My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Page 483

15. The season began with a two-part introduction to Equestria, unfolding the tale of Twilight Sparkle's journey to Ponyville and her triumph over Nightmare Moon with the help of her newfound friends and the virtues represented in the Elements of Harmony. Afterward, the season continued to hold a certain level of continuity but meandered from story to story as a episodic romp. Why'd the approach change, and how did this impact production and creative input? What do you believe emerged as the strongest component of the new direction; alternately, what do you believe you could have accomplished had the show stayed on its first course?

This is a good opportunity to clear up a bit of a rumor. Something I said on my dA page turned into an interesting Internet game of telephone; consequently, a lot of fans now seem to think that I had a grand scheme for a big, dramatic, serialized magical-girl style of a show. Actually, it was always my intention to have the show partially “adventure stories” and partially “relationship stories,” as I called them in my initial pitch bible. I had thought that maybe a third of the episodes could be more like Dragonshy, or the end of Feeling Pinkie Keen, or even have this creepy thread through them like Stare Master. But, ultimately, fewer than a quarter of the episodes had this adventure aspect to it. There were several reasons why. For example, restrictions on what was considered too scary for our younger demographic put limitations of the types of stories we could tell. The accelerated schedule also made it difficult - plot heavy episodes take too long to plan, and too many new characters and locations were a heavy burden to the crew at such a fast pace. If we had tried to do more, they would have fallen short; and since we had a cast and crew that was so well versed at comedy, it just seemed like the right decision to de-emphasize that style.

I don’t think the consequences of this minor change in direction were really felt in Season 1 except for the quantity of the types of stories. The tone or humor would not have been different, and the expectation that we could start going in that direction in later seasons gave me hope that I could still fulfill some of the characters' grander destinies; but, truly, I always wanted this show to be an ensemble-cast comedy first and foremost.

If we had penned more adventure stories, the only difference I can think of is that perhaps you would have seen more of Luna and Zecora. Zecora was designed to be a sage and mentor to whom the ponies could go for information about their quests. She was designed to be a second mentor to Twilight, but that didn’t come to pass. And Luna, though good, was meant to be associated with darkness and night - and these are considered (by some) to be iffy themes for a show for young girls - so she had to slide to the wayside.