The newest My Little Pony Movie is out. Fans of the newest version of the “My Little Pony” (MLP) animated show are still excited for the newest addition to the show’s canon.

The movie follows the Mane 6, six main characters from the show, and Spike, the spunky dragon-child sidekick as the Storm King threatens Equestria. While the plot line is a little cliche, it covers few mature topics. Amy Nicholson of the Variety said in her review, “Instead of easy after school platitudes, the show focused on advanced lessons: how to accept flaws, forgive mistakes and melt anger with empathy — sophisticated stuff for an audience with an intended age of seven.”

She then mentions this might be because of the older audience that has popped up, something older viewers agree with. Brenna Kilpatrick, a senior at Bob Jones, said, “MLP has been one of my favorite shows for years. Although there are many times you can tell it was made for kids, many lessons and characters are relatable to my current situations.”

One of new improvements in the movie is the animation changes. For the first time the MLP franchise is using 3-D animation mixed with its normal 2-D style. While at some points the animation can seem ambitious, the little details add to the style. For instance, Spike has see-through cheek wing things, something the show has never done due to the complexity of hand drawing and animating the entire show.  

Anthony Di Ninno, the cinematographer of the movie said in an interview, “another thing that prevising this movie in 3D allowed us to do was use our 3D previs files as the basis for our 2D layouts. It allowed for a large amount of freedom in creating the camera angles we used and also allowed me to get the language of the camera lens into the artwork.” This definitely shows throughout the movie, with many creative shots. A certain chase scene comes to mind after the ponies meet the cunning cat Capper.

Speaking of Capper, the movie focuses a lot on world-building the land around Equestria. The first being the rough and tough town Capper is from, a striking contrast to Equestria. There are also swash-buckling pirates in a rising number about being awesome and a new addition to the horse-themed species, the Hippogriffs. Each new set of characters is introduced in a creative manner that takes the common tropes from a slightly different perspective.

In the end the movie takes the existing world of MLP and adds on to it in a well done manner. If the show isn’t your cup of tea it probably isn’t for you (it is mostly a kids movie after all). However, if you have a couple spare hours once it comes out and want to see what it’s about while doing homework, feel free. Just be careful about getting the songs stuck in your head.