Poll: Equestria vs. Ooo, which is the most interesting world?

Recommended Videos

themistermanguy

Senior Member
Nov 22, 2013
677
7
23
Country
United States
Both Adventure Time and My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic take place in RPG-esque fantasy lands (a rarity for cartoons these days), named Ooo & Equestria respectively. However, which setting do you think is the most interesting? I honestly have to say the Post-apocalyptic Earth itself, Ooo. Not only are its origins unique, but thanks to its unique set of rules and structure, anything can happen. On the other hand, I think Equestria is a cool place as well, but world-building is something MLP's been kind of lacking in lately, here's hoping season 5 fleshes out Equestria as a world more.
 

Sean Hollyman

New member
Jun 24, 2011
5,175
0
0
I've never watched Adventure Time but I'm going to vote for it because anything is better than MLP.
 

Sniper Team 4

New member
Apr 28, 2010
5,433
0
0
Oh, I love My Little Pony! Favorite cartoon on T.V. right now by far.

That being said, I think Adventure Time's Oooo blows Equestria out of the water. There's a sense of mystery around the place, of the hidden darkness that the current world has been built upon. This adds a sense of thrill to it for me, and I feel that the writers are slowly revealing little pieces of the world that they have carefully thought up and are just waiting for the right time to fill the rest of us in on the lore.

Equestria doesn't have that. The writers just seem to add places and lore as they go. I don't think they have a big map and book about the lore and world of the show. This, of course, allows them to add whatever they need without having to worry about ruining or contradicting things that they've already planned, but at the same time it takes away a bit of the sense of wonder.
 

themistermanguy

Senior Member
Nov 22, 2013
677
7
23
Country
United States
Sniper Team 4 said:
Oh, I love My Little Pony! Favorite cartoon on T.V. right now by far.

That being said, I think Adventure Time's Oooo blows Equestria out of the water. There's a sense of mystery around the place, of the hidden darkness that the current world has been built upon. This adds a sense of thrill to it for me, and I feel that the writers are slowly revealing little pieces of the world that they have carefully thought up and are just waiting for the right time to fill the rest of us in on the lore.

Equestria doesn't have that. The writers just seem to add places and lore as they go. I don't think they have a big map and book about the lore and world of the show. This, of course, allows them to add whatever they need without having to worry about ruining or contradicting things that they've already planned, but at the same time it takes away a bit of the sense of wonder.
There is an official map of Equestria Hasbro released that's online.
 

Scarim Coral

Jumped the ship
Legacy
Oct 29, 2010
18,157
2
3
Country
UK
Sniper Team 4 said:
Oh, I love My Little Pony! Favorite cartoon on T.V. right now by far.

That being said, I think Adventure Time's Oooo blows Equestria out of the water. There's a sense of mystery around the place, of the hidden darkness that the current world has been built upon. This adds a sense of thrill to it for me, and I feel that the writers are slowly revealing little pieces of the world that they have carefully thought up and are just waiting for the right time to fill the rest of us in on the lore.

Equestria doesn't have that. The writers just seem to add places and lore as they go. I don't think they have a big map and book about the lore and world of the show. This, of course, allows them to add whatever they need without having to worry about ruining or contradicting things that they've already planned, but at the same time it takes away a bit of the sense of wonder.
There is an offiical guidebook of MLP (which I so happened to have bought) which does contain lores and an officialmap but it only cover up to season 3.


OT- Despite being a MLP fan (and I do watch AT) but since the topic is about the most interesting I would have go with Ooo. No offence to Equestria but Ooo is much more fantasy (I mean there is a pony version of New York while there is a village of manly vikings in Ooo) given to the many subtext of it being an fallout Earth.

Oh I may aswell thrown in the map of Ooo just for kicks.
 

EternallyBored

Terminally Apathetic
Jun 17, 2013
1,434
0
0
Ouch, that's actually kind of a tough question. Ooo has an interesting and detailed backstory that does a good job of explaining its loony tunes logic. Equestria is a little less detailed, but what's there is an interesting variation of traditional fantasy tropes that you don't often see used together.

Both settings have interesting creatures, Ooo's can be more hit or miss for me, with some places looking more like they just wanted to add something bizarre and stupid, or trying to appeal to stoner humor. Equestria's creatures are more consistent, but also a little less out there, since they pretty much all draw from various real world mythologies, even the more bizarre characters like ahuizotl are adaptations of actual mythological creatures, which for someone like me, who loves traditional mythology, is more interesting than Ooo's grab bag of candy people, amorphous blobs, and talking lemons.

The history is more detailed with Ooo, and the whole post-apocalyptic thing gives it a dissonant tragedy to offset the often whimsical creatures and setting. Equestria's history is a little more traditional fantasy faire. Ooo's is more interesting to me in this case, simply because they do more with it.

