My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Season Eight, Episode Eighteen: “Yakity-Sax”

Tags

Applejack, Fluttershy, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Twilight Sparkle, Yakity-Sax, Yovidaphone

Synopsis:

The girls get a rather loud and obnoxious surprise when Pinkie Pie unveils her newfound love for the Yovidaphone instrument from Yakyakistan, declaring it her favorite thing and devoting herself to playing it all day, every day. Unfortunately, Pinkie is terrible at playing it and soon brings chaos and unpleasant, disruptive noise to everyone in Ponyville. Finally, the rest of the girls confront Pinkie and directly state that she’s not any good at playing the instrument and should focus on what she’s good at instead. At first, Pinkie seems to take the news well and abandons the Yovidaphone, but over the following days she lapses into depression over not being any good at playing it. The girls’ attempts to cheer her up fall flat and eventually culminate with her leaving Ponyville entirely to head to Yakyakistan to listen to real Yovidaphone players without so much as saying goodbye. The girls follow her there and find her even more depressed in a yurt hosting a Yovidaphone concert. She admits hearing good Yovidaphone players only made her realize more how she’d never be good at playing the instrument. This prompts the girls to suggest she play it anyway in a performance for the yaks even if she’s not good and will risk angering them, as it’s something that make her happy. Reluctantly, Pinkie does so, and is surprised at a roaring ovation from the yaks. They explain the true nature of the Yovidaphone is to play it to make yourself happy, so as long as Pinkie made herself happy by playing it she played it “perfectly”. Pinkie immediately goes into an encore song about how she has the best and most supportive friends a pony could ever ask for.

Review:

This episode was widely panned as being not only the worst episode of Season Eight but one of the worst of the entire series (according to IMDb, it’s actually third from the bottom at the time of writing this…with this same season’s “Non-Compete Clause” being the worst, if you’re interested). Do I think it deserves that notoriety?

Well…pretty much, yeah.

It’s not my personal pick for the worst of the worst, but that dishonor goes to episodes that I find painfully bland as well as making the mistakes that this episode did–namely gave a great big muddled moral and went out of character. To give the episode some credit, it at least kept things moving and animated and kept me wanting to see what would happen next. Aside from that, due to what I just mentioned (a muddled moral and out-of-character), it’s not that good.

While some muddled morals are smudged, this episode seemed to have been subjected to a rewrite that ruined it. The lesson behind it is good: do things that make you happy even if you’re not the best in the world at them. However, that lesson was already partially touched on and yet handled better by Season Six’s “On Your Marks”. I get the sense that how the episode was originally written was with the original Yakyakistan ending and only part of the opening. Namely, Pinkie Pie learned to play the Yovidaphone and loved it a lot although she wasn’t that good, she saw that real players were much better than her, she tried to go to Yakyakistan to learn better and failed, and at the end the rest of the Mane Six show up and tell her to do what she loves and from there the same resolution. And if that had been what happened, it would have been a decent episode.

Instead, everything gets confused. It’s very clear that the Mane Six, and Ponyville for that matter, don’t dislike Pinkie’s playing just because she’s not good at it but the fact she is very clearly disruptive and, in some cases, actually causing harm to residents and wildlife by playing. However, in order to make the end lesson works, none of the Mane Six state: “Pinkie, maybe you should play in a more open area.” or “Pinkie, maybe you should only confine your playing to indoors.” or “Pinkie, your instrument is really loud; please don’t play it after sundown.” No, they go straight to: “You’re not good at playing that instrument, and you should only do things you’re good at.” Not only is that rather hamfisted, it missed the mark of what the episode had been setting up.

And what does that mean? Was Applejack just supposed to smile and nod when Pinkie ruined her apple crop? Or Fluttershy supposed to just learn to put the animals to bed later after Pinkie went away? You can do something that makes you happy even if you aren’t good at it, but you can’t expect others to pretend you are. I play piano myself and I’m not that good. So if someone tells me to stop playing because I’m annoying people (which HAS happened before), I may be hurt but I have to expect it.

The other major factor is Pinkie Pie being out of character, which itself has two aspects to it.

The first is that it’s unnatural that Pinkie would get so attached to this instrument that she would hinge her entire sense of worth and well-being on it. What makes Pinkie happy is making other ponies happy. That’s been cemented since “The Smile Song”. The reason she went flat-maned in “Party of One” was because she thought her friends didn’t want to be her friends anymore, which hurt her personally but also disrupted her because she was throwing another party to make them happy and, to her, they acted like they didn’t care about her attempts to do so. Here…it’s an instrument she’s never touched before this episode. Suddenly Pinkie practically loses her sense of self over it. Not even in a “good” way appropriate to her character, such as in “The Maud Couple” when Pinkie had her meltdown over Mud Brier and imagined the girls all ending up having the opposite interests. She just becomes a bland lump who the rest of the girls have to actually physically move to make her do anything.

The second is that it makes Pinkie rather unlikable. A number of fans of “Gravity Falls”, which was a very well done show, nevertheless had the constant beef toward Mabel Pines that she always had to get her way and didn’t have to make any personal sacrifices, no matter how small, for the other characters for the sake of a relationship, and that others would have to cave into her to deal with her depression or sadness…which could be construed as a form of emotional manipulation. The same problem occurs here. The fact that Pinkie would end up going to such depressed lengths over an instrument she just picked up, continuously sulking until the Mane Six seemingly “caved” and just gave her what she wanted in order to get her to stop, seems almost childish. Like this was her version of throwing a tantrum or, worse yet, being emotionally manipulative to get her way.

Even Maud’s literal interpretation of everything the Mane Six say seems to be more “smartass” than her normal way of communicating in this episode.

I will say the rest of the Mane Six are fairly spot on for their characters (even if Applejack has grown more evasive rather than blunt) and, like I mentioned before, the episode at least keeps from being bland even if it goes in an unlikable direction to accomplish that end. Yet while Pinkie has her negative characteristics, this episode seemed to manufacture both one for her as well as engineer a situation which would bring it out. Neither makes for a good episode.

Fun Facts:

Although this episode is the eighteenth in production order, it actually aired prior to “A Matter of Principals” as part of Discovery Family’s “Summer of Surprises”. The episode wasn’t announced ahead of time and didn’t air again until the official release date, which was when I saw it.

Early releases of this episode called the instrument a “Zenithrash”, but this was not approved by Hasbro and the name was eventually changed to Yovidaphone. However, some synopses of this episode, including the one on Netflix, continue to call it a Zenithrash.

Applejack may be honest, but she’s mastered the subtle art of “weasel words”. “I can honestly say I’ve never heard anything like it in my life.”

Rarity slips and uses an apple euphenism. It’s a bit out of the blue, so I almost wonder if it was a line flubbed by Tabitha St. Germain they decided to keep.

Notice that Rainbow Dash kicks Fluttershy in the face to wake her up? 😛

Applejack chastises Twilight for attempting to lie about Pinkie’s playing ability, a callback to “Horse Play”. It’s rare to get a same-season callback that’s not tied to the season finale.

Notable in this episode is the return of flat-maned Pinkie AKA “Pinkamena”, who first appeared all the way back in Season One’s “Party of One”. It confirmed that Pinkie’s poofy mane goes flat whenever she’s depressed. However, this episode took it a step further and had her gradually lose all coloration, which is worse than her respective sisters (as even they have eye coloration).

Pinkie Pie’s bit in the yurt with ordering one ice cream sundae after another is a knockoff of the often-parodied bit of a depressed drunk constantly ordering more liquor at a bar. Also, yaks can wear bartender tuxes. 😛

Rating:

1.5 Stars out of 5

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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Season Eight, Episode Thirteen: “The Mean 6”

Tags

Applejack, Elements of Harmony, Fluttershy, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Queen Chrysalis, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Starlight Glimmer, The Mean 6, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

Twilight Sparkle is planning a camping “friendship retreat” with the rest of the Mane Six and Starlight Glimmer, but before departing they do a quick pose for a photographer from the Canterlot Historical Society. Unfortunately, the photographer is none other than the deposed Queen Chrysalis, who turns out to have a spell capable of making evil-natured clones of the Mane Six. She does so in the Everfree Forest with the intention of using them to claim the Elements of Harmony and their power for herself, making her the most powerful entity in Equestria. However, the plan almost immediately begins to backfire. The clones are the opposite of personality of their true versions and are generally disobedient and apathetic in every way, while the Evil Twilight Sparkle soon proves to be just as cunning and malevolent as her “maker” and plots to seal the elements for herself. Not long after their creation, the clones split off and wander into the forest just as the real Mane Six arrive and get separated as well. What follows is a series of errors as the various evil clones and their true counterparts keep getting mistaken for one another by both sides, creating confusion all around. By the end of it, the Mane Six and Starlight are at each other’s throats, but before it can blow up Twilight calls a stop and apologizes to everyone for what she “contributed” to the confusion, prompting the others to do the same and reconcile before their friendship suffers any further strain. Meanwhile, Evil Twilight managed to learn the location of the Tree of Harmony from the true Pinkie Pie, and she leads Chrysalis and the other evil clones there to claim the elements. She accidentally reveals her true plans prior to claiming them, prompting an enraged Chrysalis to try and destroy her; only to discover Evil Twilight is as powerful as the real deal and nearly ends up destroyed herself. Before Evil Twilight can finish her, however, the Tree of Harmony reacts negatively to the evil clones and destroys all six of them before they can claim the elements. Chrysalis, furious, vows revenge on Starlight yet again before flying off, while the rest of the girls arrive and see the campsite destroyed (by the evil clones), but good-naturedly rub it off; saying if their friendship can survive the disaster of the camping trip it can survive anything.

Review:

“Queen Chrysalis blasts off again!” That joke kind of summarizes most of what I dislike about this episode, but I’ll go into more detail.

What ultimately I think of as “bad” episodes are not so much ones that had a rather uninteresting premise to begin with that end up being bad but ones that had a great premise that ended up underwhelming. This gets my top pick in the latter category. While there were worse episodes overall, this one gets my pick for my personal least-liked episode of Season Eight.

The main problem for it to me is Chrysalis. While until this point Tirek was clearly the bigger and most imposing threat, Chrysalis had been built up as the most monstrous, evil, and debatably dangerous adversary to Equestria. Her very character is a Knight of Cerberus trope–the mere fact that when she shows up in an episode is supposed to signify that things got real. She’s supposed to both invoke terror as well as even a touch of grotesque revulsion in her modus operandi, and while most of her villainy has happened “off screen” the implication is that she’s both cunning and talented enough to normally be able to defeat all the most powerful entities in Equestria herself without anyone else even noticing. So malevolent that the writers decided to keep her around as a future threat at the Season Six finale.

So…bringing her back in a mid-season episode that ended up being partially a “friendship lesson” and turning her into a somewhat bumbling villain who seriously didn’t think her own plan through was kind of a let down for me. While Chrysalis manages to show off her evil well enough at the start of the episode, a few rounds with the Mean Six and even her best attempts to be intimidating comes off like Moe from the Three Stooges trying to keep Larry and Curly in line.

