The Epic Fantasy No One Expected - My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

There's a new cartoon on tv that drove 4chan to distraction, enchanted jaded writers and 40-something professional comic geeks, and passes the Bechdel Test in almost every scene. It's about a courageous band of non-humanoid beings who live land full of strange, ancient magic, forgotten prophecy and terrible monsters.

It's My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.

There's a lot of pink, they're all ponies, and the show is aimed at 3 - 8 year old girls. None of this stops it from being pure, unadulterated awesome.
 

The pilot is about a loner sorceress trying to warn an oblivious populace of the return of an Ancient Dark Lord Night Mare, despite the seeming-disinterest of Princess Celestia, their Immortal God Queen. (I'm sorry, their immortal, infinitely powerful, ruling princess who may or may not have created the world. Yes, big difference, suuuuure.) Of course, as is always the case in Cassandra stories, the evil appears and needs to be defeated by a group of plucky heroes.

The plots of the following episodes range from preventing an oncoming famine to attacking giant space bears (no, really) to the butch-er ponies being excessively competitive with each other to ... manually changing the seasons via magic as the usual thing to do.

( Allow me to explain... )

And then they have awesome adventures fighting monsters and engaging in a market economy! NO REALLY. You should watch it.

(For ALL your pony news and free episodes, I direct you to The Official Site and Equestria Daily.)