@LadyMoondancer It is just like how superhero cartoon need a fight scene. Sometimes it seemed like they were trying to meet a certain quota of singing/fighting for each episode, even if it came out of nowhere.
On the main topic, my hot take is; My Little Pony has never been a franchise about magical horses since G2 ended. People begging Hasbro to make them more horse-like, or introducing human character that befriend the ponies, will never get what they want.
G1 is about Megan (a farm girl), Molly and Danny discovering the magical land inhibited by all sort of magical creatures, not just ponies.
G2 Friendship Garden game is about the player having a magical pet horse.
It pained me to see G3 design note basically removing all horse-like qualities from ponies and make them act like little girls instead.
Now, this is might not be a hot take, because I saw people on YouTube saying the same thing a lot; but, I think G5 is pretentious.
It is what most people who think "I want my childhood media to be darker and more serious, but remains a children media for the next generation of kids to enjoy." and then, they fumble the execution because they think all they need to do is throwing dark subjects into colourful cartoon.
The heart of G5 is based on some allegory of Racism. The main conflict is about healing the land and restoring it back to the way it used to be before 3 pony races separated. That is a very dangerous way to start a kid series. You can't just use these serious real life topic as shock value, or uses it as a bargain chip for people to take your show seriously. Shows like Static Shock or teen Titans 2003 does address serious things like racism, but the heart of the show is that they are both action-comedy-coming of age superhero shows. That is why they got respect for not being afraid to get serious, and they can really make children re-examine their own prejudice.
G5's overall tone would be much better if it is a slice of life/magical adventure show that dip its toe (hoof?) into tension for 3 pony races not truly trusting each others. How would you teach kids about racism, if your version of racism is outlandishly fantasy? It's not like 1/3 of world population will actually get the ability to fly when everyone stop being mean to each other.