My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ “Equestria Girls: Spring Breakdown”

Tags

Applejack, Fluttershy, Lux Deluxe, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Ragamuffin, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Sci-Twi, Spring Breakdown, Sunset Shimmer, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

It’s Spring Break, and the Humane Seven are looking for an opportunity to relax (and get a reprieve from Equestrian magic) by going on a week-long cruise on the Lux Deluxe planned by Twilight Sparkle which features a variety of activities for each of them to enjoy. However, Rainbow Dash, (eagerly) expecting there to be another incident with Equestrian magic, ends up ruining most of the fun of the others by running around trying to sniff out any new enemies or magic relics to contend with.

As Rarity gets attracted to a somewhat simple crewman named Ragamuffin, Sunset ends up confronting Dash about her behavior potentially ruining the trip Twilight had planned. While she apologizes, Dash nevertheless wants to make a big scene at the Rainbooms’ poolside performance that evening in the not-so-secret hopes that it will attract a malevolent Equestrian force to combat. Unfortunately, instead the display seems to kill the ship’s generator and plunge the voyage into darkness just as storm clouds roll in.

Following the power outage, Dash is insistent that the reason for the failure was true malevolent Equestrian magic attacking the ship as a result of them manifesting their powers; something which the rest of the group, getting irritable about Dash’s behavior, is more than doubtful over. Things get worse when Dash ends up ruining the attempts of the girls to sneak in some of their own interests, including Twilight’s attempt to get the auxiliary power on the ship started, when she spots a strange glowing emblem in the ocean under the growing storm around them and drags the girls out to see it…only for it to vanish by the time she gets there. Twilight is especially angry at Dash for ruining the trip and insisting that there’s an enemy for them to fight, but by the next morning (with the ship still stranded in the ocean and the storm around it getting worse) she relents for losing her temper and goes out with Sunset to find her. Unfortunately, they soon discover, after failing to elicit the help of the rest of the girls, that Dash has headed off into the storm to look for the source of the emblem herself.

With Twilight and Sunset both feeling indirectly responsible for Dash’s departure, the two go off to find her while the rest of the girls try to tend to the Lux Deluxe. The two end up trailing her boat to a seemingly deserted jungle island filled with wildlife, and track her down to a quicksand pit. As they try to save her, however, her claims are at least partially justified when they are shocked to discover a monstrous carnivorous plant from Equestria running wild and attacking them. While Twilight holds it at bay, Sunset tries to get Dash out but, in the process, discovers that the quicksand pit is shallow and seems to be concealing golden light. Getting an idea, she shoves Dash the rest of the way into the quicksand before grabbing Twilight and throwing themselves both into it. Moments later, the three find themselves in the Everfree Forest in Equestria…all three transformed into ponies.

After getting over the initial shock of their transformation, Dash decides that hanging out in Equestria for a while in pony form would be the best way to give Twilight a different kind of vacation to make up for her behavior on the cruise. Twilight seems to agree, and she, Sunset, and Dash end up sneaking into the Castle of Friendship and meeting up with Equestrian Twilight Sparkle, Spike, and Pinkie Pie to relax and learn about the world. While they’re having fun, however, the storm in the human world grows more violent and, in their desperation to get the ship working again, the girls accidentally run the cruise ship into the rocks surrounding the deserted island; causing the ship to begin to sink. In Equestria, meanwhile, Equestrian Twilight shows off some of the notable items from their adventures and ends up showing off the Staff of Soconus from their fight against the Storm King, which supposedly contains the remains of the magical storm he generated. Yet on seeing his symbol around it, Dash realizes it’s the same symbol from the ocean she saw the night before, and the humans-turned-ponies realize that the remains of his storm are wrecking havoc on the human world.

Sunset, Twilight, and Dash take the Staff of Soconus and return to the human world to use it to stop the storm, but the ship is still sinking. After Twilight and Dash make up with one another, they and Sunset return to the boat and, with Twilight accepting Dash’s earlier statement that the girls are in fact “superheroes”, they end up saving the rest of the passengers and getting them to shore. Unfortunately, they are now all stranded on a deserted island, and in the end the only way for them to get back is to cross through Equestria to access the portal Equestrian Twilight has in the castle. This leads to a final scene of Equestrian Twilight and Spike getting an unexpected visit by a large crowd of humans-turned-ponies.

Review:

When I first saw this on TV, I didn’t think too bad of it. Unfortunately, on rewatch, this episode entered the elite segment of episodes that go downhill on seeing them the second time. This is possibly the lowest point of the entire spinoff series thus far.

It was at this point that the fundamental flaws of Equestria Girls versus its parent series began to become apparent. I’ll go over that in more detail when I cover the final special, but here I’ll start touching on them. The problem isn’t that there is anything overwhelmingly bad with this special; it’s that there are lots of small things that are a little bad that add up to a mess.

