My Little Pony (Generation 5) / YMMV

For audience reactions pertaining to specific G5 works, see:

Base-Breaking Character:
- Out of all of the Mane 5, Pipp Petals seems to be the most polarizing. Some love her for her singing voice and stylish and peppy attitude as a pop star influencer, while others despise her believing she has no depth beyond her pop star career/social media.
- Sparky Sparkeroni, Hitch’s adopted baby dragon son. While some like the little tot for his cuteness and sweet personality, others also dislike him for his realistic baby behavior, tendency to cause problems, and his character’s use of toilet humor in Tell Your Tale.
- Opaline Arcana, the alicorn Big Bad. Some find her alicorn status and its story potential makes her a compelling villain, but others find her too generic and underwhelming for the one responsible for the Happy Ending Override of G4 (which had a lot of divisiveness itself). Her more comedic portrayal in Tell Your Tale has also been divisive, with some liking it for making her more entertaining to watch while others criticize it as diminishing her credibility as a threat.
Broken Base: The complete breakdown of pony race relations, combined with G5 being a Distant Sequel to G4, caused quite a bit of controversy. Some fans were put off by seeing everything Twilight Sparkle and her friends worked for go right down the toilet. Others thought it represented a respectable Hard Truth Aesop, that good times don't last forever. Others just Take a Third Option and ignore the connection to enjoy G5 as its own thing or just view it as an Alternate Continuity where something similar to G4 happened, but not the same (the fact that G5 has multiple unexplained inconsistencies with G4's worldbuilding gives more fuel to this interpretation).
Fanon:
- Instead of being a completely separate location, fans have latched onto the idea that the three settlements are just the older cities from G4, but renamed over time and/or made unrecognizable due to geographical changes and the passage of time. Take this map of the Equestrian east coast for example. The pink tree in the background between Zephyr Heights and Bridlewood being revealed to be the Tree of Harmony just added more credence to this theory.
  - Maretime Bay is Baltimare.^note
  - Zephyr Heights is either Canterlot or one of the cloud cities like Cloudsdale and Rainbow Falls perched on a mountain when magic is gone, be it the same as the one where Canterlot resides or another mountain altogether.
  - Bridlewood is either Ponyville, the Everfree Forest, or Ponyville overrun by the Everfree Forest.
- Due to animals being inexplicably drawn to him and that he gained the ability to speak with them in the Make Your Mark special as well as his kind personality, some people have come to the conclusion that Hitch is related to Fluttershy.
Fanon Discontinuity: Many have rejected it as a sequel to Friendship Is Magic due to negating its happy ending and Worldbuilding with the old setting disappearing and being forgotten, while many not turned off by that came to reject if for failing to give a satisfactory explanation for what happened or continuity with Friendship Is Magic. Even those who like G5 often treat it as an Alternate Continuity.
Fanwork-Only Fans: Even many put off by the Happy Ending Override of Friendship Is Magic are still interested in the new setting, peculiarly the mystery of what happened, and new characters. As the series moved to focus on younger audiences and left the G4 connections unsatisfactory there's many who despite disinterest in the series still producing fanworks and fanart around them.
Franchise Original Sin:
- The pony tribes forgetting their lessons and becoming racist toward each other seemingly rendering the heroes actions pointless was already present in the Friendship Is Magic Series Finale with far less issue. The difference is, it was the instigators were well-established as the best manipulators in the series, making it plausible they could pull it off, and was just a secondary part of the conflict. However, in G5 it's the reason the current setting exists and sets off the series, while failing to give a good explanation (the only work to do so had them use the same methods shortly into Twilight's rule when everyone should have known better, further exacerbating the issue). Even those not put off by the Happy Ending Override found it dragged down the series.
- The reasons Opaline Arcana was criticized as an underwhelming villain (underdeveloped characterization and backstory, failing to live up to their alleged threat, needed the G4 heroes inexplicably inept to be effective) also apply to most of the G4 villains^examples. The difference here is, as the one responsible for G4's Happy Ending Override, Opaline had the higher expectation of justifying her being successful where prior villains failed and being the reason for the Sequel Series, which many feel like she failed to live up to, not helped by her getting far more screentime by comparison.
Launcher of a Thousand Ships: Hitch, being the only male main character and described as attractive in-universe, gets shipped with pretty much everypony. He's often paired with Sunny, Pipp, Zipp, Izzy, or Sprout, but more unusual ships pop up from time to time, such as with Fluttershy — or even Discord — from the previous generation.
Memetic Mutation: See here.
Older Than They Think: My Little Pony (G3), and My Little Pony Tales to a lesser extent, also had Earth Ponies, Pegasi and Unicorns live in separate communities. It wasn't as major a plot point, however.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: In My Little Pony: A New Generation, Pipp Petals was the least popular of the new main characters due to her social media obsession being seen as a shallow attempt to appeal to younger audiences and lacking character depth or story contributions compared to the others. Opinions on her character improved as the following series, starting with Tell Your Tale, showcased more sides to her personality, such as her working at her new salon Mane Melody and her love of spooky things, and explored her relationship with her sister Zipp more. The fact that the other main characters were seen as stagnating^note also helped Pipp's development stand out for the better.
So OK, It's Average: The overall opinion of G5, especially the post-A New Generation series, is that it fails to meet the very high bar set by the previous series, but has enough production values and compelling characters it leaves little good or bad to talk about or remember it by.
Tainted by the Preview: The fact that G5 is a sequel to Friendship Is Magic, particularly its controversial Finale Season, has caused this for quite a few fans — those who'd prefer a Continuity Reboot, those who disliked said finale, or both. Those who did like the idea of it being a sequel were apprehensive over everything the series accomplished being torn down seeming just as an excuse to re-tread prior conflicts.

YMMV / My Little Pony (Generation 5)

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