Aside from that, I didn’t really care for the other parts of this episode. Very quickly, I realized the evil clones were the writers’ getting the opportunity to reincarnate the corrupted Mane Six from Season Two’s “The Return of Harmony”. (About the only thing new was we got to see what a corrupted Twilight Sparkle would have been like…basically an evil villain herself. Surprisingly, she was still good at magic and she tried to instill comradery among the Mean Six even if she ultimately thought they were idiots.) If you read my review of that episode, you know my personal opinion was that they weren’t that entertaining and they wore out their welcome quickly. Most of that sentiment is shared here. While it was a bit more bearable seeing it happen from individuals who weren’t the actual Mane Six, and, I’ll admit, some of Evil Fluttershy’s viciousness and Evil Pinkie Pie’s apathy made me crack a smile, it’s just another let down. Chrysalis actually creates evil clones of the Mane Six with the intention of stealing the Elements of Harmony. The possibilities for drama were endless. Instead…a comedy of errors watered down by the dramatic parts of this episode followed by a deus ex machina.

Also, like I said, this episode tried the odd step of mixing in a friendship lesson on what should have been a drama-based episode. I do give it some credit in that it showed the Mane Six have grown so much and have so much faith in one another that they are able to diffuse their argument without ever even needing to know how it started…but at the same time I’m banging my head on a desk that Chrysalis hatched this elaborate and deadly plan around them and they’re completely oblivious to it ever happening.

Ultimately this episode was something of a mixed bag for me, but considering I expected a lot better I have about the same opinion of it Starlight Glimmer has toward trail mix.

Fun Facts:

Kind of obvious, but the title is a parody of the Mane Six. I only point it out because that epitaph is only used informally outside of the series, but was popular enough to merit being used for a title.

The cold open for this episode was teased at Comicon in storyboard format, although all of the lines had been recorded.

Um…anyone wonder whatever happened to the original photographer for the Canterlot Historical Society? Probably nothing good…

The “pony” photographer at the beginning of the episode puts up a good performance, but in addition to not being able to hide her disdain for Starlight Glimmer, Chrysalis throws out a few other hints toward her true identity. Her retinas have the same coloration and her Cutie Mark is that of a ladybug.

Rainbow Dash’s mane, apparently, is not in strands of different color. Rather, all of her hairs are rainbow colored.

Chrysalis’ growing insanity kind of makes sense. Being a eusocial creature, she likely suffered some psychological damage being separated from a hive.

There’s something a bit “off” on all of the Mean Six, aside from their colors.

• Applejack: apples on the Cutie Mark are unripe
• Rarity: diamond tiers are inverted on Cutie Mark
• Pinkie Pie: balloon tiers are inverted on Cutie Mark
• Fluttershy: butterflies on Cutie Mark are blue instead of pink
• Rainbow Dash: Cutie Mark is upside down
• Twilight Sparkle: background twinkle is the same color as foreground on Cutie Mark

Evil Twilight actually foreshadowed Season Nine by, much to Chrysalis’ anger, pointing out that she needed friends to have victory over Twilight Sparkle.

Evil Fluttershy does give the opportunity to see Fluttershy crazy again. It’s been a while. 😛

“I wants IT!” is a parody of Gollum from Lord of the Rings.

Pinkie Pie briefly turns into her short-lived (and unloved) Rainbow Power Form while recalling the Season Four finale to Evil Twilight.

Evil Applejack says she managed to survive for “127 Hours”, a parody of “127 Hours”, which tells the real life story of Aron Ralston–a mountaineer who was forced to cut off his own arm to escape being pinned by a boulder.

The campsite has a tent themed to each pony. Twilight is so thoughtful. 🙂

There’s a good chance this episode was going to debut as early as Season Seven but got delayed, as the surprisingly unsettling scene of the Mean Six’s deaths in its original form didn’t make it past the censors. While the scenes of most of the Mean Six dying remained the same, a mixture of rapid aging and melting, Evil Twilight’s death originally was far more graphic: featuring what looked like portions of her skull melting and peeling away from her eyeballs.

Rating:

2 Stars out of 5

 

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Season Eight, Episode Nine: “Non-Compete Clause”

Tags

Applejack, Gallus, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Non-Compete Clause, Ocellus, opinion, Rainbow Dash, review, Sandbar, Silverstream, Smolder, Student Six, Yona

Synopsis:

Applejack and Rainbow Dash are both excited to win the School of Friendship’s Teacher of the Month award only to find that they’ve lost (yet again) to Fluttershy. When Twilight Sparkle announces a special lesson on teamwork to be handled via a field trip and mentions that it’s appropriate for the Teacher of the Month, Fluttershy suggests that Applejack and Dash handle it together, which they agree to in order to try and show off that they are Teacher of the Month material. However, both end up letting their competitive natures get the better of themselves and end up arguing and ruining each other’s respective activities and even endangering the students. Twilight confronts both of them angrily about it and suggests that the best candidate for Teacher of the Month would be selfless enough to not be interested in the position to begin with, but Applejack and Dash convince her to give them one more chance on a nature walk. Unfortunately, they now take Twilight’s comment to heart and now “anti-compete” with each other by continuously trying to have the other one take charge to show themselves more selfless, and as a result end up getting the class lost and stuck on one side of a ravine. Still trying to follow the other’s ideas and teach about teamwork, both end up building very flimsy bridges to get across and end up breaking both of them and leaving them dangling over a river filled with pony-eating “biteacuddas”. The Student Six, however, work together as a team to rescue them and, on returning to the School of Friendship, declare the lesson as a success as they have misinterpreted Applejack and Dash’s behavior as showing them not what to do and believe they purposely put themselves in danger to motivate them to work as a team. Twilight sees through the ruse but lets it slide and decides to commend the two, yet unfortunately Applejack and Dash soon start bickering over who nearly ruined the nature walk.

Review:

This was considered by several members of the fan community to be the worst episode of Season Eight and one of the worst episodes of the entire series (although one episode in Season Eight in particular would take that title from it in the second half…). I don’t quite think it’s that bad, even compared to other episodes of this season, but…yeah, it’s pretty down there.

One of my least favorite episodes of all time was Season One’s “Look Before You Sleep”, which I summarized as “Applejack and Rarity argue for 22 minutes.” This episode, in many ways, is nothing more than an alternate version of that spliced with an alternate version of Season One’s “Fall Weather Friends”. The latter might be what irritated fans the most. As Twilight calls out in this episode, Applejack and Rainbow Dash learned a long time ago about how thoughtless and ultimately pointless it is when they get over-competitive with each other, so learning the same lesson again is never a good thing. Even Fluttershy, who gets slammed the worst for it, usually has a different context behind it. There’s a different context here too but, this time, it’s worse because they put kids in danger with their bickering. It would have been one thing if it was only them, but this makes it much worse.

Nevertheless, I saw some good things that keep me from rating the episode too low.

I can say this for this episode: also similar to “Fall Weather Friends”, it shows off Ashleigh Ball’s talent on being able to voice both Rainbow Dash and Applejack as the main leads of an episode. That always astonishes me, especially since in this one they need to defer to each other’s ideas and therefore she had to keep them straight.

It also does a good job of building on the Student Six. So far in Season Eight, the Student Six had only really featured in one other episode, “Horse Play”, and after that one I had the lingering fear in the back of my mind that they might end up being a “unit” similar to how the Cutie Mark Crusaders were in a lot of early episodes; namely the same filly more or less copy and pasted three times with small variations. In this one, even if they’re only the “side characters” to Applejack and Dash’s antics, they all stand out as individuals and highlight their own personalities. I still had a bit of trouble differentiating Smolder and Gallus’ characters, but everyone else is definitely spot on. Silverstream thinks everything that happens was meant to be fun, no matter how disastrous. Ocelus still gets good ideas but is timid about showing them off. Sandbar is still laid back, and Yona is still her big, goofy, (increasingly lovable) self.

Finally, it avoids one big problem that I had with “Look Before You Sleep” and most Applejack/Rarity episodes in general: something physically happens. Although most of the episode is arguing, things stay very active, whether it’s in the shed-building, the canoeing, or the nature walk and rescue. And even if the two are rather unlikable in this episode and they spend the bulk of it arguing, we at least get a “commentary” from the Student Six. They help break up the constant bickering by throwing in side comments or even having physical reactions, which both helps mediate the annoyance while simultaneously making them their own characters.

When taking all of that into considering, while a lot of fans see this as a failure, I see it in the same light that Twilight sees Applejack and Dash’s failed lesson: the students still managed to get something worthwhile out of it, so that makes it a C+ in my book.

Fun Facts:

Anyone else think the real reason Fluttershy keeps winning Teacher of the Month is because she’s probably too kind-hearted to give out anything less than As? 😛

Assuming that there has been one ever since the season premiere, based on the Teacher of the Month photos the school has been open nine months at the start of this episode.

By now, the cast had switched to using “everycreature” instead of “everybody” (or “everypony”).

Hey, the Student Six got to experience the additional benefit of any Apply-Family-created structure…how quickly and easily it’s destroyed. 😛

Not gonna lie…Ocelus’ seapony form is cute. 🙂 Unlike the pony she normally changes into, that one’s more obviously her as it shares the same color palette. Even her retinas are the same color as her, um, “eye spheres”.

As yet another callback to Season One…Twilight is kind of dense in the second half of this episode; not realizing that Applejack and Rainbow Dash still haven’t learned their lesson. Of course, by the finale, she’s able to read between the lines of the Student Six, so she kind of redeems herself. 😛

That somewhat sly grin on Yona’s face after ramming Applejack and Rainbow Dash. 😛

As this episode offered a rare view of Ocelus from the backside, it was the first time I ever noticed her wing coverlets are spotted, somewhat like a ladybug’s.

Rating:

2.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Season Eight, Episode Seven: “Horse Play”

Tags

Applejack, Fluttershy, Horse Play, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Princess Celestia, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Spike, Starlight Glimmer, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

For the first “Ones-versary” (the 1,111th anniversary of the first time Princess Celestia raised the sun), Twilight Sparkle has written a play for the School of Friendship to perform to commemorate the event. When she sees Celestia get head-over-hooves excited about it and confess her love for the theater as a child, Twilight announces she’ll be the star of the show on the spot to give her a chance to be part of the play, in spite of the misgivings of Spike, Starlight, and the rest of the Mane Six. Their fears soon prove to be well-founded when it turns out Celestia is an abysmal actor and a stage klutz; inadvertently ruining the play’s central sun prop and giving a horrible performance. Rather than confess the truth, Twilight tries to salvage the situation by getting Celestia acting lessons while the girls try to get a new prop, but not only do they only succeed in damaging the set more but Celestia fails to get anything from the experience. Eventually, Twilight blows up in a screaming fit about the play being a disaster and Celestia’s terrible acting, unknowing that she is in earshot. Upset that she wasn’t honest with her from the start and let things get this far, Celestia flies off, but Twilight flies after her and confesses that she just wanted to do something for the individual she looks up to the most for once. Celestia ends up forgiving her and returning to the show and, taking charge as the new stage director, reorganizes the play to make up for its faults and shortcomings and manages to put a successful show on after all. Celestia is happy with this at the end; stating she only ever wanted to be part of a play, not necessarily star in one. She ends the episode shocking everyone by saying she plans to abdicate the throne to pursue theater full time…afterward smugly commenting that maybe she’s not such a bad actor after all.

