My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Genre	Family, Children
Running time	22 minutes
Creator	Lauren Faust
Starring	Tara Strong Andrea Libman Ashleigh Ball Tabitha St. Germain Cathy Weseluck
Country of origin	United States and Canada
Original network/channel	Discovery Family
Original run	2010-2019
No. of episodes	222

Left to right: Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Spike

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is an animated television series with combined elements of comedy, slice-of-life and fantasy. It was developed by Hasbro Studios in partnership with Lauren Faust, who believed that the formula used for previous generations of My Little Pony should be retooled to be more respectful to the intelligence of its female demographic. Her efforts to do so largely payed off, as the show was not only popular with its target audience, but came to spawn a colossal teen and adult fandom known as the 'Bronies', a portmanteau of 'bro' (a word for a male, derived from 'brother') and 'pony'. The term originally only referred to males in the community, but came to mean the group as a whole.

Premise

Most of the show takes place in the fictional land of Equestria, inhabited by various types of anthropomorphic ponies who come in a variety of colours of the rainbow and earn 'cutie marks', fur markings in the shape of an object or symbol to do with their talent, once they discover it. For example, the talent of a central character called Pinkie Pie has been recognised as throwing parties ever since she discovered that talent and earned a corresponding cutie mark of three balloons.

The three main types of ponies are earth ponies, which are regular ponies re-imagined to fit the description above, pegasi, which differ from earth ponies due to having wings, and unicorns, which differ from earth ponies due to having a magical horn on each of their heads. Other types also exist, including alicorns, a royalty-exclusive race which each have one horn, wings and are stated to also have earth pony properties.

Most of the show’s episodes focus on Twilight Sparkle, her five closest pony friends - Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity and Applejack - and her dragon assistant Spike.

The studious Twilight started her life as an introvert living in Canterlot, the country’s capital, and had friends but devoted little to no time to them. She was sent to Ponyville to help with preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration, only to find that Nightmare Moon, the evil alter-ego of Celestia’s sister Princess Luna, had escaped from her imprisonment in the moon.

In making their way through the traps she had set up through her magic, Twilight Sparkle and her aforementioned five new friends learnt to defeat them by approaching them peacefully and logically and, at the time of defeating Nightmare Moon, Twilight reflected on their collective actions and realised which elements of harmony they each represented, and discovered her own to be the initially unknown sixth - magic. After involving in gradually more and more of a social life to balance out her studies, Twilight Sparkle was eventually crowned the Princess of Friendship and, many years later, became the ruler of Equestria as a whole.