Recently, the Hasbro toy company’s My Little Pony Friendship is Magic TV show series has sparked more Conventions, Fan Sites, and Forums in the past two years in America than most children’s shows ever would in ten. The ironic thing about it is, the main audience for the show is adult men. The series is written by Lauren Faust, who was the lead writer of Fosters Home for Imaginary Friends and a story artist on Cartoon Network’s The Powerpuff Girls. Although she no longer writes for the show, she continues her involvement with the fandom through her participation in the upcoming film, BronyCon: The Documentary, which will adventure into and explain the unusual following that her artistic efforts inadvertently created.
How I first learned of the show was through web artist hotdiggedydemon’s parody cartoon that appeared on Newgrounds.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxAJqvslV7M.
(Warning: Contains fowl language)
After cluelessly laughing my ass off at this random animation, I checked out the rest of his work, and by the end of his series, I knew most of the names of the main ponies. That felt weird. but what felt weirder was finding myself enjoying the show upon giving it a chance during my breakfast and cereal one morning. Yes. I was sitting there laughing at the jokes in My Little Pony, and at this point I’ve seen quite a few episodes. At Otakon, I had no idea why the MLP series was such a popular costume and art topic. Now, as strange as it may seem, I get it. It’s another cartoon on TV. Whether it’s ponies, cats, dogs, or people, if it makes you laugh at the end of the day, people will enjoy it.
For a more in-depth explanation to the nature of Bronies and the Brony movement, check out animator hotdiggedydemon’s lengthy post on how and why he thinks it came to be. It says a lot about our culture today.
Yeah. That exists.
