My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Friends Forever #35 (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Friends Forever #35): “Twilight Sparkle & Starlight Glimmer”

Tags

Friends Forever, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, review, Spike, Starlight Glimmer, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

Although still months away, Twilight Sparkle is already planning Hearth’s Warming Eve gifts for next season and decides, for Princess Celestia, to go to the Castle of the Two Sisters and pick up some of the nicer ones for her as a gift while sorting the old library in something she calls “Book-sort-cation”. She decides to also roll it into a lesson in thoughtful gift giving by bringing Starlight Glimmer along; who, in spite of being tired from friendship lessons, is eager for the chance to see if there are magic books there written by Starswirl the Bearded. On arrival, however, Twilight, Starlight, Owluiscious, and Spike find the place is rather dusty and a mysterious vine is spewing spore dust everywhere, making Spike sneeze and, as a result, causes him to head out with a book on “Ferocious Flora”. While he’s gone, however, Twilight and Starlight start getting into a progressively more heated argument about the best way to sort that eventually turns into personal insults, all while the mysterious vine grows bigger and more widespread. Spike eventually finds out from the book that the vine is a “Squirm-Spore”, a hive-like spore-based creature that generates animosity in ponies and feeds off of it to grow bigger and stronger, eventually reaching dangerous proportions. As the Squirm-Spore starts animating suits of armor and stonework in the castle ruin to attack, Spike rushes back and tells the girls the news, and they realize it has been feeding off of their hostility. Realizing this, however, the two are able to resist the effect and work together, combining their magic along with Spike and Owluiscious to weaken and repel the monster back into Everfree Forest. Following the incident, Twilight reads more and discovers Starswirl the Bearded himself once fought a monster like that, which was triggered into growing into monstrous proportions by an argument between him and Melvin the Manticore. Hearing this, Starlight realizes that even somepony like Starswirl needed help from time to time, while Twilight realizes even somepony like Starswirl didn’t always know everything. The two reconcile, Twilight marks off Starlight as having completed this “lesson”, and, without distractions, the book sorting resumes; much to Spike’s chagrin.

Review:

This is…an interesting one.

In a way, I kind of think this is a wasted arc. Starlight Glimmer is a fairly unique character on the show, and in many ways represents what would happen if a “normal person” was suddenly in the magic land of friendship that is Equestria. She definitely has a way of thinking more maturely and treating things with more human-like neuroses and reactions. Pairing her with any other character, therefore, would be interesting just for her to have to adjust to them. The fact they paired her with Twilight Sparkle, the character she already interacts with far more than any other character, seemed a bit of a waste. But considering this was so soon after “The Cutie Re-Mark”, it might have been appropriate.

At the time this came out, Starlight Glimmer was still relatively new as a cast fixture. And because her personality had shifted so much between her time as a villain and her time as a regular, it’s understandable that the writers would have had a hard time pegging down her character (because I know I sure did, and I think the show writers did as well).  Because of that, this arc makes some character flubs. Starlight tends to be a compulsive overachiever, and she overcompensates for her lack of social skills by trying her best to be a people-pleaser at times, even when she shouldn’t. While I can see her being tired of friendship lessons, it wouldn’t be something she would profess in this case because she’d have a chance to “impress her teacher”. Furthermore, although Starlight is awkward in most social settings and interactions, she still longs for them. There’s never been a moment on the show in which she hasn’t been invited to participate in an activity or had a subordinate task in which she hasn’t felt “left out”.

The lingering animosity between her and Twilight, on the other hand, is something that could be potentially appropriate. Starlight did, after all, have a rather quick turnaround, and it’s hard to believe she’d just throw off all of her years-long mindset just like that. Parts of her might still long for her commune and a more controlling society. It’s a topic that would be interesting to pursue on the show, but in this case it gets a pass in any event because we can attribute Starlight having been affected by the spores.

Also, I find something rather interesting about this arc. One of my issues with the main series is that Starlight is still failing to “integrate” into the Mane Six. In Season Seven, there was only one episode, “It isn’t the Mane Thing About You”, in which Starlight felt like she was fully on the same level as the rest of the girls; no better and no worse. Most of the time she either stands above them or stands apart from them…and, granted, while the second of those two might be what the writers ultimately want, it enhances her reputation for being “Mary Sue”. I like this one because it’s the first real time that Starlight and Twilight had to work together on something (unless you count their very brief scuffle with the Pony of Shadows in the Season Seven finale).

Aside from that, one other thing I want to mark this issue down for is the monster. It’s basically the same modus operandi as the Dazzlings all over again, and connected to Starswirl the Bearded to boot. I thought they could have gone with something a bit more original than that. It’s a small complaint, but still.

The characterization confusion on the part of IDW is understandable in this issue, but nevertheless makes some of it fall flat. Aside from that, while colorful the plot isn’t all that remarkable even for “Friends Forever” standards, and it doesn’t really offer anything new to Twilight and Starlight’s relationship other than hints that she still clings to her old way of thinking. If I forgive the confusion, it’s still pretty middle-of-the-road.

Fun Facts:

While Jay Fosgitt’s art style for ponies is fairly signature, Spike’s own design is more-or-less the same as on the show.

The mention of crafting friendship lessons for Starlight places this story in the middle of Season Six.

Two of the comics Spike takes with him are “Flying Mouse” and “Arachnerd”, possibly insults for Batman and Spider-Man, respectively.

