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

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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ IDW My Little Pony: Legends of Magic Annual

Tags

Daybreaker, Flash Magnus, Legends of Magic, Legends of Magic Annual, Mage Meadowbrook, Mistmane, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Nightmare Moon, opinion, Pony of Shadows, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, review, Rockhoof, Somnambula, Starswirl the Bearded, Stygian, the Pony of Shadows

Synopsis:

Many years ago, in the nearly-complete Canterlot Castle, Starswirl the Bearded shows off a hall of mirrors to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna; each of which serves as a stable method of going to another world. As Celestia and Starswirl talk about the risks and benefits of having stable portals like this following the incident with Luna (in the first “Legends of Magic”), all of the mirrors suddenly let out dozens of shadow creatures who try to seize the princesses–calling them “the destroyers”. Starswirl ultimately fails to save them as he and the girls fall into the mirror portals, and all mirrors save one are shattered. Meanwhile, in Rockhoof’s village, the rest of the Pillars of Old Equestria are taking some casual time as the pegasi of the Royal Guard are put through an obstacle course made by the Mighty Helm. The exercise is ruined, however, when a drained Starswirl suddenly pops into existence, having just managed to teleport himself back to his world of origin. He explains that the princesses have been captured but sets out to try and rescue them himself, only for Stygian to actually show off his anger for once in insisting that the rest of the Pillars come with him. On arrival back in Canterlot, Starswirl finds that the remaining portal has been destroyed from the other side, leaving no way to easily get to the princesses, which causes Stygian to chastise him again for being irresponsible. In the end, Starswirl makes a new, albeit very temporary, portal to take the group in after them, and they arrive in the same dark, bleak world where Luna was taken when she was abducted. Although he has a spell to key in on the girls, it won’t take effect until the group gets close to them, so they split into three groups: Stygian and Rockhoof; Somnambula, Mistmane, and Meadowbrook; and Flash Magnus and Starswirl. While searching, Rockhoof points out that Stygian is growing increasingly upset with Starswirl’s nature and says he’d follow Stygian if he was willing to speak up more. The two are attacked by a gang of monstrous lightning bugs, but during the encounter Stygian finds, much to his surprise, that they obey him when he gives them orders, and so he commands them to lead them to the princesses. As for the ladies, Mistmane points out that the entire world they are in seems to have been permanently corrupted with anger and hate. On being attacked by corrupted Lumber Bears, Mistmane is further distressed to find even she can’t purify them. Finally, Flash Magnus and Starswirl run into a monstrous “pony of shadows”, who recognizes them from their counterparts in this world. He easily defeats Flash and turns on Starswirl, saying the version of him in this world betrayed him and tried to stop him, and in return he destroyed him along with the rest of this world’s Pillars of Old Equestria. Before he can do the same to Starswirl, however, Stygian and Rockhoof find the unconscious princesses and launch a signal. Although all of the Pillars see it, the shadowy pony is able to teleport there before any of them. On arrival, he confronts Rockhoof and Stygian and reveals he kidnapped the girls to corrupt them into their malevolent alter-egos Daybreaker and Nightmare Moon, then use them as his enslaved minions to destroy all other realities and corrupt them just like his own world. However, although he doesn’t recognize Stygian, he hesitates to attack Rockhoof, saying he’s the only one he “misses”, and that allows the rest of the group to arrive. Knowing Stygian can command the shadow pony’s legions, Rockhoof overrides Starswirl and tells him to lead the charge. While the rest of the group battles the corrupted creatures, Stygian goes to save the princesses. The shadowy pony tries to stop him only to get a shock when he and Stygian annihilate each other’s attacks. He then attempts to order one of his minions to grab the princesses, but is thwarted when Stygian calls out a command over his and the monster instead gives the girls to Pillars. As they make their escape, the infuriated shadow pony demands to know who Stygian is. Reveling in his chance to be the hero for once, Stygian tosses his name over his shoulder in a one-liner. Once the group is back home, the mirror is smashed, Starswirl takes the girls aside to their rooms to wake up, and, as a result of sleeping through the whole thing, they again only recall Starswirl ever had anything to do with their rescue. The rest of the Pillars, however, praise Stygian and Rockhoof decides to take him out to try the “oat boat” challenge. Meanwhile, back in the dark world, the shadowy pony realizes who Stygian was on hearing his name as well as how he was able to thwart him, as he lowers the darkness around him to reveal himself to be that world’s version of Stygian.

Review:

As I mentioned before, part of the reason I was rather underwhelmed with “Shadow Play” was the fact that they spent so much time building up to the villain and he ended up being rather underwhelming. Ultimately, in the main series, the Pony of Shadows was quite literally all shadow and no substance. While he talked more about darkness than Xehanort from “Kingdom Hearts” on a cloudy day, that’s all he really ended up having. Other than the fact that the Pillars of Old Equestria seemed incapable of beating him on their own, it wasn’t exactly clear what threat he represented or potential he had.

While most of the “Legends of Magic” arc handled Stygian and why we should feel more for him and his relationship with the others, it was this annual that escalated the Pony of Shadows into one of the greatest and most terrible villains.

If we can assume that, left unchecked, the Pony of Shadows from the main universe would have eventually become the one from the alternate universe, then he is one of the most fearsome and heavy foes ever encountered. In his universe, he not only killed Starswirl the Bearded and most of the Pillars of Old Equestria, but it’s heavily implied that he committed pony genocide. No ponies, enslaved or otherwise, are ever seen in his universe–indicating that there aren’t any left. If that wasn’t enough, his entire world is permanently corrupted. Even Mistmane can’t purify anything there. All of the animals have been consumed by his anger and hate, and it looks as if nature itself right down to the trees and weather are the same way. And if all of that wasn’t enough, the Pony of Shadows isn’t satisfied with being an evil thing of darkness and hate on a consumed world. He wanted to do the same to every world out of a mixture of malevolence and madness by turning two kids into his enslaved personal attack “dogs”.

Definitely the worst.

However, it’s a bit interesting that, in spite of this arc making Stygian one of the worst villains ever, it showed that he still clung to one thread of his humanity(pony-ity?). I’m not sure if it was just a side-effect of him being the first one Stygian recruited, but the comic brought his relationship with Rockhoof full circle when it showed even the Pony of Shadows still clung to his memory of their old friendship. There’s the part where he says that he’s the only one he “misses”, of course, as well as admits he was the only member of the Pillars he didn’t kill himself but who died in an accident. Yet even more than that, note that on the previous page when the Pony of Shadows appears he doesn’t immediately attack but tells Rockhoof and Stygian to run away and never come back…showing out of all the ponies he’s massacred Rockhoof is the only one he’s willing to spare.

Well, the big factor of this issue out of the way, let’s talk about the rest of it.

This was more the kind of issue that I wish the entire “Legends of Magic” series has been–adventures featuring all of the Pillars of Old Equestria. As it was, this once again covered older territory by having the villain from the series, but even so it was nice to have more chances for them to be all together. I will say it was kind of a disappointment for ones like Mistmane and Somnambula to once again have little to nothing to do or add, but the good relationships it had already established in the earlier series were strengthened.

As we see was eventually his biggest fault, we have another issue where Starswirl once again assumes he knows best and tries to head up everything by himself. Once again, we see this isn’t really entirely based on ego but based on the fact that his reputation has fed in on itself. Everypony always expects him to know best and do the best, and so he expects himself to know best and do the best. This time, however, we get to see the beginnings of the eventual “breakup” between Stygian and the group, although his anger is mostly centered against Starswirl in this one. He starts to call him out not only on his bad decisions but is actually snide at a point or two. However, as the issue progresses, we can see that some of that is still misplaced. Once again, Stygian suffers from his perpetual self-doubt and inadequacy, and that this is likely being projected as a result.

There’s a lot of good dramatic moments and action alike in this one, just as I always hoped. I do have couple few beefs with it. It never quite explains whatever happened to the dark universe’s version of Celestia and Luna. The text indicates Starswirl tried to protect them from the Pony of Shadows and died trying, but the fact that the Pony of Shadows obviously didn’t succeed in getting them means he had to have done something to keep them from being captured. Did he banish them? Turn them into stone? Possibly kill them to keep them from ever being used, as we know Starswirl might sacrifice? It also ends, surprisingly, by leaving me wishing for a bit more explanation and follow-up. On the last page, for example, it’s not exactly clear what happens from here. This annual came out well after the Season Finale for Season Seven, so everyone already knew Stygian and the Pony of Shadows were the same person long before the end. Therefore it doesn’t really come as a huge shock to see the alternate version of Stygian at the end. However, if Starswirl opened the portal to his world, it seems likely that Stygian could open a portal back to Starswirl’s without a mirror. So I’d say they haven’t necessarily seen the last of him. In that case, what does the last page mean? Was it just put in for whoever hadn’t seen the final episode of the season? Or does it mean there’s still a touch of hope for that world’s version of Stygian?

Those beefs are very minor, however. Overall, this was a great annual and a great way to cap off the “Legends of Magic” series. If you’ve seen “Shadow Play” and liked it, or if you didn’t like it and wanted the backstories of the core characters fleshed out, I recommend it highly. It will give the season finale the weight and force that it was going for all along.

Fun Facts:

This issue serves as the conclusion to the “Legends of Magic” series. Chronologically, it obviously happens between the defeat of the Dazzlings and Stygian’s turn into the Pony of Shadows, but it seems to be closer to the latter than the former. Stygian is no longer timid but actively calls Starswirl out on his behavior, clearly beginning to grow angry with him.

At least in the comic universe, this episode hints more at Luna having a pacifist nature. Even when being attacked by dark creatures, she still sees them as creatures and doesn’t want to counterattack.

Mage Meadowbrook’s offer of a cure to the dragons was so great it led to a treaty, namely the “Treaty of Meadowbrook”. 😛

Rockhoof has a banner in his room saying “Oat Boat Winner”.

Stygian predicts that the princesses will ensure Equestria remembers Starswirl but will forget the rest of the Pillars of Old Equestria, a prediction which turns out to be completely true.

In the main series, the Pony of Shadows was made to stand out from the rest of the cast by being hand-drawn rather than flash-animated. In the comic, he again stands out by having a different font and black word balloons.

This is the first appearance of an “ogre” in the series.

Technically, this is the first time Daybreaker has “appeared” in the comics.

When Stygian and the Pony of Shadows attempt to attack one another, their spells cancel each other out in spite of the fact the Pony of Shadows is far stronger. This indicates that a unicorn can’t overcome his or her own magic, and could be something of a similar effect to the “Priori Incantatem” of Harry Potter lore in which two wands of the exact same nature can’t overcome each other if a spell is cast from both at the same time.

Rating:

4 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ IDW My Little Pony: Legends of Magic #1: “Starswirl the Bearded”

Tags

IDW, IDW comic, Legends of Magic, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pillars of Old Equestria, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, review, Starswirl the Bearded, Sunburst

Synopsis:

Sunburst arrives in Canterlot looking to research the history of Equestria, and to aid him Princess Celestia offers Sunburst access to Starswirl the Bearded’s old study and his private records. On looking inside them, Sunburst discovers a section marked “Legends of Magic” that included Starswirl’s own records of myths and legends of ponies in folklore. He discovers one that he wrote about himself: “The Great Starswirl the Bearded, the Two Sisters, and the Magical Vortex”…

Shortly after the founding of Equestria and the completion of the Castle of the Two Sisters, the great mage Starswirl the Bearded found himself (unhappily) tasked with acting as the tutor of the juvenile alicorns Celestia and Luna. Both earned his criticism: Celestia for being arrogant and self-centered and Luna for being childish and unable to keep up. After failing at a magic lesson and being reprimanded by Starswirl, telling her that her “best” might not be good enough if she needs to defend Equestria in a life-or-death situation one day, Luna, eager to prove herself, stole one of Starswirl’s books to practice a bubble spell at night. However, she still failed at it, and when Celestia came out to start teasing her about her failure Luna tried a much more advanced spell to open a dimensional gateway. While she succeeded, evil, dark things were there and called out to Luna’s dark side (especially her jealousy and anger toward Celestia) in a voice only she could hear before sucking her through the portal. Celestia, now scared and panicking, ran to get Starswirl and, on telling him the situation, he reprimanded her for choosing to mock Luna’s shortcomings rather than encouraging her to overcome her weaknesses. Starswirl informed her that as Luna was unable to control the spell, a “darker power” from a dimension where evil has taken dominion opened it as a way of trying to get into their world to devour it as well. He reopened the portal and led himself and Celestia in after Luna, but Celestia, growing more fearful for Luna’s safety, broke off on her own. She found her in the grip of golem-like creatures that were trying to force her into a dark suit of armor. She freed Luna, who said the voice she heard thought she was someone else meant for greatness and also told her to destroy her own sister, but she also believed that something else was actually responsible for controlling the creatures and the world. She was unable to elaborate further when a colossal golem attacked, which Starswirl held off to allow them to escape. On returning home, the two reconciled, especially Celestia for the way she had been treating Luna, shortly before Starswirl rejoined them and closed the portal behind. He mentioned that he was confident nothing would drive the two sisters apart again and that, if the voice Luna heard was to be believed, they avoided a great tragedy.

Later, Sunburst gives the story to Celestia, which was Starswirl’s closing wish for the tale, and she and Luna share some snickers over it (either at their old behavior or the irony), while he moves on to the next story about an individual named “Rockhoof”…

Review:

It pains a die-hard fan like me to admit it, but the glory days of the MLP Fandom are over and it’s on its way out. I still remember it in its heydey in the aftermath of the Season Four finale and “Rainbow Rocks”. At that time, the show seemed to be running on all eight cylinders and what came for years to come afterward, including the feature film, mostly was a legacy of its success at that time. But what many fans might not realize is that this was also when IDW was cruising off of its success. It’s attempt to run an MLP:FIM comic ended up being a smash hit no one expected.

