Equestria Girls

My Little Pony: Equestria Girls (or simply Equestria Girls) is a fashion doll toy line created by Hasbro as a spin-off of the Friendship Is Magic/Generation 4 toyline.

Equestria Girls depicts characters from Generation 4 in the form of colorful humanoid people and is a parallel universe diverging from the Friendship Is Magic universe, mostly focus on the modern world/high school setting.

The series has four direct-to-video/television films and three half-hour special episodes with an ongoing short-form web series streaming on YouTube and Discovery Family Go, with four full-hour specials (and a Holiday-themed compilation special) produced by DHX Media and Hasbro Studios. Boulder Media Limited, however, will produce the Summertime shorts.

Since 2020, the future of the spin-off is uncertain due to Hasbro canceling Generation 4 in favor of Generation 5 due to ending the main flagship series on its ninth season.

The spin-off is a source for Harmony Unleashed: Equestria Campus Supremacy set in the Humanoidverse series as a parallel universe from the Anthroverse, especially the Anthro Bunraku series with an expanded Equestria as a big US-inspired country rather than a small one.

It is co-created by (then) current Hasbro head of Storytelling Meghan McCarthy, although the credit goes mostly to Hasbro and she wrote the first two films, mostly due to how characters like Sunset Shimmer and Flash Sentry aren't owned by Lauren Faust due to her disapproval of the series.

Overview
The name "Equestria Girls" came from the parody of Katy Perry's "California Gurls" in a promo from the show by The Hub (a joint venture channel between Hasbro and Discovery Communications, now Discovery Family) shown in 2011.

Fans of the show gathered the domain "equestriagirls.com" as a non-profit streaming service website for the show until Hasbro shut the site down and took it over after its patent registration in 2013.

The franchise was mentioned by Hasbro, DHX, the crew and the fandom around February and March, taking before the controversial Season 3 finale. It was described as a companion series according to Hasbro Studios president of international sales, Finn Arnesen. In May, it was planned as a film series rather than a spin-off television series, although it airs on television after its theatrical limited release. The franchise, like the FiM series, will sell toys, accessories, and merchandise.

According to the films' writer, Meghan McCarthy, she didn't thought of a sequel as she formerly thought Equestria Girls won't be an ongoing franchise until Rainbow Rocks and future installments were planned later.

First film
In the first film, Sunset Shimmer stole the crown from Twilight Sparkle, and she goes into the magic mirror to explore and find the crown with the help of five counterparts of her friends, only to stop Sunset Shimmer from using the element of Magic for evil.

Rainbow Rocks
In the second film, Sunset Shimmer and The humanoid Mane five teams up with Princess Twilight Sparkle for a chance of having Sunset to redeem herself. Meanwhile, they have to fight a trio of humanoid sirens that turned from a friendly musical event to a Battle of the Bands.

Friendship Games
In the third film, Sunset Shimmer and the Mane Five will face an unexpected rival in the yearly Friendship Games, as the Wondercolts and Shadowbolts compete, they will face Sci-Twi, Twilight's human counterpart who investigates the magic in Canterlot High as mandatorily commanded by Abacus Cinch.

Legend of Everfree
In the fourth film, Sunset, Sci-Twi and friends and all students from Canterlot High are gone into a field trip to Camp Everfree for its last day open. However the "Hu-mane Seven" and Spike finds out about the magic in Camp Everfree, as well as trying to help Sci-Twi face her darker self, Midnight Sparkle.

Magical Movie Night
The three special episodes follow the daily lives and adventures of Canterlot High School's top students – Twilight Sparkle, Sunset Shimmer, Applejack, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Rarity – following the events of Legend of Everfree.

In Dance Magic, Rarity and her friends enter a music video contest to get money to repair Camp Everfree. However, she struggles with the idea that the rival students from Crystal Prep "borrowing" the same idea that Rarity got for a music video. In Movie Magic, The seven friends have been invited to a behind the scenes production of the new Daring Do film adaptation directed by Canter Zoom as a reward for the camp fundraiser. However, production goes awry when an actress has scheduling conflicts and a prop is stolen during the film's production.