Review:

I’m a bit of a sucker for Celestia episodes, especially ones that treat her as her own character rather than a MacGuffin, but even accounting for that I think this episode was a good one.

There’s a lot to like in this episode aside from another rare turn at Celestia as a normal pony. The dialog has a bit of a fanfiction-esque feel to it with the speed, delivery, and edge on some of the lines, but it still works and I think it works very well. I’m very fond of the fact that, although this is very much a Twilight and Celestia episode, all of the Mane Six, Spike, and Starlight get a chance to shine a bit in it. Initially, back in Season Six, I made the complaint that Starlight could never appear with the rest of the Mane Six unless she stood out (and usually above) the rest of them. Since that time, Starlight has gradually seemed to move into an “independent” role from the rest of the girls; becoming her own character that existed around them like Maud Pie or Trixie. This is one of the rare episodes that not only brings Starlight back into the same “sphere” as the Mane Six but actually has her on equal footing with the rest of them. In this episode, she’s very much “one of the girls”.

I also like that this episode is a bit of return to form of Spike being Twilight’s “voice of reason”. A lot of episodes have shifted Spike into his more negative light, but I like episodes like this where he pretty much keeps telling Twilight how it is and “rolling with the punches”.

On top of all that, it fleshes out more Equestria Lore. The funny part is that a lot of the Equestrian history in this episode was presented in “The Journal of the Two Sisters”, but none of that was necessarily canon. This episode cemented quite a bit of it, although it left out a few important details (such as Luna raising the moon for the first time at roughly the same point).

Twilight’s interactions with Celestia are pretty nice too, especially the big confrontation. Overall, the dialogue seems more mature in this episode than it has been with others, and Twilight and Celestia themselves seem less “formal”. For once, Twilight isn’t cowering and cringing before Celestia because she fears divine retribution or punishment but because she knows she did something bad to her friend, and a lot of the delivery that Nicole Oliver and Tara Strong give really sells that.

On a final note…the last joke of the episode kind of puts a weird spin on the rest of it. It revives the old notion of “Trollestia” all over again; the possibility that she was deliberately faking being a terrible actor. Now you go back and watch this episode and wonder just how much of all of this Celestia was aware of the whole time and if she was just trying to teach Twilight another lesson all along.

Overall, another good all-around episode.

Fun Facts:

Thanks to this episode, coupled with material from “The Journal of the Two Sisters”, we can get a ballpark figure on the time span of history of Equestria. Assuming that each season of the show represented a year, and Luna was stuck in the moon for 1,000 years, then Celestia was over 103 years old when Luna was banished. According to “Journal”, Celestia actually gained her Cutie Mark from raising the sun for the first time, and assuming she initially aged similar to a filly, then that would put her around 115-116 years of age at that time, and is currently 1124 years old.

Pinkie Pie’s giant cannon is apparently named “Big Bertha”.

The history as presented in this episode is actually very similar to the history presented in “The Journal of the Two Sisters” by Amy Keating Rogers, indicating that, for that book at least, the content inside is canon.

Although they don’t have much presence or purpose, this is the second episode to highlight the Student Six and the first following the Season Eight premiere.

Celestia debuts her own rarely-utilized “Royal Canterlot Voice”. Notice that after she uses it, even Smolder is trembling. This might in itself be another little nod to “The Journal of the Two Sisters”, as in that book the filly Celestia was able to intimidate an adult dragon with her own voice.

On Stage and Raspberry Beret (wonder how many kids got that reference…) were first introduced way back in Season Five’s “Made in Manehattan”.

Celestia sitting upright in a chair…

Twilight’s wings act as an instant blow dryer. 😛 Also…that lying face. Considering how many pony expressions have become memes over the years, I’m stunned no one picked up on that one.

The giant firework has Trixie’s cutie mark on it.

So Celestia can save the day…so long as the problem that needs fixing is a play. 😛

Luna is not happy that Celestia cut in on her gig. 🙂

Rating:

3.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Season Eight: Episodes One and Two: “School Daze”

Tags

Applejack, Chancellor Neighsay, Fluttershy, Gallus, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Ocellus, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Sandbar, School Daze, Silverstream, Smolder, Twilight Sparkle, Yona

Synopsis:

Following the events of the “My Little Pony Movie”, the Cutie Map has expanded to now cover the countries surrounding Equestria. Taking that as an imperative to spread the Equestrian way of friendship beyond Equestria, Twilight Sparkle gets the idea to open an official School of Friendship designed to teach its students how to do so. Princess Celestia endorses the idea but states that Twilight must get approval from the Equestria Education Association (EEA) to formally establish her new school. On presenting her plan to the EEA, the head, Chancellor Neighsay, seems skeptical until he interprets the School of Friendship as a defensive measure designed to teach ponies how to protect Equestria from non-pony nations and grants provisional approval. Twilight opens the school, convincing the reluctant Mane Six members and Starlight Glimmer to become its faculty, but surprises them and everyone else on revealing she has opened it to every creature and has five “international” students: Gallus, a pessimistic and pragmatic griffon; Yona, a prideful and exuberant yak; Ocellus, a shy but intelligent changeling; Silverstream, a perky and energetic hippogriff; and Smolder, a rough and competitive dragon. The school almost immediately runs into trouble when Twilight insists the Mane Six teach according to the EEA guidebook in order to ensure approval; making it impossible for them to teach about friendship. Nevertheless, the five international students, along with a sixth Equestrian student (an easy-going and mellow stallion named Sandbar), manage to hit off a friendship with each other. On Friends and Family Day, the same day Neighsay himself is visiting to evaluate the school for formal approval, the six cut class and end up having fun together by the lake. Unfortunately, it gets out of hand when Ocellus shows off and accidentally turns into a giant monster that damages part of the school. This, in turn, causes Neighsay to lash out on a racial tirade against Twilight for even including international students in the first place right in the faces of their sponsors, causing them to storm off angrily and take their students with them. Neighsay himself, acting on behalf of the EEA, shuts the school down.

Twilight wallows in depression for a time, in spite of the Mane Six’s attempts to cheer her up, until Starlight Glimmer points out that her idea of a School of Friendship was important and valuable and she shouldn’t let the EEA dictate to her about how to “handle friendship”. Taking the message to heart, Twilight decides to reopen the school after agreeing to let the Mane Six run it in the way they see fit. They attempt to bring the international students back, only to find that the students all ran away from their respective homes when the closing of the school threatened to break up their new friendship with each other. In spite of Twilight’s delight that this happened, she soon learns their respective sponsors (Grandpa Gruff, Prince Rutherford, King Thorax, General Seaspray, and Dragonlord Ember) are all blaming each other for their children going missing and are threatening war over it. The Mane Six soon discover that Sandbar has been going around Ponyville getting supplies for a number of individuals and, on realizing he was friends with the international students, they tail him to the Castle of the Two Sisters where the six of them have been hiding out together. Unfortunately, they attract the attention of a gang of Pukwudgies from the Everfree Forest who attack, but the Mane Six arrives and save them just in time–showing off to the group that their teachers can be “cool”. After explaining that the school will be different, the six agree to return with them, and both the students and sponsors meet up as Twilight reopens the school. This prompts Neighsay to reappear, but she announces her intention to keep the school running outside of EEA jurisdiction as it’s the first ever school of friendship and, therefore, subject to its own rules. Princess Celestia supports Twilight’s idea as revolutionary, and Neighsay, still distrustful of non-pony races and now angry at Twilight herself, withdraws. After demoing to the sponsors the new way of running the school, with each teacher now able to govern their own lessons and classrooms, they agree to allow the international students to remain–forming the Student Six.

Review:

In spite of the tie-in and the attempt of the half-season long setup and plot of the previous season, the “Legends of Magic” arc not only seemed to not leave the desired impact but, once it was over, left the series without much of a place to go. Starlight Glimmer, for all of the hate she got (and what I myself had for her), managed to keep the show running by giving it something to do after Season Four seemed to reach a good stopping point, but by the end of Season Six, one of the most lackluster seasons, her arc was mostly over. While Season Seven had a number of great one-shot episodes, especially in the first half of the season, there was still no overall direction for the cast to move in…and especially Twilight Sparkle.

To fix that, a new dynamic was launched in this episode: the idea of the School of Friendship. This introduced a two-fold way of keeping the story going. 1. More obviously, it introduced the Student Six, which offered six new characters to work with and to play stories off of. 2. More importantly, it gave Twilight Sparkle a way to be more proactive while continuing to challenge her.

Of course, there were a lot of ways this could go wrong. Especially with the Student Six. Starlight Glimmer had been only a single new member of the cast and it immediately seemed like she was going to be “Twilight Sparkle 2” to some people, myself included. Introducing six new characters at once seemed like a more brash move than some of the things “The Fairly Oddparents” pulled, especially since six new characters were introduced in the previous season and have had very little to do since then. Not to mention a lot of fans seemed ambivalent toward the School of Friendship itself.

If it had remained simply a ploy to try and extend the life of MLP:FIM, I might have agreed with it. However, after viewing this episode, I think the writers deserve a bit more credit. If this was a ploy to get the series to run longer, they executed it rather well.

Perhaps rather wisely, the Student Six, while playing a big role, don’t “dominate” this episode. Twilight Sparkle, Starlight Glimmer, Spike, and the rest of the Mane Six still play a large part, as does the sub-villain of Chancellor Neighsay. While Twilight is ultimately the focus, it’s nice to have her as the focus on something besides a Twilight Freak Out or fighting a villain. Everyone else is spread out in what seems a bit thin but not them simply being there to “be there”. Perhaps it’s not as big and epic as most two-parters, but I think it works well.

The Student Six themselves are obviously one of the highlights as this serves to introduce them, and I think that works out pretty well too. On initial viewing, I wasn’t too blown away by any of them, but that’s fine: most of their nuances and reasons for affinity would come out in later episodes. This one was meant to show the audience who they were, most of all.

In terms of how much I liked them in their first appearance, Sandbar took home the gold for me. He doesn’t stand out as much as the others, but I appreciated his laid-back attitude, his role as “peacemaker” among the group, and the fact that, frankly, he was another male regular.

For better or for worse, Yona’s personality and size stands out from the group. While I didn’t get it too much from this first episode, and, in fact, I actually disliked how she shared the yak standard of being seemingly a prideful brute, she would end up growing on me after this episode and acting as something of a “peace offering” to me and the yaks in general. This is where the whole idea of “yaks best at everything” stopped seeming so much an egotistical boast as something both more comical as well as more of a self-affirmation and…dare I say it…almost endearing. When Yona runs around saying “yaks best at _______”, it doesn’t seem so much like she’s rubbing her species’ greatness into the faces of everyone as hyping herself up for a new experience; like she’s going to throw herself 110% into whatever she does.

Ocellus placed next for me in this first episode. Her personality is somewhat of a fusion of Fluttershy’s timidity and social awkwardness and Twilight Sparkle’s bookwormishness and intelligence. The result is a new character who doesn’t really seem like a rehash of either, which is good. The idea of the “shy bookworm who’s really smart” is nothing new to children’s animation, but the way MLP:FIM was set up it managed to escape it until now. Twilight Sparkle had the intelligence part down but, as she was the main character, she came off as a bit more of a Hermione Granger type that was more proactive and precocial. Ocellus, on the other hand, has the smarts but no self-confidence unless she’s supported by the Student Six.