The problems begin right with the setup. One of the big issues that Equestria Girls shares with MLP:FIM is that almost all of the episodes are reactionary. The girls do some activity purely out of fun, some conflict arises, and the girls are forced to resolve it. However, there has to be something about it. Something fun. Something magical. Perhaps even the act of ponies doing something normally reserved for humans. Here it’s the girls going on a Spring Break cruise. A cruise in and of itself is neither a dramatic nor dangerous situation; it’s a time to relax. In fact, part of the reason the worst Equestria Girls specials are so bad is that the setup is always boring: the girls are doing something that’s non-dangerous and is essentially an activity for fun or relaxation. (True, the ponies do that a lot too, but I’ll get into why there’s a difference here later…)

Since the original three EG movies, one can make the argument that the villains have consistently gone downhill in one way or another (Wallflower Blush being the one something of an exception), and this special is another step down in that there really isn’t any villain. For that matter it’s kind of unclear what the conflict really is. The special’s resolution is mostly trying to escape from a bad situation, which makes this movie more of a giant version of one of the shorts rather than a narrative going to a conclusion.

On that note, the main series has lampooned itself before by saying that all of its plotlines can be broken down into a “friendship problem” or a “monster attack”. This special doesn’t really seem to commit itself to either. The situation with the storm is so inconsistently focused on that it’s unclear how much of it is supposed to be a threat, let alone a sentient one to be dealt with. Yet what really falls apart is the friendship problem angle. What exactly did Rainbow Dash and Sci-Twi learn at the end of the episode? Was the goal for Sci-Twi to accept that they’re superheroes? That they’re going to have to do Equestian magic clean-up duty all the time? Was the goal supposed to be they needed to back Dash up from now on whenever she went on one of her almost-crazy searches for a problem that needed fixing?

That brings into the next bad part of this special…the plotline just isn’t put together that well. It’s weird that Dash is suddenly obsessed with finding villains to fight, and obsessed to the point where she starts being so oddly thoughtless and even almost crazy. It’s weird that Pinkie gets so easily banned from the buffet for an accident that wasn’t her fault. It’s weird that Dash simply talking sternly to a rabbit ruins the petting zoo. It’s weird that they tried to shoehorn in this totally pointless love subplot with Rarity and Ragamuffin that went nowhere (Was he supposed to be some sort of Leonardo DiCaprio joke?).

There is a legitimate few seconds that’s a combination of sweetness as well as the elephant in the room being pointed out: the fact that everything that has gone wrong in the human world is, in fact, Sunset Shimmer’s fault and ultimately traces back to her, as well as a cementing of the sister-ly relationship she’s formed with Sci-Twi (“I wouldn’t trade you for anything in the world…or any world.”) Yet it’s also a poor plot item, because it’s used only as a quick plot device to give Sunset and Sci-Twi a reason to pair together to go after Dash as opposed to all the girls or just Sci-Twi. It comes out of nowhere and is used just for that, so even it seems cheap and ultimately forced.

Really, this isn’t anything new for the franchise. They did things similar to it in other specials. The problem is here it’s especially poignant because this special has so much wasted potential. One of the things that actually got me a bit excited for this was when I saw the Storm King emblem in the previews. That actually got me a bit hyped. I actually thought it might have meant we’d see a humanized Storm King or, dare I say it, a humanized Tempest Shadow. Even if that didn’t take place, however, I also knew from previews this was going to be the first time we truly saw the Humane Seven go the other way through the mirror portal and end up as ponies. I thought about what this would mean. What the ramifications would be of them meeting their Equestrian counterparts. What sort of things they might see in each other now that they were looking at how they turned out in a different world. How this would frame their thoughts toward Sunset Shimmer now that they actually knew the world she originated from. Perhaps, even, that the two sides would end up switching places and be forced to work out an issue from the standpoint of the other: the Humane Seven needing to master their new bodies and be confronted in a world that’s fantasy based without any of the comforts or conveniences of the human world, and the Mane Six needing to try and work out an issue as normal humans.

None of that happened. Most of the Humane Seven as ponies is never even seen, and when it is seen it comes off as Sunset, Sci-Twi, and Human Dash taking a thoughtless vacation while leaving their friends to rot. (Even accounting for the storm not getting worse, they know full well they’re struggling to get the ship running again and keep the passengers calm.) Yet I realized that, even if they did, it wouldn’t really matter. Again, I want to keep some of this for my final special review, but the issue is that most of the Humane Seven are nothing more than transplants of their source characters. You know who these people are, whether they’re in human form or pony form, and so there’s really nothing new to compare. The only two who are different are the two Twilights. While Equestrian Twilight has grown over the series to become more active, composed, and thinking of the future of her world as a whole, Human Twilight prefers to be more on the sidelines and to embody more of the character type of “the quiet, awkward brainy one”. There’s enough there that you know there’s more than splits them apart than just Sci-Twi’s glasses. For everyone else, there’s nothing.