Even so, it seemed like a rather crazy idea to me for the two series to try and pool their collective success in creating a massive cross-over event between the main series and the IDW comic. The “Legends of Magic”, an arc of comics running cocurrently with new episodes of Season Seven focusing on the mythological “Pillars of Old Equestria”, was a crazy idea but nevertheless got me enthused as a chance to highlight a whole new cast of characters as well as to expand on the largely untapped and/or incoherent lore of the history of Equestria. I’ll admit I also admired the chance to do things in a more fantasy based setting with lots of sword and sorcery action as well. The way they handled it was clever too, synchronizing releases of new issues with the time the characters were being introduced in the main series via their “story” episodes.

Well…I already went over what we eventually got in the main series. Now it’s time to touch on the other half. As for my thoughts on the series as a whole, well…it’s complicated. I ended up liking the story on the whole, especially when capped with the annual, and yet not nearly as much as I thought I would. As much of my thoughts on it go issue-by-issue, I’ll save the bulk of my answer for the series proper.

Suffice to say for now the “Legends of Magic” series can be thought of as split into two halves. The first half focuses on individual stories that simply reinforce the legends that were seen on the show. The second half, however, focuses on Stygian’s story and his relationship with all of them. Needless to say, I prefer one over the other.

Let’s jump right in…

I didn’t care for this one too much on the first reading, but on the second I appreciate it better and not just because it ties into the “crown jewel” of the series that was, in my opinion, the annual. It involved quite a bit of IDW Comic Lore retconning in order to finally harmonize Starswirl the Bearded with the main series, but they still managed to throw in some details about Starswirl knowing about the existence of multi-dimensions such that one of the more infamous arcs of the IDW Comic, the “Reflections” arc, wasn’t totally negated.

It’s a bit funny that this one is supposed to focus mostly on Starswirl the Bearded when the real stars of it are the juvenile Celestia and Luna. It was probably not an easy job to work them in, needing to harmonize not only IDW Comic Lore but also with the backstory of the main series lore. At first, I was a bit put off that Celestia was depicted, quite honestly, as repulsive. Prideful, arrogant, and quite honestly a bit of a bully, this is a very far cry from how Celestia normally appears on the show.

Yet on reading it again, I think it actually makes sense. While I tended to think of Celestia as normally being a goodie-two-shoes and possibly a teacher’s pet as a child, this depiction makes sense too. Maybe she wasn’t always as kind-hearted, gentle, and graceful as she is now. Maybe she did have to grow up quite a bit to be the figure she is now. And, whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing, this version of Celestia makes it far more plausible for Luna’s eventual turn into Nightmare Moon. Even if Celestia really did change her ways after this storyline, personal hurt at bullying and feeling inferior doesn’t necessarily go away that easily. It’s likely Luna would still have this old treatment of her lingering in her memory, and every time ponies would flock to her days and ignore her nights she likely remembered it. So yeah, I have to give this issue some props for making Nightmare Moon more plausible.

And while Starswirl the Bearded might not be the highlight, it does show a bit more of his character and his weaknesses. While his criticisms/advice to Celestia and Luna may have been justified, it was still authoritative and, as a result, both of them still made bad choices. The conflict started because Luna was eager to prove herself to him after getting the bad report, and Celestia herself broke off from him to try and make up for her own mistake. Furthermore, Starswirl ended up being incorrect in thinking the matter was closed at the end of this. Yet in spite of all of that, some of his comments and actions show he really does care about Celestia and Luna, clearly enough to sacrifice himself for them–he just didn’t always show it that well.

So all in all, this gets my pick for one of the better ones of the first half of the series, even if it serves mostly as a teaser for the annual and takes us over ground we’ve mostly tread before.

Fun Facts:

Unlike most other comic arcs, the “Legends of Magic” arc was completely written and drawn by Jeremy Whitley and Brenda Hickey. Most other series in the IDW franchise usually alternate writers and artists.

This was one of the bigger retconnings that IDW has ever had to do. Within the “Reflections” and FIENDship is Magic comic about the Dazzlings, IDW had already presented their own concept of Starswirl the Bearded’s past. With the main series getting into it in Season Seven, most of those depictions were rendered totally obsolete. The comic canon as well as the show now more closely follows Amy Keating Rogers’ “The Journal of the Two Sisters”, a junior novel produced separate from the main series.

The show’s legacy has never quite outlived the animation in the pilot episode, which depicted Princess Celestia as having a pink mane (as she did in her original concept) only to have her end up being rainbow-maned by the end of the episode. The idea since then in the fan community has been that Celestia’s mane was originally pink but later became that way. This comic somewhat endorses that by showing that young Celestia’s mane was predominantly pink with only the edges being rainbow-like. Luna, naturally, is in her “young” form that she was in at the end of the pilot episode (a whole other fan community canon).

The comic makes a couple of side references to serve as a “bridge” between the Journal of the Two Sisters (main canon) and the “Reflections” arc (comic canon). When Luna accidentally burns up the bush she’s trying to bubble, she cries out that she hopes there weren’t any creatures in it. This is canon with the Journal as Luna was the more “animal-loving” of the two alicorns. The concept of multi-dimensions, on the other hand, was elaborated on in “Reflections” and plays a big part here.

This issue ends up as a set-up for the annual, which would close the series.

Rating:

3.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Friends Forever #38 (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Friends Forever #38): “Princess Celestia & Princess Luna”

Tags

Friends Forever, Kibitz, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Philomena, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, review, Tiberius

Synopsis:

Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, out of a desire to do more activities together, have decided to participate in Ponyville’s own Sisterhooves Social. However, they have two problems to deal with. One is that they’re vastly overpowered compared to the other competitors, and the others is their schedules are too jam packed to allow them to attend. As a result, the two decide to combine their duties while cutting back on sleep to try and make time for the event, against the warnings of the palace majordomo Kibitz. Just as he fears, the stress causes the two to progressively grow more “testy” and start to find fault in each other’s duties and grow competitive. It gets worse when their solution to the overpowered problem, some magic berries that will reduce their powers, end up also magically making them more competitive until they’re constantly screaming and at each other’s throats. They continue their arguments until they reach the point of saying each one is completely better than the other at everything, and keep on doing so right to the event. They end up making a spectacle of themselves with their constant arguing, eventually causing them to break from each other for the six-legged race and instead pair with Sweetie Belle and Rarity, who are also competing. Unfortunately the event is suddenly wrecked by their misbehaving pets, who got into another set of magic berries meant to restore their power after the event and have grown to colossal size before raging against each other. The princesses manage to work together enough to pacify the pets, and afterward realize they were reflecting the competitive nature of their owners. On doing so, the two calm down and express their own mutual admiration for one another and confess their competitiveness came from a fear that either sister would outshine the other. They reconcile, Sweetie Belle and Rarity (now out of sorts) excuse themselves, the rest of the Mane Six arrive too late to do anything, Kibitz is unhappily commanded to help clean up after being blamed by the sisters for causing the berry mishap in the first place, and they thank the audience for reading the “Friends Forever” series.

Review:

Here it is, the final issue of the “Friends Forever” IDW series. I honestly thought it would keep going forever, but the IDW comic had proverbial “bigger fish” to fry with other new series after this. And for the finale, it ended with the two ponies who triggered the entire MLP:FIM series themselves: Princess Celestia and Princess Luna.

At the time I read this, Season Seven’s “A Royal Problem” had already aired, which was my favorite treatment of the relationship of the two alicorns with one another. This arc looked like it tried to achieve the same end, albeit in a bit more humorous and lighthearted manner. As a result, I’ll always wonder what I would have thought of this arc if I hadn’t seen that episode first. I probably would have admired the end a bit better but, in light of that episode, I’d say this is another issue where IDW has to suffer for not being able to see what the writers are thinking. Not as bad as some (say with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon), but still.

The fact of the matter is the main series still leaves a lot of mystery around the princesses and their characters. While I feel “A Royal Problem” finally began to hammer in a real understanding of both, at the time this comic came out aspects of their characters were still an enigma to be fleshed out. Andy Price, who also did the “Reflections” arc and some of the more noteworthy arcs in the IDW comic series, has his own rendition of them, and I’m not a big fan of either of them.

While he does tend to portray Celestia as more of a regular pony rather than an alabaster statue (especially in “Reflections”), he also tends to make her both visually as well as personality wise a normal, down-to-earth pony as opposed to a princess. That, to me, unfortunately doesn’t reflect reality. It may be true that, in her heart, Celestia is a normal pony with a normal demeanor, but that’s not how she conducts herself. She recognizes she has to present “more” to others; somepony who’s calm, collected, sagacious, and in control. Although she does like trolling ponies from time to time, even that is a sign of her desire to portray herself to others. That’s the only way she can show her sense of humor. By comparison, in this issue and others, she seems like just a normal pony at all times. Prone to acting a bit immature herself and often less dignified and official.

Luna, on the other hand, is much worse. The comic writers tend to portray her as insensitive to the point of uncaring, selfish to the point of being a bit of a snob, and childish and immature to the point of being a useless “extra” compared to Celestia. This issue went a bit too far for me when she so dismissively referred to Twilight and the Mane Six as, more or less, lackeys to be given chores to do. Luna is aloof and often unsociable, but she does care about others–and I find it impossible to believe she would dismiss Twilight like that after helping her three times over.

These portrayals, in turn, color something that looks like it was trying to be a lot of careful, loud, energetic fun and diminishes it to me. In light of being OOC as well as “A Royal Problem” I was too distracted on both the initial read and the reread to pay attention to most of the fun going on. But even then, the dialogue dump at the end to wrap up the story seems out of left field. The story does have the excuse that Celestia and Luna were both under the influence of magic berries, but it’s still a sharp 180 to hear them at each other’s throats practically to the point of wanting to reignite the Celestia/Nightmare Moon feud for most of the comic only to spend the last couple pages talking about how much they love everything about the other. Similar to Sweetie Belle, I kind of want to gag at how lazy that is.

While the artwork in and of itself is worthy of note and a lot of the antics are entertaining, ultimately I dislike this arc more than many of the Friends Forever arcs. While meant to be an epic finale to the IDW Friends Forever series, it unfortunately ended up being a shoddy version of a better Season Seven episode.

Fun Facts:

This was the final issue of the IDW “Friends Forever” series. As with many of the Andy Prices IDW comics, it has an official title: “Battle Royal”.

A number of callbacks, in particular to Andy Price’s other IDW entries, occur in this arc. Recurring comic-exclusive characters Kibitz and Tiberius appear extensively, but King Aspen and the deer of Everfree are also mentioned.

One of the “tasks” the princesses have to rush through is battle Chrysalis…again. Another is attending the Equestria version of Mardi Gras on “Horseleans Street”.

A major collision between show canon and comic canon occurred in this story. Season Seven’s “A Royal Problem” was the main series finally handling the sisters swapping duties with both learning to appreciate the job the other one does. While it did a good job of portraying both of them on equal footing, it did overlook the elephant in the room that was the fact Celestia did indeed handle Luna’s job for 1,000 years. By comparison, the IDW comic acknowledges that, but often goes to the opposite extreme (especially with Andy Price) and reduces Luna often to being a selfish, immature, egotistical brat who really isn’t necessary to keep Equestria running. Nevertheless, that viewpoint does take into account the show’s own backstory, and Celestia and Luna going into dreams to defeat nightmares is a sharp marked contrast from the similar scene in “A Royal Problem”. This issue was published prior to that episode, and time will tell if IDW tries to recant on it.

Celestia likes jazz. By comparison, Luna likes rock. 😀

Crystal Ball calls Kibitz “Mustache Pony”.

Bit of a typo on one word balloon: “I gaurantee everypony”.

Favorite joke: LUNA: “Are you always this arrogant or did you take lessons?” CELESTIA: “I took lessons!”

When Philomena and Tiberius start to rampage, one of the ponies at the Aquarium tent yells: “Save my walrus!” That’s a nod to an old Ren & Stimpy cartoon: “Fire Dogs”.

The mysterious Fedora Pony appears again in a panel after Philomena and Tiberius are subdued.

The princesses reveal their pet names for each other: Marshmallow (Celestia) and Dark Nut (Luna).

The issue ends with Celestia and Luna breaking the fourth wall. As an added joke, Pinkie Pie asks who they’re talking to.

Rating:

1.5 Stars out of 5

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

Tags

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

Synopsis:

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

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

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

Review:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fun Facts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The mysterious fedora pony appears at the train station.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating:

4 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Equestria Girls: Forgotten Friendship

Tags

A Friendship to Remember, Applejack, Equestria Girls, Fluttershy, Forgotten Friendship, Most Likely to Be Forgotten, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Princess Celestia, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Sci-Twi, Sunset Shimmer, Twilight Sparkle, Wallflower Blush, youtube

Synopsis:

At Canterlot High School, Sunset Shimmer, who has retained position of President of the Yearbook Committee and Editor-in-Chief since her days when she was still a bully, is finishing up getting the results for the “superlatives” for this year’s edition. She’s pleased to learn that she and the rest of the Humane Seven have been named “Best Friends”, but Trixie is outraged that she was not voted “Greatest and Most Powerful-est” (in spite of the fact that was never a category) and vows revenge. The girls decide to take their group photo using Twilight Sparkle’s new drone camera tomorrow at a beach outing for the yearbook, and that night Sunset writes to the Equestrian Twilight Sparkle thanking her for giving her the second chance that turned her into who she is today. The next day, however, when Sunset arrives at the beach, the rest of her friends act cold, afraid, and hostile to her. On touching them, she realizes the girls have had their memories of her erased.