An energetic, bubbly, and happy character that contrasts with others around her is always nice, so Silverstream was a good addition to the dynamic, but I couldn’t help but have a bit of an issue with both her and the hippogriffs in general. Obviously, they couldn’t get the voice actors for Queen Novo and Princess Skystar to be full-time cast members, so, along with Tempest Shadow, they’ve been relegated to world of “allusions” rather than ever show up. But in Silverstream’s case, it seems so obvious that they wanted to make Skystar a permanent addition to the cast, they couldn’t because they didn’t want to change her voice actor, and so Silverstream really is “Skystar v.2.0”.

In the initial appearance, who ranked at the bottom was Smolder and Gallus. While eventually the two would be more distinct to me as well as more appealing, they seemed initially like two aggressive and unfriendly individuals, although on watching a second time I see how Smolder is actually more bold and brash while Gallus is more apathetic. Nevertheless, I didn’t have anything necessarily against them either.

However, what really stands out to me in this episode was not the introduction of new characters but the opportunity to see a different side of Equestria not before witnessed. I made the joke after this episode that evil centaurs, dark unicorns, and changeling queens have nothing compared to Twilight’s greatest foe: bureaucracy.

This episode shows that even the princesses don’t enjoy absolute authority in Equestria. Rather, even they are subject to rules from non-princesses in certain spheres; such as education. That’s an interesting concept that helps flesh out how government actually works in Equestria.

Another interesting aspect of this episode, albeit a darker one, is it shows that in spite of being magical ponies in a land of friendship, ponies can still harbor racism. In all fairness, it’s not entirely unfounded. Dragons never liked ponies until Ember came around, and even now they’re still destructive brutes and most of them only ignore ponies because she commands them to. The hippogriffs more or less left Equestria to rot when the Storm King attacked in spite of being historic allies. Griffons in general don’t like anyone, with the show pointing out Greta and (eventually) Gilda are the only two “friendly” griffons. The yaks have better relations now but talking with them is still rocky due to the wide difference in cultural norms. And changelings? I don’t really need to go through why ponies would hate them no matter how cute and innocent they’ve become. Nevertheless, it’s funny to imagine how a country that was founded by apparently forfeiting their racism for friendship still retains quite a bit of it.

In still another interesting turn, when Starlight convinces Twilight to reopen the school, I noticed that most of her rationale and thinking is in line with the “old” Starlight Glimmer. Namely that if you believe your own conviction to be right and worthwhile you should ignore criticism of it and enforce it; even if doing so “breaks the rules”. In the sense of this episode, it’s a good thing…but it’s not all that different from how Starlight ran her old commune. So that makes this another interesting point where Starlight shows her old personality is still very much a big characteristic of her life.

All in all, I thought this was a good episode. It was pretty clear Chancellor Neighsay would return, probably for the finale, and was going to end up being a villain, so it had that element of setup. As for the Student Six, well…similar to Neighsay in this episode, I felt they didn’t really knock me out of the park but they had more personality and interest than the Pillars of Old Equestria ended up having, so I myself gave them my personal “provisional approval”. Unlike other season openers that made me nervous about what could be coming, this one left me interested to see what the show would come up with next.

Fun Facts:

Canonically, this episode takes place after the My Little Pony Movie, placing the film chronologically between Season Seven and Eight although Season Seven was still coming out when the movie premiered in theaters.

The expanded Cutie Map is vaguely in the style of the newer map of the “expanded” Equestria, which actually includes surrounded countries, but is hard to make out.

Chancellor Neighsay is voiced by probably the second-most-famous voice actor ever to appear on the show (after Tara Strong): Maurice Lamarche. While he has done a wide variety of roles over the years, he’s probably most infamous for his signature “Orson Wells” voice which was best applied to Brain from “Pinky and the Brain”. He uses the same voice for Neighsay. In my opinion, he bears some resemblance to Ming the Merciless from the Flash Gordon series. The portals he makes bear a resemblance to the ones Doctor Strange uses in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, only blue instead of orange.

Way back in Season One, the Elements of Harmony were depicted as six regular gems rather than being in their shapes that matched the Cutie Marks of the Mane Six. The shield emblem of the School of Friendship returns them to that appearance; invoking the idea of the Infinity Gems/Stones.

The busts in the lobby of the School of Friendship are of the Pillars of Old Equestria. Appropriate, but one of the only nods that the half-season-long plot of Season Seven would get.

Ember still cringes a bit every time Spike hugs her. 😛 Smolder actually backs off in surprise the first time she sees Ocellus transform.

This marks the first episode where the characters, to be more inclusive in their pronouns, have to change from saying “everypony” to “everyone”. However, this wouldn’t last, and before long they would shift to using “everycreature”.

Interesting voice acting task for Tabitha St. Germain: voice Rarity if she was Ocellus doing an exaggerated parody of Rarity. Angel Bunny doesn’t buy it.

Rarity might be infamous for her drama queen bits, but Twilight comes close burying herself in a pillow fort and actually playing depressing music for herself.

Odd animation choice…freaked out ponies have pupils of asymetrical size in this one.

Far from cheering Twilight up, Angel Bunny seems to contract Twilight’s depression. 😛

The “confetti cannons for everycreature” are all color-coded to match the girls and Spike.

Pharynx makes a brief cameo when Fluttershy visits the Changelings.

The Canterlot throne room has been redone to match its appearance in the “My Little Pony Movie”; including the blue interior and two thrones of equal stature for both Celestia and Luna. While there’s a carpet extended over it, you can also make out the symbol on the floor where Tempest Shadow put the four captured princesses around the Staff of Soconus.

At one point, Ocellus turns into a bugbear from “Slice of Life”.

Pukwudgies are creatures from North American folklore and are similar to the idea of European goblins. However, the pukwudgies in this episode share more in common with the Krites from the “Critters” B-horror-movie franchise, especially in how they move and fire needle-like quills.

Confirming Rainbow Dash’s fears, Gallus had indeed nicknamed her “Professor Egghead”. (He also made fun of her in a picture.)

Rainbow Dash says the school will be “220% cooler”; a nod back to her infamous “20% cooler” line from the first season.

When Fluttershy tosses the EEA handbook over her shoulder, she hits a random pukwudgie.

The bit where Chancellor Neighsay says “And none shall pass!” and slams his hoof down, creating a magic shockwave, is a nod to Gandalf’s infamous line while confronting the Balrog in “The Fellowship of the Ring”.

Twilight Sparkle’s rulebook is about three times the size of the EEA one…naturally. 😛

Did Applejack and Rainbow Dash…invite the students to go drinking with them?

Did Angel Bunny become a student? Well, he needs the lessons.

“Friendship Always Wins” appears to temporarily suspend reality…as it allows the Mane Six and Student Six to do a whole musical number about the new school while the guardians of the international students never move anywhere.

Rating:

4 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Equestria Girls: Rollercoaster of Friendship

Tags

Applejack, Equestria Girls, Fluttershy, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarijack, Rarity, review, Rollercoaster of Friendship, Sci-Twi, shipping, Sunset Shimmer, Twilight Sparkle, Vignette Valencia, youtube

Synopsis:

It’s Summer in the human world, and Applejack and Rarity are trying to get a job at the newly-opened Equestrialand theme park selling caramel apples so they can spend the summer hanging out with each other. Instead, however, Applejack doesn’t get hired for the job, and Rarity ends up getting hired by the director of public affairs, an infamous and self-absorbed online “Snapgab” personality named Vignette Valencia, for the job of lead costume designer for the park’s Light Parade. Applejack is disappointed that she misses the chance to spend the summer with Rarity but, as a costume designer job is important to her, she encourages her to take the job regardless. While Rarity hits it off with her new boss readily, she soon gets overwhelmed by the demand of the position and ends up inviting her friends over to the park on the day of the Light Parade with VIP passes to hopefully help mitigate the stress. However, on arrival, Applejack is clearly upset to see how close she and Vignette are already.

As Applejack makes no secret of her jealousy of Rarity’s relationship with Vignette, she, in turn, shows no interest in the girls until they mention they’re the Rainbooms, and on seeing their own feed on Snapgab she decides to have them highlight the Light Parade. As Rarity is too busy to spend any time with the girls, including Applejack, they break off and go around the park. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash both end up trying out the roller coasters, but Dash is the one who ends up getting weak in the knees while Fluttershy enjoys herself. Afterward, Valencia tags Fluttershy to speak with her privately, announcing that she wants to make the Rainbooms appeal to a larger demographic by having them all change their appearances and personalities for the performance. When Fluttershy shows her hesitation, however, Valencia unveils her cell phone, which the audience sees has been tainted by Equestrian magic, and takes a picture of Fluttershy with it; teleporting her into a seemingly white, empty void.

While Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer attempt to win at a rigged ring toss game, with predictable results, Applejack notices Fluttershy is missing and tries to ask Rarity about it, but gets angry when Rarity seems to be more concerned (and increasingly stressed) about the parade. Applejack snoops around the park and finally discovers Fluttershy was last seen with Vignette. After a mishap involving a fake “Deputy Fun Inspector” badge that Pinkie Pie gave her, Applejack accidentally gets access to the park security cameras and spots Valencia as she brings Rainbow Dash to one side with much the same proposal she gave to Fluttershy. On refusing, Rainbow Dash gets zapped into the same void, and Applejack, on seeing her vanish, realizes they’re in trouble.

Rarity almost reaches a breaking point as Vignette, getting increasingly demanding and changing her mind almost constantly about what she wants, commission the costumes to be redone with an hour before the parade. She also gets angrier when Applejack doesn’t show up for final fittings and sound check on time, but as soon as Applejack does arrive she immediately reveals what Vignette has done to Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. She attempts to prove it by swiping Vignette’s phone and using it, but unfortunately Vignette overheard her accusations and swapped her phone for a normal one. Nevertheless, Applejack persists in her accusations, leading Rarity to lash back that she’s angry that she was hired and Applejack wasn’t, before Applejack lashes out that Vignette always panders to everyone and that Rarity’s “not special”. This makes her break down in tears and Applejack shamefully runs off. Twilight, Sunset, and Pinkie, however, realize that Applejack never makes things up and was telling the truth about Vignette, but she snapshots them as well as soon as they discover it. Rarity comes back out just as Vignette creates holographic versions of the girls to perform instead according to her idea, and she likewise exposes that she no longer cares about Rarity’s vision and wants to use her own for the parade instead. Rarity realizes Applejack was telling the truth about Vignette, right before she tries to take a picture of her as well.

