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| country = | language = English | num_seasons = 5 | num_episodes = 117 | list_episodes = List of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episodes | executive_producer = | producer = | editor = | location = | cinematography = | camera = | runtime = 22 minutes | company = | distributor = | network = Hub Network (2010–2014) Discovery Family (2014–present) | picture_format = | audio_format = | first_run = | first_aired = | last_aired = present | preceded_by = | website = http://www.hasbro.com/mylittlepony/en_us/ | production_website = http://www.hasbrostudios.com/shows/page/title/my-little-pony }} ''My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic'' is a children's animated television series produced by Hasbro Studios and DHX Media Vancouver. The series is based on Hasbro's My Little Pony line of toys and animated works and is often referred by collectors to be the fourth generation or "G4" of the My Little Pony franchise. The series premiered on October 10, 2010, on The Hub cable channel. Hasbro selected animator Lauren Faust as the creative director and executive producer for the show. Faust sought to challenge the established nature of the existing My Little Pony line, creating more in-depth characters and adventurous settings. The show follows a studious unicorn pony named Twilight Sparkle as her mentor Princess Celestia guides her to learn about friendship in the town of Ponyville. Twilight becomes close friends with five other ponies: Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie. Each represents a different face of friendship, and Twilight discovers herself to be a key part of the magical artifacts known as the "Elements of Harmony". The ponies share adventures and help out other residents of Ponyville, while working out the troublesome moments in their own friendships. The series has become a major commercial success, becoming the most highly rated original production in the Hub Network's broadcast history and leading to new merchandising opportunities for Hasbro, including books, clothing, collectible trading cards, and comics. Despite the target demographic of young girls, ''Friendship Is Magic'' has also gained a large following of older viewers, mainly young and middle-aged men, who call themselves "bronies". Portions of the show have become part of the remix culture, and have formed the basis for a variety of Internet memes. A spin-off feature film series, ''My Little Pony: Equestria Girls'', has been made and shown in limited theatrical screenings prior to television broadcast and home media release. A feature-length film directly based on the series itself, and separate from the ''Equestria Girls'' brand, has been announced for a theatrical release on November 3, 2017. ==Origin== Hasbro, Inc. has produced several incarnations and lines of toys and entertainment related to the My Little Pony franchise, often labeled by collectors as "generations". The animated series ''My Little Pony Tales'', premiered in 1992, was the toy line's most recent television series before ''Friendship Is Magic'', and it featured the pony designs of the first toy line. It was followed by various direct-to-video releases, which featured later designs up to the third incarnation of the franchise. Just as Michael Bay's film had helped to boost the new ''Transformers'' toy line, Hasbro wanted to retool the My Little Pony franchise and update it to better suit the current demographic and taste of young girls. According to Margaret Loesch, CEO of Hub Network, revisiting properties that had worked in the past was an important programming decision, influenced to an extent by the opinions of the network's programming executives, a number of whom were once fans of such shows. Senior Vice President Linda Steiner also stated that they "intended to have the show appeal to a larger demographic", with the concept of "co-viewing" of parents with their children being a central theme of the Hub Network's programming. Central themes that Hasbro sought for the show included friendships and working together, factors they determined from market research in how girls played with their toys.〔 Animator and writer Lauren Faust approached Hasbro, seeking to develop her girls' toys property "Galaxy Girls" into an animated series. Faust, who had previously worked on Cartoon Network's ''The Powerpuff Girls'' and ''Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends'' (both created by her husband Craig McCracken), had been pitching original animation aimed at girls for years, but had always been rejected by studios and networks because cartoons for girls were considered unsuccessful. When she pitched to Lisa Licht of Hasbro Studios, Licht showed Faust one of their recent My Little Pony animated works, ''Princess Promenade'', "completely on the fly". Licht considered that Faust's style was well suited to that line, and asked her to consider "some ideas where to take a new version of the franchise".〔〔 Faust was initially hired by Hasbro to create a pitch bible for the show, allowing her to get additional help with conceptualization.〔 Faust said she was "extremely skeptical" about taking the job at first because she had always found shows based on girls' toys to be boring and unrelatable.〔 My Little Pony was one of her favorite childhood toys,〔 but she was disappointed that her imagination at the time was nothing like the animated shows, in which the characters, according to Faust, "just had endless tea parties, giggled over nothing and defeated villains by either sharing with them or crying". With the chance to work on ''My Little Pony'', she hoped to prove that "cartoons for girls don't have to be a puddle of smooshy, cutesy-wootsy, goody-two-shoeness".〔 To do this, she incorporated into the design of the characters and the show many elements that contradicted idealized stereotypes of girls, such as diverse personalities, the message that friends can be different and can get into arguments but still be friends, and the idea that girls should not be limited by what others say they can or cannot do.〔 Elements of the characters' personalities and the show's settings were based on her own childhood imagination of the ponies' adventures, in part inspired by the animated shows that her brothers would watch while growing up, such as ''Transformers'' and ''G.I. Joe''; she considered that she was making ''Friendship Is Magic'' "for me as an eight-year-old". Faust still aimed for the characters to be "relatable" characters, using stereotypical "icons of girliness" (such as the waif or the bookworm), as to broaden the appeal of the characters for the young female audience. Faust stated that as she provided Hasbro with more of her ideas for the show, she was inspired by their positive response to the non-traditional elements. Faust had initially pitched the show to include "adventure stories" in a similar proportion to "relationship stories", but recognizing the younger target audience, as well as the difficulty of basing complex plots on the adventure elements, she trimmed back this content, focusing more on exchanges between the characters. The show still incorporates episodic creatures intended to be frightening to children, such as dragons and hydras, but it places more emphasis on the friendships among the characters, displayed with a comedic tone. By the time the show was approved, Faust had developed three full scripts for the series.〔 Faust began to work out concept sketches, several of which appeared on her deviantArt page, including ponies from the original series (Twilight, Applejack, Firefly, Surprise, Posey and Sparkler), which would later build on the core for the main cast of the show. Hasbro approved the show with Faust as Executive Producer and asked her to complete the pitch bible. In order to do so, Faust brought in Martin Ansolabehere and Paul Rudish, who had worked on other animated shows with her. Faust credits Rudish for the inspiration of the pegasus ponies controlling the weather in Equestria, as well as the character of Nightmare Moon during this period. Faust also consulted her husband, Craig McCracken, a fellow animator and creator of ''The Powerpuff Girls'' and ''Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends''. After seeing the initial version of the pitch bible, Hasbro requested more character designs from Faust's team; subsequently, Faust brought aboard Dave Dunnet and Lynne Naylor to further refine the background and character styles.〔 On completion of the pitch bible, Hasbro and Faust began looking at studios for the animation. Studio B Productions (renamed to DHX Media on September 8, 2010, after its parent company, along with DHX's other subsidiaries) had previously worked on Adobe Flash-based animations and on shows that featured a large number of animals, and Faust felt they would be a good selection. Studio B requested that Jayson Thiessen be the director, a choice Faust agreed with. She, Thiessen, and James Wootton led the completion of a two-minute short to pitch the final product to Hasbro, resulting in the company's sanctioning the full production. Faust estimates that from being initially asked to develop the show until this point took roughly one year.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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