By this point in the series, these omissions are no longer just disappointing; they’re official failures. The whole “point” of this special, if you can call it that, was Sci-Twi accepting the role of the Humane Seven as basically magical girls. Yet not only does the Equestria Girls series fail to properly execute the keystone pieces of a magical girl series, they overlook what opportunities they have. And this one did the worst so far. At the bare minimum, we expect, if nothing else, at the end of one of these episodes either a character will grow or a relationship will grow. Neither happened in this episode. Honestly, I’m not sure it even has a moral. And when a special is robbed of an interesting plot, a good message, and even forfeits a chance for fun and action, what does that leave it with? A huge pile of more-than-bland meh.

My guess is this episode, more than “Sunset’s Backstage Pass”, had to do with why the line was eventually cancelled. To me, this episode dug a grave for any potential future longevity the franchise had.

Fun Facts:

The Humane Six have all worked their respective geodes into some accessory on their attire rather than the normal hanging around the neck.

Pinkie Pie and Bulk Biceps reenact the “I’m flying” big from “Titanic” on the prow of the cruise ship. Ironically, the Lux Deluxe also sinks on the second day.

As a bit of meta humor, when Rainbow Dash fantasizes about a sea monster attacking the cruise ship and Fluttershy asks if the sea monster is ok at the end, she answers that the sea monster is their friend now. Basically, it sums up almost every Equestria Girls special.

Based on the context, it appears Sci-Twi may have paid for the trip for the Human Seven, although it’s also equally likely they simply got it for free as part of the live entertainment. It lend more credence to the possibility that she is, in fact, from a wealthy family.

I guess this particular episode gained its Y7 rating when Applejack was trying to talk over a mouth full of vomit and swallowed it down. Yuck…but the show didn’t have the chutzpah to have her ralph all over Rainbow.

Kind of a weird thought… At Bronycon 2018, Tabitha St. Germain read one of her fan-written scripts which featured and alternate-universe version of Derpy who was a superhero named Ragamuffin. I just found it ironic that Rarity ended up playing off a Cockney-themed character named Ragamuffin in this special.

The Youtube version of segment two accidentally plays scenes from a later installment when Ragamuffin says goodbye the Rarity.

Although Flash Sentry is pretty much officially a background character by this point in the series, he nevertheless goes starry-eyed when Sunset looks at him during the song.

Why is the chef guarding the desserts? Aren’t they free to the guests?

The special references a line of shorts from Youtube in which the Humane Seven were working on a school play. The constant references to the main character being a “coal miner’s daughter” are no doubt a reference to Loretta Lynn.

The look on Ragamuffin’s face when Dash yanks Rarity away…

At least Fluttershy remembered to feed Pinkie Pie. Were they really planning on not letting her eat on board the ship just for the mishaps with the cake?

First time the animators have gotten a chance to do Twilight as a unicorn in a while. 🙂 I figure Sunset is happy she’s not an alicorn…

“All my things are HORSE THINGS!” Ok…that was a legitimately funny line from this special.

The human-turned-pegasus Rainbow Dash initially lets her wings hang low. Apparently, pegasi need to practice keeping their wings folded on their backs for normal day-to-day activities.

Is there a “Thunderlane Jr.” in Equestria?

The painting Spike is hanging is reminiscent of Salvador Dali’s “The Persistence of Memory”. There’s a good chance Salvador-Dali-pony painted it. 😛

Somehow, Equestrian Twilight Sparkle instantly recognizes that human Rainbow Dash isn’t her Rainbow Dash. Perhaps there’s subtle nuances that ponies can recognize.

Then again, maybe not. Pinkie Pie doesn’t realize the Sci-Twi is a version of Twilight Sparkle due to her glasses. This might be a joke toward the infamous Clark Kent/Superman secret identity.

Human Rainbow Dash (as a pony) makes the infamous “20% Cooler” joke. Har-har. 😛

Telekinesis is apparently somewhat innate to unicorns, as Sci-Twi was able to start using her horn’s magic in spite of having only been a unicorn for a few hours. Of course, this might have been as clear as early as Season Two’s “Baby Cakes”.

Part of the things Equestrian Twilight brought out for the humans-turned-ponies to look at includes Pinkie Pie’s “new friends” from Season One’s “Party of One”. Other items include the relics that would feature in the Season Eight finale, Boneless 2 (in a custom-made case, no less), the glow-paz that Dr. Cabelleron stole, the Staff of Sameness (which should really just be a stick…), and…the Alicorn Amulet? Maybe Twilight should keep that away from the humans…

One of the more notable goofs of this episode is that it basically ret-conned part of the MLP Movie while trying to reference it. The Storm King didn’t have any magical power of his own. All of the magic he possessed was in the Staff of Soconus, which he absorbed from the alicorns, and was supposedly restored to them and Equestria at the end of the movie. One could make the argument that maybe the big magic storm he made itself was what was still lingering behind, but the episode doesn’t say that directly so I’m calling it a goof.

