| “ | Greetings, Tantabus. I am ready. Do your worst. | „ |
| ~ Princess Luna to Tantabus. |
| “ | I saw that the Tantabus had grown more powerful, but I did not realize that power was enough to enable it to escape my dreams. If its power grows, it could very well find a way to escape into the real world. It could turn all of Equestria into a living nightmare! | „ |
| ~ Princess Luna describing Tantabus' abilities and goal. |
| “ | Princess Luna: I created the Tantabus to give myself the same nightmare every night... to punish myself for the evil I caused as Nightmare Moon! Fluttershy: But why would you do that?! |
„ |
| ~ Princess Luna reveals herself to be the one who created Tantabus. |
The Tantabus is the main antagonist of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic episode "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?".
He is an Equestrian magic created by Princess Luna to subject her to nightmares for the crimes she committed as Nightmare Moon. He was later empowered by Luna's guilt (and also accidentally gained full self-awareness along the way), and escaped into the dream world, subjecting the people of Ponyville to nightmares in an attempt to increase his own power at Luna's expense so he can infiltrate the real world and turn the existence of all life in Equestria into a constant waking nightmare.
Biography[]
The Tantabus was originally an Equestrian magic that was created by Princess Luna to punish her for what she did as Nightmare Moon. It inhabited Luna's dreams and gave her nightmares so that she would constantly feel guilty for what she had done. During one of Luna's dreams, the Mane 6 appeared and attempted to bring her back with the Rainbow Power. However, Luna did not foresee that her guilt would serve as the source of the Tantabus's power enhancement, which not only became stronger, but also suddenly became fully self-aware, and after it learned about the Mane 6 through Luna's dream, escaped into the dream world, indirectly causing Luna's dream to end well instead of the bad one she had intended. Having escaped into the dream world, the Tantabus began spreading nightmares among the people of Equestria, starting with the Mane 6 first.
The next day, the Mane 6 say that they have been seeing nothing but nightmares, with a constant presence of a certain creature made of blue smoke. After contacting Luna, she explains that the Tantabus has become stronger and has escaped from her dream, starting to spread nightmares into the dreams of other Equestrians. She also explains that with each new dream, it becomes stronger, and if it reaches a gigantic indicator of its power, it will be able to fully penetrate the dream world into the real world, turning Equestria and the lives of everyone living in it into an endless waking nightmare.
Determined to find and defeat the Tantabus, Luna returns to the dream world the following night through the dreams of the Mane 6. The Tantabus first decides to corrupt Rarity's dream by transforming the dresses in her dream into monsters, so that she will experience a sense of fear towards the fashion that she likes and loves so much. Once Luna enters Rarity's dream, the Tantabus immediately decides to empower itself with Luna's guilt for making Rarity suffer because of it, after which it orders the dress monsters to attack Luna and Rarity, and escapes into another dream.
Having entered Pinkie Pie's dream, the Tantabus decides to corrupt her dream by transforming many cakes into monsters, so that she will experience a sense of fear towards the cakes and sweets that she likes and loves so much. And despite the fact that Luna, who arrived in Pinkie Pie's dream, easily defeats all the cake monsters, the Tantabus still manages to escape to another dream.
Having entered Fluttershy's dream, the Tantabus decides to corrupt her dream by turning Angel into a giant monster so that she experiences a feeling of fear towards the animals that she likes and loves so much. Although Luna manages to save Fluttershy from the attack of the Angel-monster, the Tantabus still manages to escape to another dream, along the way leaving the Angel monster in Fluttershy's dream so that he can deal with her.
Having entered Applejack's dream, the Tantabus, escaping from Princess Luna, decides to corrupt Applejack's dream on the way to another dream by turning all the apple trees on her farm into rotten trees, so that she would experience a feeling of fear and despair before such a disastrous situation on her farm, which she loves and cherishes so much. In the end, the Tantabus still escapes from Luna into another dream through Applejack's giant apple, turning it into a rotten one along the way.