In Mirror Magic, when Sunset has no more space to write reports to Princess Twilight, she returned to Equestria and meets Starlight Glimmer, which she is curious to discover the Mirror world, in which she enters. However, after the events of Movie Magic, Juniper seeks revenge on the Mane Six for sabotaging her plans of replacing Chestnut for the Daring Do movie.

Forgotten Friendship
Sunset Shimmer discovers that her friends' memories of her have been mysteriously erased; she promptly returns to Equestria where she reunites with her former mentor Princess Celestia and seeks help from Princess Twilight Sparkle to find the cause before the memories vanish forever.

Rollercoaster of Friendship
Rarity takes a summer job as a costume designer for a new amusement park to which hinders her friendship with the other girls, particularly Applejack.

Spring Breakdown
The girls take a luxury cruise for spring break, but wayward magic imperils the passengers and forces Sunset Shimmer, and the parallel universe counterpart of Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash to visit Equestria for help from Ponyville's Twilight Sparkle.

Sunset's Backstage Pass
It follows Sunset Shimmer as she attends a music festival along with other protagonists but finds herself stuck in a time loop.

Better Together Holiday Special: Holidays Unwrapped
Presented in an omnibus manner, the special follows the protagonists who prepare for and enjoy, the parallel universe's equivalent of Christmas and holiday season.

Controversy
The controversy towards the spin-off was mostly made from Bronies who disapprove of the idea of a high school-themed My Little Pony series, as well as its humanization, mostly due to "not being faithful to the name" and for being "generic" and "stereotypical" for the high school setting being overused many times in media, as well as the "destruction of the franchise". Because of this and the storyline of the first movie, it got mixed reviews, most criticisms was for Sunset Shimmer's antagonistic character and its setting.

Lauren Faust dismissed the spin-off due to her assumed regressiveness of what My Little Pony was supposed to be since she worked on the show for one season before she left due to its inability to work on a toy-driven show. She also dismissed due to its humanization and setting.

Much like the Power Rangers: Megaforce series, for being a controversial season for its 20th-anniversary fan-wise, The first film and overall toyline will commemorate the franchise's 30th anniversary, and is controversial to the fandom. The despising towards the franchise by bronies still happen today by a minimum.

Source and Inspiration for the ECS Series
Due to the humanoid forms of the characters, and the EG/Anthro Bunraku crossover films, the television series got a soft reboot of the crossovers by making it a television series developed by Aaron Montalvo and Greg Weisman as part of the Humanoidverse project for MGM, Kadokawa, Aniplex, Hasbro and Hollowfox Entertainment.

The series is animated by Titmouse, Trigger, Production I.G, DHX Media, Boulder Media Limited and Rough Draft Studios. Montalvo, Weisman, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Avi Arad and Jayson Thiessen will be executive producers with Thiessen and Hiroyuki Imaishi as supervising directors. (Later, Rob Renzetti replaces Thiessen for supervising director and executive producer until Season 2.5, Same thing with Atsushi Nishigori for supervising director until Season 3 after Imaishi worked on Space Patrol Luluco, then Imaishi returned for Season 3 with Akira Amemiya as collaborative supervising director, and Asaph Fipke will be an executive producer and supervising co-director alongside Imaishi. After Weisman stepped down as EP after working on the films and the first half of Season 3 due to his return to committment for Young Justice for its third season named "Outsiders". Dan Harmon will be involved as an executive producer for the rest of the series starting with Season 3 and replacing Weisman starting with the second half. Weisman will be an executive creative consultant alongside McCarthy and Montalvo as well as story consultant.)

The series diverges itself from the EG/AB crossover movies and the Equestria Girls films, as it was made for an older audience by expanding a human world Equestria, as well as adding a new character, developing characters (especially Flash Sentry), and getting stories right with romance, action, relationships, supernatural elements and trying to make the high school setting pleasing than its original source material.

Another thing that differs from the source material is the pairings, in contrast to ship-teased pairings in the films such as Rarijack and Flashlight, the pairings consist of main ones such as Sparity, Twijack and Flashimmer. And the dynamics, like how the show was done, were inspired by anime, manga, video games, western animation (mostly Steven Universe, Young Justice and Rick and Morty) and most western sitcoms and dramas (such as The Middle, iCarly, Arrow and Breaking Bad).