On further learning the only memories any of the girls have of her is of her being cruel, mean, and deceptive, Sunset writes to the Equestrian Twilight and is relieved to discover she still remembers her “being nice”. Sunset returns to Equestria to try and find out how the Humane Six lost their memories and, unable to help her alone, Twilight takes her to Princess Celestia; leading the two to finally reconcile. Celestia and Luna, in turn, take the two to the forbidden section of the Canterlot Library, where they find a record from Clover the Clever in the pre-Equestria era of an old pony sorceress who used a magical item called the Memory Stone to erase memories and fragments of memories from her victims. The records show Clover was able to thwart her attempts to erase his own memory by keeping records of everything she erased, and eventually chased her through a portal before the record abruptly ends; indicating Clover hid the rest to keep anyone from finding the stone. Sunset believes the stone was hidden in the human world and a human has uncovered it and used it against her.

Sunset returns to the human world while Equestrian Twilight continues her research, attempting to convince the girls through photographs that her claims of their friendship are real, but not only are the photos dismissed as forgeries but she is falsely accused of intentionally breaking Human Twilight’s drone camera when she accidentally steps on it. When Sunset sees Trixie is still trying to get into the yearbook, she suspects her of having the stone and using it as revenge for not including her superlative and confronts her in the school hallway. Trixie ends up being clueless about the entire matter, but on overhearing Sunset talk about how she knows she’s one type of way yet everyone in school sees her differently, she sympathizes with her considering her own attempts to constantly be “great and powerful” and believes her story. She agrees to help Sunset find the true culprit in exchange for getting put in the yearbook. Meanwhile, Equestrian Twilight finds Clover’s missing record showing the stone was buried in a circle of three rocks, but also discovers that erased memories are gone permanently if they stay removed for three days.

Sunset and Trixie go about the school but are unable to find anyone who looks like a potential suspect. Finally, they are down to only one student left to investigate: Wallflower Blush, a quiet, introverted member of Sunset’s own yearbook committee and the sole member of the Gardening Club, who is so unremarkable that she constantly goes unnoticed and forgotten by everyone (including Sunset and Trixie). At that point, Twilight writes back to Sunset with the news of the rock formation and the warning that the stone has to be destroyed by sunset that day. On seeing that Wallflower’s desktop background is of the rock formation, she touches Wallflower and discovers she accidentally discovered the Memory Stone and used it to remove everyone’s positive memories of Sunset. She angrily confronts her and demands to know what she did to her to cause her to do this to her, to which Wallflower angrily responds that, to her, Sunset never changed at all: she ignored her completely as a bully and she continued to ignore her completely as everyone’s “best friend”, and that she erased everyone’s memories so that everyone would see her the same way she does–as”the biggest meanie”. Before Sunset and Trixie can stop her, she uses the stone to erase their memory of the entire encounter and leaves them locked in the editing room.

Sunset, however, took a cue from Clover the Clever and left herself a note to check Twilight’s broken drone’s camera, which she set to record the moment before she confronted Wallflower. After watching the footage, Trixie gets Sunset to realize Wallflower had a point, and Sunset mentions that even when everyone hates her permanently tomorrow she’ll still have one friend in her. This, however, emboldens Trixie enough to try out one of her “escape artist tricks”, which manages to get Sunset free. She runs out to confront Wallflower again, but this time does so in front of the rest of the Humane Seven and, in the ensuing confrontation, Wallflower accidentally blurts out that she did indeed erase their memories of Sunset. Infuriated that her plan to get back at Sunset has been exposed and determined to make her suffer, Wallflower moves to erase the Humane Six’s memories of high school all together. Realizing that will destroy their friendships with each other, Sunset jumps into the path of the attack rather than let herself be the cause of breaking up their friendship a second time. Sunset’s own memories of high school (and, ergo, the entire human world and living as a human) are erased, but on seeing her sacrifice for them the rest of the girls finally believe that she’s really their friend and are still able to unite with her to “pony up” and destroy the Memory Stone before sunset. Everyone’s memories are restored and Wallflower, after seeing firsthand what her desire for revenge did to Sunset, repents of her own behavior. As it turns out, however, Sunset apologizes to her for never being a good friend. As Sunset writes to Equestrian Twilight about the stone’s destruction, she reveals she made amends by including Wallflower on a page in the yearbook for the Gardening Club, as well as gave Trixie her full page superlative for “Greatest and Most Powerful-est”.

Review:

The “Equestria Girls” franchise, by most estimates, was undergoing a degeneration until this special. No one really liked the original, but “Rainbow Rocks” blew everyone away with one of the show’s greatest ensemble darkhorses: Sunset Shimmer elevated from generic villain to deuteragonist. “Friendship Games” was considered by most fans to be lesser by comparison, and “Legend of Everfree” paled compared to that. The three 22 minute specials were rather unremarkable as well, especially among those who disliked Starlight Glimmer as “Mirror Magic” made it look as if she was going to shanghai the EG universe just as she was accused of doing the same to the main series. Even ignoring that, continuous generic plotlines with one-dimensional villains who “just needed a friend” led the entire series to feeling like it was more or less copies of each previous one with slight modifications.

By comparison, the shorts featured on Youtube were a bit better received as they were small vignettes that allowed the individual girls to shine in different situations rather than have most of the Humane Seven squashed into a “character lump” while one or two other characters did everything. Yet once again, the shorts shined when they went to the star of the EG series, Sunset Shimmer. Through them, Sunset has been revealed to be a multi-faceted, oddly pragmatic, and lovable character…especially in ones like “My Past is Not Today”, “Monday Blues”, and “Rarity’s Display of Affection”.

It seems only natural that what would get the “Equestria Girls” franchise back on track would be a special devoted to everyone’s favorite bacon-headed girl.

“Forgotten Friendship” was widely loved by the fan base, and with good reason. Not only was this special a bit of a departure from the normal fare, but it also was a bit more “mature” than those others. It relied a lot heavier on character and internal conflict rather than on a lot of magic and colorful pictures and action sequences. In that sense alone, the new Y7 rating was justified. This special was good in the same way that “The Perfect Pear” was good–the story is great but really little kids likely won’t understand why.

Going with that, this is a special that focused more on a theme and concept rather than an overt tangible antagonist (although there was one of those too): namely the idea of how much of our own identity is, ironically, shaped by the perception of others toward us. Most of us work very hard to make sure people only see the “best” side of us, and if we do something wrong we work even harder to try and show off so much good that people will forget those moments. Sunset is caught in the situation of what would happen if all anyone could remember about them was everything bad they had ever done. The end result is a look at just how much of ourselves we define based on the reaction of others, and what sort of existential crises might result. (There are a number of times in the episode Sunset begins to revert to her old way of acting as a result of being treated like her old self.) The lesson Sunset herself learns (Can you really go around calling yourself a good person if all you are is “not mean” to people?) even goes back into that–causing her to ask herself if it really matters if the school gives her an award for a superlative when she personally knows she didn’t live up to that standard.

Some fans might have thought making Trixie be the surprise co-star of this special was just to capitalize on her newer, more prominent role in the main series. Since she’s Starlight’s friend now, they decided to make her Sunset’s friend. I…disagree. Going with the theme of the special, she belongs here. As is pointed out, Trixie is the very poster child of an individual who is constantly trying to make herself into a better individual by making herself appear to everyone as a greater individual. She always fails at it, but…in spite of continuously failing, she always sees herself personally as “great and powerful” even if no one else does and never gives up trying to promote that view. In that odd way, for all of her obnoxiousness, selfishness, childishness, and pettiness…Trixie is rather endearing and even slightly admirable. It’s something of the same deal as with Wile E. Coyote or Team Rocket: you admire a character for never giving up or abandoning who they are.

Wallflower Blush ended up being one of the more popular EG villains as well. While I’m pretty sure the Dazzlings still hold Number One, I’d place her up there with Midnight Sparkle in a tie. While Midnight Sparkle definitely has more charisma, in terms of realism and motivation it goes to Wallflower. Since “Rainbow Rocks”, the villains were pretty much cookie cutouts: character who doesn’t rely on friendship acquires Equestrian magic, ends up misusing it and being corrupted, turns into a monster, and gets blasted into submission/tearful apologies by the Humane Seven. Wallflower Blush…didn’t really break the mold, but she did “deform” it quite a bit.

On the spectrum of villains, there’s multiple axes to consider. Most modern ones place villains on the range from “True Villain” to “Anti-Villain”, dividing villains between those who are genuinely evil and those who are pretty much just confused or misguided individuals with good intentions. A different spectrum not often considered is motivation. Even if a villain does something genuinely cruel and malicious out of spite or hostility, there are some with such good motivation that we can’t help but admit we might have done the same thing. Wallflower isn’t quite to that extreme, but she’s close. Most fans of the show probably couldn’t identify with Gloriosa Daisy or Juniper Montage, but a lot of them have experienced feelings of invisibility or the dehumanization of being part of the high school crowd. In Wallflower’s case, she was an individual who had done a lot of work toward digging the hole she found herself in. The flashbacks reveal she didn’t make a ton of effort to try and join in at parties or social gatherings, and later she reveals that she erased memories of anything she had ever done to stand out…ironically making herself invisible as those would have been the things that would have made her stand out in people’s memories. Nevertheless, the fact remains Sunset never noticed her as a bully and never noticed her as a good friend either, so from her perspective Sunset never changed at all. So to see someone who you remember being a tyrant and a brat be loved and admired by everyone while you yourself, having never done anything cruel to anyone, still remain ignored by everyone?

The other part of this is that Wallflower shares something with older EG villains: egocentricity. She tends to see the world only from her perspective. She’s not as overt or obnoxious about it as other villains were so it doesn’t stand out, but it’s clear based on the episode. Wallflower continues to act the same way around Sunset in the editing room in spite of the fact she knows what she did to her. She describes the entire thing as trying to “teach her a lesson”. It heavily indicates that Wallflower does not realize just how badly she hurt Sunset by what she did, or what she would be doing if she fully erased the high school memories of the Humane Six. It’s not until she removes Sunset’s memories that she finally sees what she’s really been doing to her all this time, and the look on her face makes it clear she doesn’t like it. The fact that we get that instead of Wallflower turning into some magic memory-stealing demon is a major step forward. It’s not perfect, but it’s enough to make Wallflower’s change far more genuine.

If that wasn’t enough, this episode gave a lot of what fans had wanted to see. Sunset gets to interact with the Equestrian Twilight Sparkle, who hadn’t been seen since the brief appearance in “Friendship Games”. And it also gave what they had really been longing for, namely the reconciliation between her and Princess Celestia. Similar to a few scenes in “Legend of Everfree”, this special also indicated that Sunset Shimmer has a closer relationship with Sci-Twi than the other girls. Now…some fans have made the jump straight to homosexuality from that, but I think that’s extreme. For one thing, it would be one-sided because Sci-Twi has a boyfriend, and that would only make things more awkward for her to be around Sunset in that case. I tend to think that Sunset sees Sci-Twi as a “little sister”. And there are some genuine dramatic and gripping moments, including the climax in which Sunset cries out in anguish as her memories of the girls are removed one by one and how she looks at Sci-Twi and says: “Don’t forget me!”

Alas, there are some negatives.

This special has been compared to the infamous “Anon-a-Miss” arc from the IDW comic, which enjoyed a resurgence in popularity following the release of the special. One of the big differences between that story and this is that in this one the Humane Six have a plausible reason for instantly giving Sunset the cold shoulder. Nevertheless…most fans were a bit upset that the friendship-orientated personalities of the Humane Six didn’t make more of a connection. There are a fistful of scenes in which Sci-Twi starts to question it, which makes the most sense for her because she only has one “bad” memory of Sunset Shimmer and most of who Sci-Twi is today depended on Sunset Shimmer’s actions, meaning she would be the most likely to conclude something was “missing” in her memories. However, none of the girls ever seem to get the sensation that their group is somehow incomplete or question Sunset’s absence…in spite of the fact a comment by Rarity indicates they should have been experiencing deja vu of some sort or another. I think it would have been a nice touch myself, although going with the theme of the special I’m not sure it would have meshed.

The resolution was a bit hurried as well. While I compliment it for evading some of the expected tropes and cliches, it still adhered to quite a bit of convenience. The Humane Six just happened to be at that location and, what’s more, after giving Sunset the cold shoulder for three days they’re suddenly paying enough attention to her to overhear the key parts of her argument with Wallflower. And by not doing what I said above, it makes the fact that the girls turned around so easily, even considering Sunset’s sacrifice, a little unbelievable. If they had been starting to question if Sunset might be telling the truth, it would make sense. Since they didn’t, it seems like it was just a tad convenient.

Lastly, the moral was a tad smudged again. Everything started because of those superlatives in the yearbook. So was it arguing that superlatives were bad? Or that everyone should get a superlative just so that you acknowledge them, which defeats the purpose of a superlative to begin with? Also, by presenting the idea that Sunset was indeed in the wrong about her treatment of Wallflower, it leads to the idea that some of what happened to her was “merited”.

Nevertheless, none of those are major issues. This special was rightly one of the best in the entire Equestria Girls franchise. If future specials stick with the concept behind this one, not being afraid to consider a theme and treat the audience as being a bit older than the original crowd, and the EG franchise might indeed be able to endure when the main series departs in two seasons.

Fun Facts:

This special was the first entry in the “Equestria Girls” franchise to be rated Y7 instead of Y. While the dominant thought for the rating change is Wallflower Blush shouting: “I hate you!”, I noticed old Equestria Girls specials were retroactively upped to Y7 ratings as well, indicating it’s likely more of a change of ratings policy than new content.

This special was originally conceived as a five-part miniseries to be showed as part of the Equestria Girls Youtube series, which was eventually put online in weekly installments under the title of “Most Likely to Be Forgotten”. The special itself is a condensed version of the miniseries and is six minutes shorter, with several jokes and asides cut out, such as the pony Sunset Shimmer briefly spotting the pony Flash Sentry and a broken library index machine.

Similar to other Equestria Girls specials, this initially debuted in junior novel form under the title: “A Friendship to Remember”.

This special has frequently been compared to the IDW Comic Equestria Girls Holiday Special. Both plotlines featured Sunset Shimmer being unjustly accused of still being a cruel bully, the other girls casting her out, and the one responsible wanting to make Sunset suffer out of jealousy. It also shares a lot in common with the popular Season Five episode “Amending Fences”, which dealt with a character thinking of herself as a great friend discovering she had been neglecting someone for years.

