PMV: "Go West"... to Equestria!

Pat1711 – "Go West"... to Equestria!

A little bit of nostalgia for you today, though maybe not if (like me) you didn't know this PMV existed until now. It was released on 25 June 2011, so it lacks the bells and whistles of more recent PMVs – but by the standards of the time it's nicely done. Besides, there's not much Pet Shop Boys in the fandom anyway. I don't know anything at all about Pat1711, probably because they hardly released anything. This PMV has had over 25,000 views though, so it's not that obscure.

I want to post something happier now...

Sawtooth Waves ft. Chi-Chi – To the Skies

...so how about some Scootalove? "To the Skies" is a new song from Sawtooth Waves (formerly The Brony Nation), with vocals by Chi-Chi – someone who will need no introduction and who's been contributing to the fandom for years. (See "Sounds of 2013", for a start!) The song, which deals with Scoot's feelings about being a ground-bound pegasus, is accompanied by an eye-catching video collaboration (see the video description for full credits). Together all this produces one of the nicest PMVs I've seen for a while. Its being about Best Filly doesn't hurt that impression one bit.

Have an old PMV

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I don't have much to talk about, at least not now. I do have one or two things I'd like to post about, but they're things that will take actual effort and it's still too hot for that. So here's "Stamp on the Ground", a PMV by FluttershyElsa from August 2012 that was once enormously popular, as its 1.87 million views will testify. Nothing too demanding here, just a bit of old-fashioned fun. I'm all for that!

Note: this PMV contains rapidly flashing images.

PMV: The Journey Thus Far

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I saw this on EqD earlier and liked it so much that I wanted to feature it here. This PMV by Cole Donnerstag is an eight-minute celebration of the first seven seasons of Friendship is Magic, and one that very firmly places our equine friends in the role of heroes. You couldn't watch this and think they were just any old ponies. It's an old-fashioned PMV in its lack of flashy effects, but I think that makes it stronger. There are no S8 spoilers, so if you've seen to the end of S7 you'll be good to go. Donnerstag is not well known (only 40 subscribers at the time of writing) but that may now change.

"Pony Girl" starring Fluttershy and Fluttershy

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Tridashie's "Pony Girl" video has become a modern fandom classic, with over seven million views since it was released in April 2017. Now, Pinkie Rose has made a cover with the adorability factor taken up as high as it will go and then some. Rainbow Dash's role has been taken by Fluttershy, and Twilight's by... er... Fluttershy. It's a lot of fun, and with one exception ("'Shy" would have been better than "F. S.") the reworked lyrics are pretty decent as well. Give it a look!

And yes, I am posting this as my "Forgotten Friendship" review will be a few days yet. But what the hay!

PMV: "Jump Up Super Star"

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I was a bit down recently when HN reported that PinkiePieSwear's PMVs had been made inaccessible. Not just unlisted as they were for a while, but entirely gone from public access. Admittedly "Flutterwonder" is hardly going to disappear from the internet, but not everything is that lucky. There's so much history bound up with them that's gone now, perhaps for good.

So, the appearance of the PMV above, created by Foxy Lee, came as a real tonic. Apart from its subject matter (the movie) this feels like something that could have been made five years ago – and that's a compliment. It harks back to simpler times when PMVs were rather more about having a good time than about spectacular technical achievement. She clearly had fun with this, and so did I.

As it happens, Foxy Lee has also moved her older PMVs away from her main channel, but she's set up the Foxy Archive channel instead. I'm grateful to her for taking the trouble to do that – although it still means the years of old comments are no more (not always a bad thing on YouTube, admittedly), at least those who want a nostalgia hit can still get it.

And, yes, the third PMV ever made!

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It's not the first G4 PMV. It's not the second, either. But while those two currently have about 160,000 views between them, "Trouble Is a Friend - My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic AMV" has over 2.5 million on its own. As such, it often gets discussed as though it was the first. While that's not the case, it nevertheless has a good claim to be the earliest G4 PMV to truly make it big – and perhaps the first truly modern example of this particular art form.

At 3'35", it's considerably longer than either of its predecessors. It's also noticeably more carefully edited, with the lyrics generally quite well fitted to the clips we see on screen. Again, all of them are from the S1 premiere – as it debuted on 30th October 2010, this PMV appeared only a day after "The Ticket Master" aired, too late for that episode's content to be used. I think it holds up fairly well and, unlike the two PMVs that came before it, is worth watching for more than just its historical value.

But it still isn't the first.

The second G4 PMV ever made!

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And no, this one isn't "Trouble is a Friend" either. Back in September, I posted about what is to the best of my knowledge the first G4 PMV, "Your Love Is My Drug". That was made from trailer footage before Friendship is Magic even started its run, but "Good Company" was not. It came out on 28th October 2010 and used the less fandom-specific term "AMV" in its title. (Though I suppose as it's Fluttershy-themed, that could be said to stand for "Adorable Music Video"!)