Having entered Rainbow Dash's dream, the Tantabus decides to corrupt her dream by changing her favorite dream of fighting Changelings into a dream of disgustingly cute singing flowers playing an equally disgustingly cute song with a flute, in order to mock her love of sports and anything that can cause her excitement or thrills, wishing for her to suffer psychologically because of such a dream. Having successfully corrupted Rainbow Dash's dream, the Tantabus escapes from Luna through a cloud in the sky into another dream.
Having entered Princess Twilight Sparkle's dream through one of the books in the library, the Tantabus decides to corrupt her dream by turning several books into bat-like and slug-like monsters in order to deprive her of the desire and love for knowledge that she so loves. Having sent several bat-books after her, the Tantabus decides to confront Twilight himself and deal with her, but is stopped by Luna, who temporarily imprisons the Tantabus in a crystal. Distracted by trying to save Twilight from the book-monsters that attacked her, Luna forgets to restrain the Tantabus, which instantly breaks out of its crystal confinement. Realizing that at the moment he will not be able to defeat Luna and the Mane 6, he instantly resets the dream effects of all the Mane 6 members, forcing them and Luna to temporarily leave the dream world so that he can think about his next steps.
Realizing that it is impossible to defeat the Tantabus while it is moving from one dream to another, Luna, at Twilight's suggestion, creates a shared dream for all of Ponyville to ensure that the Tantabus can be defeated without fear of it escaping. By creating the shared dream, Luna warns all of Ponyville of the Tantabus's approach, which immediately appears above Ponyville, but Luna temporarily stops its movement with magical lightning. Realizing that it will not be able to penetrate the real world this way, the Tantabus begins creating many dangers for the citizens of Ponyville to distract the Mane 6: it brings a couple of buildings to life and turns their monsters, creates a carnivorous plant, and sets a flock of flying cupcakes on Big McIntosh. Taking advantage of the fact that the Mane 6 are distracted by saving the inhabitants of Ponyville, the Tantabus turns part of its body into a sword blade and cuts a passage into the real world, but does not have time to fully penetrate it, as Twilight manages to hit it with a magic beam, and Luna seals the passage with her magic. In an attempt to find a better way to penetrate the real world, the Tantabus tries to escape, but is overtaken by Rainbow Dash, who pierces it through with her body, which, however, does nothing to the Tantabus, as well as Twilight's magical attack on her body, the wound from which he also easily heals. Having managed to convince all the inhabitants of Ponyville to use their imagination in the dream world to defeat the Tantabus, the Mane 6 and the inhabitants of Ponyville begin to attack the Tantabus, which has already turned part of its body into scissors and cuts itself another passage into the real world. But he again does not have time to fully penetrate the passage, since Spike, who turned himself into a knight, cuts him in two with his spear, which, however, did nothing to the Tantabus, since he immediately restored the damage received. However, his path is blocked by an attack from Filthy Rich with the help of his money magic, with which he pushes the Tantabus away from the passage to the real world. But the Tantabus manages to immediately cut a new passage to the real world with part of its body, and does not have time to penetrate it because of Scootaloo, who, having increased her wings several times, pushes the Tantabus out of the passage with streams of wind. Then he is imprisoned in a vortex by Rainbow Dash, who turned herself into Zapp, but this is not enough, and the Tantabus, enraged by such obstacles in the way of his plans, breaks out of the vortex. But his actions are hampered by a flock of living books summoned by Twilight from the library she restored, Applejack, who turned herself into Mistress Mare-velous, and Fluttershy, who made it so that Angel monster was on their side. Along the way, Rarity manages to patch up the passage created by the Tantabus.