“WARK! The ship is still sinking! WARK!” Ok…TWO funny lines.

I don’t know if I ever noticed this before but, when “ponied-up”, all of the girls seem to be capable of sustained flight and not just Sci-Twi, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash.

Unfortunately, none of the human-exclusive characters are shown in pony form at the end of the special.

Rating: 

1 Star out of 5

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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Season Eight, Episodes Twenty-Five and Twenty-Six: “School Raze”

Tags

Apple Bloom, Applejack, Chancellor Neighsay, CMCs, Cozy Glow, Cutie Mark Crusaders, Fluttershy, Gallus, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Ocellus, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Sandbar, Scootaloo, Silverstream, Smolder, Spike, Starlight Glimmer, Student Six, Sweetie Belle, Tirek, Twilight Sparkle, Yona

Synopsis:

While taking the students of the School of Friendship for a visit to Cloudsdale, Starlight Glimmer is shocked on seeing her spell that allows non-pegasi to walk on clouds suddenly fail, leading to multiple students being endangered. On returning to school to report to Twilight Sparkle, Twilight soon finds her own magic failing both in her and in other unicorns. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna quickly summon them and Princess Cadance to Canterlot where they share findings that Starswirl the Bearded compiled: namely that all magic is vanishing all across Equestria, and will vanish completely and forever in three days. Prompted by a suggestion by Cozy Glow, whose friendliness and helpfulness have gotten her the title of Professor Sparkle’s Friendship Assistant (which she may or may not have given herself), the Mane Six decide to inspect Tartarus to see if Tirek has found a way to drain Equestrian magic from within. While gone, Twilight puts Starlight Glimmer in charge with Cozy Glow assisting her. However, the next day Cozy claims she got a letter from Starlight saying she was going to help Twilight and she was left in charge, and she immediately begins to do special favors for the entire school…something that makes the Student Six suspicious. Even more suspicious is when they catch Cozy Glow coming up from the grating that leads to the Tree of Harmony in the library. They follow her back to the headmare’s office and watch as she herself is surprised and confronted by Chancellor Neighsay. He has blamed the loss of magic on the non-pony creatures being let into the school and further accuses Twilight of being irresponsible by letting them in and then abandoning the school for what he calls a pointless friendship quest, and plans to take over to make the school ponies only. He ends up catching the Student Six, as he possesses a magical artifact that hasn’t yet had its power drained, and imprisoning them in the school, but Sandbar manages to get free by pretending to share Neighsay’s speciest sentiments. Meanwhile, the girls arrive at the gate to Tartarus but, without magic, have no way in. They discover that Cozy Glow packed a magical artifact that will open any door, but shatters after a single use. They use it to get inside and find the denizens of Tartarus miserable as they have lost their own magical abilities. They also confront Tirek, who is still depowered but nevertheless teases and strings them along when they press him for answers. The girls eventually realize that if they are unable to get their magic back from Tirek that they are locked in Tartarus with him, which he soon reveals was his intent all along. He further explains that while he couldn’t get free, he had gotten inquiring letters from an unknown pony which he decided to respond to both out of boredom and a chance of getting revenge on Twilight; ending up telling the pony everything she would need to get the Mane Six locked in there with him as well as to drain magic from Equestria. Back in the School of Friendship, Sandbar manages to recruit the Cutie Mark Crusaders with the intent of getting Cozy Glow to distract Neighsay long enough to free the rest of the Student Six, but when they try to find her by following her under the library, they are shocked to discover Cozy Glow not only has Starlight Glimmer imprisoned there but is using the power of the six artifacts (from “A Matter of Principals”) to drain all magic of Equestria and banish it to oblivion. Revealing her true vile nature, she reveals her intent to become the “Empress of Friendship”.

