My Little Pony: The Manga Starts Out as Silly Fun Then Becomes a Wickedly Smart Time-Travel Adventure
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00:00Okay, hi everyone, number one Marmaduke fan here.
00:04I did it again.
00:07My little niece asked me about ponies.
00:09I explained the concept of My Little Pony to her and showed her a picture of them and
00:13now she's mentally attached to them.
00:16My sister's going to disown me.
00:18I introduced my nephew to Ninja Turtles.
00:21I introduced my niece to My Little Pony.
00:23What have I done?
00:24So I got her the first IDW book.
00:27It was a hit.
00:28I'm not going to give her these right away because it's probably going to take like a
00:31year to read through that first thick book I got her.
00:34But for a future birthday I got her the My Little Pony the manga because I had to.
00:40I couldn't resist.
00:41What could My Little Pony the manga be about?
00:44And it was not what I was expecting.
00:45So I'm going to give this a spoiler-free review and then I'm going to do probably like a semi-spoiler
00:50review.
00:52The spoiler-free review is if you like the silly slice of life episodes of My Little
00:58Pony you will get a kick out of this.
01:01If you were around between 2009 and 2012 when ponies were all over 4chan you have to get
01:09this.
01:10Oh my gosh.
01:11Yeah.
01:12Which actually kind of like made me think for a while because it's referencing a lot of
01:16you know like fan gags about the series.
01:18I was enjoying it but I kind of thought well wait a second is my niece going to enjoy this
01:23if she doesn't know for example who Derpy Hooves is and what all the lore about Derpy
01:29Hooves is from My Little Pony fan boards, right?
01:33And I actually think that David Lumsden did a good job kind of like using memes from the
01:42fandom without making it just self-referential so it's not oh it's funny because it's a meme
01:48haha Derpy Hooves likes muffins, right?
01:51He'll actually kind of like use the idea that the character Derpy Hooves like muffins to
01:55do something fun or he might reference a silly you know fan character from the background
02:02but then he'll actually integrate it into his story pretty well.
02:04So I think that a kid who doesn't know the meme side of things will still get a kick
02:09out of it.
02:10It was just something I was kind of like puzzling about as I read.
02:12So volume one was just so it's written in a four coma style and I guess one of the interesting
02:17things is is this even a manga?
02:21Maybe we could let the PhDs argue that.
02:24The manga purists might not like it.
02:27So David Lumsden sounds pretty American, sounds pretty Western to me.
02:32Shiei, I tried to look her up and I can't find anything about her.
02:36I found like Reddit forums linking to dead links that were supposed to be her portfolio.
02:43My guess is it's probably a female mangaka who runs a studio because Seven Seas Entertainment
02:48has done content similar to that before.
02:51I think these are the guys who make manga adaptations of classics of Western literature
02:56and they localize Japanese illustrated editions of things like the Chronicles of Narnia books
03:02and the George McDonald books illustrated by Japanese artists I think were put out by
03:07Seven Seas.
03:09For me that's like, as long as you have Japanese talent on it who are in the manga industry
03:16that's enough for me to call it a manga even if it's formatted left to right.
03:21Who cares?
03:22I'm not going to have that silly debate about how purely something has to be for it to be
03:26counted as manga.
03:27So it's a four coma style and the writer has some fun.
03:32There's one notable chapter where the writer really has fun with the manga idea that I
03:36thought was pretty clever.
03:37So Discord, who has the power to alter reality and is aware that he's a fictional character,
03:43he realizes they're in a manga so he snaps his finger and he puts all of the ponies into
03:47a silly manga world.
03:49I was just cracking up the whole time I was reading this but I was also trying to think
03:54is this smart writing?
03:55Is it just oh haha Naruto ninjas?
03:58I thought he did a pretty smart idea of using a parodying manga in a way that's actually
04:04funny beyond just saying haha manga characters have big eyes.
04:09So he actually told the story.
04:11He referenced not just Naruto but several different genres of Japanese manga in a way
04:16that shows me that he actually watches the material and kind of knows the vibe of some
04:22of these things.
04:23Then there's just some clever gags that work on their own even if you don't know the show's
04:28being referenced.
04:29So that's one of the most consistent things I noticed.