However, all this turns out to be useless, since the Tantabus was counting on the fact that the more members of the Mane 6 and the more residents of Ponyville try to stop it, the stronger Luna, due to the current situation in which she barely manages to hold a common dream to fight the Tantabus and at the same time must not allow it to penetrate the real world, will feel that nothing will work and that because of her Equestria will be doomed. As a result, due to the fact that Luna's feelings of guilt turned out to be much greater than before, the Tantabus increases its abilities several times, after which it easily throws away all the opponents who held it back, simultaneously beginning to take a form that is suitable for its penetration into the real world. Having transformed part of its body into a unicorn's head, the Tantabus cuts a giant passage into the real world. At the same time, the Mane 6 realize that the Tantabus is being strengthened by Luna's guilt, who eventually admits to everyone that she created the Tantabus to create dreams for her, to punish her for the evil she once did, and to ensure that she would never forgive herself for what she did as Nightmare Moon. Strengthened by Luna's guilt, the Tantabus, taking the form of a giant unicorn and cutting a hole completely into the real world, begins to move into it. However, the Mane 6 convince Luna that she is no longer who she used to be, and that her actions show that she is no longer the person who would have put Equestria in danger like the Tantabus in the past, and when the Mane 6 ask Luna if she is willing to trust them enough to believe that they are right, Luna says that she is willing to believe them, thereby ending her guilt and renouncing her past. At the same moment, Tanatabus, who had almost completely entered the passage to the real world, is deeply horrified by the fact that Luna has stopped feeling guilty and has abandoned her past, and that his plan has now failed forever, after which he sees with horror how he is deprived of his abilities, and as a result, against his will and desire, is pulled back inside Luna, and is trapped inside her forever without the possibility of freeing himself.
Appearance[]
Tantabus is essentially formless, but can manipulate its state at will to suit any situation. In its default form, it appears as an amorphous being of deep blue star smoke outlined in light heliotrope.
Personality[]
Due to its unique appearance as an Equestrian magic, Tantabus has no ability to speak and is only slightly capable of expressing any emotion, but its character can be judged by its actions throughout the episode.
Among all the representatives of Equestrian magic, the Tantabus stands out for its cold-blooded, heartless and sadistic nature, something that was completely out of character for it before it gained full sentience, having originally been created to torture Luna at her command for her past. After gaining full sentience and through its actions towards the Mane 6, it becomes obvious that it enjoys the psychological pain and suffering of living beings. Its favorite method of psychological torture was to force its victims to dream the way they wanted it to, and then twist it to its sadistic desires, turning it into a nightmare and enjoying their deep sense of fear while it tormented them. This sadism even extended to its creator Princess Luna: it enjoyed the way Luna constantly felt guilty about not being able to stop the Tantabus and believed that all of Equestria was doomed because of her.
As a rule, due to its appearance, Tantabus cannot speak, and if it does make any sounds, it pronounces them with strong distortion and indistinctly. However, despite this, Tantabus is very tactful and intelligent, it masterfully analyzes its victims not only in terms of their psychology in order to corrupt their dreams, but also in terms of their strength and what danger it could pose to it, and accordingly always successfully plans its method of fighting them. For example, when it could not give a full-fledged rebuff to Princess Luna and Twilight Sparkle, being stopped by the former rather quickly, it preferred that Luna and Mane 6 woke up from his actions and left the dream world in order to at least briefly, but think about their further actions, and not go directly to such dangerous opponents for it, knowing full well what power they possessed. Also, during the shared dream created by Luna, his first decision was to make the Mane 6 switch their attention to saving the inhabitants of Ponyville while he managed to penetrate the real world. In addition, during the same shared dream, he, realizing that he still lacked the strength to penetrate the real world (since he was too often prevented from doing so by the Mane 6 and the inhabitants of Ponyville), he preferred that his opponents send as much of their strength as possible to restrain him, calculating everything in such a way that Luna became even more insecure that the Tantabus could be defeated, ultimately feeling guilty again for her actions, which allowed the Tantabus to strengthen itself several times and fully gain the ability to penetrate the real world.
