Tags
IDW, IDW comic, Kibitz, Micro-Series, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, review
Synopsis:
Princess Luna enjoys her duties of “guarding the night” thoroughly, although she thinks it’s a great deal of work only she can handle. While talking to Princess Celestia about it, she says Celestia’s own duties are far easier by comparison and she could easily handle both. Celestia ends up letting her handle the duties and taking the day off herself to teach her a lesson. Luna is soon swamped with a never-ending onslaught of extremely boring and mundane activities as she’s forced to address each and every teeny, tiny concern in Equestria that requires any form of authority with hardly a moment to catch her breath. She gets progressively more and more overwhelmed until, at last, she dismisses the royal scheduling advisor and handles tasks in her own manner and pace, and as a result manages to get through the day’s workload. When Celestia returns, Luna immediately apologizes for making light of her own duties. She relinquishes them back to Celestia, and Celestia herself congratulates her on actually being able to get through all of the day. However, Luna is soon unhappy again when she sees Celestia go straight to bed, meaning she has to roll straight into the night shift without any time to rest.
Review:
Well, after nine serious-to-quasi-serious arcs, I guess they wanted to end on pure fluff. I’m a bit unhappy it had to fall on my favorite character. ๐ฆ To be honest, I don’t care too much for Luna’s portrayal in this. I think it’s a tad OOC. Her being awkward and having a “high” way of talking isn’t, but her being a royal snob who thinks of her subjects only slightly more highly than Mel Brooks did in “History of the World Part I” makes me grimace a bit. In general, it seems the comic writers frequently use Luna as a comic-relief character; the one big exception being the “Nightmare Rarity” arc. Then again, Celestia is often trolled too, so it may just me frowning at the treatment of best pony.
Still, even if this arc didn’t intend it, and really, when you look at it, Luna got what she asked for and nothing less, there’s the sense that this was more “Trollestia”. Maybe it’s the fact they go out of the way to show Celestia getting herself pampered, or the fact that, for all that happened in this arc, it really still does seem like Celestia “takes it easy”. (I mean, give me a break…signing things, nodding her head, and what-not? That would just be poor planning on her part. She could get a bureaucracy to handle all of that and devote time to the tasks she DOES delegate to others: namely protecting/saving Equestria.) I know most of it was just for gags and to have the normally more goddess-like Luna be stuck with boring and mundane tasks, but…I don’t know. It just didn’t really “mesh” with me, and few of the moments seemed particularly funny. Amusing, yes. Funny, no. And it also ignores the fact that Celestia did both the day and the night for 1,000 years, so I’m not sure there’s a “physical exhaustion” factor in this like it makes it out to be.
But, if I can put my “Luna Love” aside, I can still see a moral inside of it. In a way, you can think of this as the “logical conclusion” of the much more serious matter of Luna turning into Nightmare Moon. That was basically born out of a desire she had to be the “head honcho”: to be the one and only ruler of Equestria. Now, ironically, although it’s done in a joking fashion, Luna gets the chance to be the only ruler and sees it’s a bit more work than she anticipated and learns not to so easily dismiss the job her sister does even if it appears to be a big load of nothing. Also, Luna manages to succeed when she stops letting other people tell her how to “do her job” and takes charge in her own way, showing…yes, even if she may be more quick-tempered and slacking than Celestia, she can handle it.
So…putting aside all prejudices and preferences, it might not be the most dramatic way to end the Micro-Series, but it’s alright.
Fun Facts:
Celestia’s royal scheduling advisor is named “Kibitz”. In spite of the name, he’s more of a servant, really. He also featured quite a bit in the “Reflections” arc, although he had no lines in that one.
When Luna is surveying Equestria, the guard is changing between the threshals and the earth ponies. As they go to work, they swap “Morning Sam.” and “Night Ralph.” This is a reference to Looney Tunes, which featured a shortly lived and lesser-known series with a sheepdog and wolf named Sam and Ralph who were perfectly cordial co-workers although their occupation was to kill each other.
Flash Sentry briefly appears in this arc. He’s made out to be kind of a wimp. Not sure if the authors made that intentional or not.
Likely the first time crystal ponies have appeared in the comic. It’s a bit hard to tell that they “shimmer” on paper. ๐
Flax and Wheat from Rarity’s Micro-Series cameo along with the Flim-Flam Brothers. The solution Luna proposes is a takeoff of the infamous decision King Solomon decreed to resolve a dispute over who was the true mother of an infant. As one might expect, Luna’s favorite activity out of the day duties is punishing ponies. ๐ And the Flim-Flam Brothers are the opposite party in every dispute.
One panel features Luna bored over having to read all of Twilight Sparkle’s letters to Celestia. ๐
The Crystal Ponies mention “The Navigator” is the newest dance craze. This was the dance invented in Comic-Arc #3 by accident when Sapphire Shores’ group mimicked Big Macintosh looking through the crowd.
When all activities get brought to Luna at once, Pinkie Pie is in the crowd.
One of Luna’s duties is to listen to Apple Bloom moan about not having her Cutie Mark.
There’s a doujinshi at the end showing how Luna got the opossum following her around in every panel of this arc.
Rating:
3 Stars out of 5