I’m not sure I was comfortable learning about the “Bronies”, subjects of the documentary A Brony Tale. My Little Pony is an animated television series that is made for an audience of little girls and which features flying pastel cartoon ponies. Bronies are fans of My Little Pony who are predominantly male and between the ages of 14 and 30. As one of the My Little Pony voice actresses notes, “my pervert alarm went off”.
I was settled in for a cringefest of a freak show, but surprised to met a biker Brony, an Iraq combat vet Brony, married Bronies and just a lot of seemingly manly and normal-looking Bronies. A Brony Tale raised some serious questions of gender expectations – why can we be so repelled by someone’s surprising taste in a harmless TV show? But then we visit BronyCon – the convention for Bronies – and see a lot of them expressing themselves with very strange costuming (and FanimeCon is held close to my house, so I have a high bar for strange costuming).
A Brony Tale is only 79 minutes long – and could have shaved 4-5 minutes off the voice actress’ journey to the BronyCon. A Brony Tale is available streaming on iTunes. Still mulling this over. Hmmmm…