Powers and Abilities[]
Being an Equestrian magic capable of manipulating the dreams and nightmares of any living being with virtually no limits, the Tantabus was an extremely powerful entity. Its unique nightmare magic and techniques allowed it to easily overpower almost any weakling in Equestria, giving it the edge it needed to fight and confront even Luna, the most skilled and powerful alicorn capable of manipulating dreams. The Tantabus demonstrated many impressive abilities, such as creating a variety of monstrous creatures with unique abilities from any object, its immortality, agility, and regenerative abilities due to its Equestrian magic nature, and virtually unlimited abilities in both the dream realm and possibly the real world. In particular, in its battle with the Mane 6 and the citizens of Ponyville, the Tantabus was able to withstand a huge amount of damage from all of their attacks, and was able to psychologically wear down Luna with its actions for most of the battle, even pushing her to the brink of psychological despair, allowing her to experience guilt, thereby strengthening itself even more and defeating the Mane 6 and all of the citizens of Ponyville at once. If Luna had not given up her past with the help of the Mane 6, the Tantabus would have been able to infiltrate the real world without any problems and turn the lives of every inhabitant of Equestria into an endless nightmare.
- Genius-level Intelligence: Despite being unable to speak or express emotion due to its physical appearance, the Tantabus displays incredible tactical and strategic foresight and a exceptional level of intelligence compared to all other members of Equestrian magic, who were typically either granted a primitive level of intelligence to perform basic tasks relative to their nature, or had no intelligence at all. It was able to use information from Luna's dream to learn information about the Mana 6 and use it to further combat them if it were to encounter them in a dream. The Tantabus was also able to tactically retreat from the battlefield, forcing both Mana 6 and Luna to wake up from their dreams in order to think about their next course of action and best infiltrate the real world, defeating their enemies along the way. While his priority was to get out into the real world, he also decided to drag out the time so that as many of his opponents as possible would try in vain to restrain him, in order to create a sense of insecurity in Luna about the current situation. This ended up working in his favor, as Luna eventually began to feel even more guilty for the fact that Equestria was doomed because of her, allowing the Tantabus to increase its power at once and defeat all of its restrainers without breaking a sweat. Unlike all other representatives of Equestrian magic, the Tantabus has also been shown to be very creative in using its magic in any situation, including its ability to manipulate reality and its body, such as using as many different ways as possible to distract the Mane 6 and Luna in order to infiltrate the real world so that they would focus on directly saving the citizens of Ponyville instead of himself, as well as transforming its body into different objects in order to infiltrate the real world as successfully as possible. And on top of all that, he was well aware that, although he had a fully functional moral free will, he was still partially dependent on Luna's guilt, which was a double-edged sword for him, being the force that supplied him with power, but at the same time could deprive him of it as soon as Luna let go of her past.
- Magical Immortality: Due to its properties as an Equestrian magic, the Tantabus is completely immortal and has the ability to live an unlimited amount of time regardless of the situation or other external factors of the world around it.
- Enhanced Regeneration: As a representative of Equestrian magic, the Tantabus has one of the most developed and powerful regeneration rates in all of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. When Rainbow Dash pierced it in mid-flight with her body, it instantly healed, not even feeling any discomfort from such damage, managing to instantly restore the damaged area. It also took him mere seconds to recover from a piercing wound from Twilight's magic beam, as well as from Spike's spear attack, which split his body in half.
- Limited Omnipotence: due to the ability to manipulate dreams at will, Tantabus possesses almost unlimited power, which may even surpass the level of power of Princess Luna herself. He has the ability to transform both living and inanimate objects into any monsters, can change the surrounding space at his own discretion including the geosphere, atmosphere and biosphere, can change the physiology and biology of living beings at will, can cut passages between the dream world and the real world, can create any creatures from scratch, can heal any damage inflicted on him, can change his formless shell as he wishes, etc., etc. It is also worth noting that the factor on which the level and effectiveness of his abilities depended was the level of Luna's sense of guilt, which could easily reduce his power to a minimum as soon as Luna stopped feeling guilty and abandoned her past.