Unfortunately for Cozy, Neighsay’s presence and his assuming control of the school interferes with her plans to take it over herself. She uses the opportunity of him declaring himself the new headstallion to rally the student body against him when he announces his plans to go against Twilight’s guidelines, leading the students to revolt and reinstate Cozy in charge. Once he’s tied up and apart from the others, Cozy exposes herself to Neighsay, stating that she believes friendship to be the means to power and, by taking over the school and ridding Equestria of magic, she’ll have the ability to gain the most “friends” and therefore be the most powerful in Equestria. Sandbar and the CMCs free the rest of the Student Six but, on seeing Cozy depose Neighsay, decide on an alternate plan. While the CMCs create a diversion for Cozy, the Student Six free Chancellor Neighsay; causing him to realize how wrong he was to prejudge them. He ends up using his artifact to go to Canterlot and get the princesses, while the Student Six rushes to caverns under the Tree of Harmony to free Starlight Glimmer and stop the magic drain. Unfortunately, they realize not only will upsetting the relics likely cause an explosion, but Cozy isn’t distracted nearly as long as they like and, on sniffing out the CMCs and imprisoning them in a broom closet, she leads the rest of the students down there to frame them for trying to remove the magic of Equestria out of species jealousy. Meanwhile, the Mane Six are unable to escape Tartarus under their own power but Twilight gets the idea to use the innate magic that makes up the monsters there to give her enough to open the doors. They manage to even get a reluctant Tirek’s help when he realizes too late that he could be imprisoned with the Mane Six (and especially Pinkie Pie) forever. While the gesture works to break them free, the sun is setting on the third day and they have no chance of getting back to the School of Friendship in time. Meanwhile, the student body rushes the Student Six but, through a mishap, Gallus accidentally gets trapped along with Starlight. The rest of the Student Six get imprisoned trying to save him just as the portal to the aether opens and begins to draw all magic inside. However, the Tree of Harmony reacts and ends up rescuing them and freeing the Student Six; showing at the same time how they too each represent an Element of Harmony. This act convinces the student body of their innocence and the Student Six seize the relics and remove them. While it does cause a blast, the six plus Starlight are teleported to safety and magic is restored to the denizens of Equestria. As a result, not only the Mane Six but the Princesses, Neighsay, and a royal guard escort are all able to arrive at the school in moments. Cozy Glow is confronted, but now that she’s trapped she soon breaks down and reveals her demented and power-hungry side. She tries to escape but is cornered not only by the Princesses, Neighsay, and the Royal Guard but the student body as well. Chancellor Neighsay ends up apologizing to Twilight and agrees to let her run the school as she sees fit, and the Student Six get a bit disappointed on realizing that even though they saved Equestria they still haven’t learned everything about friendship in just one semester, and as a result still have to wait to graduate. As for Cozy Glow, she ends up imprisoned in Tartarus right alongside Tirek, and with a malevolent grin asks if he wants to “be friends”.

Review:

To be honest, ever since the Season Four finale, the end of seasons has constantly failed to grab me. There always seems to be something wrong with it. The Season Five finale was…well…either you like it or you hate it. The Season Six finale had to artificially remove most of the cast so one could focus on Starlight and crew. The Season Seven finale, on the other hand, suffered from cast overload so that the far majority of them were along for the ride.

To me, this season finale represents an attempt to try and make up for the shortcomings of the previous two by having a large cast, but still managing to keep them all relevant. In that regard, I offer my compliments to it for succeeding better than the Season Seven finale. Unfortunately, a lot of this episode and what went into it was mediocre at best.

In spite of the stakes, this episode isn’t very dramatic. Tirek returns and does nothing. Tartarus is brought back and does nothing. A chance for a decent friendship lesson is presented but rolls off almost as an afterthought or an aside. And while a lot of characters are featured, few are relevant and the few who end up being important get muddled so much that they fail to stand out as much as they should.

While the season as a whole had done a good job of introducing the Student Six and rounding them out as characters, in this episode they act mostly as a unit. Their individual personalities stand out almost less than they did in the season premiere, which is too bad because, ultimately, they end up being the most relevant to the episode and saving the day.

I had suspected that Chancellor Neighsay might end up being the villain for the season finale, and I give this episode credit for including a convincing subvillain with an ulterior motive from the main one. I also liked how he ended up getting his comeuppance in a very ironic format; mostly being punished for his own devious and cold demeanor. Nevertheless, not a lot of time was spent dwelling on it, and on watching the episode a second time the point where Neighsay is taught a lesson about dismissing other species simply because they aren’t ponies and has his own specism turn him into a heel wasn’t quite as poignant or long-lasting as it could have been, and the moral of not prejudging someone, or even an entire group, is somewhat muddled. It’s brought up again when Cozy Glow tries to rally the students against the Student Six but, even then, the students themselves never seemed to distrust the Student Six based on species until that point. In all other episodes, they seemed readily accepted as fellow classmates and residents of Equestria. Hence, it kind of fell flat there too to me.

Yet the real issue to me is that although other characters are given some screen time, ultimately they’re pointless being there. This is the first season finale that featured the CMCs in a role, and…they don’t really accomplish anything. Cozy Glow could have just as easily been distracted by something else temporarily. I actually feel a bit worse about this part because a CMC episode served to introduce Cozy Glow this season, so one would think that the two would at least have acted as if they were a bit closer so that it would have made Cozy seem a bit more vile when she backstabbed them.

The Mane Six take up a very large part of this episode but, again, for almost nothing. A lot of time is devoted to them going to Tartarus and then breaking out of it, but in the end it does nothing for the plot. Things would have still ended up the same for them when the Student Six succeeded.

Tirek also amounts to nothing, and that one’s a bigger problem. I can forgive it somewhat now as I realize it was setting up for Season Nine, but the fact of the matter is no matter what your view is on Tirek in terms of villain ranking the fact was he was the focal point of the best season finale and so large and intimidating he almost appeared to be from a different show all together. Making him the butt of Pinkie Pie’s jokes and being too clueless to realize he played himself constituted quite a bit of Villain Decay, not to mention they brought back the most fear-inspiring villain to spend his time monologing in a cage in his weakest form.