A “wallflower” is a type of introverted person who attends social events but tends to stick to themselves and avoid standing out in any way.

Snips and Snails, in keeping with early episodes of the main series, have become Trixie’s minions again. With their memories erased, shouldn’t they be serving Sunset again?

Twilight’s drone had its AI changed by the Memory Stone to fear Sunset…somehow.

It has been noted that the Memory Stone is very similar in appearance to the Gossip Stones in “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time”. However, as Silver Quill noted in his own review, this is likely not so much inspiration from Zelda as both drawing inspiration from the same source: namely the “third eye” in many Eastern belief systems such as Hindu and Taoism. It’s considered to be a point of higher consciousness, intuition, and spiritual perception. As Silver Quill also mentioned, it is worth noting whenever the girls either lose or gain memories, the point of entry/origin of the memories is the same spot where the “third eye” is said to reside.

In a surprising change to Equestrian history, it is revealed Clover the Clever was in fact a stallion. Apparently back in Season Two’s “Hearth’s Warming Eve”, the girls weren’t necessarily playing roles to gender.

Both songs in the special are incidents of the characters being aware of their own musical number. Wallflower mentions she was trying to get Sunset’s attention through her own song, and Trixie later fast-forwards through Wallflower’s on the drone recording.

When Sunset “ponies-up”, her memories are still missing and so, naturally, she looks confused about the entire experience.

Rating:

4.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Season Seven, Episode Ten: “A Royal Problem”

Tags

A Royal Problem, Daybreaker, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Nightmare Moon, opinion, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, review, Starlight Glimmer

Synopsis:

Starlight Glimmer gets a surprise when the Cutie Map not only summons her, sending her right to the Royal Palace of Canterlot itself, but her alone. On arriving at Canterlot, she immediately picks up on trouble between the two sisters; noticing that both of them are inadvertently hurting the feelings of the other by not acknowledging the hard work they do. She confronts them both one morning to have them explain how they feel about that, but this only prompts the sisters to get into a heated argument in which they both believe their own job is extremely difficult while the other one has it “so easy”. Eventually, going with a gut decision, Starlight casts a spell to switch their Cutie Marks so that both will be forced to spend a day in the other one’s shoes to see what it’s like. Both sisters, believing themselves to be the one in the right, end up agreeing with it. Princess Luna expects an easy day where all she has to do is smile and be admired; yet learns the hard way about how emotionally exhausting it is to go the entire day being empathetic, understanding, and warm toward everypony without a moment to rest and ends up accidentally ruining a field trip fund raiser and scaring locals fearing Timberwolf attacks. She goes to bed physically exhausted and tormented by nightmares about her mistakes. Princess Celestia expects an easy night of simply watching Equestria and making ponies have “lovely dreams”, but gets struck by the isolation and loneliness of the position. When she ventures into the Dream Realm to try and help ponies with their nightmares, she ends up needing to help Starlight herself who is desperately fearful that failing to aid the two sisters will lead to the return of Nightmare Moon. Celestia moves to confront her; only to be shocked when she finds Starlight is also dreaming about an evil version of her named Daybreaker, the mere sight of whom leaves Celestia emotionally paralyzed. Feeling alone and anxious, Celestia draws the sleeping Luna into the same dream for assistance, but when she reveals she can’t as Celestia alone has her special dream magic, the older sister flies into fear and despair at how she’s not as brave or strong as Luna. In response, Luna reassures her that after seeing what she had to go through all day she knows she’s strong enough to defeat Daybreaker, and, emboldened by her sister’s confidence, Celestia is able to destroy her and Nightmare Moon and end the nightmare. The two sisters awaken the next day with new appreciation for the all the work the other does and are now closer than ever. Starlight Glimmer’s flank glows, showing her job is done, only for Twilight Sparkle to teleport in and demand the entire story out of her. Luna quickly mutters that Celestia needs to fix the messes she made with the field trip and the Timberwolves before heading to bed for the morning.

Review:

Pull up a chair for this one because I’m going to go on for a while.

While, for me and many others, “The Perfect Pear” ultimately ended up being the best episode of Season Seven, this one has my pick for my favorite episode of this season. This is the sort of episode I’ve been wanting to see for years. One that finally gets into Princess Celestia’s character. Ultimately, I think that was one of the hallmarks of this season and one of the edges that the newer writers have over the older ones. The first generation writers treated the princesses of Equestria as plot devices and Worf Effects. The second generation writers treat them as normal individuals. Before we get into them, though, let’s start with the episode as a whole.

As a Cutie Map episode, it’s one of the best. I will admit that I did groan a bit that Starlight Glimmer got the first “solo” Cutie Map assignment. However, I understand why she did it. She really was the only character fitting for this episode, as her lack of tact and her notions that she believes she knows best were what was needed. Only she would have been bold enough to not treat the two royal sisters as, well, “royalty” and to actually switch their Cutie Marks in the first place. And while she does have several moments where her less sociable and less tactful nature comes out (“I can’t! Even if I wanted to!” “Good choice! Heh, not that you had one.”), she does quickly realize those are the wrong things to say. And in spite of those moments, you do get the sense that, at her heart, Starlight really has “mastered friendship” enough to where she really does want to help the two sisters rather than just treat the whole thing as some achievement or notch on her belt. She does have empathy in this one; she just hasn’t learned how to express it or suppress her old habits yet.

And it’s not like she gets through the episode “pain-free” either. Thanks again to Kelly Sheridan’s voice acting, the part where she breaks down in tears in her nightmare is very genuine and makes even stubborn-Starlight-fans like myself feel some sympathy for her.

However, similar to “Top Bolt”, this is one episode where the characters being helped outshine the pony responsible for fixing the friendship problem: namely Princess Luna and Princess Celestia. As I said before, we learn a lot about Princess Celestia’s character in this one, but I’ll start with Princess Luna.

From episodes like “Luna Eclipsed” and “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?”, we’ve learned about Luna, but she’s still apparently vague enough to be somewhat of an enigma in the series. Most fan views of her contrast sharply with views from the IDW comic, for example. It’s possible to get the viewpoint that, of the two princesses, Luna is the one who is more aloof, separate, thinks of herself as “above” the common ponies, and acts the most mysterious and godlike.  One can get the sense that she’s really all about herself as a princess, and that’s easy to see as she was once Nightmare Moon; a villain who selfishly only cared about being treated as a queen and was heartless and cruel in all other regards.

This episode shows that Luna does care; it’s just she doesn’t show it in the same way. Luna isn’t sociable or able to deal with large groups in grand displays or public occasions, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about her subjects. She’s just not that sort of individual. There are people like that in the world who do have friends and loved ones, but prefer to be in small groups or one-on-one rather than big events surrounded by strangers. She doesn’t like talking about her feelings but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t feel for others. Rather, Luna shows she cares through overt actions. When she sees a pony with a problem, her answer is to jump in and take care of it herself (which will contrast to Celestia in a moment…). When she deals with individuals, she wants to do it head on rather than just talk to them about their feelings. She also does want to be seen as a symbol of power and control, but that’s because how she feels she does best. She doesn’t see her royalty as something so much to be lorded over other ponies as a symbol of status and power that they can feel safe under. Lastly, Luna is both strong and intelligent enough to deal with problems as they need to be dealt with, but only at her own pace. Only after she has had time to think about them. Note that in her earlier episodes with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, she never “jumps in at the first nightmare”. It’s only after a little while has passed that Luna interjects and then presents them with the proper solution. It’s quite possible Luna was observing them for a while before she got the heart of the problem. (Especially in “Sleepless in Ponyville”, as Luna was present in Scootaloo’s first nightmare but didn’t actually intervene until the second night.)

And it’s for these reasons that Luna was always ideally suited to rule the night. As the only one awake at night, she holds the position of guardian of Equestria, and that’s fine with her because she’s not afraid to use her own power offensively. She’s alone except when she enters dreams, and that’s also fine with her because now she has quiet and peace while she thinks about how to fix problems ponies have. And yes, she would also work all night hard because she’s literally fighting nightmares from dusk until dawn. While she would definitely prefer to get a bit more acknowledgement for all that she does, ultimately the “job” that Celestia holds is not for her and never was for her, which is something she failed to realize as Nightmare Moon. While she may have been displeased with her task due to lack of praise, ultimately the role she plays is what’s best for her…what “her Cutie Mark is telling her”.

Now, for Princess Celestia…

The years have not been kind to Celestia. She still gets regular calls of being a character who can only tell others to do things and is unwilling and/or powerless to do anything herself or “Trollestia”–a character who purposely makes the lives of her subjects miserable for her own amusement. All of this stemming from the fact she never takes a more active role like Luna does or deals with problems directly, or that she simply doesn’t care.

This episode helps clarify things for me. First and foremost is that Celestia does care as well, just not in the same way Luna does. Luna is against being open and social and believes in demonstrating her power to fix problems directly. Celestia, as hinted at in “Celestial Advice” and throughout the series, on the other hand, doesn’t so much as shirk her duty as a princess as believes that most ponies don’t need her as a princess. To her, she believes ponies can solve their own problems if they pause to think about it or, perhaps, “get a slight nudge in the right direction”. She’s showed this throughout the series. Celestia gave very little advice in “Celestial Advice”. Instead, she let Twilight talk about everything that was bothering her and let her know that she didn’t have to worry. She never actually told Twilight what to do; Twilight decided that on her own. In the pilot episode, all she did was send Twilight to Ponyville knowing that the rest of the girls would be just what she needed and let Twilight go from there. In “The Return of Harmony”, rather than try to help stop Discord herself, she just sent Twilight the letters and the girls were able to go from there.

But does that mean that just because ponies can fix their own problems that they will fix their own problems? Of course not, and that’s why Celestia acts the way she does. She believes in the power of her position as well, but in a different way than Luna sees it. She knows other ponies see her as someone powerful and glorious and that to even be acknowledged by her or in her presence makes them feel important and good about themselves. That’s why it’s so important to her that she make all of her public appearances and shows ponies that “she cares”. Celestia barely knows Starlight other than by reputation (and, in fact, the night they were supposed to meet she got stood up by her), but in this episode she goes out of her way to make her breakfast herself every morning, gives her a royal suite while she’s staying at the palace, and puts her to bed herself when she falls asleep assisting her in starting her work for the evening. And even when she and Luna are disagreeing with each other, she does make more of an effort than Luna to try and do something for her (note after Luna picks up a pineapple the first day and skips the pancakes, the next day Celestia puts pineapple on the pancakes). Celestia may be, at least in modern Equestria, more of a figurehead ruler than anything, but she realizes her importance as one and that’s why she goes out of her way to continuously make everypony believe their time and concerns are important to her. And yes, that can be very emotionally draining. To always be “smiling”, showing concern and empathy for every individual and making them feel they’re valued, that’s not something everyone can do.

Yet Celestia doesn’t mind it because she’s naturally a social individual. She doesn’t just handle being around lots of other individuals; she likes being around others. She’s not at her most effective without the company of other ponies. Just like Luna may be a natural loner, she’s a natural social butterfly. Does she want quiet and solitude at times? Yes. Does keeping things up for a crowd get to be too much some times and stress her out? Yes. But ultimately, she prefers being surrounded by others because making them happy makes her happy. It’s being alone and being forced to deal with threats all alone that makes her uncomfortable. Note that in this episode she says about Luna “even when we were apart I knew I needed her”. And that’s true. Ever notice that Celestia’s “glory days” of defeating things with her own power stopped after Luna’s banishment? Or that she goes for Luna in help with Starlight’s nightmare? Even if Celestia does have power, she needs support to use the full measure of it. (More on this in a little while…)

Finally, the scene-stealing mare…

While this episode might have been a great Celestia/Luna episode, and even a good episode for Starlight Glimmer, the one who stole the show was who became for a time the series’ “best villain”: Daybreaker. After years of speculating on what an Evil Celestia would look among the fandom, we were treated to this character. And really, she’s a scream. Her design is genuinely intimidating and appropriate, but her personality is what’s even more striking. While Nightmare Moon is smug, arrogant, and prideful, Daybreaker is insane, vicious, and vain. Whereas Nightmare Moon laughed evilly before, it was always from a position of pride and haughtiness. Daybreaker does it because she’s crazy and gleefully loves venting her power. I love how she has little bits like where when she says: “the better, prettier, and more powerful version of you“, she actually preens herself just a tad on saying “prettier”. Also I love how she claps her own hooves in delight. You can tell Nicole Oliver had a lot of fun voicing her after six seasons of needing to do the motherly voices of Celestia and Cheerilee.

Fans loved her, but she nevertheless kicked off a bit of controversy. Just how “real” was Daybreaker? Was she never anything more than a bad dream Starlight was having with no more substance than that? Was she a very tangible threat who stood a chance of becoming as real as Nightmare Moon did? Was she somewhere in the middle?

All sorts of arguments were taken for all sides. I don’t think the evidence is there for either extreme myself…although I will say this in favor of the worst case scenario. The exact nature of Nightmare Moon is still poorly understood, as I stated in earlier reviews. It’s unclear (seemingly even to the writers) as to whether or not she was something external to Luna that took her over or if she’s Luna herself consumed by her own jealousy. One thing the second half of this season did, and especially the season finale, was start to make it lore and canon that there is an external negative “force” (which Stygian would later simply call “the darkness”) somehow over Equestria that seems naturally opposed to the same force that gives things like Cutie Marks, the Pillars, and the Elements of Harmony. A sort of religious mythos that we get glimpses of from time to time. Perhaps it’s nothing more than negative feelings, but by latching onto negative feelings it can manifest itself through Equestrian magic as reality. As demonstrated in “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?”, Luna’s own power is a tall responsibility because it works two-ways. On one hand, it allows her to go into the dreams of ponies and see their darkest and most negative fears and sides. Yet on the other, it allows those same fears and dark sides, if they get out of control, to use her as a gateway into the real world. The Tantabus nearly did that, and after this episode it’s starting to look as if Nightmare Moon was her own nightmare that grew beyond her power to control and manifested itself through her. (No wonder Luna looks so tired every morning…she’s got to work hard to put all this stuff down every night.)

