RE: kurosurintomasu - I cannot fault you for that. Both for the fact that the 2 episodes they played a major role in were pretty good, and for the fact that they are voiced by Weird Al.

RE: senlemonsnout - Yeah! In my experience... well okay I haven't had much experience with the fandom itself, but it does feel like it's a lot healthier now than it was back when it was a frothing obsession. Oh and if you want to re-watch the gen4 main series, I sincerely hope you check out "My Little Pony Best Gift Ever", which is the gen4 Christmas special, which honestly I thought was really well done. Out of all the extra stuff for gen4, that was like, the one I wish I had seen earlier the most. The second most bestest one I thought was the 6 episodes of "Friendship is Forever", since I feel like it is a much better ending to the show than the final episode of S9. There's also now season 10 in comic form which I also gotta read, but supposedly it's pretty good.

Also yeah, Gen5 doesn't seem as good as gen4, but to be fair, Gen4 is a pretty high bar. It's still fun though I think for the most part. The most glaring thing to me besides the whiplash to 3d animation is probably the world building inconsistencies, but yeah.