04:31It works on its own and knowing the references and getting what's being parodied might help
04:37a little bit but you don't need it.
04:40It's funny because of the slapstick or it's funny because of the irony without having
04:44to rely on just the reference.
04:45So book one is just sort of like a collection of mini-sodes and then book two is the weirdest
04:53thing I've ever read.
04:54So I think we're going to get out of spoiler territory and into this is where I'm going
04:57to talk about light spoilers.
04:59So book one, I could kind of tell he does one mini-story with each of the main six
05:05cast.
05:06They even advertise it.
05:07You know you've got to appeal to kids who have one favorite pony.
05:10Book two shifts gears and it becomes an entire story centric on Pinkie Pie herself and I
05:17kid you not, this is the funniest and probably one of the smartest time travel reality altering
05:25stories I've ever read.
05:27It's Groundhog's Day but with Pinkie Pie.
05:30So Groundhog's Day and Edge of Tomorrow.
05:34So Edge of Tomorrow is the premise of you repeat the day over and over again.
05:38Edge of Tomorrow does it as an action-adventure sci-fi story.
05:42Groundhog's Day is a pretty funny movie.
05:45It's a funny and a sad movie.
05:47It's almost like it's a commentary on life.
05:49This is just the funniest thing I've ever seen with a Groundhog's Day setup.
05:54So Pinkie Pie finds herself living a day over and over again and it's the day before
06:01the big festival.
06:02So she's less worried about the fact that she's living the same day over and over again
06:06as the fact that this means that the big party's never going to arrive.
06:11So this was genius.
06:14What was genius about this is this is the perfect character for this scenario.
06:17So when Pinkie Pie isn't very well written, she's just a character who's totally random
06:22and just says silly things that don't make any sense.
06:24When Pinkie Pie is well written, she works in a couple different ways.
06:29She can do sort of Bugs Bunny cartoon, Hanna-Barbera physics antics.
06:34She's sort of the sweet person who's goofy in the midst of a serious situation.
06:39So she adds levity and it's sort of like it's fun that although she's got this very kind
06:46of like lighthearted personality, she's actually in a dangerous scenario and she really does
06:51want to solve the problem.
06:52It's just she never gives up that chipper side of her.
06:55And because she's kind of weird, she's creative.
06:57She comes up with what sounds like a stupid idea until you actually think about it and
07:01think, hey, wait a minute, that sounds stupid, but that might actually work, come to think
07:06of it.
07:07So I thought this was a very good example of Pinkie Pie being written as someone who
07:13can achieve that kind of comedy.
07:15The absurd person in the midst of this bad scenario.
07:20So she starts reliving her day over and over again.
07:22At first she thinks that everyone's playing a prank on her and doesn't even realize she's
07:28living the same day over and over again because she's kind of blind, right?
07:31She's an adorable blind.
07:33And then once she figures it out, then of course it's the antics of her trying to figure
07:37out what to do about this situation.
07:39And it just gets weirder and weirder and more complicated from there.
07:44But everything's very carefully niched together.
07:48I'm sure David Lumsden was very proud of how he pulled off all the time travel stuff.
07:52And then I noticed he even foreshadowed some of it in book one.
07:56So very funny, a funny book.
07:59If it makes you laugh, I will recommend it.
08:01I'm not going to do the play by play of everything that happens.
08:04It's the physical comedies on point, the ironic situations are on point.
08:09The characters are fitting with, he clearly really loves this franchise and even knows
08:14like the fan, the goofy fan theories about it, about the background characters.
08:19So highest recommendation for if you're a pony nerd, you're going to absolutely love
08:23it.
08:24Presumably, I don't know.
08:25It seems like the fandoms died down a little bit from the heyday, but for me it was kind
08:30of a flashback to 2009, 2012 and it avoids the trap of becoming overly self-referential
08:36and just having fun with the characters and putting them in these, in these amusing and
08:40hilarious situations.
08:42So check it out.
08:43You'll get a kick out of it.
08:44Okay.
08:45I can't believe I forgot to mention this.
08:47So P.S. there, there is a panel where the My Little Pony cast form a Voltron robot by
08:55combining together to fight a spike Godzilla.
08:58This is a real panel that exists in a real comic.