But that said, I don’t think that possibility was present here. It’s clear neither Celestia nor Luna were afraid that Daybreaker would somehow escape into the real world. Luna’s sole concern was that Starlight would have psychological damage from the out-of-control nightmare. Nevertheless, Daybreaker was more than just some dark possibility in Starlight’s mind. Whether by accident that Starlight’s fears ended up being so spot on, or by intentional in that somehow Starlight’s nightmare fed off of Celestia and began to become her nightmare as well, it’s clear that there was some “truth” in Daybreaker. Celestia is clearly uncomfortable when she’s defending against Daybreaker’s accusations. If they were all together false, she could have denied them outright. The fact Celestia didn’t fear Nightmare Moon at all but feared Daybreaker indicates she knew Nightmare Moon was just an illusion with no substance (because she knows Luna won’t go back to being her again), but that Daybreaker is a possibility she’s actually scared of coming true. One way or another, even if it’s such a small possibility that it’s effectively impossible, Celestia is scared that Daybreaker could become real.

And that, as a result, addresses the biggest concern people have with Celestia’s character: the notion that she’s too weak and incompetent to do anything to help her subjects and always has to rely on others. How I personally understand it, the truth is…she is powerful enough to deal with everything on her own. She’s strong enough to “have it all” just like Daybreaker said. But she doesn’t want to. She’s scared of her own power. She’s scared she’ll become a bloodthirsty maniac of a tyrant like Daybreaker is. So, similar to Superman, she constantly holds herself back both consciously and subconsciously. Daybreaker indicated it herself; other ponies “stand in her way”. She’s too afraid of hurting those she cares about to use her full power so she doesn’t. And since she genuinely cares about everypony, that means she can’t do much more than be the figurehead goddess. She can’t even bring out some of her full power unless she has Luna at her side.

From that viewpoint, this episode not only addresses Celestia’s character but also answers one of the most long-standing criticisms of the series. And that makes this episode even better to me.

As much as I wanted to give “Twilight’s Kingdom” 5 Stars, I wanted to give this one 5 Stars so much more… But…ugh…

The old “Paradox of Starlight Glimmer” rears its ugly head once again, and this time it’s a real shame because I don’t think it needed it except to pad out the episode. Starlight would have been fine mostly on her own in this episode. Yet…Twilight Sparkle constantly interjects, and in this episode she not only fails to do anything to help but clearly is the reason everything gets so bad. Starlight is perfectly calm and composed about helping Celestia and Luna, but Twilight keeps bringing up reasons for her to be nervous until she does get nervous. She’s the one who brings up the idea that Celestia and Luna could reignite their old feud, which is why Starlight has the nightmare. Being neurotic is nothing new for Twilight, but to actually drive other ponies to be neurotic as well is a mark against her. While I thought Celestia, Luna, and Starlight were great in this episode, I didn’t like how Twilight, similar to “No Second Prances”, was once again made out to be “an obstacle to Starlight’s greatness”.

But the other plot hole is far harder to overlook.

The idea of Princess Luna spending a day in Princess Celestia’s shoes was actually done once already in the IDW Comics. In that one, it was more than clear that Celestia had the harder job and that Luna was served a (humorous) slice of humble pie as a result of it, and it was capped off with Celestia being something of a troll. This one did it much better and was far more appropriate, officially making that comic non-canon, showing that it’s not so much the respective difficulty of their jobs so much as to what the two are ideally suited to, just like any other ponies with their Cutie Marks. (I’m sure Rainbow Dash would find Twilight Sparkle’s job of “being an egghead” boring and frustrating while Twilight would have no idea how to be as athletic or “awesome” as Dash and both would conclude the other had the harder job, for example.) But one thing it did point out as a result was the fact that Celestia already knows what it’s like to “be Luna”. She has to: she did it for a thousand years while Luna was banished to the moon.

Now, one can make the argument that all Celestia did was raise the sun and the moon…although they did goof on that as well when Celestia remarked that raising the moon was easier than raising the sun. Especially since Luna points out only her magic has the ability to enter and manipulate dreams (it was Celestia that connected Luna to Starlight’s dream, not Luna’s own actions). Yet that, of course, raises another question: did ponies just have really bad nightmares for a thousand years? My own headcanon is that somehow becoming “the Mare in the Moon” allowed Luna’s influence to continue to help mitigate the effects of bad dreams for a thousand years through her image if not her direct action, but there’s no support for that. It’s a rather glaring error, but…one I can blot out of my head if I focus on headcanon.

Aside from that, it’s a fantastic episode. We finally get into Celestia’s character, we get more into Luna’s character and her relationship with Celestia, it’s an episode that makes good use of Starlight’s positive and negative qualities, it’s entertaining as well as dramatic, and it gave us possibly the most entertaining villain of the series even if she wasn’t a “real” villain. To me, this was where I started to realize just how great Season Seven was going to end up being.

Unfortunately, the next episode would be a major step down with everyone’s “favorite” characters… (groans like Starlight)

Fun Facts:

This episode established that the Cutie Map can dispatch individuals other than the Mane Six. I hate to point out yet another incidence of ‘Mare-y Sue’, but…Starlight Glimmer is the first character who can solve a friendship problem all on her own.

It’s worth noting when this episode begins, Luna stands alongside the throne at a slightly lower position. By the time “Shadow Play” would hit, the throne would be enlarged so that both sisters could sit on it simultaneously (possibly as a result of this episode). As pointed out in an earlier review, the movie featured two thrones of equal stature for either princess.

Needless to say, Music Box Ballerina Twilight Sparkle was quite popular after this episode…although nothing could top You-Know-Who. 🙂

An interesting animation detail. The first day Starlight stays at the Royal Palace, Celestia offers Luna pancakes but she ignores them and just grabs a pineapple from the fruit basket. The second day, Celestia has put pineapple on the pancakes. It’s a sign that although the two sisters are both at fault for not appreciating each other, Celestia is at least “trying a little”. By comparison, Luna, the less sociable of the two, has absolutely no problem physically/magically shoving Starlight to one side a couple times in this episode.

Another minor animation goof. In Season Four’s “Twilight’s Kingdom”, when Luna had her Cutie Mark removed she retained the blackness behind it, leading many fans to think she had a birthmark and just the moon was her Cutie Mark. Yet in this episode, when Starlight switches their Cutie Marks, the blackness goes with the moon onto Celestia.

Another interesting animation detail. When the sisters switch Cutie Marks, their magic auras (gold for Celestia; light blue for Luna) switch as well.

Nicole Oliver gets to have all sorts of fun voice acting in this episode, especially as Daybreaker, but I think the prize for best line goes to: “What.”

Among the dreams that pass by Celestia are a tiny Fluttershy riding a giant Angel Bunny (likely Fluttershy “being the pet” again as she was in “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?”), Cadance rocking out to a DJ Flurry Heart (I honestly don’t know which one is having the dream…), Discord and the Smooze having a (one-sided) pillow fight, the Flim-Flam Brothers striking it rich, Queen Derpy (with the Twilicane, no less), and Doctor Whooves dodging the pony version of a Weeping Angel (O_o). One of the surprising dreams, however, is an unseen pony rocking baby Applejack. The coat color doesn’t correspond to Bright Macintosh or Pear Butter…

Ever since Season One, the idea of a “Nightmare Moon Version” of Princess Celestia was extremely popular among the fandom. Probably the version that became the most popular and went the most viral was a fanmade character called “Solar Flare”. Eventually, Hasbro included an “evil Celestia” version in their collectible card game officially known as “Nightmare Star”, likely because going with Solar Flare would have introduced copyright issues that would be impossible to resolve as no one knows which fan originally came up with Solar Flare at this point. Finally, this episode made an evil Celestia officially canon in the form of “Daybreaker”, who is distinct from both other renditions. Among her numerous art details, probably the most stunning is how her eyes are flaming embers. Unlike Nightmare Moon, her wing coverlets are armored as well. Unlike Celestia, she has a red outline.

“Starlight’s” toothbrush is clearly Spike’s. 😛

Rating:

4.5 Stars out of 5

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ Season Seven, Episode One: “Celestial Advice”

Tags

Celestial Advice, Discord, King Thorax, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, Princess Celestia, review, Spike, Starlight Glimmer, Trixie Lulamoon, Twilight Sparkle

Synopsis:

Following the events of “To Where and Back Again”, Twilight Sparkle is throwing a special celebration for the ceremony where Starlight Glimmer, Trixie Lulamoon, Discord, and King Thorax will receive the “Pink Heart of Courage” award for saving Equestria from Queen Chrysalis. After the award ceremony and during the party, Discord comes up to Twilight and asks her what she has planned for Starlight next, prompting Twilight to realize that her normal plans for “friendship lessons” are no longer appropriate considering how far Starlight has come in a short time. Not knowing what to do with her next, she ends up drawing Princess Celestia aside to talk with her about it, and while talking realizes she needs to send Starlight away on her own to continue to grow just as Celestia sent her. Yet each time she thinks to send her someplace, she imagines an outrageous fear–eventually prompting Celestia to burst out into laughter. She insists she’s not laughing at Twilight, but rather the fact that she felt the exact same way. She helps Twilight to realize she’s not really afraid of anything bad happening to Starlight, but rather the fact that she’ll lose a friend; and reassures her that, just as Twilight is still close to Celestia, Starlight will still be close to her. Twilight ends up returning to the gathering and publicly announcing that Starlight has “graduated” from her role as a student of friendship and is free to go where she likes. Yet after the announcement, Starlight approaches Twilight and admits she’s not ready to leave; as she doesn’t want to abandon her “teacher” either. Twilight is overjoyed and gives Starlight her “award present”: a room mirror just like her own that has pictures of her own friends all around it, so that she’ll wake up every morning “seeing herself surrounded by her friends”.

Review:

Thanks to the wonders of Netflix, I no longer have to wait forever to watch an episode twice for a review. So…let’s get started!

First, as always, Season Seven in general.

Season Six was nobody’s favorite. A few still disliked Season Three or even One or Two compared to it, but it wasn’t at the top of anyone’s list. It was, after all, quite a jarring move in which we had to quickly recover from Starlight Glimmer almost spontaneously being “turned good” and then deal with her as a cast regular for the rest of the season. A lot of fans didn’t care for her and making her a regular was enough to get some to abandon the franchise forever. I myself said I only “tolerated” her at the end, and that wasn’t easy. A lot of her critics had the fear she would eventually be put in a position where she’d have to save the Mane Six…but none of us expected “To Where and Back Again”, where she had to save everypony. And if it was, it was way too soon. Combined with the Changelings suddenly turning oddly-colored and innocent, and even Chrysalis couldn’t help salvage that. Personally I thought the season as a whole had some high points, but in general it was one of the worst.

Because of that, there was some puzzlement about what Season Seven would be able to offer. And we ended up getting something rather surprising.

I personally feel the first half of Season Seven was running on all eight cylinders and was fantastic. In fact, I dare say the first half of Season Seven is the best the show has ever been. We kept getting one episode after another that revealed new sides to characters that were totally plausible and interesting, and ended up making for episodes with a lot of heart as well as humor and entertainment. And all of it was capped off by the astounding “The Perfect Pear”.

The second half, on the other hand, went where the show had never gone before. By now, the IDW Comic was rather infamous, being one of IDW’s hottest selling titles and, at one point, enabled it to do more sales in one month than any Marvel or DC title. WOW. And after years of fans wishing and hoping that something from the comic would become show canon, and getting a taste of that in Season Six, we were getting something shocking: the IDW Comic and the show would actually collaborate on the “Legends of Magic” story arc to produce a joint story spanning both the comic and main series. Rather unprecedented for most genres.

Unfortunately…that’s where thing fell flat to me. While the second half of Season Seven had a couple good points and, in terms of lore, expanded it in new and amazing ways…the comic arc dulled it considerably. It’s the episodes that avoid alluding to the comic that are great while the ones that tie in the comic muck everything up.

As a result, what could have been the greatest season of the show’s history lapsed into “average”.

Enough of that. Let’s get to this episode.

Starting off this episode, I felt the old cynic in me about Starlight Glimmer come out. I had seen clips of it before it came out, and on realizing Starlight Glimmer was “graduating”, I rolled my eyes yet again. Hearing Twilight go on about how much Starlight had excelled at friendship made me just shake my head. Really…Starlight hadn’t done that much in Season Six to learn about friendship. She reconciled with Sunburst, she made friends with Trixie, she heard a story about a holiday, she accidentally mind-trolled five of the Mane Six…and then she saved Equestria. And that’s it. Twilight had to go through a lot more. That’s one of my two complaints about this episode, but it wasn’t one I really had at the time. I wanted Starlight “out of the picture” initially, so I didn’t care how.

The other complaint is Discord. By now I’m starting to realize that Discord just can’t change his nature of wanting to troll ponies even after what Twilight did for him. Nevertheless, he does have a line toward the end that indicates he was trolling Twilight without even realizing it; when he reveals he wanted her to send Starlight to him all along.

Yet really those are my only two complaints for the episode. The rest of it?

I had wondered if the “new” Changelings would appear after the last season’s finale, and starting with this episode I quickly realized King Thorax was a new recurring character. Frankly, I like it. The show needs more male regulars. And while I was a bit jarred at their new appearance, I’ve accepted it fairly quickly. The real jarring thing is how “childish” and innocent the Changelings became once they started sharing their love.

There’s a lot of characters in this episode and most of them only get a couple lines at most, but everyone seems in character and appropriate, so that works out fine.

