My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: Season One Review

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I have been waiting for a release of the full season for quite some time as I'm sure many others have. Definitely support this release,it is clearly targeted for Bronies being an exclusive like this and the alleged bonus content like audio commentary with the cast and crew. Supporting this will surely lead to more DVD releases, perhaps even Blu-ray!

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It doesn't matter if you'd rather have Blu-ray. Good sales of this will lead to Blu-ray. It doesn't matter if you have access to Netflix streaming or iTunes or YouTube for the episodes. They don't have audio commentary. Find the money for this and support the official release!

Update (11/27/12): According to Seth's review of this DVD on Equestria Daily, the commentaries on this disc are amazing. I share his sentiment even now, and I can confirm my agreement with him after I receive the DVD.

Update (12/13/12): I received my DVD days ago, but I just wanted to confirm that this is a great 4-disc DVD set. The commentaries are especially interesting, although the only new voice credit information that we learned that wasn't already known was that Tabitha St. Germain voiced the stallion who screams in "The Best Night Ever" after Rainbow Dash knocks and catches him.

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Putting aside the whole "brony" phenomenon, this show is still well worth the price, for a number of reasons:

The characters: This is where the show really shines. The characters are all very well-rounded and surprisingly complex for a show aimed at this age group; it avoids lumping the characters into stereotypical roles. For example, in just about any other show, Rarity would be a stereotypical girly-girl, obsessed with boys, shopping, and hair. Here, she's certainly a fashionista, but she's also a competent businesswoman, something of an artist, and knows how to handle herself in dangerous situations. All the cast members have a similar level of development, which lends itself really well to the slice-of-life nature of the show.

The character designs and animation are great. It's cute and endearing, but not to the tooth-rot degree of previous generations, and it's still good for the occasional action sequence. As a bonus it's very expressive and surprisingly detailed for a flash-based cartoon.

Ditto for the music; it doesn't necessarily stick out, but it definitely enhances the show as a whole.

Good writing: On the whole, the show avoids most of the pitfalls of kid shows by using lots of character-based humor and self-awareness that can appeal to viewers of any age and rarely feels patronizing towards the adult audience. You don't need to be a kid to find it funny. At the same time, the plots are generally executed well enough that they don't feel like rehashes of common plotlines, and even when the plots are quite simple they're still entertaining due to the charm that the characters bring to everything.

Good Acting: There's some serious voice talent here; Tara Strong (Twilight Sparkle) is basically the patron saint of voice acting, Andrea Libman displays some impressive range (voicing both Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, two characters who have almost opposite personalities), Ashleigh Ball gives Rainbow Dash and Applejack very distinct voices, and Tabitha St. Germain does a great of job making Rarity into an entertaining and balanced character.

This isn't to say that Season 1 is totally without fault; like all things, it has a few rough spots (In particular, the Cutie Mark Crusader based episodes can seem a bit same-y due to the characters having the same motivation in each), but overall it's consistently high quality and well worth checking out, even if you aren't a kid. I've found that it has a degree of quality and subtlety that sets it apart from a lot of other children's programming.

EDIT: Now that I have the DVD, I'm just going to throw in a few comments about the physical media aspects. I haven't had time to watch everything yet, but I've watched a few episodes worth on the various discs and they look good so far.

1. The commentaries are very entertaining and interesting. They aren't particularly ground-breaking, but it's fun to hear about some of the behind-the-scenes stuff from the show's staff. There's a good selection of people from actors, to writers, to producers, and they definitely offer some interesting insights into the show.

2. The audio and video quality are great. It's not hi-def, but it's still perfectly good quality that really demonstrates the skill of animators and composers.

3. The physical DVD box itself is sturdy, if without frills.

The only things I can really complain about are rather insubstantial, but in the interest of fairness I'll include them anyway:

1. The box artwork. They use some of the same stock vectors that they use for 90% of the merchandise, which isn't bad in and of itself, but having seen it everywhere else it feels a bit lazy when it would have been fairly easy to use something new. Also, one of the DVD's has an image of Princess Cadance, who doesn't actually appear in the series until the end of the second season. It doesn't bug me, but I guess a kid could get confused wondering who the pink pony on the DVD is.

2. The menu music. It's a loop of the "My Little Pony" line from the show's theme song, and if you listen to it for more than about 20 seconds it starts to get a bit annoying. Again, an extremely minor issue, but one that could have been really easily solved by just sticking in some of the show's (excellent) BGM instead of a 10-second loop.

So basically, the show itself is awesome, the DVDs maintain the quality, and the only issues are so insubstantial that they're barely worth mentioning. They certainly aren't important enough to knock any stars off the rating. If you were on the fence about buying the DVD, do it, it's completely worth it.

(Note: I haven't checked out all the special features, like the coloring pages and whatnot on the fourth disc, but I doubt those will really factor much into the rating either)

Honest reviews on My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic: Season One

It's about time the greatest show to hit our TV hit DVD, so can't wait :D

I will be ordering this from the UK, and I recommend it to ANYONE!

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I'm not going to waste time talking about the show. If you want to know what it's about, read any of the other 80+ reviews lavishing praise on the series, or, better yet, record a few episodes from the Hub on your DVR or Tivo. I'm going to discuss the stuff people reading these reviews actually care about: picture/sound quality, packaging, and extras.

Picture/Sound Quality = This set looks as good as any of the other MLP:FiM DVDs released by Shout! Factory. Really, this show can only look so good on DVD. The picture quality is great for a Flash-animated show on DVD, but it won't look great if you're used to the 1080p iTunes releases of the episodes.

Packaging = This set contains four DVDs in one case. Each disc is well-protected and easy to access. The art on the front and back of the case is pretty good. I'm less thrilled with the illustrations on the third and fourth discs (third disc has an illustration of Princess Cadance, a character not introduced until the Season Two finale! while the fourth disc has a questionably illustrated Princess Celestia). This is all nit-picking, though. Everything is bright and colorful. The case comes with a slip-cover illustrated the same as the case. The case itself is see-through, and the opposite side of the paper with the cover art displays a very pretty layout of various characters walking around Ponyville while also listing the various episodes in the set.

Extras = I counted six episodes with full commentary tracks (Friendship is Magic parts 1 and 2, Winter Wrap-Up, Suited for Success, The Show Stoppers, and The Best Night Ever). Commentators for these episodes include a couple of Hasbro execs, Jayson Thiessen, James Wootton, Nicole Oliver, Cathy Weseluck, Andrea Libman, Tabitha St. Germain, and Daniel Ingram. The commentators have a lot of fun talking about these episodes, although, far and away, my favorite commentary so far is the one for "Suited for Success," in which Daniel Ingram talks quite a bit about the difficulties in finalizing the songs in that episode. There's nothing mind-blowing in these commentaries, but it is fun to hear Ingram talk about the music and the voice actors talk about the various characters.

Beyond the commentaries, there are short "Pony Profiles" in which the Mane Six are briefly introduced, downloadable coloring sheets, and two sing-a-longs (for the extended version of the title theme and At the Gala, respectively). These are mainly for children, but the sing-a-longs are definitely cute.

All-in-all, this is a solid set, and well worth investing in if you want to support the show's official release. Let's buy enough of these that Shout! Factory releases high quality Blu-Rays of these eps.