Mellon

I have so many thoughts about what we've learned thus far of MLP G6 and I just wanna get them out of my head.

First and foremost, obviously, the Rarity and Applejack erasure. I am a bit biased (Rarity is my favorite) but I just think this is a bad move. Each of the individual characters that made up the mane 6 made that friend group what it was. It's not just about the elements of harmony, it's about the dynamics between the characters and the role they each played. It feels off balance without these two. The only two reasons I can think of for excluding them are budget (with the flop of gen 5, I wouldn't be surprised if they had a smaller budget) and a trend in girls media I fear gen 6 may be following of, what I call, pinkification. You'll notice that the only main characters they pulled have pink incorporated (the red in Rainbow's mane is really leaning pink here, imo) into their palettes, while Rairity and AJ don't have any pink and both lean neutral. We see this happen far too much in girls media where they just start shoving pink (especially hot pink) onto things (Sofia the First (the original) and the later Barbie movies are both great examples of this) and I hate it. Pink is great, but girls are allowed to like other colors.

This brings me to my second pressing thought on this matter, the art direction. This promo image is very pretty as a piece of art, but if we ignore the pretty lighting and fluffy rendering to instead just focus on the character designs, I hate it. Just like gen 5 it's too busy, it's too much. Doing intricate and even over the top designs work really well for something short lived and special (like any time on the show they dressed up for a special occasion) but all the time is a lot. I'm hoping these are just concept art that may crop up at an important moment and that's it, but my gut is telling me these are either final or close to final designs and I am not looking forward to an entire show of so much excess, saturation, and pink.

The last thing I am deeply concerned about is that, to my understanding, this is meant to be an AU of Friendship is Magic and I hate that. If they just wanted to do a soft reboot — maybe clean up some of the messier lore (especially from the later seasons) — and continue the story with Twi leading Equestria, exploring the mane 6 as they enter this new stage of life, I'd honestly be okay with that (if done well). Making it an AU feels like a cash grab. It feels like rather than the show runners actually examining and understanding why gen 4 worked and why gen 5 didn't, they just said, "Well, they like these ponies better! So let's do stuff with them, again!" It's not the first time I've seen a franchise rehash the hits and it just never works because the people rehashing these things don't understand what made them work the first time around. If they weren't going to include the entirety of the mane 6 anyway, why not just make a new cast in a new world? Why are we rehashing the past? It feels like nostalgia bait to get people to watch because they don't think they actually have a good show on its own. Even them saying we may see other characters from the OG show down the line feels like bait — "you'll just have to watch the show to see if we let you have your favorite ;)." I hate nostalgia bait and that's all this feels like.