What I really liked, though? While it would be “A Royal Problem” that would really give me the satisfaction I had been craving for six seasons, this episode finally, finally, finally started to get into Princess Celestia as a character rather just a plot device. There wasn’t much in this episode, but what we saw was nice and sweet. While Celestia had been getting so poorly used that, in “Make New Friends but Keep Discord”, the writers seemed to be endorsing the “Trollestia” image of how she enjoyed driving Twilight crazy, this episode brought back what I had really suspected for years. We know that Twilight doesn’t just look up to Celestia for approval as being a “good student”; she values their relationship…their friendship. And now we know Celestia does the same. It’s very touching. It’s tempting for a lot of fans to fantasize that they go so far as to enjoy a mother/daughter relationship due to their difference in age, experience, and even height, but…no, it’s just that they’re really good friends. The sort of platonic ideal where you can feel love between two individuals with no romantic element. And, frankly, it’s nice to see Celestia “help Twilight with a problem” for once. 🙂

Last but not least, Twilight and Starlight.

As I said before, I initially rolled my eyes at the prospect of this episode. I tolerated Starlight, but I wanted her gone and I figured the sooner the better. Yet a funny thing happened when I actually saw this episode. A great deal of it was from watching Silver Quill’s analysis of Starlight Glimmer’s character, I’m sure, and ruminating over what he said when I watched this episode.

Yet on seeing Twilight make her announcement, on seeing her speak with such pride, on seeing her tearing up at the thought of losing her friend, and on seeing Starlight’s own reaction to everything, I realized something odd that I never expected.

I didn’t want Starlight to leave either.

Silver Quill is right on most of his points. Starlight Glimmer does add to the show. She’s a character type that’s never been used before, but she’s also one of the more realistic character types. Kelly Sheridan honestly does a fantastic job voice acting for her. Probably the best on the show. She manages to give the sense of Starlight somehow being “the only normal person in a world of happy ponies”, and yet still fits in. She can probably emote more than most of the other voice actors vocally as well.

Yet I think what really ended up finally hooking me on Starlight I picked up in the rewatch of this episode. I still to this day hate “The Cutie Re-Mark”. I still have to consciously block it from my mind to fully enjoy Starlight. I still can’t “believe it” in that episode. However, when I saw Twilight’s tears, when I saw her express her fears, when I saw Starlight express how fearful she was at the end of this episode at the thought of leaving, and when I saw them embrace, I realized that what I did believe was the friendship between the two of them. I don’t know how exactly they connected, but I didn’t need to. It just “did”, and I believed the end result. And because I believe Twilight and her own friendships, that got me to believe in Starlight as well. Now I can confidently say I actually like Starlight Glimmer being on the show and I hope to see more of her in the future.

…I do wish she would be on the same level as the rest of the Mane Seven and would interact more one-on-one with non-Twilight characters or in smaller groups without Twilight, but I do fully accept her and enjoy her being there.

So yeah, I like this episode. In fact, I dare say it’s better than most of the season openings that were two-part dramas. And coupled with the next episode, it left me in a very good place for the rest of the season.

Fun Facts:

Season Seven was the first season not to open with a two-parter. Instead, both this episode and “All Bottled Up” premiered on the same day.

Spike channels Rainbow Dash’s mimicry a bit by being able to style his own scales to match Rarity before he imitates her.

Twilight’s mirror has scenes from “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”, “Fall Weather Friends”, “Gauntlet of Fire”, “A Canterlot Wedding”, “Luna Eclipsed”, and the Season-Six-And-Later show opening. It also features a picture of Rarity and Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Owuliscious, Twilight and Moondancer, and…Discord and Celestia. 😛

In Pinkie Pie’s greatest act of hammerspace to date, she simply pulls a cord out of nowhere to deploy the entire party setup.

The crowd at the award ceremony for the “Heroes of Equestria” includes Starlight’s former cultists, the “new” Changelings, and Fluffy Clouds.

The “new” Changelings got voices in this episode. To go along with their new appearance, their voices are equally more pleasant.

One of Discord’s two appearances this season. And (sigh) he’s back to trolling Twilight.

Once Discord teleports out of the tea, Twilight quickly dumps it out. I wouldn’t drink anything he had been bathing in either.

Twilight’s fear about one Changeling deviating from the rest of the hive would ruin all of Starlight’s good intentions. The irony is that this possibility would be explored later this season in “To Change a Changeling”.

As a meta joke, this is apparently the first time ever Celestia has heard her own name being invoked in a pronouncement. 😛

Twilight’s fantasy about Starlight and Ember starts with them both calling each other’s names, slapping their arms together, and flexing…which is a knockoff of Dutch and Dillion’s meeting at the beginning of “Predator”.

The cuckoo clock that Starlight and Sunburst make in her fantasy has Flurry Heart for a cuckoo bird.

Somnambula is first mentioned in this episode in Twilight’s fantasy about Starlight and Sunburst.

Twilight’s fear about what will happen to Starlight and Sunburst is similar to the failed alchemy spell that Edward and Alphonse performed that left them both “crippled” in “Full Metal Alchemist”.

Starlight’s mirror has pictures from “Every Little Thing She Does”, “To Where and Back Again”, and “No Second Prances”.

Pinkie Pie also instantly cleans up the room with “vacuumspace”.

Rating:

4 Stars out of 5

Everything Wrong With “My Little Pony: The Movie”(2017) In the Time It Takes You to Read This

Tags

Applejack, Capper, Captain Celaeno, Cinema Sins, Everything Wrong With, Fizzlepop Berrytwist, Fluttershy, Grubber, humor, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, My Little Pony: The Movie, parody, Pinkie Pie, Princess Cadance, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Princess Skystar, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Spike, Storm King, Tempest Shadow, Twilight Sparkle

As always, this is a shameless knockoff of “Cinema Sins” and you should check out their vast collection on Youtube. They’re hilarious if you don’t mind nitpicking.

After years of eager anticipation and months of excitement buzz from previews, stills, and the soundtrack, the bronies and pegasisters finally got the feature film they craved and declared it to be overwhelmingly and astonishingly passable. Let’s see why!

—

Everything.

Wrong.

With.

“MY LITTLE PONY: THE MOVIE”

In the Time It Takes You to Read This or Less.

SPOILERS!

(duh)

—

Movie about “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” will be surprisingly void of ponies and Equestria, so shotgun blasts your eyeballs with pastels of ALL the ponies in the first ten minutes.

SIN COUNT: 1

Movie shows how dated its script is by featuring Starlight Glimmer, the show’s deuteroagonist who single-hoofedly saved everypony else in the main cast, in a completely non-speaking background pony role with less screen time than Derpy.

SIN COUNT: 2

Seven seasons in and you can’t highlight an episode with Twilight Sparkle unless it starts with her OCDing about something.

SIN COUNT: 3

(First close-up of Twilight Sparkle)

New animation style makes Twilight look like she’s on meth in every close up, and yet heartless animators give her nothing but close ups the rest of the film.

SIN COUNT: 4

(Twilight’s long, rambling proposal to the princesses)

For fans of the show in the audience, you know this is a par-for-the-course Twilight obsessive-compulsive nerd rant. For those who aren’t fans, this is the signal for you to check your watch and groan that the movie still has an hour and a half to go.

SIN COUNT: 5

(Pinkie Pie’s Discord-shaped balloon)

For the bronies in the audience, sorry. Tiny morsels of fanservice like this is all the filmmakers have left to throw to you after things like “Slice of Life”.

SIN COUNT: 6

(Shot of Fluttershy’s bird choir)

Should we ask why Fluttershy felt the need to put Angel Bunny in a bird costume and stick him in with the choir? Of course we should. Pondering things like this keeps us from asking the real question of why they bothered putting Fluttershy in this movie.

SIN COUNT: 7

(Tempest’s Airship arrives)

Movie features the mixed-media blending of 2D style and 3D style animation in the same scene. It was jarring and odd looking back in the late ’90s and it still is in 2017.

SIN COUNT: 8

(Grubber walks out to make his announcement)

Discount Olaf…or Equivalent Value Sid.

SIN COUNT: 9

(Tempest Shadow makes her first appearance)

Darth Neigh-der.

SIN COUNT: 10

Well, out of all of the characters they left out of the film from the show, they still kept the three non-Twilight alicorn princesses, so it’ll be nice to see them get to have some action to themselves for a chan-

(Cadance gets petrified)

SIN COUNT: 11

Ok, Cadance gets a lot of screen time anyway. It’s Celestia who really needs the counterweight. So I’m sure she’ll have a big role to-

(Celestia gets petrified)

Sigh…

SIN COUNT: 12

Alright, Luna is everyone’s favorite and she’s already in the air, so we’ll get to at least see-

(Luna gets petrified)

Celestiadamnit, movie!

SIN COUNT: 13

(Cadance’s screamed line while being petrified)

And that is Britt McKillip’s second and final line of the film. She had an easier time earning a paycheck for this film than Anna Paquin for “X-Men: Days of Future Past”.

SIN COUNT: 14

(Twilight catches Luna as she’s falling)

So, what would have happened if Twilight hadn’t caught Luna? She would have shattered, and…then Tempest would be screwed, because she needs all four alicorn princesses…unless she’d go get Flurry Heart to substitute.

SIN COUNT: 15

Tempest was such a smug equine she only brought exactly how many gem bomb thingees she would need. She learned nothing from that one episode of “The Simpsons” where Homer impersonates Krusty. “I told ya’ we shoulda bought more than four Obsidian Orbs!”

SIN COUNT: 16

Sigh…ok, let’s go over a brief list of all the ways Tempest’s plan should have failed immediately. 1. Cadance could have just stopped her Obsidian Orb in midair using telekinesis rather than a shield. 2. Luna can both turn into mist as well as into multiple individuals, both which would negate an orb. 3. Celestia could have simply flown to the Queen of the Hippogriffs herself rather than spent an excessively long time standing still in one spot attempting to explain the detailed plan to Luna. 4. The girls could have evoked their Rainbow Power forms and instantly annihilated the Storm King’s army as those are more powerful than all four alicorns combined…

SIN COUNT: 17…18…19…20

Tempest disables three princesses single-hoofedly but after messing up on the fourth one lets her minions decide things.

SIN COUNT: 21

“…hungry.” “Hungry?” “Hippos?”

Hasbro’s shameless plug of their own board game is only slightly more dignified than the movie “Battleship”.

SIN COUNT: 22

PINKIE PIE: (Crazed and picking up a skull) “Maybe THIS guy knows where we are!”

Insanity.

SIN COUNT: 23

SPIKE: “…And this cactus…” (Showing his rear end)

Damnit, children’s movie. You had to put in one butt joke, didn’t you?

SIN COUNT: 24

Pinkie Pie’s scene in the market attracts all sorts of unwanted attention, and yet we’re supposed to think Twilight was in the wrong for not suggesting this first later in the film.

SIN COUNT: 25

Capper suavely befriends and charms lost ponies, takes them back to his place, and then later means to sell them to individuals who would sell ponies to the highest bidder. Replace “ponies” with “young women” and this is probably the most disturbing thing in this entire film.

SIN COUNT: 26

CAPPER: “My apologies for the state of the litterbox.”

And a fecal related joke too? Shame on you!

SIN COUNT: 27

(On learning about Mount Aris)

Ponies now know their destination, how to get there, and three of them are airborne including the only one who is actually a target, and yet continue to use the ground and transportation for locomotion the remainder of this film.

SIN COUNT: 28

Twilight attempts to get girls away from pony trafficker as quickly as possible, and yet we’re supposed to think Twilight was in the wrong for this later in the film.

SIN COUNT: 29

Capper’s life and moral outlook is changed by a unicorn putting two buttons on his jacket. Granted, if this were real life, that would actually be somewhat plausible. As this is a cartoon, that’s a sinning.

SIN COUNT: 30

5. Twilight could have instantly frozen all attackers in place like she did with the Hooffields and McColts. 6. Discord could have instantly snapped his fingers and freed the princesses while imprisoning Tempest. 7. Starlight Glimmer could have knocked several of the airships out of the sky by herself, especially since she can fly and teleport. 8. Shining Armor could have accompanied Cadance to Canterlot since “everypony” was supposed to be there and used their combined shield to blow Tempest all the way to Klugetown…

SIN COUNT: 31…32…33…34

It’s understandable that Captain Celaeno and her crew wouldn’t waste their only allowed meal break to throw ponies overboard. What’s not understandable is why they invite them to join them and feed them as well before planning to throw them overboard once finished.

SIN COUNT: 35

The Storm King forced Celaeno and her sky pirates into a life of menial servitude but not only left them all of their weapons but apparently all of their loot as well.

SIN COUNT: 36

Pirates regain their impulse to be pirates and decide to revolt against a tyrant because someone essentially says: “Why don’t you go back to being pirates?”

SIN COUNT: 37

Rainbow Dash thoughtlessly performs a Sonic Rainboom that acts as a massive signal flare to Tempest Shadow, and we’re supposed to think Twilight was in the wrong for not wanting her to perform it later in this film.

SIN COUNT: 38

When the Sonic Rainboom goes off, Tempest’s airship is close enough to actually distinguish the pirates’ airship, which means that it must have still been in visible range when they took off from Klugetown. Yet she and her minions continued to act as if they needed Capper’s directions to find the ship, which they now catch up with in less than half a minute.

SIN COUNT: 39

Movie teases Rainbow Dash learning how to fight with a sword with Celaeno and never delivers.

SIN COUNT: 40

Pirates and pirate ships are an easy way to inject fun into a film…unless you only want them for toys and have them instantly defeated as a result like this movie did.

SIN COUNT: 41

Tempest totally destroys pirate ship with Celaeno, her crew, and Capper on board and yet fails to kill anyone. That horn is busted.

SIN COUNT: 42

(Rarity’s drama queen fits)

Over-the-top Drama Queen Rarity is hilarious. Mediocre, slowly-animated, subdued Drama Queen Rarity makes non-bronies in the audience check their time and thank Celestia the movie is over half over.

