My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

*My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic* is the installment of Hasbro's *My Little Pony* franchise that started (and ended) its run in the 2010s. It's also the only *MLP* series that isn't exclusively watched by girls, due to the massive brony fandom. It's also one of the few Hasbro shows to air the entirety of its run on a channel space where the network carried on it rebranded in the middle of the show's run.

## Tropes

* Animal World: Level 5, and this isn't even counting *Equestria Girls*.
* Downwards Funnel: This is the *MLP* show that uses this the most.
* Obscurity, much?: This is one of the few girls' cartoons to actually avert this, given its massive brony fandom and in its heyday, views of anything related to this were in the *millions* most of the time. You know this show was popular when several cons *devoted* to MLP were started.
* Point of discontinuation: When the show ended, so did BronyCon. In 2018, BronyCon announced it would be discontinued after the 2019 event.
* The Colbert Effect: *Friendship is Magic* is the show most bronies will think of when you mention *MLP*.
* I Have Failed to Keep a Secret: Inverted. Starlight Glimmer *knew* Rainbow Dash's first Sonic Rainboom gave the Mane Six their Cutie Marks and never bothered to tell them. That was, until they found out by themselves.
* Size Changing: Briefly in the series finale, Pinkie Pie becomes a giant (and crazy) pony.
	+ Luna and Nightmare Moon are the same pony, except the latter is taller than the former.
	+ Like Jake from *Adventure Time*, Discord can also do this at will.
* Shonen Beat: In a rare non-anime example. There's a *reason* there's a huge brony fandom.
* Fauxnime: For a girls' cartoon, this is to be expected. That said, the art style was likely because Lauren Faust, who developed the show, previously worked on her husband's show *The Powerpuff Girls (1998)*, which had some shades of this.
* Canadian Content Required: Averted. The show was animated in Canada (and co-produced by DHX, to boot), but it was developed by Lauren Faust, who is American.
* Dubless Series: Most of the show was never dubbed into Japanese, because of Japan's own girls' properties.
* Padding Filler Z: It's expected that this show, which delves into the kind of frightening stuff no other *My Little Pony* show delved into before or *since*, would take a few breather episodes.
* Comedy Censtral: When this show aired in Canada, they actually censored the word "loser", making people complain that the move made *Friendship is Magic* look like an adults' cartoon rather than a girls' show. Averted in the USA (its other country of origin), where the word is used without any bleeping.
* Cartoons Mean They're For Kids: Level 1, due to all the dark themes throughout the show's run.
* Satisfactory Conclusion: The ninth season ends (along with the show itself) with one of these.
* Post-Conclusion Epilogue: "The Last Problem".
* Catchy Tunes: The opening is quite possibly the *only* version of the *MLP* music to get a rock makeover. Averted in the Italian version (or played straight according to The Mysterious Mr. Enter...)
* My Life Meme: Given this show attracted a huge fandom of bronies, it's expected. "20% cooler" doesn't even *begin* to describe the amount of memes made during this show's run...
* What's with Andy's Unanswered Questions?: Averted. The show had *nine seasons* to work with, and thus the showrunners were able to wrap everything up and answer all questions. Even with *Equestria Girls*, it's clear why everything happened when it did.
* No Home Release for You: Wanting to own physical releases of this show if you live outside North America is a game of roulette. If you're lucky, there would be some releases on physical media, but if you're not, you might as well hit legal streaming sites.
* This gave us inspiration: The entire reason *why* Lauren Faust created the show in the first place (even though she originally didn't intend to make it) was because the previous *MLP* show failed and became the most obscure part of the franchise in its history.
* Blame It on Development: Some of the ponies are based on characters from *Milky Way and the Galaxy Girls* (Lauren Faust originally pitched a cartoon based on that toyline and ended up making this show instead).
* Cartoon Network Isn't Teletoon: Because not every country has the channel it aired on stateside, this is inevitably played straight (on linear television anyways) outside of the US.