Is Foundation Worth Watching? An Honest Take

Short answer: no, unless you specifically want a five-episode Chinese YouTube cartoon about a shapeshifting red pony and her human sidekick. That is what this Foundation is. It's not the Apple TV+ Asimov show. It's not the Isaac Asimov novels. It's a 2015 web animation called Foundation by a creator credited as Yimumu, and it ran for five episodes on YouTube before ending.

If you searched "is Foundation worth watching" and pictured Jared Harris in a robe muttering about psychohistory, you want a different page. That's the Apple TV+ show, also called Foundation, based on the Asimov books. This guide is about the little animated series that shares the name. Both things exist. Google doesn't care which one you meant.

The quick verdict

This Foundation is a five-episode animated web series from 2015. It has two ratings on TMDb, which tells you roughly how many people on Earth have seen it and remembered to log it. It's fine for what it is — a small indie animation project on YouTube — but it is not the show most people typing this search are actually looking for. If you want a serious recommendation, scroll down to the "Who should watch it" section and I'll be straight with you.

What Foundation is actually about

The premise, per the only synopsis anyone bothered to write: Lucky and Pie, a red shapeshifting pony and an adventurous young boy, have adventures together. That is the entire logline. It's tagged Animation, Action & Adventure, and Sci-Fi & Fantasy, which for a five-episode YouTube project means "the creator threw in some magic and some fight scenes and called it a day."

Tonally, based on what exists publicly and the format, this sits in the same neighborhood as fan-driven indie animation from the mid-2010s — the era when a lot of ambitious solo animators were uploading serialized shorts to YouTube hoping to build a following. Some of those projects became careers. Most of them ended after a handful of episodes when the creator ran out of time, money, or both. This one ran five episodes and stopped. Draw your own conclusions.

The math on time

Five episodes. Web series length, which typically runs anywhere from five to fifteen minutes per episode. Round up and you're looking at maybe an hour, hour and a half, tops, to watch the entire run.

So the time investment isn't the problem. You could knock this out over lunch. The question isn't whether you can afford the hour. It's whether there are, oh, ten thousand other things you could watch in that hour that would leave a bigger dent. Reader, there are. If you're a completionist about indie animation, or you're specifically researching mid-2010s Chinese web animation, or you clicked in because the poster art caught your eye and now you're curious — an hour is nothing, go for it. Otherwise the time is better spent elsewhere.

What it gets right

Giving credit where it's due: solo and small-team animators making original serialized content on YouTube in this era were doing something genuinely hard. Character designs, backgrounds, storyboarding, voice work, editing, uploading, promoting — one person, often nights and weekends, no budget. The fact that five episodes exist at all is a small miracle of stubbornness.

The character design leans into the shapeshifting pony conceit in a way that suggests the creator had a specific visual identity in mind, not just default anime-adjacent shorthand. The color palette in the promotional stills is striking — that hero image is doing more work than most indie animation from the period. Whoever Yimumu is, they had a look.

That's about as far as I can push the case in good faith. This isn't a hidden masterpiece the algorithm buried. It's a small project by a small team that made a small thing, and the small thing has small charms.

What doesn't work

It ended after five episodes. That's the biggest structural problem with recommending it. Whatever the story was building toward, you're not getting a finish. The status is officially Ended, not Cancelled, but functionally there's no difference — you get an opening arc and then the lights go out. Readers who hate being sold a great show and then finding out it stops on a cliffhanger should note the ceiling here is even lower. There isn't really a great show. There's a promising fragment.

The other problem is discoverability and context. There is almost no writing about this show in English. Two ratings on TMDb. No major review coverage. No fandom wiki of any real depth. If you watch it and love it and want to talk about it with someone, good luck. That isn't the show's fault, but it is part of the honest answer to "is it worth watching" — because part of watching something is being able to share it, and this one is a solo experience by default.

And bluntly: with the sample size we have — five episodes, two public ratings, minimal English-language footprint — nobody can promise you it holds up. It might be great. It might be rough. The internet has not built a consensus, and I'm not going to invent one to pad this page.

Who should watch it

If you're specifically into mid-2010s indie animation and you enjoy poking around YouTube for forgotten serialized shorts, yes, throw an hour at it. This is squarely in your lane.

If you're a fan of the My Little Pony fandom-adjacent animation wave from that era — shapeshifting ponies, adventure buddies, fantasy trappings — you'll probably recognize the DNA and enjoy the flavor. Go in.

If you came here from a Google search for the Apple TV+ Foundation based on Asimov's novels, close this tab and search "Apple TV Foundation review" instead. That's a different show. Jared Harris. Lee Pace. Big empire, big budget, big robes. Different beast entirely.

If you want a polished, finished, story-complete streaming experience — the kind of thing you queue up on a Sunday and finish satisfied — skip this. You'll be annoyed. Five episodes and out is not a satisfying meal.

Where to watch

This Foundation aired on YouTube, which means the episodes are either still up on the creator's channel or lost to the great deletion event that eventually claims all abandoned indie animation. Search "Foundation Yimumu" on YouTube and see what surfaces. There is no Netflix option, no Prime Video option, no Apple TV+ option. If you can't find it on YouTube, it's effectively unavailable, and that is your answer.

The TMDb page is here if you want to verify the metadata yourself before you go hunting.

FAQ

Is this the Apple TV+ Foundation with Jared Harris?

No. This is a different show that happens to share the title. The Apple TV+ Foundation is a live-action adaptation of Isaac Asimov's novels, big budget, currently ongoing, streaming exclusively on Apple TV+. This Foundation is a five-episode animated Chinese web series from 2015 about a shapeshifting pony. Two completely unrelated projects. Google's search index does not care.

Is Foundation overrated?

Hard to be overrated when almost nobody has rated it. Two votes on TMDb, no meaningful critical footprint. This one skipped the entire hype cycle. If you meant the Apple TV+ show — that one has a mixed reputation, gorgeous production, dense plotting, and a habit of losing casual viewers by episode three. Different conversation.

Does it get better after episode 1?

With a five-episode run, the whole show is basically a pilot arc. There isn't a slow-burn season two waiting to reward your patience. What you see in the first episode is more or less what you're getting for the full runtime. If the opening doesn't grab you, bail — there is no back half that rescues it.

Why does this show have the same name as the huge Apple TV+ series?

Titles aren't trademarked in a way that stops overlap, especially across languages and formats. The Apple show is based on Asimov's Foundation novels, published starting in the 1940s. This animated series independently used the same English word for its title. It happens more than you'd think — you can find a dozen unrelated films and shows called The Beast or Awake or Legacy. TMDb lists them all and lets you sort it out.

What to do tonight

If you want the Asimov show, go watch the Apple TV+ Foundation — start with the pilot, give it until the end of episode three, bail if the political stuff isn't landing. If you specifically want this five-episode YouTube animation, search "Foundation Yimumu" on YouTube, watch the first episode, and if it grabs you the whole run is done inside an hour. If neither of those sounds right, that's the honest answer and you can close the tab.

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