However, Rarity is able to interrupt Vignette’s phone by blocking its effect with her gem shields, and she runs off to find Applejack while Vignette herself takes over for the parade. On meeting Applejack, Rarity surprises her by apologizing for letting Vignette’s flattery of her distract her from caring about her friends and the two reconcile. Soon after, they get a call from Twilight who has a plan for getting them out of “the phone”, only for Rarity and Applejack to discover that the girls were simply teleported into a random white room within the park itself. However, they soon realize Vignette is getting more corrupted and is now changing whatever she doesn’t like, and that if she does the same to the crowd at the parade thousands of people will be crammed into the room at one time and will be crushed. The girls manage to confront Vignette at the parade just as the crowd boos her horrible song, with Rarity declaring it’s ok to want to be more admired but not at the expense of the ones who care about you. She and the girls “pony-up” and Rarity destroys Vignette’s phone with a rainbow whip. In the aftermath, Vignette admits her vast online popularity has become a substitute for having real friends in her life, but both Rarity and Applejack offer to befriend her. And as the crowd loved the “lightshow” during the parade, the girls are able to perform a new song to cap off the night: “Side by Side”.

Review:

Is this secretly, or even accidentally, the most brilliant entry in the Equestria Girls franchise to date?

Following a series of mediocre specials, what little love the Equestria Girls franchise seemed to garner from “Rainbow Rocks” appeared to have cooled considerably until “Forgotten Friendship/Most Likely to Be Forgotten” aired. I, at least, was far more enthusiastic about the future of the franchise after that came out and was looking forward to the next special. Unfortunately, this was a step backward, almost feeling like a glorified Youtube short rather than something worth an hour-long special.

Part of the reason “Forgotten Friendship” succeeded where “Rollercoaster of Friendship” failed that I realize I didn’t pick up at the time was not simply the focus on Sunset Shimmer but the fact that, aside from the first movie, “Forgotten Friendship” attached itself back to the main series more than any other entry. We spent a good amount of time in good ol’ Equestria and got to expand on both the pony Twilight Sparkle as well as Princess Celestia. By comparison, “Rollercoaster of Friendship”, like most EQ entries, is grounded solidly in the real world where there is, quite literally, little magic to be found.

On the second viewing, I compliment this entry for taking a few more risks, but none of them really panned out (with one possible exception…). One was the series attempting to subvert expectations. The girls appear that they’re on the road to all being trapped again with a buildup to another magic demon to fight, only to turn out they were never trapped at all but stuck in an ordinary room with an unlocked door the whole time. The problem with this one is it didn’t end up being nearly as funny as they hoped. It didn’t help that the build up to it was almost part-and-parcel a repeat of “Mirror Magic”. (Fluttershy is even the first one captured again.) Rather than being an amusing turnabout, it came off as series laziness.

Another was trying to focus on one or two of the girls instead of the group as a whole…and by “as a whole” I mean Sunset, Sci-Twi, and “Etc.”. 😛 This one focuses specifically on Applejack and Rarity and their relationship. The problem is one of the other specials already focused on Rarity: “Dance Magic”. So rather than looking like it’s giving all the girls their chance to shine, it looks like she’s unbalanced in coverage compared to the others.

The third, and biggest, was the villain. One thing the series hadn’t touched on yet that was ripe territory for the EQ spinoff was the impact of social media: how it encourages people to become more superficial while at the same time addicting them to the praise and attention they get from grooming a fake personality and appearance. Unfortunately, it didn’t seem to hit that hard with the villain. Vignette Valencia is tied with Juniper Montage as the worst villain of the franchise. Unlike Juniper, they tried to give something charismatic with Vignette; namely her ability to roll off complicated responses mixed with LOLspeak and never pausing for air. It was an interesting idea, but it fell flat. Even after watching the special twice I can barely comprehend what Vignette is saying. What more, she is, by far, the most shoehorned villain redemption yet. Throughout the entire special Vignette is continuously superficial and self-absorbed. Even when she hires Rarity she’s only interested in using her. She doesn’t so much get “corrupted” in this one as gets more used to her newfound power. While people complain about Juniper, she at least came off in “Movie Magic” as someone thoughtlessly selfish as opposed to outright selfish. Vignette comes off as just plain selfish and uncaring. And while the special does try to pass in a message at the end about how one can have thousands of followers and no real friends, which is the true black mark of social media, it’s almost an afterthought like a fortune cookie message rather than tied into the plot.

Instead, the plot plays out like a series of Youtube shorts, especially with the bits with Fluttershy/Rainbow Dash and Sunset Shimmer/Sci-Twi. A lot of the humor comes from Rarity stressing out over her new job and the drama comes from the relationship strain between her and Applejack. None of that has anything to do with social media. Now if the series ever tries to do a special that really does focus on social media, it’ll come off as rehashing from this.

This all made for a rather mediocre special to me, but there were two things that stood out. One was something that stood out to me personally. The other…was pretty much the reason this somewhat unremarkable special ended up generating tons of buzz.

As Silver Quill noted in his review of “Friendship Games”, as admired as Sunset Shimmer is the ongoing complaint is that she’s effectively a different character from her initial appearance. He argued that the one thing Sunset has in common both as a villain and as a protagonist is her need to prove herself to be “better” than any challenge that comes her way. And what I liked about this special is it rammed it home in her scene with Sci-Twi. Although she states right at the outset that the game is rigged, she still has to beat it. Why? Because she can’t let the game be “better” than her. She has to prove she’s superior to it. She says it directly in a cold voice: “I don’t like to lose.”

The other needs little introduction…

In the world of the Internet, the rule for shipping two people together is pretty much that they simply appear in the same scene together. This episode, however, made a much more plausible case than usual for “Rarijack”. While all of it is solidly in the realm of ambiguous, there are more than a few moments in this episode. First, there’s the fact the whole center of the episode is Applejack and Rarity wanting to work in the same place so they can hang out all summer. Nothing’s wrong with that or unusual among friends, but the fact that it apparently is so important that the two of them get to do it together as opposed to any of their other friends is unusual. Applejack’s constant reactions to Rarity and Vignette shows she’s clearly jealous. She could be jealous of their friendship, but at the bare minimum that would indicate that Applejack views Rarity as a friend with a special status above the rest of the Humane Seven. Then there’s the fact that Applejack and Rarity constantly hold hands and blush when they look at each other, especially in the ending song when the two seem to be singing to one another.

Considering the fact that similar gestures and looks have been used with Lyra and Bon Bon, who the fandom considered to be a homosexual couple and the show writers seemingly endorsed in later episodes, this has led to widespread speculation that Applejack and Rarity’s human forms are a homosexual couple as well.

For me personally, I don’t think there was anything “conclusive” in favor of that viewpoint. If you realize the whole setup for this plot is contingent on Applejack and Rarity being closer friends with each other than the rest of the girls, it doesn’t seem so much of a big deal. For those who think the episode was implying that Applejack and Rarity or a couple, my suggestion is to think about the plot from the standpoint of them not being a couple and then ask how you could have presented the same plot in such a way to ensure no ambiguity while still letting their relationship as friends come through. I don’t think you could have, so this is going to have to be another one of those deals where I think the audience is just reading too much into it…or, perhaps, subtle fanservice.

In conclusion…average. It seemed a bit worse than average when it first came out due to being overshadowed by “Forgotten Friendship”, but now I consider it solidly middle-ground. Takes some chances but doesn’t really push them enough to work.

Fun Facts:

Similar to “Forgotten Friendship”, this special was originally conceived as a five-part miniseries to be showed as part of the Equestria Girls Youtube series. The TV version appears to be identical to this one.

Apparently, Stinky Bottoms’ Discount Hat Emporium exists in both worlds. 😛

Equestria Land ironically seems to be a land based off of MLP:FIM as if it was an actual series in the human world. Surreal.

Considering the fact the girls have dealt with actual Sirens, I’m surprised Rarity is so cool about fake ones being in the show. 😛

Microchips gets mentioned by name for the first time in a special, although his name was introduced in an earlier Youtube short.

MICROCHIPS: (Offering) “Caramel Apple?” APPLEJACK: “Uh…’Applejack’.” It took me a while to get that joke. That’s what you get for naming yourselves after common objects. 😛

Nice continuity joke. VALENCIA: “I need a stress salad!” (Later) FLUTTERSHY: “Do you mind if I eat this salad? I’m feeling stressed.” RAINBOW DASH: “You gonna eat that stress salad?”

Although they originally appeared in human form in one of the shorts for “Rainbow Rocks”, the humanized Flim-Flam brothers make their first special appearance in this episode.

After Rarity screams about needing a bigger pile of clothes to scream into, the shot fades out and fades in on one of the stuffed animals at Flim and Flam’s ring-toss game: a horse with the same coloration as Rarity. 😀

“…because she’s always blowing smoke up your chimney!” Earn that Y7 rating.

Pinkie Pie knew they were in a room the whole time but just went along with it. 😛

Rating:

2.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #25 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issues #51-53): “From the Shadows”

Tags

Applejack, Fluttershy, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Shadow Lock, Spike, the Pony of Shadows, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

After an outing to see “The Bridle of Frankenstag” with the rest of the Mane Six, Twilight Sparkle and Spike are heading home to the Castle of Friendship only to find it has been broken into. The thief is still inside, a mysterious gray unicorn stallion, but he manages to escape with several of Twilight’s books after ransacking the library. Fearful about what just happened, Twilight calls the girls over for an impromptu sleep-over, and on ordering the remaining books she finds that none of the spellbooks have been taken but, rather, history books about monstrous figures from Equestria’s past. The next day, Twilight and Spike use a Location Spell she placed on the books to find them, but on finally tracking them down she finds the books abandoned in an alley with all of their pages blanked out. The girls split up in town, realizing the thief couldn’t have gone far, and through independent investigation find the culprit is a pony named Shadow Lock who has a specialty for book magic, including the ability to erase not only the contents of books but also the knowledge that the content gave to anyone who ever read that book. They manage to track him down to the Public Library just as he’s about to check out even more books, but on being confronted by the girls he uses his power to bring multiple monsters to life out of the books to attack them.

As the girls begin to struggle with the monsters, Shadow calls out that what he’s doing is for their own good; that he’s trying to keep “a darkness” from returning to Equestria. While the girls manage to stop the rampaging monsters by hurriedly moving to the end of their stories, he escapes in the confusion. Over the next few days the girls attempt to stake out classrooms, newspaper offices, and historical reenactment sites to try and corner Shadow Lock, but he either doesn’t show or manages to escape in the same way he escaped the library: unleashing more monsters. Finally, Twilight and the girls set a trap at the Canterlot Museum by holding a huge “History of Equestria” exhibit, then staking out that location. Sure enough, Shadow Lock sneaks in and makes for the archives, thinking the girls asleep, but on arrival he’s surprised to see Twilight Sparkle is awake and waiting for him. She stops him from summoning another monster from a book and offers to hear him out on his reasons for why he’s doing what he’s doing; suspecting that she has the upper hand in she can always call out to wake her friends up to help her. What she doesn’t realize, however, is that Shadow Lock already dealt with them by trapping them in a world brought to life by the museum exhibits.