In regards to present setting, both are interesting in their own ways, Ooo for its weird almost dreamlike qualities with its somber background, and Equestria with its fantasy tropes subverted and given a new spin. For Equestria, they take a lot of cliche fantasy tropes and put them in a world that fantasy rarely utilizes well. The first point being, you've got a fantasy setting with nary a human, dwarf, or elf in sight, allowing the whole setting to focus on more exotic creatures without worrying about the narrative being hijacked by generic human audience insert character A. Equestria also nicely sidesteps the technological stagnation issue that infests a lot of settings, with actual steam trains and other technology, Equestria isn't stuck in an eternal medieval dark age like so many other fantasy settings, which gives the whole setting a really nice smattering of industrial revolution and late 19th early 20th century technological flair.

In the end, I'm just barely voting for Equestria on this one, more because I really enjoy the fantasy approach and interpretation of traditional fantasy creatures into a world that isn't dominated by the same old humans, short humans, and humans with pointy ears, that infests so much of the fantasy genre. I like them both, but Equestria is a little more interesting to me as a whole.
 

Sniper Team 4

New member
Apr 28, 2010
5,433
0
0
TheMisterManGuy said:
There is an official map of Equestria Hasbro released that's online.
Scarim Coral said:
There is an offiical guidebook of MLP (which I so happened to have bought) which does contain lores and an officialmap but it only cover up to season 3.
And I have a copy of that map, but it is just of Equestria. Even the comic books have a bigger map, showing where Discord was originally defeated. There's only a direction for the Griffon Kingdom, and no mention of Saddle Arabia or any of the other places that the show talks about, which makes me believe that none of this is planned. Ooo, on the other hand, I'm betting they have a reference guide, or they are taking very good care to make sure that everything is organized as it goes.
 

Scarim Coral

Jumped the ship
Legacy
Oct 29, 2010
18,157
2
3
Country
UK
Sniper Team 4 said:
TheMisterManGuy said:
There is an official map of Equestria Hasbro released that's online.
Scarim Coral said:
There is an offiical guidebook of MLP (which I so happened to have bought) which does contain lores and an officialmap but it only cover up to season 3.
And I have a copy of that map, but it is just of Equestria. Even the comic books have a bigger map, showing where Discord was originally defeated. There's only a direction for the Griffon Kingdom, and no mention of Saddle Arabia or any of the other places that the show talks about, which makes me believe that none of this is planned. Ooo, on the other hand, I'm betting they have a reference guide, or they are taking very good care to make sure that everything is organized as it goes.
Did you not see the official map of Ooo in my post? It's just as single containment as it is to Equestria but I will let it go seeing that there was that episode when you got a good look of the the plant with a chuck of it is blown off.
 

PeaceRider

New member
Oct 17, 2011
40
0
0
since I don't find LSD-land or the recent run of LSD-lands and stretchy people interesting, I cast my vote to the candy-colored equines
 

Radeonx

New member
Apr 26, 2009
7,013
0
0
I say Adventure Time, based solely on the fact that MLP is shit.

From the one episode of Adventure Time I've seen, it seems at the very least sub par, so I'll assume that that applies to the world as well.
 

Vuxul

Europony
Dec 7, 2010
18
0
11
While i'am brony number one in my local area and might be going slightly insane with ponies, i would go with Ooo. They don't explore the world all that much and end up sitting in Ponyville/Canterlot almost the entire time. You get a feel of adventure (time) there, with all the different areas.
 

Madame_Lawliet

New member
Jul 16, 2013
319
0
0
Ooo by a wide margin.

Ooo is, in my opinion, a large part of what makes Adventure Time such a great show, the setting carries allot of the story, and it's where Adventure Time gets many of it's most interesting aspects. Ooo has a very detailed back-story about it supposedly being our world post nuclear apocalypse (the "Great Mushrooms War" as it's often referred to, obviously implying mushroom clouds) and the denizens of Ooo being mutations as a result of that Nuclear War. This isn't just a fan theory either, it's all totally cannon, and frequently made subtle reference to (I guess this makes Adventure Time is sort of like Fallout for kids).
The keyword here is SUBTLE, the lore of Adventure Time has origins for damn near everything steeped in the history of Ooo, but they don't bash you over the head with it, it's always kept as a secondary concern to whatever story is the focus of the episode, and when it is directly referenced, it's done in a way that kids watching will likely not even catch it but older viewers are far more likely to. This is a big part of why Adventure Time succeeds as a show that's truly able to be appreciated on multiple levels, the kids watch it for the light hearted humor, colourful art style, and eccentric characters (and that's a perfectly valid way of viewing Adventure Time); however parents and older viewers can appreciate the deeper then meets the eye lore, surprisingly deep storytelling, and subtle continuity stuff that may go over some kids heads (and mean that inevitably when the generation growing up on Adventure Time comes to their own, they'll come to realization of all these deeper levels to the story and setting they never noticed as kids and it'll blow their minds, granting it longer stability as a direct result (I fully expect "2000's kids" to remember Adventure Time the same way we remember Ed, Edd, n' Eddy, The Powerpuff Girls, or Courage).