"My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic | Fluttershy - Good Company G4 AMV", to give the video its rather wordy full title, is set to the tune of the song from the 1988 Disney animated feature Oliver & Company. At 2'28" it's more than twice as long as "Your Love Is My Drug", but it's still very simple compared to what we see today, using exclusively footage from the S1 premiere as that was all there was at the time.

The first G4 PMV ever made!

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When people talk about the dawn of the PMV age, the video they tend to mention is "Trouble Is a Friend" by LM1313. It's by some distance the best known of the very early PMVs, but it's not the first. It's not even the second, but that's something I'll talk about on another occasion. The first, I believe, is the one embedded above: "Your Love Is My Drug" by MLPBubbles, published on 30th September 2010.

And no, that's not a typo. This video was put together from trailer footage that aired more than a week before Friendship is Magic premiered. This inevitably means that the video is very short (only just over a minute) and reuses animation – but hey, the show does that in some of its songs too! I'd love to know if anything older is out there, but for now, this is the PMV I consider to have started it all.

Also, technically this means the G4 fandom didn't start on 4chan after all. ;)

"You're Gonna Go Far Kid" PMV unblocked on YouTube (edit: or not. Edit again: maybe)

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A few days ago, I mentioned here that TheSlutfox's hugely popular PMV, "You're Gonna Go Far Kid", had been blocked by UMG. Well, that is no longer the case. I was alerted by Griffin in a comment that the video was now available once more – and, as you can see above, it remains so. As far as I can tell from a quick skim through YouTube, the other uploads of the same video that had been blocked are also once more viewable. Even if you don't like the PMV itself, the return of the video is surely welcome from a fandom history perspective.

Edit: and it's gone again. I'm not sure how the process works, but given that pretty much every copy of the video, including some at different speeds/pitches and even a few covers have been blocked... well. I have no idea what's going to happen now, but I'm rather pessimistic. I hope I'm proved wrong. Thanks a bunch, UMG. You are officially the new Sony. And no, that is not a compliment. I suppose the one thing we can take heart from is that it reminds us how lucky we are in this fandom that most things are controlled by Hasbro. A company that, by mediacorp standards, is really pretty damn good to us.

Edit again: as of 10.30am GMT on 3/12/16, it's up again! Who knows what's going on?

"You're Gonna Go Far Kid" PMV blocked on YouTube

As I type this on Wednesday morning UK time, a little piece of fandom history is no more. TheSlutfox's Rainbow Dash PMV, set to a speeded-up version of The Offspring's "You're Gonna Go Far Kid" and released in April 2011, was one of the first to make a really major impact. It's certainly not to everyone's tastes, but with over 25 million views in five and a half years, there's no denying its significance.

You'd have been forgiven for thinking that a video that had survived for that long, with that level of exposure, would be safe. But no: for whatever reason, it has, like nearly all other YouTube uploads of the video, been zapped by UMG. Now, when I go there, all I see is the screen above. I know a bit of searching will find it on other sites – but it's not the same. I'm genuinely sad about this.

Remember this?

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Yeah, you're right, this is just filler. But hey, if the show can do it, why can't I do the same? I remember when this video came out in July 2012, and it blew me (and plenty of other people) away. JanAnimations got even better later on, before the C&D hit, but this was the first time I realised what a superbly talented animator the guy was. Also, I heard EileMonty sing the song live at BUCK years ago, which is definitely worth some memory-jogging. :)

Also, in case you're one of the three people wondering: no, I'm not going to be featuring the song (by MandoPony) in the Pony Music Library, for the simple reason that the song is pretty much inseparable from the PMV in my mind.

Video: Rainbow (Dash) (Ponyfied TV Openings) by Basic Rainbow

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Unless you're a) British and b) of a certain (my) age, this may mean nothing to you. But for those of us who fall into this subset of pony fans, the nostalgia overload here is ridiculous. It's a PMV of a sort, but really it's more of an expression of affection for both Rainbow and FiM. It's lovely, it really is. If you're confused, there's a link shown at the start to a side-by-side with the original, though it's unlisted so I won't link to it directly from here. Props go to Idris on Twitter for pointing me at this piece of brilliance!

Video: I Just Can't Wait To Have Wings

This PMV by KirbyRainboom is short and silly, which is of course the best combination available! It is, of course, a parody of a certain famous song from The Lion King and for the most part it's very well done. There are a few points at which the lyrics could have done with a little work in terms of rhyming/scansion, and for that reason I'm not sure I'd put it in my own all-time list, but there's no doubt that it's good fun.