- Reality Warping: in addition to its ability to manipulate dreams, Tantabus also has the ability to warp reality to suit its needs. For example, it was able to completely alter the reality of Rainbow Dash's dream, transforming it from a dream of fighting Changelings into a dream of disgustingly cute singing flowers. Typically, the distortion of reality extends not only to the surrounding space, but also to specific objects, such as when, during a shared dream, it was able to easily transform two buildings in Ponyville into monstrous living beings.
- Nigh-Invulnerability: As one of the most powerful representatives of Equestrian magic, Tantabus has exceptional durability due to the extremely high concentration of magic in his body. He can withstand a huge, if not infinite amount of damage without having any problems with it. For example, when Twilight sent a swarm of living books at him, or when Filthy Rich used magic on him during the shared dream, he felt no discomfort from the amount of damage they inflicted on him.
- Dream Manipulation: One of the Tantabus's main abilities is the ability to enter the dreams of living beings, manipulate them, and control them while they sleep. It takes advantage of their vulnerability, and does so in order to manipulate their dreams to the best of its ability for its own sadistic purposes. Just like its creator Luna, the Tantabus has no restraints on its abilities in the dream world, and possibly in the real world, as it can both create positive dreams and send a wide variety of nightmares, which it uses to the maximum extent as a means of psychological attack and as a means of torture against any of its enemies. It especially enjoys harming those who dare to stand in the way of its plans. This method is similar to King Sombra's gypnosis, but has a more perverted range of ways to cause psychological harm to its victims. But, much like King Sombra's ability to hypnotize his enemies into experiencing their worst fears, the Tantabus' nightmares, while powerful and effective, are not always perfect, as its victims can resist their effects by displaying enough willpower and imagination in the dream world to be able to fully fight their nightmares if they were not made effective enough by the Tantabus to psychologically torment their victims. However, even with this, the willpower to fight against their nightmares is not enough to break out of the dream state or even fully fight back against the Tantabus even in the earliest stages of its power. For example, even though Luna's efforts to bring Mane 6 back from her deep fear in the dream world were partially successful, all of the nightmares created by the Tantabus were only dispelled when the Tantabus itself willed Mane 6 and Princess Luna to leave the dream world. This ability of the Tantabus also allows it to obtain information about its victims, including their inner desires and their concept of emotions. For example, after the Tantabus managed to gain self-awareness, it was able to learn about the existence of the Mane 6 and their power through Luna's dream, and then, by infiltrating each of their dreams, it was able to fully learn about the personality of each Mane 6 member and what is the opposite of what brings them positive emotions. As a result, the Tantabus was able to use the information it gained to deeply affect the psychological makeup of the Mane 6, as shown in the scene where it corrupted the dreams of each of the Mane 6 members so that they would experience a deep fear of what they liked. In this case, the Tantabus used the knowledge of what each of the Mane 6 liked most, or dreamed about, or experienced positive emotions in their lives to specifically create nightmares that it believed would break their psyches to the core and make them fear what they liked for the rest of their lives.
- Dream Walking: due to the fact that he has almost equal, if not greater, strength than Luna, Tantabas has the ability to move from one dream to another by any means available to him.
- Psychology Knowledge: Thanks to his advanced level of intelligence, Tantabus has a great understanding of the concept of emotions in any living being, allowing him to profitably understand what brings joy and generally pleasant emotions to those around him, and what plunges them into deep fear. With this knowledge, he was able to easily understand how to most logically and effectively corrupt the dreams of the Mane 6 to make them all fear what brings them the most joy and positive emotions in life.
- Guilt Enhancement: due to its partial connection with Princess Luna, the Tantabus has the ability to increase its powers whenever Luna experiences guilt, making itself stronger and able to develop new abilities, or enhancing the ones it already has. Unfortunately, if Luna stops feeling guilty and renounces her past, the Tantabus's power will be reduced to a minimum, forcing it to return to Luna against its will and desires.
