestly wouldn't say it's the best either. I don't even know if it would be in my top five. I think it just crops up a lot because, well, it's insane. It's one of those works where there really isn't a lot to compare it to, and it's been around for so long that it's something of a mainstay. It definitely has its weaknesses (in the later parts, the plot tends to boil down to "establish team of good guys, have the Big Bad throw Stand Users at them, Final Confrontation", and the art can be a bit... odd in a lot of places), but it's generally so melodramatic that it's enjoyable to most people anyway
Anyway, I'm going to bed now.
edited 3rd Aug '15 9:17:08 PM by JapaneseTeeth
Reaction Image RepositoryI have no idea why people keep saying the Madoka dub is bad. I know, opinions and all, but I didn't have any problems with it at all. In fact I thought the actors did a great job, particularly in the cases of Kyueby, Kyoko and Homura. Then again I haven't really watched the original japanese version, but if I had found the voices/acting annoying {Which I didn't} I could have just switched back to the Sub at any time {I watched the series on Netflix}.
Okay, rant/gushing is over. Now back to the topic of ponies........ Erm, I got nothing at the moment.
Yeah, I thought the Madoka dub was pretty good as well. It got everything across, at least.
Japanese to english dubs are always a bit weird because of the differing structures of the language forcing kind of weird and unnatural diction in order to sync up. I imagine that can be a bit offputting, in some cases moreso than others, but I grew up on shows that had been translated from French, so I kinda got used to that. It's vaguely nostalgic, even.
Birthright: an original web novel about Dragons, the Burdens of Leadership, and Mangoes.Post of the Day #1188
It made the article significantly more laughter worthy for me.
Ah crossovers. Either you love it or it makes you taste like sodium.
Visit my Tumblr! I may say things. The Bureau Project20% cooler now feels like a cheap and easy way to try and "connect" or refference the fandom. Mostly cause you never see any Brony say that even mockingly. You probably see it on a Hot Topic Black Board or a show's parody of FIM.
My Tumblr "If theirs one thing I'm good at, it's blowing" Jesse Cox 2013It's one of the oldest memes, and mostly out of fashion.
edited 4th Aug '15 9:03:33 AM by edvedd
Visit my Tumblr! I may say things. The Bureau Project@Scott: It was really popular back in the days of the first season, to the point of almost being a fandom Catchphrase. Then as we got more content to work with it eventually became something of a Discredited Meme.
I think that's largely because with the fandom being (comparatively) smaller and with little material to work with, each individual joke could spread a lot further more quickly, because all it took was one or two popular artists to use it and then everyone would be aware of it. Nowadays there are so many fans that everybody will latch onto different parts, so you get a bunch of minor memes rather than one massive one.
edited 4th Aug '15 9:19:19 AM by JapaneseTeeth
Reaction Image RepositoryLate to the partyness:
Yep, that's it. It was a fun watch and did, in fact, appear to be solidly programmed (I don't recall many major skips or bugs they took advantage of). Was quite the early morning acid trip, though, since that was not what I was expecting out of the game at all. It was then followed up by Samurai Pizza Cats, which is also pretty weird, but not quite as entertaining as the Hello Kitty game was.
Re: Evangelion: I remember watching that when I was fifteen and totally losing interest because I couldn't connect with any of the characters. That, and just how insanely acid trippy the whole thing was (finding out later that most of the shit that looked meaningful was thrown in because they thought it was cool explained a lot, though...). I can't really say I hate Shinji, but he was incredibly formulaic for me, since I'd run into that archetype with so many JRPGs. In fact, I think the penguin ended up being the most interesting character.

I think a lot of my problem is that I was trying to track the story based on symbolism. Taking everything at face value - Giant Monsters are attacking! robot up and fight shit! - is much simpler, but I went three movies in(roughly 3/4 of the series, I think) trying to figure out what shit meant based on what was, to me, really obvious and blatant symbolism, and it all just kinda became noise.
Birthright: an original web novel about Dragons, the Burdens of Leadership, and Mangoes.