Finally, the villain. Cozy Glow was, unfortunately, dead on arrival. As I mentioned in earlier postings, everyone already knew she would end up being the villain going into this episode, and we’ll never know if people would have been fooled until the big reveal. (I think midway through part one all doubt would have been gone, personally.) In this episode, we finally get to see her true nature, which includes her forming rather psychotic and twisted faces whenever she abandons her faux cuteness and innocence. If there was any questions prior to this episode about whether or not she was meant to be a knockoff of Darla Dimple from “Cats Don’t Dance”, I think this should have settled it.

That being said…part of the appeal of Darla Dimple was the depths of insanity she went to. She went so over the top that she was pretty much Pinkamena from “Party of One” in most of her scenes. By comparison, Cozy is mostly just angry and power-hungry. There’s a moment or two where the animators really make her look like she’s got a screw loose, but most of the time she’s just an egotistical brat. If they had gone the whole nine yards and made her genuinely psychotic, I think she would have just worked out enough as a villain for this episode.

Instead, I kind of wince on seeing the most deadliest threat to Equestria to date being a young pegasus. That’s not to say the idea of a magicless individual being a serious threat doesn’t appeal to me, but the fact that it’s Cozy Glow feels a bit underwhelming. Unlike Starlight Glimmer, who, at least in the Season Five opening, managed to exude a true aura of malevolence through her controlling, manipulative, and even sadistic behavior, Cozy Glow just seems like a form of spoiled brat.

The fact that Tirek and the monsters are mostly used for humor and that the villain is Cozy Glow, a character whose very diabolical nature should have a humorous element to it from the contrasts of her personality, gives the impression that this drama-based episode should have been more comedic. The fact that it isn’t played up in that way makes it just mediocre. While I’ll give it one more point of credit of not immediately making the Student Six perfect or overwhelmingly saving-the-day (more like they did just from the standpoint of being normal individuals), it also didn’t do much to build on them anymore as we kind of knew their friendship was magic by the time “What Lies Beneath” came out.

I like it better than some season finales and I won’t fail it because there’s nothing outright bad about it (other than, perhaps, the Mane Six and Tirek alike both being clueless about what the end result of letting the door to Tartarus shut on them would be), but it wasn’t that great. A capstone like this made me begin to realize what the folks at Hasbro likely did…it was time.

Fun Facts:

Cozy Glow sucks up so much she even splits the discarded juice box into its recyclable and disposable parts.

I think the pony that Yona is clinging to in Cloudsdale looks like the odd love child of Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. 😛

It wasn’t until this episode that I realized Gallus hates being dragged into things out of “friendship obligation”. 😛

As an interesting bit of lore, it seems magic is used fairly commonplace throughout Equestria, as indicated that it’s used to keep food fresh in spite of having no refrigeration or preservatives.

Twilight references the last time she was in Tartarus. This is referring all the way back to “It’s About Time” in Season Two, and was never actually seen on screen. Tartarus itself before this episode was only seen briefly in Season Four’s finale. While in Greek Mythology, it’s essentially the equivalent of Hell (being the place the worst of the worst of Ancient Greek mythology got locked up in), in this episode it’s mostly depicted as, well, a giant kennel.

Does Fluttershy actually try to comfort the cockatrice for not being able to turn them to stone? Actually, that sounds like Fluttershy would do that.

Among the imprisoned monsters are the cockatrice, the bugbear, the malwurf, the manticore, and the chimera…all of whom have appeared throughout the series. Cerberus, who first appeared in “It’s About Time” in Season Two, also shows up.

Tirek licking his lips when he mentions all the magic that’s missing might, in fact, be a reference to “The Silence of the Lambs” in the scenes between Clarice and Hannibal Lecter.

My prize for visual joke goes to the shot of Sandbar showing the various objects he planned to throw at Apple Bloom’s window next. 😛

Cozy Glow fashioned a crown for herself using tape. It what might be a bit of an animation goof, it would seem she made the crown from her necklace as she isn’t wearing the necklace in the second half of the finale, but she briefly has both at the end of part one.

Yona calls Neighsay “Nasty Pony” and Cozy Glow “Even Nastier Pony”. I don’t know why, but…that gets a grin out of me.

As another throwback to Season Two, Pinkie Pie is used as a form of torture. 😛 She may have been using a pair of prosthetic limbs for her monkey costume, but…it’s probably more likely she just grew a pair for the occasion.

When the monsters that help Twilight out give up their abilities, they split into individual animals. The chimera turns into a goat, saber-toothed tiger, and snake, the cockatrice turns into a chicken and a cobra, the manticore turns into a lion and a scorpion, the bugbear turns into a wasp and a panda, and Cerberus turns into three separate dogs. This might, in fact, have been another allusion to Grogar in Season Nine. He describes himself as the “Father of Monsters”, which he may have created by splicing together normal animals into one body. (It’s interesting to note the three dogs Cerberus turns into appear to be different ages.)