Weaknesses[]
- Guilt Abandonment: Despite having achieved full self-awareness, Tantabus was still bound to Luna by her guilt, which, while not depriving him of his moral agency, directly affected his power level, something Tantabus was well aware of, and therefore tried his best to create situations in which Luna would never stop feeling guilt and would always supply him with power for his plans as needed. However, due to his burning desire to enter the real world, Tantabus failed to notice that Luna eventually stopped feeling guilt and abandoned her past, forcing Tantabus against his own will and desire to return back to her.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- The Tantabus is the second villain to be created by a major villain (the first being the Plunderseeds who were created by Discord).
- Tantibus (alternate spelling for Tantabus) is Latin for the word 'nightmare'.
- Its appearance and color shape is reminiscent of an ancient and noble creature of Japanese mythology, Daidarabotchi (ダイダラボッチ, literally "Giant").
- According to "Big" Jim Miller, the Tantabus was based on the Japanese Baku.
- Tantabus is the only representative of Equestrian magic in My Little Pony Friendship is Magic that is fully self-aware.
- He is also the only villain in My Little Pony Friendship is Magic that is Equestrian magic.
- The Tantabus' ability to influence the psyche of its victims by influencing their inner fears is similar to the hypnosis of King Sombra, who also had the ability to show his enemies their greatest fears with his magic. However, the effects of the Tantabus are much more painful and dangerous than Sombra's hypnosis, which is primarily aimed at mass enslavement of its victims and deprivation of their free will. While Tantabus's psychological torture differs from brainwashing and showing enemies their inner fears in that it is more twisted and more subtle and varied in execution, since Tantabus has every right to change these very fears and psychologically torture his victims in a variety of ways, because he is an Equestrian magic, having almost the same level and set of abilities as Princess Luna, while Sombra is only capable of mass hypnotizing, depriving enemies of their will, and psychologically revealing to them their deepest fears, based on subconscious thoughts and images.
- In the non-canon Gameloft game, during the "Princess Panic" group quest story, it managed to break free from his confinement inside Princess Luna, and plunged all four Alicorn Princesses into a horrific nightmare.
- It partly represents the dark side of Princess Luna, because as it also had absolutely no interest in the lives of the people of Equestria, being willing to both harm them and basically use them for any of his selfish purposes, and was willing to calmly put Equestria itself in any danger, including causing psychological harm to its people by inflicting all sorts of nightmares on them so that they would live forever in fear of what brings them positive emotions in life.
- Among the many other villains in G4, the Tantabus perhaps stands out as Princess Luna's most personal enemy, distinguishing himself by his actions in the form of deliberately creating precisely those dangerous situations for the Mane 6 and the inhabitants of Ponyville in which Luna would often or almost constantly feel guilty, wanting to ultimately make her completely sink into deep despair due to the fact that she could not save Equestria, while no other villain in the series has ever tried to do anything similar to Luna, focusing his attention primarily on the Mane 6.
- This also partly makes the Tantabus a very personal enemy to the Mane 6 in some ways in regards to their interests, as he deliberately and with sadistic pleasure tried to corrupt their dreams not only on the level of making them afraid of everything in reality, but also sought to psychologically destroy their love and care for everything that gave them positive emotions in life, wanting to make them eternally afraid of it, and eventually renounced such behavior forever, which sets him apart from other G4 villains, such as King Sombra (who attempted to psychologically torture the Mane 6 by showing them their worst fears and hypnotized everyone in Ponyville) or Sunset Shimmer (who was able to temporarily ruin the Mane 6's friendship and psychologically abuse them) who also attempted to psychologically harm the Mane 6, but none of them attempted to harm them on such a deep and subtle psychological level as Tantabus, whose desire was based on a complete and utter desire to put the Mane 6 into a state of constant waking fear of anything that evokes positive emotions in their lives.
