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| With such power, the future promises many things... |
Happy belated new year!
What better way to kick off 2023 in Funtasia Daily than with the first major Filly Funtasia news in a while?
It's been a little over two years since episodes 13-26 released in China. Now, after a long time with little to no news regarding the future of the series, it seems like 2023 will be bringing some answers to the questions left from the first season.
But, before we delve further, a little extra context on Filly Funtasia's history of delayed releases.
This will be a little long, so do skip to the bottom of this post if you only wish to read the news.
Filly Funtasia first began to be promoted in 2013. Back then, the show was expected to premiere in 2014, yet it never saw its debut until early 2019. Despite the fact that, supposedly, 26 episodes were being produced, only 13 of them made it to TV. What happened?
It is known that Filly Funtasia spent years in what we call "development hell" before production was picked back up in 2018. At this point, none of the studios that originally worked on the show were involved in its development anymore. Just one year after, the first half of that season hit Italian broadcast.
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| Source |
This is an outdated chart illustrating the original production plan for Filly Funtasia from 2018 onwards. The yellow and purple bars correspond to the duration of the pre-production and production process for four batches of episodes and a movie, in the middle. According to it, production should have wrapped sometime during late 2020.
But wait, did I mention a movie? Indeed, there is apparently a Filly Funtasia movie in the works. This has actually been known for years, but specific details regarding its plot or when it is coming aren't currently known, other than that it was originally set to air this year:
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| Source (archived) |
Above is another outdated chart, this time pertaining to the brand's supposed distribution plan for five years since the show's premiere. The top section of this chart shows the rate at which new animated content would be released, with the first batch of episodes premiering internationally in 2019, and the second in October 2020. (As we know, this was the original plan before it was announced in November 2020 that it would be pushed back another month.)
Note that in the Chinese release (as happens with the German dub as well) episodes are split into two halves, meaning that for each batch of 13 episodes, they get a full 26-episode season. According to this chart, these "seasons" were supposed to air yearly 2019 through 2022, with the movie acting as the series finale, I speculate. Filly Funtasia is planned to have 52 full episodes and a movie. It is unknown whether there's a possibility for the show getting renewed for more seasons in the future. There has also been no mention of the two Filly Butterfly and Filly Stars specials announced years ago.
It's evident that these plans turned out to be unsustainable, likely due to the COVID-19 outbreak hitting China in December 2019, meaning that for the following years production would be slowing down significantly and thus leaving us with no new episodes, nor a new movie, for the entirety of 2021 and 2022.
As a bit more added context, while production of the show is done by Guangzhou Huamai Animation Studios in Hong Kong, a lot of the pre-production process was outsourced to B-Water in Spain. It is possible that their involvement in the show could have wrapped up long ago, as far as writing and storyboarding goes. If you want to read a little more on their work for Filly Funtasia, you can check their site here.
Now for more recent news. A Chinese article talking about Filly Funtasia's involvement in the 2023 Hong Kong Toys & Games Fair briefly mentions how the pandemic has affected the brand in the past years, and assures that with COVID-19 prevention measures being lifted, production and launch of the third and fourth seasons has accelerated. An earlier article talking about Filly Funtasia showing up at the 2023 Children's Spring Festival Gala made a similar statement, and reported that a trailer for the new season is coming soon. Though this article was written a month ago, this trailer has yet to be released.
The first article also goes on to talk about the importance of Filly Funtasia visiting the Hong Kong fair, as the brand has been participating in fairs from mainland China mainly and this could mean a better chance of international distribution. We may go more in depth about Filly Funtasia toys and merchandise in a future post.
Are you excited about the future of Filly Funtasia in 2023?