Pinkie Pie and Applejack find themselves stuck in the cavepony exhibit, Rarity and Rainbow Dash are stuck in the Egyptian-themed exhibit with Queen Cleopatrot, and Fluttershy and Spike are stuck in the medieval exhibit with pony knights and a full-sized dragon. Shadow Lock, deciding to let Twilight continue to think everything’s fine, explains that he discovered he is the last descendant of an ancient pony who was corrupted by darkness into a horrible monster capable of dooming all of Equestria. He first discovered it on reading about him in a book, and ever since then he’s continually found more passages of him that has made him obsessed with the fear that he too will be corrupted by darkness into the same monster. He felt the only way to prevent it from happening was to erase all memory of his existence so that none will ever follow in his footsteps. Twilight, however, points out this won’t stop the inevitable of another tyrant appearing and that erasing and hiding from history won’t stop it; that one has to embrace both the good parts and bad parts of their history if they want to learn from it and keep it from happening again. Her point is proven when Shadow Lock realizes, to his own horror, that by using his spell he has already erased from his own mind how the monster was stopped the first time. Not long after, he is surprised as the rest of the girls show up; revealing they escaped the history traps that they had been stuck in by doing something different from normal history–further proving Twilight’s point. He apologizes for all he’s done and changes his strategy; instead deciding to go through Equestria and use history to find a way to stop the monster from returning and the same thing from happening again. As he departs, Twilight realizes she never got the name of the villain from him, but the girls brush it off. Meanwhile, in the Ponyville House of Antiques, a shoppony accidentally knocks over a blind buy barrel that contains an old journal marked with a star swirl and a picture of the same monster from Shadow Lock’s memory inside…

Review:

With this story arc, the combination IDW comic/main series arc of the Pillars of Old Equestria and the Pony of Shadows was officially launched. The timing was good as it came out prior to the start of Season Seven, even though the actual arc on the show wouldn’t start until midseason. Plotwise, it was an interesting and clever way to launch things to me.

Overall, this whole arc is well-balanced. All of the girls are given something to do although they are shoved into pairs for most of it. Each one gets their own lines, quirks, and gags, just like you would expect from any episode trying to use all of them. The girls treat the whole plot in a rather “light” manner even though it does have some heavy implications, especially when the audience doesn’t know what Shadow Lock’s intentions are exactly initially. The balance works out well in this one rather than being a sharp contrast such as in “Reflections”, “Chaos Theory”, and “The Ponies of Dark Water” (to a lesser extent).

On the “darker” side, the biggest standout is Shadow Lock himself. There’s been a number of OCs in the IDW Comic over the years; many of them just there to fulfill minor roles. Creating a new villain, and a stallion no less, was eye-catching a bit in and of itself. I’m a bit grimacing at the use of a cloak yet again, but overall there’s something about Shadow Lock personality-wise that makes him seem a bit different from the other Equestrians. His attitude seems a bit sharper and more severe.

Some of the last issue is a bit of a callback to the plot in #15 and #16, especially with more monsters coming out of books. I kind of kept thinking of that arc as this one went on, so if there was anything I would mark this arc down for that would be it. Nevertheless, it was still fun and made for some good jokes.

Seen in the context of the entire season arc, a point I will make here and will make later is that the comics went a long way into making the Pony of Shadows a much more intimidating, fearsome, and dangerous foe than the show itself managed. Liberated from the Y-rating and having much more room to work with as they could focus on individual characters, the comic overall did a much better job of promoting the stakes for the Season Seven finale, which itself had such character overload it really only had time for a 44 minute exposition dump. This arc, on the other hand, created an intriguing and foreboding villain in Shadow Lock, and the fact that he was trying to save Equestria from something far deadlier and went to such lengths to ensure it, not to mention the hints and hype that began in this issue, really geared me up more for the Season Seven finale than I would have been otherwise. In that regard, it did its job very well.

If you frame this prequel in the light of what we eventually got out of the show, it seems to downgrade its rating a bit. But keeping in mind how much better the comic did plus how effectively this started building up for the finale, I give it a higher rating it deserves.

Fun Facts:

This comic arc is the prelude to the IDW “Legends of Magic” limited series and the second half of Season Seven’s overarching story arc. The last page connects directly to Season Seven’s “Uncommon Bond”. This arc also, in part, fixes the plot holes of many of the Pillars of Old Equestria never getting mentioned, the Pony of Shadows not having any reputation from legend, and Celestia and Luna not remembering that the Pillars were real individuals, although the “Legends of Magic” arc would later explain that as well by having them purposely avoid making their presence known to either of them. (As well as a brief line from Fluttershy using the incident to explain why the CMCs are still in the same grade after seven years. :P)

“The Bridle of Frankenstag” is playing in the same theater from “The Ponies of Dark Water”, which was apparently rebuilt. Although the girls clearly point out it was a play, the IDW Comic writers seem to have forgotten that film exists in Equestria (as evidenced in “Hurricane Fluttershy” and “One Bad Apple”). 😛

I just noticed…instead of sleeping bags, rollaways, or even spare rooms, for sleepovers Twilight has entire beds in her own bedroom. Weird.

As a nod back to Rainbow Dash admitting to Scootaloo that scary stories got to her when she was younger in “Sleepless in Ponyville”, she’s the only one who had nightmares of Frankenstag.

This arc might be the first time Fluttershy has ever used her attractiveness to get out of a situation.

The cyclops pony bears a resemblance to Bulk Biceps. His Cutie Mark is an eyeball. H. Pony Lovecart is a parody of H.P. Lovecraft, whose horror writings often featured elderich horrors of monstrosities that included tentacles. Hence, nothing but a mass of tentacles comes from his book. Frankenstag’s monster is a parody of Frankenstein’s monster and, as if often the case with those who have read the book, he corrects the cast on misconceptions given from the popular media version. 😛

The “Marshans” are parodies of the Martians in “War of the Worlds”. In that story, the Martian invaders were eventually destroyed by contracting infections and sickness from Earth’s native bacteria.

The Mane-Iac briefly returns in a cameo.

Trenderhoof (from “Simple Ways”) cameos at the Canterlot Daily News office. (Were newspapers really around back in the days of the Pony of Shadows? :P)

Ponebert by Trot Adams is (obviously) a parody of Dilbert by Scott Adams. It seems, just like in real life, the quality of its humor is somewhat up for debate.

In Colonial Whinniesburg, Prancy Drew makes a brief cameo.

So ponies DO have bathrooms and they DO use toilet paper. 😛

Somnambula as a locale (rather than an individual) is mentioned for the first time in this arc.

This arc is the first appearance of the Pony of Shadows (although only as a drawing in a book).

It’s never explained how Shadow Lock managed to descend from the Pony of Shadows, although it’s safe to assume he isn’t a direct descendant of Stygian. It’s also never explained how he got the scar across his snout. Shadow Lock doesn’t look like it compared to the show version, but he does bear a slight resemblance to Stygian in “Legends of Magic”.

Some of Pinkie Pie’s attempts to talk to the caveponies include saying “Artoo Deetoo” or R2-D2, the droid from the Star Wars franchise.

Pinkie Pie randomly mentions the Matrix, complete with shades.

Rating:

4 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #24 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issues #48-50): “Chaos Theory”

Tags

Accord, Applejack, Chaos Theory, Discord, Fluttershy, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Spike, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

The Mane Six, Spike, and Starlight Glimmer are all heading out with the residents of Ponyville to enjoy the Cosmic Convergence Conjunction, only to find that they have a “party crasher”: Discord. It’s not long before his chaotic nature and need to be the center of attention earn him a scolding from the girls, who pouts and disappears. Not long after, the Cosmic Convergence Conjuction occurs but, as it does, Starlight notices something nearby. The girls look and see what appears to be a blend of a strange egg and Discord smoldering in the ground. They take it back to the Castle of Friendship only for it to hatch, revealing a creature that looks like Discord but dresses neatly, talks calmly, and acts mannerly. He indicates that he’s a creature that Discord transformed into as a result of the energy of the conjunction, and is not a spirit of chaos but one of order and harmony. Twilight Sparkle names him “Accord” and, on learning that he wants to help bring order and harmony to Equestria, decide to reintroduce him to town. He ends up being extremely mannerly and helpful, earning the admiration of all of the girls except Fluttershy, but Starlight gets uneasy when Accord, rather than fix a hotel under construction that is suffering from a clash of styles from disagreeing architects, momentarily mind controls both of them instead to make them agree on the same design. Twilight and the others rub it off as a mistake, however, and the next day Accord and the girls are invited to Canterlot for a royal luncheon with Celestia and Luna to formally introduce him. While at the luncheon, Starlight vocalizes her disapproval with how Accord acted the other day, but Accord soon surprises everypony by saying he wishes to bring complete harmony to everypony in Equestria via unity, and he plans to achieve unity by making every resident in Equestria think exactly alike and run it under his own direction. He starts by trying to mind-control everypony in the palace and, while Celestia manages to protect the girls, herself, and Luna, everypony else is turned into a like-minded zombie.

Unable to reason with Accord, who believes he is simply doing what Celestia and Luna were trying to do “more efficiently”, Twilight tells Celestia and the rest of the girls to start evacuating Canterlot while she and Luna enter Accord’s mind using her dream magic. While they successfully enter, they soon discovered he’s changed inside and out and all he has is a uniform sameness throughout his mind. Nevertheless, Twilight manages to find a snow globe in one of the monolithic offices inside his head that contains the original Discord. She breaks it open and frees him, but Discord informs her that he is merely the last part of what Accord is now that is still Discord. He confesses that he was truly hurt when the girls scolded him at the Cosmic Convergence Conjunction and felt he would never fit in with them, so he decided to change himself into a harmonious form instead. Unfortunately, he can’t change back unless Accord willingly changes himself back into Discord, and shortly after confessing this the Accords inside his mind trap the three of them… Back outside, Celestia and the girls break for it only to discover Accord is not only rapidly expanding his control to all of the other ponies in Canterlot but he is, in effect, copying his own consciousness onto them in order to make them partially clones of himself from a mental standpoint. They manage to escape the zone of his magic influence and round up whoever isn’t converted yet to the train station, only to get a rather bad surprise: Twilight and Luna, both now mind-controlled as well, suddenly arrive.

The group manages to escape on a train and head toward Ponyville, but while en route Celestia begins to wonder if Accord might actually have a point; seeing as he seems to have brought harmony and balance far easier and more quickly than Celestia has. Starlight protests that he’s gone about it through making ponies conform and be controlled, as she did once, rather than trying to get them to work together as friends. She begins to speculate based on similar incidents (such as with the cursed water, the Mirror Universe, and Inspiration Manifestation) that both Discord and Accord themselves actually had the same goals (making friends) but went about it in different ways. On arriving in Ponyville, Celestia leads the girls to go for the Elements of Harmony with the intent of using them against Accord and Celestia taking Twilight’s spot. Soon after, Accord teleports in and invites them to try, and not only do the Elements not work they actually enhance his power to allow him to instantly mind-control everypony in Equestria except Starlight (who was protecting herself at the point of the attack). However, before Accord can do the same to her, she points out that since she’s the only non-controlled one left and no threat to him that he should be able to convince her to join his philosophy without forcing her. Accord agrees to the challenge, claiming that he’s made everypony in Equestria his friends by making them think alike and that “friendship is order”. Starlight counters that friendship is about understanding and connecting with others because of differences, and that Accord hasn’t really made a single friend or brought any ponies to work together. All he’s made is copies of himself who can only think and act the way he wants them to “and not a single friend”. Realizing he was wrong all along, Accord tells Starlight goodbye and says he hopes this is the last she’ll ever see of him before turning back into Discord. The girls all welcome Discord back and learn to appreciate how differences and “chaos” helps build friendships, and the cast ends with a proclamation that “friendship is magic”.