When all of the magic gets returned to Equestria, some of it goes to Pinkie Pie… One might say “that explains everything”, except Pinkie was still able to “be Pinkie” even when magic was gone.

Poor Ocellus and Yona didn’t even get their fake diplomas. 😦

Rating:

2.5 Stars out of 5

 

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Season Eight, Episode Twenty-Three: “Sounds of Silence”

Tags

Applejack, Autumn Blaze, Fluttershy, kirin, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, nirik, opinion, review, Sounds of Silence

Synopsis:

The Cutie Map has activated again and, even more surprising, is once again summoning Applejack and Fluttershy; although both are soon nervous to discover that the Cutie Map is taking them to the Peaks of Peril on the edge of unknown lands of Equestria. According to legend, that realm is the home of the honest and kind kirins, but also the flaming and fearsome niriks. The two arrive and run into a brief disagreement when Fluttershy pauses to help a group of local squirrels spruce up their den with local wildflowers, but as a result they find a secret passage under the cliffs right to the kirin village. However, both ponies are puzzled to discover all kirins are both mute and emotionless; leaving them incapable of discovering the friendship problem (let alone fixing it). They eventually point the way to a kirin who can talk, and Applejack goes to find her while Fluttershy stays behind. Applejack ends up running into a chatty, energetic, and boisterous kirin named Autumn Blaze. She reveals that the kirins and niriks are, in fact, the same creature; kirins transform into niriks when they get angry. At one point, a particularly large argument resulted in most of the kirins turning into niriks and burning down their village, causing their leader to demand the entire population cross into the “Stream of Silence”. Doing so removed the ability of the kirins to speak or feel emotions so they could never transform into niriks and cause destruction again. Autumn, however, accidentally came across a patch of Foal’s Blossoms which, when made into tea, restored her abilities to speak and feel. As a result, the other kirins made her decide to either become silent again or be exiled and, unwilling to lose the ability to speak and feel again, she chose exile. Applejack rushes back to the village to get them to welcome Autumn back and to set about restoring their voices and emotions, but on running into Fluttershy (who discovered the same link with niriks) she disagrees as it could cause another round of destruction. They begin to argue and the kirins, fearing they’ll too turn into niriks, seize them and attempt to dunk them in the Stream of Silence as well. However, Autumn, in nirik form, shows up and saves the both of them without causing any harm. This leads Applejack and Fluttershy to point out that the kirins can be responsible with their emotions and anger instead of forcing themselves to be mute and emotionless to get along. Realizing they gave up too much, the kirins indicate they want their voices and emotions back, but Autumn despairs on saying there are no more Foal’s Blossoms. However, it turns out the squirrels Fluttershy ran into earlier picked out flowers that were Foal’s Blossoms the entire time, and they use them to restore the voices of the rest of the kirins who, in turn, welcome Autumn back. Fluttershy and Applejack thank each other for their respective virtues helping again while Autumn breaks into a musical reprise for her village.

Review:

Well, before I get into the pony-of-the-hour, let’s talk about the rest of this episode.

On the whole, it’s a good one. If you remove you-know-who from it, it’s not quite as good as it would be with her, but I still think it’s one of the better ones. Kirins are finally formally introduced into the series (sadly too late to get one into the School of Friendship…), and I’m quite fond of their design and nature. Definitely the highlight of this episode aside from, again, you-know-who.

Comparing this episode to “Viva Las Pegasus”, I think it might be just a bit inferior aside from the stand-out character. While I didn’t think “Viva Las Pegasus” was that great of an episode, it did give a lot of color and things going on for your eyes. By comparison, the kirins kind of just stand around idly doing things with expressionless faces. The beginning of the episode is also a bit slow-paced even if it did end up being relevant to the plot. That being said, they did manage to cram a surprisingly large amount of exposition into a small time frame. In a season mostly void of Cutie Map calls to the Mane Six, this was a pretty good one. Especially considering the fact it utilized two of the more quiet and less wacky characters, Applejack and Fluttershy.

But of course…if you’ve actually watched this episode, you know as well as I do that all of this is largely irrelevant once the second half of the episode hits. While the Student Six collectively might be the best new “character” this season, when it comes to an individual character the one who stood out the most in Season Eight was this surprising ensemble darkhorse: Autumn Blaze.

