Meant to says something to this a while back but I forgot to, anyway I recently heard that people are calling this kind of animation California animation and as far as I can tell it usually refers to cheap to produce, low quality and low effort crap just like everything from California animation styles so popular now and I think that if they'd spend a little more money and make a better quality product that more people would be interested in it. Also I find the style a turn off and won't watch anything done in it.
Okay, so this is why the whole "CalArts style!" label is so dumb. It has no meaning. Somehow it's gone from "art that has a certain style of mouth, like Gravity Falls and Steven Universe" to "I dunno, made in California and . . . is cheap?"
MLP Make Your Mark is animated in Vancouver, British Columbia using CGI models made in Ireland and MLP Tell Your Tale is from a studio based in Malaysia, but they have a British studio as well. G4 MLP was animated in Vancouver (one studio) and the Philippines (two studios). You will often see animation done in countries with a lower minimum wage, which is nothing new; that's also why G1 MLP 'n Friends and many other 80s television cartoons were animated in South Korea instead of the US. (To be clear, being made overseas is cheaper in the sense of "costs less money than a similar product in the US would", but it doesn't automatically mean "bad animation." Batman The Animated series and the entire Disney Afternoon were made overseas too.)
As far as adults liking MLP, sure they can like it. But ultimately this is a toyline (and associated media) aimed at kids, and that's fine. (Kids still deserve nice things so, yeah, give MLPs better hair quality, Hasbro.) Hasbro is happy when adults buy toys or merch, but the vast majority of their sales come from kids or from adults buying toys for kids' birthdays etc.) The MLP FIM cartoon nosedived in quality when they started including in-jokes for adults. Although the bigger problem is they ran out of things for the main characters to do as they achieved their goals. So then they tried to switch focus to the students but for some reason barely merchandised them?? Weird. IMO they should've ended the show after Season 3 or 4, which would've been the length of an average Hasbro show.
I started out loving the G4 cartoon (even though it wasn't perfect) but I was sooo tired of the Mane Six by the end. I wish I could look back on G4 and say "Gee I wish they'd had more episodes" instead of "FINALLY they're dead
", lol. I hope G5 runs for about three seasons.
Regarding the IDW comics, imo they are insecure about whether they can retain their readers without heavily referencing G4. Maybe their readers are mostly adults, or maybe IDW simply believes they are. (It does seem VERY difficult to get comics into kids' hands unless an adult in the family happens to be a comic collector; like, they aren't sold in Target or grocery stores so most kids are never going to see comic books, right?) I don't like the close G4 tie-in with the comics either. They don't seem to understand the new characters, so they're like "Izzy is lonely and doesn't tell anyone! Sunny is a history nerd!", and it feels like they reeeeally wanted to write Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle and just superimposed Izzy and Sunny's colors over them, you know what I mean? Another odd moment was Pipp wanting to tell her followers the truth about the crystal being crystalnapped and Zipp is like "No! The truth will frighten them too much!" and I'm just like . . . have the IDW writers even seen the G5 movie?
I don't think the cartoon will be as closely connected. They never even say Twilight Sparkle's name in the G5 movie and a little kid could watch and understand it without ever seeing any of G4. Which was surely the intent. From what I've heard, Hasbro nixed a lot of more direct G4 elements and wouldn't even let the movie people show the Tree of Harmony (which was the pink-leafed tree Sunny and Izzy ran by in their travel montage) until it was changed to just
kind of look like the Tree of Harmony. I think the implication of the single apple tree they found was that was all that was left of Ponyville / Applejack's farm. That's the level of reference I like . . . Something that's totally unobtrusive for new viewers but which also implies "EVERYTHING OLD IS DESTROOOOYED" for older viewers. I'm a big fan of fictional dystopias where everything falls into ruin so it makes me happy.