The Mentally Advanced Series | |
---|---|
The title card for the series | |
Creator(s) | FiMFlamFilosophy |
Date added | May 29, 2011 (first episode) |
Transcript | Available |
Status | Ongoing |
Type/genre | Parody |
Show connection | Abridged series of My Little Pony Friendship is Magic |
My Little Pony: The Mentally Advanced Series, also variously titled My Little Pony: The (Abridged) Mentally Advanced Series, is a series of videos that contextualize episodes from the original show by re-editing and re-dubbing them. The general storylines are often kept somewhat intact, but the characters' personalities are drastically reinterpreted. Most of the voices are performed by the series' writer, FiMFlamFilosophy on the "Dawn Somewhere" YouTube channel, who also performs these duties for Rainbow Dash Presents. The series' genesis was a result of creative differences with the team of another planned abridged series; FiMFlamFilosophy left and created his own videos from scratch.
Episodes[]
- Main article: The Mentally Advanced Series/Original Series
- Main article: The Mentally Advanced Series/Reboot Season 1
Every episode, except for episodes 10 and 13, opens with a title card depicting an apparently lobotomized Pinkie Pie, accompanied by a voice-over in which Pinkie sings an abridged version of the theme song.
Episode 10 introduced a new abriged version of the theme song that plays with the title sequence. After it is done, a title card appears showing a crying Fluttershy holding a lobotomized Pinkie's head.
After over a year of delays, FiMFlamFilosophy decided to skip over the unfinished eleventh episode and start work on the next one instead; barely two weeks after the announcement, episode 12 was released.[1]
Beginning with Episode 14, episodes use still images from the episodes they're based on rather than conventional animated footage, making them similar in tone to FiMFlamFilosophy's other produced work Rainbow Dash Presents and also allowing for faster episode production.
Rainbow Dash Presents[]
- Main article: Rainbow Dash Presents
Rainbow Dash Presents is a spinoff series also written by FiMFlamFilosophy and features art by artist Petirep. It features 'Mentally Advanced Series' Rainbow Dash reading popular fanfics with a humorous spin.
YouTube take-down[]
The episodes came under fire in January 2013 by YouTube's automatic copyright detectors and several of the episodes including the newest (at the time) Episode 12. Although initially trying to combat YouTube's claims by referencing to "Fair-Use laws", FiMFlamFilosphy and Petirep decided it would be best to not fight a losing battle with YouTube and instead just host the episodes on their website Dawnsomewhere.com.
At first they planned on using their Blip.tv account to host the episodes, but due to unforeseen circumstances their Blip account was also taken down. They decided to instead just host the episodes directly from their sites server instead.
On January 27, FimFlamFilosophy uploaded redirect videos for each of the episodes redirecting viewers to each of the episodes on Dawnsomewhere.com.
Each of the redirect videos features an identical animation by Rainbow Dash Presents artist Petirep featuring Fluttershy attempting to get an orangutan dressed as a cop and the named "YouTube" to post her valentine that reads "To All My Friends on YouTube!" on its refrigerator; instead the orangutan takes the valentine to be burned by another orangutan named "Mr. Moneybags." The "YouTube" orangutan cop and Mr. Moneybag's eating of a hamburger are inside jokes to FimFlamFilosophy's Cookie Train Album ad in which the same orangutan cop accuses dash of being the "Hamburgerler" and confiscates her hamburgers. Each of the redirect video features a unique line of poetry ending with "Nothing's perfect in life."
The initial influx of viewers to the site after the redirect caused the website to nearly crash. FiMFlamFilosphy and Petirep later decided to upgrade the website to handle the new higher levels traffic.
All of the episodes of the Mentally advanced series can still be found on dawnsomewhere.com. A picture of Allen (voice actor for Thrackerzod and Celestia) is used as the thumbnail for the unaired Episode 11.
Content ID claim and revamp[]
In October 2014, FiMFlamFilosophy's YouTube channel came under fire yet again by YouTube's content ID, causing the episodes to be removed from the channel. Rather than dispute the claim and risk losing his channel completely, FiMFlamFilosophy decided to start from scratch and make future episodes with entirely original artwork and Flash-animated rigs.
"Episode 0" of the series' new format was uploaded on October 26, 2014 -- as a trial run to gauge viewer reaction -- with future episodes having a negative numbering scheme ("Episode -1 for The Ticket Master, etc).
Characters[]
- Main article: The Mentally Advanced Series/Characters
References[]
- ↑ FiMFlamFilosophy (2012-11-22). Fan Art. Comments Not Working!. “I finally decided to just scrap Episode 11. I didn’t like how it was turning out, and while it was okay and even decent in some spots, I never did find myself terribly happy with it, and it took so long producing it that my current editing skill far outpaced my skill when I started.”