Personality-wise, she kind of resembles, to me, a bit older and more “mature” version of Pinkie Pie. One who still likes being fun and wacky but has learned just a little more that not everyone appreciates it all the time. That, however, only likely serves to make her more bearable to people who aren’t solid Pinkie Pie fans. Her odd pop culture references, running gag of mispronouncing things, her way of “venting” as a nirik, and even the part where she tries to shake Fluttershy’s hoof only to find she’s still aflame is all great. Even without her nice musical numbers, which are some of the better songs the main series has seen in a while, her animated mannerisms and energy steal every scene she’s in. In that sense, it kind of made sense for Applejack and Fluttershy to be the ones to interact with her, as neither of them could reasonably compete for attention when she’s on the screen. She alone is what gives this episode the bulk of its appeal.

Probably one of the biggest tragedies of MLP:FIM coming to an end in Season Nine is it left little to no opportunity for her to ever appear again. There’s still a slim chance she’ll appear in one of the final episodes aside from the fact that season is already guest starring Patton Oswalt and Weird Al Yankovich, and a better than slim chance she’ll show up in a cameo, but considering Rachel Bloom was likely busy doing her lines for the upcoming “Trolls” sequel while Season Nine was in production that doesn’t look likely.

Nevertheless, it’s been a while since a new character stole the show and ran away with it, and a truly delightful runaway it was.

As for the moral of the episode, I, again, find that to be the weakest part of it. The most likely thing this episode is doing is taking a stab at modern censorship culture and the idea of it being better to forbid people from talking than risk them inciting anyone to anger. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have much of a corollary…or perhaps it did at one point but was edited into something different. This episode doesn’t deal so much with the idea of “safe spaces” or official laws as an entire race purposely removing its ability to speak or feel emotion for the risk of getting upset, which is an extreme we aren’t quite to yet anywhere on Earth. The message seems to be two-fold at the end…one that’s a bit muddled but the other is better. The “worse” of the two was that you shouldn’t give up who you are just because you’re scared you’ll make people upset, which…er…can be misinterpreted multiple ways. The “better” one, however, which is unfortunately underplayed, is that you have to be personally responsible and accountable for your own emotions and find healthy ways to express them. That’s a lesson everyone can learn.

I won’t give this episode a ton of points just for Autumn Blaze but…I’ll definitely give some as she’s earned them. One of the best episodes of Season Eight.

Fun Facts:

The title is a knockoff of the Simon and Garfunkel song: “The Sounds of Silence”. That’s ironic in two different ways. One is that, similar to the story within the song, the plot centers around a single talking deviant trying to get the rest of his society to open up and break their own silence. The other is that “The Sounds of Silence” is the song the new “Trolls” trailer opens up on, which is broken up by Rachel Bloom (Autumn Blaze)’s character.

Twilight notes this is the second time that Applejack and Fluttershy have both been summoned by the Cutie Map. The first was Season Six’s “Viva Las Pegasus”.

This episode actually ties into an earlier episode, pointing out that Rockhoof informed Twilight Sparkle about the Peaks of Peril.

A “kirin” (var. “qirin”) is a Chinese unicorn; one of two mythological creatures that both Western cultures and Eastern cultures have in common (the other being dragons). Unlike the cultural differing views on dragons, both Western and Eastern cultures view unicorns/kirins as mysterious, reclusive, sacred, pure, and innocent creatures. Unlike Western unicorns, kirins are often depicted with much wilder manes, a branching single horn, and extremely long necks. There was some theorizing (at least on my part) that Mistmane, coming from a Chinese-inspired culture that apparently had unusual recurved horns, was a kirin, but this episode officially makes them part of the show. Their appearances are pony-like, but have wilder manes similar to lion manes rather than horse manes, long tails with a tufts of hair along the trailing parts, more tufts of hair along the back of their legs, somewhat “floppier” ears, scales on their hooves, backs, and snouts, and branching unicorn horns…which, like “normal” unicorns, also perform magic. As for the niriks…they’re simply “kirin” backward (:P) and I’m not sure if they’re based off anything other than Chinese art.

Although the kirin village appears somewhat tribal, the music playing in the background is Chinese-inspired as a nod to their origin.

The giant kirin, Rainshine, seems to basically be the kirin equivalent of Princess Celestia; not only in her role as leader but appearance, crown, and demeanor. I guess, in Equestria, if you’re big that equals authority. 😛 Although she has only a brief speaking role, she’s voiced by Nicole Bouma, who has a long career in voice acting on Japanese anime dubs, including in “Gintama” and “Mobile Suit Gundam 00”.

Rachel Bloom provides the voice of Autumn Blaze. In addition to being the co-creator and starring in “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”, she’s also done a lot of voice acting, including the voice of Barb in the upcoming “Trolls World Tour” movie…which kind of makes me mad because it means she was likely too busy to reprise her role in Season Nine (which is still coming out as I write this).

Needless to say, “A Kirin’s Tale” was the hit song for this season.

Autumn put faces on all of her baskets and vegetables for company; a nod to “Wilson” from “Cast Away”.

Among the things Autumn tries to connect with the silent kirins is a reenactment of “Citizen Kane”, “The Phantom of the Opera”, and even “Hamilton”.

Rating:

4 Stars out of 5

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

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 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