Review:

First things first. (Holds a gun to the head of the part of my Angry Inner Fanboy who’s mad that Starlight’s second appearance in the main IDW series was another “Starlight Saves Absolutely Every Other Protagonist in the Entire Series by Herself” story to keep him from complaining.) On we go.

A big theme that keeps getting revisited in the “My Little Pony” franchise is the idea of what would happen if characters would be the opposite of their true selves. Ironically, that idea first came around because of Discord way back in Season Two’s “Return of Harmony”. But with Discord reaching the point where he tried to fit in more with the regular cast, and him being such a stand-out character, it caused no end of fan speculation as to what Discord would be like if he was the opposite of his current self.

It was played up mostly for laughs but with a touch of “aw” and drama in “Discordant Harmony” in Season Seven. By comparison…this arc went much darker with it. It essentially showed that being an omnipotent creature is pretty much a dangerous thing for Equestria whether he wants chaos or order.

The art is really great and the pacing is pretty good, keeping things at a very tense progression after Accord reveals his intentions that keeps you engrossed in the story. I don’t think that the show could ever get away with an ending this philosophical, but…it was rather appropriate, fitting, and even clever. Most of the times in the main series when a character talks down a villain it basically amounts to “I’ll be your friend”. In this one, the dialogue was more mature and satisfying. Using the more mature rating for a more intelligent plot is good to me. And there were quite a number of callbacks both to the TV series and the comic, making this a very unifying arc. And the ending message is good as well…that chaos in and of itself isn’t necessarily evil just as order in and of itself isn’t necessarily good, and that it’s possible to appreciate and even befriend both.

However, for being an arc that focuses on Discord and the normal zaniness that surrounds him, even when he’s trying to be “orderly”, this arc goes in a dark direction pretty quick. Even the narrative hook is a bit unusual. The odd egg/chrysalis thing that Discord changes into is a bit unsettling looking right at the start, already foreshadowing that things are going to go from humorous to dark pretty quickly in this arc. And indeed they do. Similar to the “Reflections” arc, this plotline very quickly gets into dark territory. Many of the scenes of the Stepford Smiler ponies are very disturbing looking, especially when it starts showing the other ponies aren’t merely brainwashed but have been turned into copies of Accord, in a sense. The comic makes numerous attempts to try and alleviate this with comic relief, but…similar to the “Reflections” arc, it doesn’t work out that well to me. In fact, it works a little less. The plot just gets a little too heavy to be able to lift it out of it, even with someone like Andy Fleecs doing the normally wonderful art.

This does have the feel of a season-capping episode, but…it also suffers from most of the pitfalls of one. The biggest part is the rest of the girls are just there to be random gags and one liners. Celestia, Starlight, Luna, and Twilight get a good amount of focus, but Fluttershy gets largely ignored after the first part even though anything that would happen to Discord would impact her the most.

And…what the heck, I’ll let him get it out. (Lowers gun)

This comic was likely in production long before “To Where and Back Again” came out or was even known about, but I’m a little disappointed at the show staff for not warning the IDW Comic writers they planned to do an arc where Starlight would save the entire cast more or less by herself, because the fact they put out a second arc where she does the same thing in the comic made me frown a little. In several ways, it’s worse than it was for “To Where and Back Again”. In that one, Starlight found herself forced into a position of leadership she didn’t want to be in. She was hesitant and self-doubting at least, and part of the story had to be her being willing to direct others to work together. In this one, Starlight is portrayed as already being smarter, stronger, and even possibly more empathic than the others. And the issue with that is that it continuously renders not only the Mane Six superfluous compared to her but also casts doubt upon how they ever did anything to change her, as she already seems to be “better at friendship” than them without them saying or doing anything to change her…a fact that seems accurate considering the flimsy resolution of “The Cutie Re-Mark”. It’s not to say I don’t like Starlight Glimmer, but…seriously? Could they have not done an arc or two where she was working with the girls instead of bailing them and the princesses of Equestria out? …Again?

All in all, this is still a good arc in spite of its flaws. It’s not quite as funny or show-appropriate as it would like to be and I personally feel it could have gone in slightly different directions, but overall it’s still a tense, dramatic, and colorful arc. A good solid benchmark for their 50th issue. Here’s to seeing fifty more. 🙂

Fun Facts:

This arc is also known simply as: “Accord”.

Discord breaks the fourth wall earlier than usual, saying “in the four color flesh”. Comic coloration is done in only four colors: Yellow, Cyan, Magenta, and Black. A moment later he’s unhappy on seeing that the script for Issue #48 has him saying puns.

Accord is physically identical to Discord in spite of being “a creature of harmony” except in one detail: instead of a beard he has a mustache.

In possibly a nod to “Fairly Oddparents”, Accord’s word bubbles are more rectangular and rounded on the sides rather than ovals.

Both this arc as well as “Discordant Harmony” in the main series explored the idea of what would happen if Discord started acting “less chaotic”, but it’s interesting to note in both versions Fluttershy doesn’t like how he’s changed and wants him to be more chaotic.

Spike dreams of eating Kentucky Fried Crystals. Not sure how that will work out…

As with most Andy Price drawn stories, the IDW exclusive character Kibitz makes a return.

I’m sure most fans thought Twilight Sparkle eating her Toasty Oats breakfast was adorable. 😀

This comic might be the only indication we’ll ever get of numeric distances in Ponyville. The distance between Ponyville and Canterlot is 14 miles, the distance between Canterlot and Dodge Junction is 48 miles, and the distance from Canterlot to New Horseleans (never before mentioned in the TV series) is 260.

The looks on the faces of the mind-controlled ponies is a classic “Stepford Smiler”, which is similar to what was done in Season Five’s own “The Cutie Map” with Starlight’s commune members.

This story arc features a number of callbacks to earlier arcs. A major plot point is a callback to the “Friends Forever” issue with Luna and Discord–namely the fact Luna has entered Discord’s mind before. Another is a callback to the “Reflections” arc when Celestia mentions the evil version of herself. Lastly, there’s a callback to “The Ponies of Dark Waters”.

In a bit of comic relief, when Accord says he’s trying to achieve the same goal as Princess Celestia, Celestia screams: “WAT.”

Discord’s original persona is found in Accord’s mind in a snow globe, which may or may not be an allusion to “Coraline”. At any rate, the sled in the snow globe is named Rosebud, an allusion to “Citizen Kane”.

The mysterious fedora pony appears at the train station.

A pony version of Jimmy Olson calls out on seeing the mind-controlled Twilight and Luna.

As more comic relief, Starlight easily distracts the mind-controlled Twilight and Luna with a toy monkey.

When Princess Celestia tries to use the Magic Element of Harmony, it connects to her golden collar instead of as a tiara.

At the part where Starlight makes the point that you can’t be friends with “someone who’s exactly like you”, she’s looking at a random picture of Sunset Shimmer. As this arc came out in Season Six, it’s likely that this is a joke at the frequent fan complaint that Starlight Glimmer was nothing more than an attempt to clone Sunset Shimmer into a permanent role on the show.

A number of jokes are on the page where Discord returns. He brings Twilight and Luna in a fourth-wall breaking cardboard box that says “characters not seen for 16 pages”, he has a pizza from Panucci’s (the pizzaria in “Futurama”), and Doctor Whooves, no longer brainwashed, says he can finally blink…an allusion to Doctor Who’s fights against the Weeping Angels. Soon after, Discord complains about the entire story arc, saying he was only on nine of the sixty pages.

The final page is a tribute to IDW’s 50th issue of the My Little Pony series. It has numerous little nods, such as another appearance of the fedora pony, a Changeling, a foal with a horn like King Sombra’s, and an appearance from a buffalo and stag.

Issue #50 was a plus-sized issue that capped the “Chaos Theory” story arc with a ten page short called: “For the Pony Who Has Everything”, in which Discord gives Celestia a “birthday present” of turning her into a normal pegasus to take a day off as an average pony. Her Sun Cutie Mark is replaced with a Christmas tree light bulb. Eventually, Discord turns himself into a pegasus to tag along…with the Cutie Mark of an electric cord (obviously to plug in Celestia’s light bulb). When incognito Celestia says hi to Pinkie Pie, she reenacts her reaction to Twilight from the first episode, and one of the ponies in the impromptu pony parade is Jay Fosgitt, the short’s artist, in pony form.

Rating:

4 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Friends Forever #33 (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Friends Forever #33): “Applejack & Cherry Jubilee”

Tags

Applejack, Buffalo Bull, Calamity Mane, Cherry Jubilee, Friends Forever, IDW, IDW comic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, review

Synopsis:

The Equine Flu is making its rounds about Equestria, and as Cherry Jubilee is currently shorthanded for harvest season she’s called Applejack to come help her. While harvesting one day, a group of ponies called “Buffalo Bull’s Amazing Wild West Show”, which Applejack is a fan of (and, in particular, its star attraction “Calamity Mane”), rides up to the farm. Calamity Mane herself comes out and explains that the troop is sick with the flu and asks if they can stay to recuperate for a few days. Yet when Applejack approves them staying without consulting Cherry and tells her about it, on mentioning that Buffalo Bull and Calamity Mane are there she gets so enraged that she only allows them to stay one night, but tomorrow wants both them and Applejack gone (for letting them stay at all). Applejack and Calamity both try to find out the reason for being angry, but not only do Cherry and Buffalo Bull (who himself caught the flu) say nothing but it turns out Bull is angry to find out they stopped at Dodge Junction in the first place and now is getting sicker. Applejack decides to go to the town library instead to see if she can find something in the history of the town to give a clue, and ends up discovering that Cherry Jubilee is, in fact, the original “Calamity Mane”. On confronting Cherry with this, she breaks down enough to tell the whole story. As a young filly she felt her special calling was cherry farming but wanted a chance to go abroad in Equestria. When Buffalo Bull’s (then) small show stopped by the town, they fell in love with each other and she accepted his offer to join his show to see Equestria, changing to a stage name of “Calamity Mane”. While the show enjoyed success, Cherry eventually tired of the exhaustion of stage life and wanted to settle down. While they were stopped in Dodge Junction, Bull publicly proposed to her and, panicking and not sure what she wanted, she ran off to a nearby cherry farm. Feeling her calling there once again, she grew more confused and went to talk to Bull about it; only to discover he had packed up the show and left her behind. Although Cherry eventually found her calling working on that farm and eventually buying it, she never stopped hurting over being abandoned by Bull and, now, from having replaced her with a different mare. Applejack tries to point out that both Bull and her ended up having good lives that made them happy doing what they wanted and tries to tell her that holding onto her grudge isn’t going to make her or Bull happy. Cherry seems to ignore this and runs to confront Bull but, on seeing him sick and heartbroken as well, lets go of her resentment. The two finally apologize for hurting each other and reconcile. A few days later, Cherry has also managed to reconcile with the current Calamity Mane. Buffalo Bull puts on his first show in Dodge Junction in years, inviting Cherry Jubilee to also perform under her real name. She, in turn, welcomes Calamity Mane on stage to perform with her while thanking Applejack for making it all possible.