SIN COUNT: 43

(Princess Skystar appears)

Discount Dory.

SIN COUNT: 44

Kingdom of Hippogriffs, who later in the film show one of them is strong enough to subdue five of the Storm King’s minions at once, transformed themselves into Kingdom of Merponies because…TOYS! I mean, REASONS!

SIN COUNT: 45

The Mane Six would still asphyxiate rather quickly from carbon dioxide poisoning in those small bubbles.

SIN COUNT: 46

Kristen Chenowith, the voice of Princess Skystar, stared alongside Idina Menzel, also known as Elsa from “Frozen”, in the original run of “Wicked” and later as Maleficent in “Descendants”, and yet filmmakers only give her half a song.

SIN COUNT: 47

9. Equestria is allies with the Yaks, who wouldn’t take kindly to the threat of invasion and would stomp on the invaders. 10. Equestria is allies with the Changelings, who wouldn’t take kindly to the threat of invasion and would devour the invaders. 11. Equestria is allies with the Dragons, who wouldn’t take kindly to the threat of invasion and would stomp, incinerate, and then devour the invaders. 12. Sunset Shimmer could have popped back into Equestria to lend a hoof…which would have been awesome…

SIN COUNT: 48…49…50…51

TWILIGHT: “We can’t just dance around with con artists, make Sonic Rainbooms in the sky, and expect everything to work out!”

Twilight points out everything wrong with film’s own resolution.

SIN COUNT: 52

(Spike escapes Storm King minion by lighting him on fire)

Apparently so long as this happens from a perspective of 100 feet away, it can stay a PG movie, because a similar shot is used later in the film when Spike is turned into an incinerator.

SIN COUNT: 53

(Twilight’s prison chamber)

Tempest Shadow is such a Darth Vader ripoff she even stole the Carbonite Freezing Chamber from “The Empire Strikes Back”.

SIN COUNT: 54

Twilight and Tempest make it back to Canterlot via an airship only about ten minutes faster than the rest of the protagonists who are ground-bound and apparently took the time to bake a gigantic Trojan Horse cake and build the wagon to put it on first.

SIN COUNT: 55

Is Songbird Serenade being impressed into singing like a real songbird? If so, why are these big white things ordering her to sing only to order her to shut up soon after?

SIN COUNT: 56

Also, Twilight, for some reason, focuses on Songbird’s misfortune although she’s surrounded by countless friends in much worse circumstances, including the CMCs.

SIN COUNT: 57

The Storm King is easily one of the most entertaining characters in the film, so naturally he only gets two scenes. …Wait, huh?

SIN COUNT: 58

Evil army of brutes that conquered hundreds of ponies in ten minutes, a third of whom could fly and use weather as a weapon and another third of whom could use magic lasers, now gets totally defeated by thirteen individuals. Equestria seriously needs a real military.

SIN COUNT: 59

Alright, which of you folks at home predicted that the Storm King would never honor his promise and would end up backstabbing Temp-alright, alright, you can all put your hands down.

SIN COUNT: 60

TWILIGHT: (On grabbing Tempest) “Hold on!”

Telling a character with hooves to hold on to something. For that matter, how is Twilight holding Tempest right now?

SIN COUNT: 61

So the ultimate reason Fluttershy and Applejack were in this film was to help form a pony-chain just long enough to get the Staff of S…S…MacGuffin, whatever.

SIN COUNT: 62

Not counting King Sombra, “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic” franchise is finally ballsy enough to kill a villain on screen…and wastes it on a villain who spent so little time being malevolent and genuinely despicable that audience is fairly blase. Honestly, Tempest Shadow being killed would have left more impact.

SIN COUNT: 63

Magic MacGuffin Staff has a Comic Reset on it to nullify any of the drama that accompanied Canterlot Palace and most of Equestria being destroyed.

SIN COUNT: 64

Sia’s “Rainbow”. A song explicitly written for this movie by a singer who had a pony version of her made for the film in the single greatest act of MLP:FIM fandom that will ever be done.

SIN COUNT: 63

Tempest Shadow is worried she won’t fit in with the rest of the Equestrians at the party because she has a broken horn…instead of fact there are countless multitudes she tormented, enslaved, terrorized, and possibly killed.

SIN COUNT: 64

TEMPEST: “…Fizzlepop Berrytwist.”

No sin here. Like Pinkie Pie says, that’s awesome.

SIN COUNT: 63

(Discord appearing in foreground and background of end credits)

Don’t worry if you felt cheated by the background appearances of Starlight Glimmer, Trixie Lulamoon, and Cheese Sandwich in this movie. Feel cheated by this instead!

SIN COUNT: 64

(Credits scene where ponies are playing pinata shaped like the Storm King’s severed head)

That is quite honestly morbid.

SIN COUNT: 65

FINAL COUNT: 65

SENTENCE: MOICHANDIZING (“‘Moichandizing’? What’s that?” “Merchandising! We put the picture’s name on everything! Ha-ha! Merchandising! Merchandising! Where the real money from the movie is made!”)

---

 

(Scene where Tempest Shadow walks up to the open door to Capper’s house and looks in grinning)

JACK TORRENCE: Heeeeeere’s…JOHNNY!

 

---

 

(Scene of Pinkie Pie going crazy in the desert)

RAOUL DUKE: We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold…

 

---

 

(Scene where Rainbow Dash throws the Storm King Rulebook off the pirate airship)

ELIZABETH SWANN: Hang the code, and hang the rules! They’re more like guidelines anyway!

 

---

 

(Scene where Twilight gets the girls to distract Skystar and looks back to the Pearl)

HAL 9000: …What are you doing, Dave?

 

---

 

(Scene where Tempest Shadow gets in Twilight Sparkle’s face while caged)

JOKER: You want to know how I got these scars?

 

---

 

(Scene where Twilight catches Tempest Shadow before she can fly off the balcony)

TWILIGHT: Hold on!

TEMPEST: Why are you saving me?

DALEK VOICE (V.O.): I…SHOW…MERCY.

 

---

 

(Scene where the Storm King is about to petrify the girls, Tempest sees it, and runs to save them)

DARTH VADER: No…NOOOOOO!

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Reviews ~ My Little Pony: The Movie

Tags

Applejack, Capper, Captain Celaeno, Derpy Hooves, Festival of Friendship, Fizzlepop Berrytwist, Fluttershy, Grubber, Muffins, My Little Pony, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, My Little Pony: The Movie, opinion, Pinkie Pie, Princess Cadance, Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, Princess Skystar, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Queen Novo, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, review, Songbird Serenade, Spike, Storm King, Tempest Shadow, Twilight Sparkle

(Spoilers obviously follow, so you’ve been warned.)

Synopsis:

The first Festival of Friendship, a new event proposed by Princess Twilight Sparkle, is upon Equestria, and she is heading up the festivities in Canterlot by getting pop singer Songbird Serenade to perform; but, true to her normal neurotic form, is fearful that her own “magic of friendship” isn’t good enough to highlight the event as much as it deserves. As the rest of the Mane Six and Spike try to reassure her that they’re all there to help her, a dark cloud bearing a fleet of airships descends on Canterlot. They reveal themselves to be the armies of the Storm King, a monster obsessed with world conquest, and are led by his greatest minion: a scarred unicorn with a broken horn named Commander Tempest Shadow. After Princess Celestia refuses her ultimatum for an unconditional surrender and all four princesses giving up their magic to her, she shows off her astonishing power even with a broken horn by easily defeating and imprisoning her, Luna, and Cadance with special gem bombs that immobilize the victims in crystal statues. She nearly does the same to Twilight when Rainbow Dash saves her (freezing Derpy instead), and she, Spike, and the Mane Six manage to escape in the chaos by falling into a river. On learning of this, Tempest goes off in pursuit, revealing that in exchange for giving the Storm King all the magic in Equestria she’ll get her own broken horn restored.

On reaching solid ground, Twilight directs the Mane Six to follow a direction Celestia attempted to call out to Luna before she was imprisoned and find the “Queen of the Hippos” past the Badlands beyond the borders of Equestria. After crossing a barren desert and arriving in a run down city full of scavengers only interested in making money, they are nearly accosted by a group of locals wanting to capture and sell them until they are bailed out by a local anthropomorphic cat named Capper. In spite of Twilight not trusting him, the Mane Six go with him back to his place, and while inside she finds a map in his possession that indicates what they really need to find is the “Queen of the Hippogriffs”, creatures that are part eagle and part pony. They are about to leave for their kingdom on Mount Aris when debt collectors for Capper arrive, revealing he only helped them because he intended to sell them to pay a debt of his own, along with Tempest and her own minions. As a result of the confusion the Mane Six and Spike escape aboard a departing airship. Tempest demands that Capper tell her where they were headed, but Capper, on thinking of how Rarity repaired his coat and wanted nothing in return, lies about their destination; yet is dragged along by Tempest until they’re found.

On board the airship, which is crewed by anthropomorphic birds in the service of the Storm King, the girls are discovered. On being confronted, their captain, Celaeno, reveals they used to be sky pirates but were impressed into menial cargo labor by him. Rainbow Dash and the others, except Twilight who feels it is a waste of time, encourage and convince the pirates to get their old spirit back and resume their former lifestyles in rebellion against the Storm King, and in the process take them to their destination. Unfortunately, Rainbow decides to cap things off by performing a Sonic Rainboom for them, and as a result the blast leads Tempest’s own airship right to them. While Celaeno stalls, refusing to tell Tempest about the girls in spite of her threats, the rest of the Mane Six escape. In retribution, Tempest blows up their airship with the bird pirates and Capper on board, although the group manages to survive.

The girls and Spike arrive on Mount Aris only to find the kingdom long abandoned, but are attracted by a voice to a pond in the middle of the kingdom where they see a mysterious glowing figure vanish in the water. On jumping in after her, the pond sucks them into a sealed underwater cavern, but the figure rescues them from drowning and reveals herself to be Princess Skystar, seemingly a merpony. She shows the girls to the rest of their kingdom and introduces them to her mother, Queen Novo. It is revealed that the merponies were once the hippogriffs, but when the Storm King attacked them years ago they used the power of a magic pearl to transform the entire kingdom into merponies, and they made a new kingdom under the ocean. She does the same to the Mane Six and Spike, which prompts Twilight Sparkle to ask for the pearl to use it to transform the citizens of Equestria into creatures powerful enough to defeat the Storm King’s minions. Novo refuses, both due to mistrust as well as fears the pearl would be lost to the Storm King, although Skystar extends an offer to the girls to live in the safety of the kingdom instead. When they move to leave and Skystar looks unhappy that she’s lost a chance to have anyone to play with, Twilight suggests the girls have fun with her for a few minutes. As a result, Pinkie Pie and the girls end up enthusing the whole kingdom, Novo included, and persuades her to let the girls use the pearl after all–only to find out soon after that Twilight used the whole thing as a diversion to try and steal the pearl. Furious, Novo returns them to their former forms and banishes them from their kingdom. The girls angrily confront Twilight and her behavior; pointing out that since she left Equestria she’s constantly been refusing to give friendship a chance in helping them on their journey as she doesn’t believe that’s “good enough” to help them succeed/survive; and Twilight, bitter at both her failure and how she’s just ruined Equestria, ends up lashing back at the girls for not going along with her and calling them friends she doesn’t need. The rest of the Mane Six, hurt by the comments, leave Twilight and Spike on their own; and while Twilight begins to sink into depression over how she treated them on top of everything else, the Storm King’s minions come upon her and capture her.

Caged on board Tempest’s airship, the unicorn mocks Twilight at having no friends to help her now and boasting that by rejecting friendship and making herself into who she is today she’s superior to her. She reveals that as a filly her friendship with two other young unicorns caused her to get into an accident with an Ursa Minor that left her scarred and without a horn, and that they ended up abandoning her on seeing her unable to do magic; leading her to believe the only individual she could ever rely on was herself. On hearing this, Twilight realizes she’s been making the same mistakes Tempest made in not having faith in friendship with others and doing whatever she could to succeed, and, in spite of the unicorn’s heartless and self-interested demeanor, feels sympathy for her.  Meanwhile, the girls learn of Twilight’s capture but feel unable to do anything, until they’re joined by Capper, Captain Celaeno, the rest of the pirates, and even Princess Skystar (transformed back into a hippogriff), who agree to help effect a rescue.

Twilight is taken back to the Canterlot Palace, now the domain of the Storm King himself who has gone about destroying the rest of Equestria in her absence. She and the rest of the princesses have their magic forcefully removed and put into his staff. The Mane Six and their new friends attack soon after and manage to clear a path through the Storm King’s army all the way to the palace, at which point he summons a massive tornado with his new power to block them from getting any closer. Tempest tells the Storm King to honor his half of the deal and pledges to continue to serve him with her restored power, yet he simply says he has no more use for her power and never intended to give her back her horn at all. After a failed attempt to do away with her blasts the Storm King and the staff to one side while Tempest is nearly knocked into the tornado itself, Twilight ignores her chance to get the staff  and instead, much to Tempest’s own surprise, rescues her; telling her this is what friendship is really like. The Mane Six use Pinkie Pie’s massive cake cannon to fire themselves into the Storm King before he can finish both Twilight and Tempest, and with their help Twilight grabs the staff before both she and the Storm King are sucked into the tornado. Twilight is able to stop it using the staff’s magic and goes back to the others, but the Storm King also survives and has one last gem bomb to try and trap Twilight and the girls. Seeing him about to throw it, Tempest jumps into the path of the gem bomb to intercept the blast; imprisoning both her and the Storm King before they fall off a parapet. The Storm King hits the ground and shatters, but Twilight saves Tempest again before she can fall.