I'm not going to say that Equestria is a bad setting but in my honest opinion it pales in comparison to Ooo's sheer brilliance.

I really need to update my username...
 

Dalisclock

Making lemons combustible again
Legacy
Escapist +
Feb 9, 2008
11,286
7,086
118
A Barrel In the Marketplace
Country
Eagleland
Gender
Male
I like both shows, but Ooo wins hands down. There always seems to be more to see in Ooo and it can be anything from High Fantasy to Dalis worst nightmare to Post Apocalyptic city, all right next to each other.

Equestria, OTOH, doesn't seem very well planned. It started out being standard generic mideveal europeon fantasy world but then they decided to throw in a wild west town and some tech that really shouldn't exist(Arcade Cabinets and construction cranes that can be operated by hooves). Four seasons later it's pretty obvious Equestria is more or less a Pony Expy of the USA with Magic and ruled by Princesses, just stuff just thrown in.

Ooo, for all it's wierdness, actually seems more consistent and (relatively) justified.
 

DudeistBelieve

TellEmSteveDave.com
Sep 9, 2010
4,771
1
0
Ooo. It's got all that fantasy kingdom magic crap that I hate but it also is basically a Fallout 3 waste land, and I love Fallout.

Equestria, the only thing that interests me about the place is wanting to see the fall of it's dictatorship, V For Vendetta style.
 

Story

Note to self: Prooof reed posts
Sep 4, 2013
905
0
0
Ooo by far!
I mean I've watched both shows and it is really not even a contest.
It helps that Adventure Time is within the surrealism genre in addition to post-apocalyptic.
 

FPLOON

Your #1 Source for the Dino Porn
Jul 10, 2013
12,531
0
0
Madame_le_Flour said:
Ooo by a wide margin.

Ooo is, in my opinion, a large part of what makes Adventure Time such a great show, the setting carries allot of the story, and it's where Adventure Time gets many of it's most interesting aspects. Ooo has a very detailed back-story about it supposedly being our world post nuclear apocalypse (the "Great Mushrooms War" as it's often referred to, obviously implying mushroom clouds) and the denizens of Ooo being mutations as a result of that Nuclear War. This isn't just a fan theory either, it's all totally cannon, and frequently made subtle reference to (I guess this makes Adventure Time is sort of like Fallout for kids).
The keyword here is SUBTLE, the lore of Adventure Time has origins for damn near everything steeped in the history of Ooo, but they don't bash you over the head with it, it's always kept as a secondary concern to whatever story is the focus of the episode, and when it is directly referenced, it's done in a way that kids watching will likely not even catch it but older viewers are far more likely to. This is a big part of why Adventure Time succeeds as a show that's truly able to be appreciated on multiple levels, the kids watch it for the light hearted humor, colourful art style, and eccentric characters (and that's a perfectly valid way of viewing Adventure Time); however parents and older viewers can appreciate the deeper then meets the eye lore, surprisingly deep storytelling, and subtle continuity stuff that may go over some kids heads (and mean that inevitably when the generation growing up on Adventure Time comes to their own, they'll come to realization of all these deeper levels to the story and setting they never noticed as kids and it'll blow their minds, granting it longer stability as a direct result (I fully expect "2000's kids" to remember Adventure Time the same way we remember Ed, Edd, n' Eddy, The Powerpuff Girls, or Courage).

I'm not going to say that Equestria is a bad setting but in my honest opinion it pales in comparison to Ooo's sheer brilliance.
This. Too bad one of Ooo's main negatives against itself is how it can sometimes come off as "more inconsistent" than Equestria, especially for those who are trying to get into watching Adventure Time basically without giving up on it in just a few "random" episodes...

With that said, Equestria is still the more easier world to try to understand even if you've never seen any episodes beforehand... However, I feel that the world of Ooo can keep you the most invested and willing to know more about it, overall, because of how more complex (and, dare I say, more "real") that world feels, in comparison to Equestria...
 

MeChaNiZ3D

New member
Aug 30, 2011
3,104
0
0
Sean Hollyman said:
I've never watched Adventure Time but I'm going to vote for it because anything is better than MLP.
To be completely honest, that's my thought process too.