Spike gets to experience being a full-sized dragon again…kind of. 😛

Starswirl the Bearded is still in his “pre-legends” canonical form.

Melvin the Manticore is a character from, shall we say, the “expanded lore” of MLP:FIM; first introduced in “The Journal of the Two Sisters” by Amy Keating Rogers.

Rating:

2.5 Stars out of 5

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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Friends Forever #34 (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Friends Forever #34): “Pinkie Pie & Cheese Sandwich”

Tags

Cheese Sandwich, Friends Forever, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, review

Synopsis:

Pinkie Pie, while traveling in the Everfree Forest (for an undisclosed reason), is suddenly ambushed by an old sentient house on legs, and is captured and locked inside. Once within, she’s surprised to find Cheese Sandwich and three other fillies are already trapped within. They explain that Cheese was entertaining the fillies at a birthday party when the house, which Cheese has nicknamed “Housey”, suddenly arrived and captured the four of them. Unfortunately, the reason it captured Pinkie as well was because Cheese accidentally mentioned aloud he knew the other greatest party planner in Equestria, causing it to seek out and capture Pinkie. Housey is seemingly unbreakable from the inside so the five decide to do a conga line through it in order to try and find another way out without “alerting” it. However, when one of the fillies mentions aloud she’s having fun, the lights in the house grow brighter; leading Pinkie and Cheese to conclude Housey likes it when its residents are having fun. They use whatever is on hand to make the biggest party they can muster but, although Housey grows brighter, it still won’t let them leave, and Cheese makes it worse when he accidentally says the only thing that would make the party better was more partygoers–prompting Housey to look for more victims in Ponyville. However, while it’s running along it accidentally dislodges a photo album that Pinkie picks up on, and sees that, years earlier, when the house was first built by a pony family a protection spell was placed on it, but the spell ended up interacting with the love of the family for three generations and came to life. Once the family moved away, the house grew lonely for the happiness from celebration and parties that used to take place in it and longed for more. Pinkie and Cheese end up making Housey an offer: in exchange for letting them go, they’ll enable Housey to have a continuous party in which new ponies are free to enter the house and join the party whenever they wish, provided they are allowed to leave again when they want. As a result of the constant input and output of guests, the house will be host to a never-ending party. Housey agrees and lets them depart as it takes on its first new guests, and the house departs Pinkie and Cheese comment on how the best parties are celebrations of life and love, and now Housey, who saw a lifetime of parties, now has become a lifetime party machine.

Review:

It went without saying that the odds of Cheese Sandwich ever appearing on the main show were very slim. Although hiring different voice actors for celebrity characters is not unheard of, Weird Al Yankovic is such an icon that it’s unlikely they’d ever be able to replace him without getting some backlash. (Although he does have a regular series in Milo Murphy’s Law now, so maybe…) The comic, however, is free to use whatever character it wants, and so thanks to this issue we got a return of one of the more popular one-shot characters ever in the series.

Unfortunately, Cheese doesn’t get a chance to do too much here, and the writers didn’t really think to have him do much in the way of Weird Al parodies either. There are a few gags, but with the big open panels there wasn’t much room for too much over-the-top humor. Rather, this plotline does something that’s a bit more “big picture” with a hint of science fiction in it, similar to Spike’s “Pony Tales”, only this one deals with a topic normally you wouldn’t expect from “My Little Pony” in how to satisfy the basic need of a machine-like object once it gains sentience. Normally these end in one of two ways: destruction or finding a way to fulfill its desire, the second of which is usually more fun and intriguing. Such happened here. It made for an intriguing conclusion that required a bit more thinking outside of the box than your basic friendship lesson, which was kind of ingenious on the part of the writers.

I will say this story was a bit of a downer, however. By constantly interspersing Housey’s own somber story, it detracted quite a bit from the plot with Cheese and Pinkie, who normally should be such funny characters that it should have been able to elevate any situation. It does end happily enough, although a house walking around the countryside is still a tad odd, but it didn’t seem to have the humorous punch one would expect from this sort of tale.

Overall, it’s a good entry. Just not one that really sticks out as much as the others, and one that brings back Cheese Sandwich only to not do much more with him than you would expect from Pinkie Pie alone being there. So, it’s a tad disappointing.

Fun Facts:

The plot to this issue shares some similarities with Star Trek episodes. In particular, the Star Trek episode “Metamorphosis”, in which an alien entity fell in love with a Earth human and kept him immortal and alive like her and, when he mentioned he would die of loneliness, rather than let him go captured the crew of the Enterprise to entertain him; and the original Star Trek movie, in which an inanimate satellite is given sentience threatens the Enterprise and Earth until the crew makes it possible for the newly-sentient entity to gain the fulfillment it longs for.

A “starry-cloaked” unicorn named Magical Miasmo casts the protection spell on the house, and based on the cart and appearance he seems to be related to Trixie.

Aurora Muffin’s sketch features Cheese Sandwich trying to ward off the house with a balloon animal…and muscles.

Kwinkles are obviously parodies of Twinkies, and the fact that Cheese Sandwich mentions “they stopped making them a few years ago” indicates that this comic might have been written in between Hostess going bankrupt and it’s product being picked up by a new company. He also mentions the infamous Twinkie myth that they’re so processed they never go bad…which is a lie, by the way. Don’t believe me just leave a Twinkie sitting out and see how long it takes to mold. 😛

Rating:

3 Stars out of 5