Review:

Kind of ironic that Applejack, who has a history to me of having the most bland and humdrum episodes, ended up having the most heartfelt and emotional episode of the regular series with “The Perfect Pear”. Similarly, one of the most heartfelt and emotional issues of the “Friends Forever” series also goes to her.

Cherry Jubilee hasn’t had too much to do in the main series, which goes without saying. She was pretty much just a character brought in help move the plot in two episodes. Characters like this, however, are gold for the IDW Comic because they’ve been established along with relationships to other characters but haven’t yet been fleshed out. And this one did a marvelous job of that.

While the IDW Comic gets away with more than the show does based on the medium, it still has a responsibility to remain grounded not far from Y-rated territory, so it’s still subject to many of the same constraints. Nevertheless, just as was done in Season Seven, the comic managed to push the envelope by going in a story direction that little kids would find somewhat entertaining but the adult audience would understand far better and hits a bit closer to home. The experience of first being in love is something that feels very new and yet wonderful to lots of younger people. Yet it’s not very long after we first start forming connections with other people outside of our family’s that run far deeper and tighter than mere friendship that we start to learn just how “tender” and “vulnerable” those same connections are. One of the bitter lessons of most people’s younger years is the pain that accompanies throwing your heart around and giving it to other people. Yet none of that, however, is nearly as brutal or painful as when we feel like we’ve found the person who might be “the one” and bare everything to them, perhaps for a period of years, and feel like we could be together forever even if we’re still at the part of our lives where we’re trying to figure out who we are.

And as a result, when something happens that breaks that connection, there are two overwhelming emotional responses: extreme sadness and a desire for revenge. When you get hurt that bad and that deeply, it often spawns feelings of wanting to hurt that person back. And while this is most bitter, typically, in relationships…turning otherwise reasonable and pleasant people into their most hurting, venomous, and vengeful natures…it can happen any time someone hurts us deeply. And, similar to as was shown in “The Perfect Pear”, the pain can be so bad that we feel it “deserves” the grudges that we associate with it. That the misery and anguish we feel needs to keep being honored by never stopping being angry or hateful to the one who hurt us.

And just like in “The Perfect Pear”, all that ends up doing is rotting at our own hearts. Having a hole put into them ironically makes us want to keep that hole in there forever.

The truth is everyone has their reasons for doing the things they do. Some of them are selfish. Some of them are foolish. Some of them are based solely on raw and misplaced emotion and revenge. Rarely, however, (and far less often than most people are willing to accept) do people do things out of a pure desire to just be cruel for the sake of being cruel. Rarer still is the person who is willing to see what they contributed to get them to the point of where they are today and to apologize for it.

While it’s pretty clear that Bull and Cherry are friends again by the end of this story, whether or not they went so far as to restart their relationship is probably too much of a stretch. Yet even that was alright, because they finally got to part on friendly terms and finally understood, and accepted, that both of them were thinking more of themselves than anyone else in what happened and, for better or for worse, both ended up with the lives they wanted…leaving it pointless to spend the rest of their lives angry and hurting over what they did to each other.

This isn’t quite as tragic as “The Perfect Pear” and the ending isn’t quite as bittersweet although it does make the point, once again, that life’s too short to go around clinging to grudges. However, the real reason I mark it down was the “new” Calamity Mane. She is, for all intensive purposes, an innocent bystander. It’s clear she didn’t know that Cherry Jubilee was the original Calamity Mane and she looks up to Buffalo Bull in a non-romantic way, and yet she suddenly finds herself (unfairly) receiving Cherry’s wrath for Bull’s mistake. The most stand-out panel to me is where she overhears Buffalo Bull telling Cherry it was a mistake to replace “the one and only Calamity Mane”…something that clearly hurts her. Yet all we get is Applejack quickly throwing in an almost comedic “I’m sure he didn’t mean that”. At this point, you could have made an entire separate storyline in which the newer Calamity Mane now wonders if she was never anything more than a way of getting revenge on Cherry.

The way the art is drawn in the final panels, it looks as if Calamity Mane was just supposed to be happy for Bull and Cherry at the end but then, reading back through it, the writers realized that Calamity had just been wronged as badly as Cherry had been. So the dialogue was amended to include a few throwaway lines to show Cherry had made friends with her after all and didn’t mind her taking over her old spot. The biggest indication of that is the next to last panel when Cherry asks Calamity to come on stage as well…yet in the last panel Calamity is clearly just watching the show alongside Applejack. That’s something a little too big to overlook.

But aside from that, this is one of the best of the “Friends Forever” series and another surprisingly emotional tale from the most down-to-earth of the Mane Six. It’s not quite “The Perfect Pear”, but it’s definitely one of the high marks of the comic.

Fun Facts:

This entire storyline features a lot of nods to “Buffalo Bill” Cody, one of the last legendary figures of the American Old West. He was most infamously known for “Buffalo Bill’s Wild West”, a traveling show that showcased numerous acts and stunts that were themed with the 1800s American West and, in great part, helped romanticize and popularize the idea of the Old West culture. Among its most notable acts was the storytelling of Martha “Calamity Jane” Cannary, a prominent frontierswoman from the Old West and contemporary of “Wild Bill” Hickock, and Annie Oakley, an infamous sharpshooter and exhibition shooter. Buffalo Bull is clearly inspired by Buffalo Bill, especially running “Buffalo Bull’s Amazing Wild West Show”, while Calamity Mane seems to share aspects of both Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley.

It appears that Twilight Sparkle has used her princess status to promote literacy. Although she doesn’t appear in this issue, there’s a poster with her face on it in the library encouraging ponies to read. 😛

The gremlins appear…AGAIN. This time as stickers in a scrap book. So does a Pigasus from the Friends Forever with Applejack and Fluttershy.

Rating:

4.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Comic Arc #23 (IDW My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Issues #46-47): “Election”

Tags

Applejack, election, Filthy Rich, Fluttershy, IDW, IDW comic, Mayor Mare, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Starlight Glimmer, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

Shortly after Mayor Mare dedicates and opens a brand new playground on a plot of land donated by the Apple Family, an earthquake suddenly destroys it in spite of the fact the ground has been stable for years. Some of the Ponyville citizens end up blaming the mayor for not being better prepared for the incident, in spite of her insistence that not all disasters can be prepared for and some have to be dealt with as best as they can when they show up before making sure they don’t happen again. Filthy Rich seizes the opportunity of discontent to make his own bid to run for mayor, leading to Ponyville needing to hold its first election in years. All of the girls are divided, each wanting to vote for a candidate for different reasons, and Twilight Sparkle herself ends up joining Mayor Mare’s campaign team. Filthy runs an aggressive campaign making a great deal of promises for benefits for everypony, swaying a majority of the voters, while Mayor Mare’s own campaign of only making sure ponies get what they need rather than things they want but can’t have ends up falling flat. Filthy Rich wins the election and starts off with a fresh slew of promises, capping with a vow that no earthquakes will ever happen in Ponyville again…right before one demolishes a house.

As soon as Filthy Rich is sworn in, things start going bad. The earthquakes continue to destroy parts of Ponyville, the new Hoofball Stadium is being built right next to Fluttershy’s property (keeping her and the animals up all night), taxes are soaring in a vain attempt to try and pay for all of Filthy’s promises, the new playground he builds is made using the cheapest labor and materials and falls apart instantly, and pretty much all other promises he made he has to renege on. The girls try to ask (Former) Mayor Mare for help, but she answers not only can one pony not fix everything, but she’s not the mayor anymore. At a town hall meeting that night, Filthy gets pelted by the furious townsfolk and vainly tries to promise them more to pacify them, which prompts Mayor Mare to make an appearance and set the townsfolk straight that an elected official’s job is to make plans, work hard, and fix things when they go wrong. At that moment, the source of the earthquakes reveals itself: a tatzlwurm. Mayor Mare ends up rallying the town and using them to drive the monster off. Filthy Rich, ready to be done with politics, begins to go about the long bureaucratic process to resign from being mayor and turn it over to her, while Fluttershy finally gets some sleep.

Review:

Considering the timing of this issue on when it came out and the content, it’s easy to jump to the conclusion that this was poking at one 2016 US Presidential Election candidate in particular. However, I don’t agree even if that was the intention. The moral of this one could apply to pretty much any political candidate, including both Presidential ones in 2016 or any election.

The moral is a pretty good one for living in any sort of republic or democracy, or even for something as simple as putting your trust in anyone such as a lawyer or salesman: be careful about individuals who tell you what you want to hear and stop to think about whether or not they can deliver. This goes certainly for candidates you are not in favor of but more so for ones that you are, as you’re likely to simply hear what you want to hear in those cases. The problem is the lesson was more one for the citizens of Ponyville as a whole rather than just Filthy Rich, although he still needed one of his own. After all, they were the ones who fell for Filthy’s promises to begin with.

Other than that, it’s a pretty good story. I tend the Apples were a bit more ornery and hostile than they needed to be, but it was fairly entertaining. I noticed with Agnes Garbowska’s art style that the comic story can be more “drawn out” because she tends to draw big characters with fewer word balloons in a panel, so that even though this is a two-issue comic it feels more like a one-parter. While I normally didn’t take Filthy Rich for the politician type, I’ll admit that in the situation he seems appropriate. The only real alternative would have been to create an OC just for the issue, and it would have had less of an impact that way. Ironically enough it didn’t seem to have the same amount of laughs as the previous arc, but I liked the inclusions not only of Starlight Glimmer (appearing on equal footing with the rest of the Mane Six is always a plus) but also giving a bit of time to Diamond Tiara, who has had little reason to be in the series since Season Five.

All in all, a nice little story.

Fun Facts:

This was the first IDW arc to feature Starlight Glimmer as a character, although the events of “The Cutie Map” were mentioned in an earlier issue.

At this point, “Crusaders of the Lost Mark” had taken place, so Diamond Tiara was finished being a bully. I think the few lines she got in this arc was the most use they’ve had for her character since. 😛

After the town meeting, the girls return to the Castle of Friendship for a snack. They aren’t actually eating at the Cutie Map but the dining room, but, for some reason, Twilight’s chair is in there…

One of the mayor’s aides that’s spazzing out is named Nervous Nellie. Please don’t tell me her special talent is being nervous. 😛

In spite of the fact that “Slice of Life” called him “Doctor”, in this issue the Doctor Who pony is officially named “Time Turner”.

Pinkie Pie is dressed as Abraham Lincoln for election day. Was there an Abraham-Lincoln-Pony at one point…?

Starlight raises the question of if “Mayor” is a part of Mayor Mare’s name. 😛

Boffyball, from Rarity and Gilda’s “Friends Forever” issue, gets a callback.

Apparently, at one point, Filthy broke the fourth wall and promised background characters more screen time. 😛

The Tatzlwurm, which first appeared in “Three’s a Crowd”, is back. Apparently it behaves just like the Grab-oids in “Tremors”: attracted to small sounds but scared away by really loud ones.

One of Andy Price’s cover illustrations features the pony version of Tara Strong voice acting for Twilight Sparkle, and not being happy with IDW’s choice in dialogue. 😛

Rating:

3 Stars out of 5