Using the staff, Twilight frees Tempest, the three alicorn princesses, and Derpy, and restores everything the Storm King and his army destroyed. Songbird Serenade performs as intended for the new audience, which now includes Capper, Celaeno and her pirates, Skystar, and even Queen Novo and the rest of the hippogriffs. Tempest, ashamed both of her actions as well as the fact she’s still a unicorn without a horn, attempts to leave discretely, but Twilight stops her…assuring her that her horn is just as strong as the pony who owns it and that “the party” could always use more friends. She ends up using her broken horn to make fireworks and, to her own embarrassment, gives out her real name to her new friends (Fizzlepop Berrytwist), which Pinkie Pie declares the best name ever.

Review:

Well…here it is.

After months of hype, anticipation, trailers, teasers, and waiting…we got “My Little Pony: The Movie”, an actual full length movie of the characters from Equestria rather than the Equestria Girls spinoff. For weeks the fans had poured over art, announcement of voice actors, clips in trailers, and music from the soundtrack. There were prequels, merchandise, and interviews abound, and all building to this one moment. No one knew exactly what to expect. Would this boldly go in new directions? Armed with a PG rating, would it push the content envelope? Would this be the most epic story of all time? Would it be “Hollywoodized”? Would it have some sort of major event to change the show forever?

Well, finally it came out. And what’s my own verdict?

Mmm…pretty good.

On a personal level, I was a tad disappointed. All of this hype, work, partnering with Lionsgate, and three years worth of development for a film that is, quite basically, a giant drama-based episode.  It had some things that were a little better than average but some things that were a little worse than average, and…well, let’s get into it.

Let’s start with the artwork.  It went in a slightly different direction from the show’s art. On one hand, I like a few details. The new animation of perspective of pegasi flying gives a new appreciation for it, as on the show itself they’re usually only flying at a side profile. Rainbow Dash’s Sonic Rainboom looked amazing. And the perspectives used in “Open Up Your Eyes” enhanced the presentation.

Yet…there was some bad stuff too. The “cruder” animation on the show allowed for more cartoonish rapid movement. In this movie, everyone “takes their time” moving. There’s nothing rapid and fast that happens on screen. Even the fight sequences seem to be slowed down.

Also, none of the characters move rapidly anymore as they would on the show either. Body language on the show is such a major part of actions and reactions, along with exaggerated facial expressions. In this movie, they do something bizarre for an animated film…close ups. Lots of close ups. They attempt to suddenly make the characters emote through facial reactions alone. And, to me, it doesn’t work well. Especially since it constantly happens to Twilight Sparkle, and she honestly looks tired, emaciated, and, dare I say, a bit ugly in most of the film.

The thing is most of this new animation seems designed to enhance the new characters and their own way of acting and reacting, which is at odds with the original pony characters. The end result is that they end up standing out while the ponies we know and love are boring. More on that soon…

As for the music, Sia’s “Rainbow” is, naturally, beautiful. Nothing less than I’d expect from the co-writer of Zootopia’s “Try Everything”. If the movie gets any acclaim at all, it might take home a Best Original Song Oscar. As for the rest of the music…it’s there. I think Daniel Ingram is rather talented but his songs on the show usually “average out”. I don’t feel there were any “dud” songs in this film, and I’m so grateful it didn’t include a “Twilight is Unhappy” song. But ironically, I think he shot himself in the foot. Vocals are usually the biggest part of his songs on the show. He mentioned that he was excited to get to work with a full orchestra in this movie, but that ironically drowned out some of the vocal appeal. On the high end I feel “You Need a Friend Like Me” had a quality of charm to it, while “Open Up Your Eyes”, like most of Tempest Shadow’s lines, was monotone and “disinterested-sounding”.  I was crossing my fingers for another “Luna’s Future” in this movie, but…nope.

Character-wise… One of the big problems with Megan McCarthy is that she usually tends to focus on Twilight Sparkle and ignore everypony else in the Mane Six except to be used as gags or one-liners. This movie didn’t make that mistake…kind of. Twilight is still the focus but the girls get to contribute…a little. Pinkie Pie is definitely in position number two for getting the most focus, as she easily has more stand-out screen time than any of the other girls. Almost too much. The scene with the confrontation with Twilight seems like Applejack should have been the one to deliver it, but instead it’s Pinkie Pie of all characters–one of the least confrontational out of the set. She’s highlighted with Princess Skystar to boot. Conversely, Rainbow Dash gets highlighted with Captain Celaeno, but aside from a brief cider gag at the beginning of the movie and her Sonic Rainboom she doesn’t really get much that stands out. Rarity doesn’t really get much, although her brief 15 second scene with Capper was important. Yet she suffers the worst for the animation style, because even her drama queen bits seem underplayed when that’s supposed to be over-the-top to a hilarious degree. But Applejack and Fluttershy are just along for the ride, and Fluttershy has so little to do she uses her old “yay” joke twice. Neither are really utilized or even have a reason to be in the film other than they need all six of them. Aside from that, Spike serves his usual role of letting Twilight say her emotional state rather than needing to show it or imply it, and Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and Princess Cadance are only around to be Worf Effect #1, Worf Effect #2, and Worf Effect #3…as usual. The latter really disappoints me. I thought they would have had something for those three to do after all this time. Now…I realize we need more episodes like “A Royal Problem” and “Once Upon a Zeppelin” just to make them stand out as something besides characters to get instantly smacked down by every villain. (I feel really bad for Britt McKillip, who probably was able to come in one day for an hour to do her lines. :/)

The characters who really stand out are the ones for the movie. At first I was wondering why they got billing over the actual show cast, but…on seeing the movie, they deserved it. They had the most energy and interest, although I’m not sure if they were directed or written that way or it came off from their personalities. Taye Diggs’ Capper ended up having more charisma to him than I thought he would. Michael Cena’s Grubber was such a good Olaf imitation that the voice acting managed to make up for much of his lamer jokes. Liev Schreiber’s Storm King ended up having a delightful Adorable Psycho ring to it that reminded me of Lord Dominator from “Wander Over Yonder”. And I loved Kristen Chenowith’s Princess Skystar. She reminded me of kind of a mix of Dory from “Finding Nemo” and Pearl from “Steven Universe”.

Yet even that got ruined a bit by not making effective use of everyone. Kazumi Evans, Rarity’s singing voice, is one of the better vocal talents on the show and yet it was Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie who got songs to themselves. Likewise, Kristen Chenowith is a great singer and yet she only got “half a number”. The Storm King was probably my favorite of the new characters and his childish demeanor could have made for a lot of entertaining bits…and how many scenes did he get? TWO.

And of course the pony of the hour…Fizzlepop Berrytwist AKA Tempest Shadow.

In terms of persona, she definitely managed to pull off an aura of looking dark, cold, and merciless. She sold herself not only as being ruthless but also personally dangerous; a character who not only looked intimidating but was. She had the advantage of being a character not really used on the show yet: a dark, emotionless “dark lord” type. And in the scenes where her eyes go wide and she grins malevolently…whew.

And yet, Emily Blunt’s voice acting “killed” a lot of her persona. I don’t blame her. She tried. Tempest is mostly monotone throughout the whole film, and I know why. Her voice actor was likely trying to make her sound cold and ruthless like a Darth Vader type. The problem is…Emily Blunt’s voice is too pleasant to pull that off. Rather than sound dark, Tempest sounds bored or disinterested.

As a villainous character, I will say I like her better than Starlight Glimmer, and out of all the villains on the show who have done Heel Turn Faces she’s the most complete. Unlike Starlight, Tempest had a real tragedy happen to her. Left scarred and deformed trying to do something for her “friends”, reduced to being a “freak” of a pony, having lost the one thing that made unicorns unique… It’s understandable how she could have gone down a path where she no longer cared about what happened to the rest of Equestria so long as she got what she wanted, or even wanted them to suffer feeling she had been cast out. Furthermore, she’s clearly made a name for herself and learned to survive and even thrive in the world outside of Equestria. Therefore, the real reason she may want her horn back is because, on a deep level, she doesn’t feel like a “real unicorn” unless she has it. Perhaps a part of her emotionally scarred does still long to be accepted like everypony else. She gets a few other subtle moments too. When the Storm King starts abusing the magic he’s stolen for selfish, childish reasons, Tempest is visibly hesitant and uneasy. Earlier she chastised the citizens of Equestria for “wasting” the power on parties, but now she seems to realize the true waste is to make it the plaything of a child-like tyrant. That using this sort of power just to destroy and show yourself off really isn’t as great as she thought it was. Even before the Storm King makes it clear he never planned to live up to his end of the deal, she’s starting to wonder if giving him what he wanted was a good idea to begin with, horn or no horn. And rather than spontaneously turn around, what pushes her “back into the light” is seeing Twilight abandon her chance to save Equestria to rescue her after all of her persecution and taunting.

Finally, the main plot, and the main “lesson” of the movie. To be honest, I didn’t think much of it on the first viewing. I thought it was alright, but basic and unremarkable. Yet on seeing it a second time, as I do often with many MLP episodes, I saw a lot more to it.

The big trend of the series has been to make the villains, especially ones who will be redeemed, “alternate versions of Twilight Sparkle”. Sunset Shimmer was definitely that. Starlight Glimmer was that in a lot of ways. Even Moondancer was a “Twilight that could have been”. This movie did it a bit different. Rather than trying to juxtapose an alternate Twilight Sparkle onto Fizzlepop Berrytwist, they do something more subtle and focus that it’s the choice both of them are making that is bad.

Twilight is no stranger to being neurotic, but her problem in this movie is that once she’s moved out of her “comfort zone” she started to doubt the power of friendship. No longer in the realm of Equestria, she starts feeling like she’s in a sphere where the old rules don’t apply anymore. And, as the film goes on, it progressively gets worse. With Capper, she was just being overly cautious, and she ended up being that way with good reason as he did end up betraying them…although she didn’t have faith that friendship with the girls would win him over. With Celaeno and the pirates, she’s to the point of not even wanting to bother with their help. It’s the other girls who take all the initiative. Finally, with Queen Novo and Princess Skystar, she starts to cross the line. She does something downright dishonest and unethical, feeling it’s the only way to succeed outside of Equestria.

There’s a very interesting detail in the scene where she gets in an argument with the girls. Right when she reaches the zenith of her anger and says she doesn’t need friends like the Mane Six…her horn sparks–just like Fizzlepop Berrytwist’s.

That’s what drove the rest of the plot home for me from there. Twilight, over the course of the film, was gradually “turning into Tempest Shadow”; making the same mistakes she made. The real “punch” to the “Open Up Your Eyes” scene soon after that isn’t supposed to be Fizzlepop oozing her malevolence and power over Twilight, but Twilight realizing what she had been doing and how she was going down the same road she once went down. From that point on in the film, she starts to force herself to turn around in spite of being in the worst situation yet. In spite of the fact Fizzlepop still treats her cruelly and as a fool, she expresses her sympathy to her for what happened to her horn.

Yet the biggest movement happens several minutes later–when Twilight is given the chance to get her magic back and end the invasion of the Storm King if she’ll let Fizzlepop die.

In all honesty, it’s somewhat a condensed version of Season Four, and in particular an alternate version of “Twilight’s Kingdom”. In that one, Twilight had her “virtue” put to the test when Discord betrayed the Mane Six to help Tirek. In terms of the drama, it’s a bit weaker since the rest of the girls making friends had to be emphasized, and because the Storm King, in all honesty, is a subpar villain in terms of raw malevolence to Tirek. Yet nevertheless it still does a bit better in terms of who is redeemed. In Discord’s case, it was a sign of Twilight’s virtue that she was willing to forgive someone who honestly didn’t deserve it and who knew he didn’t deserve it. In this one…even after everything that happened and as cold and ruthless as she was, Twilight honestly felt pity for Fizzlepop–that she “deserved a true friend”. In “Twilight’s Kingdom”, you felt good for Twilight for making that choice in the end. In “My Little Pony: The Movie”, you feel good for Twilight for making that choice and a bit good for Fizzlepop for getting that act of compassion. So even though it’s a bit over old territory, like most plotlines that MLP:FIM uses that are from the old cartoon playbook, they manage to put their own little spin on it.

So to sum up, at it’s core, it had a nice lesson about holding true to your principles even when times get difficult and you’re forced out of your “comfort zone” that I felt was expressed a bit better and more mature than the season-wide moral of Season Four; but for all the colorful animation, the fact that everyone seems to move slower and be more subdued, to say nothing of the fact the villain seemed too childish to be taken too seriously, the climax lacked the dramatic punch that “Twilight’s Kingdom” did. The new characters are a lot of fun, even if they do the old deal of degenerating the rest of the Mane Six into placeholders. It almost feels like an original animated film rather than a “My Little Pony” movie with how little ponies, or even Equestria, even factors into everything. We never even see Ponyville. Nevertheless, the movie did take the bold step of actually killing a character on screen, and Sia’s original song was phenomenal. At the end of the day, you feel good that Twilight Sparkle used the staff in time to keep Fizzlepop Berrytwist from shattering; and since she was such a domineering, cold, and ruthless villain for most of it…that means the plot did its job.

I don’t think this film will end up attracting too many more to “the Herd”, but for the brony community it will be a nice bit of entertainment. Now the only question is where do things go from here. After taking three seasons off to devote himself to this movie, Jayson Theissen is back in the director’s chair for the main series on a show that has changed quite a bit from what it was when this movie began to be conceived. A feature film is normally the “kiss of death” to an animated series. Whether or not the show will continue is as up in the air as if we’ll ever see Capper, Captain Celaeno, Princess Skystar, or Fizzlepop Berrytwist ever again.

Fun Facts:

Based on the timeline of the movie’s announcement, the film began production around the end of Season Four. This is appropriate, as both Jayson Theissen, the director, and Megan McCarthy, the writer, handed over responsibilities to other newer show staff around this time. Thiessen, along with James Wootton, was the director of all MLP:FIM episodes until “The Cutie Map”, at which point Denny Lu, Tim Stuby, and Mike Myhre took over the reins. McCarthy was one of the show’s original writers and is responsible for the first two Equestria Girls movies, “A Canterlot Wedding”, and “Twilight’s Kingdom”. Considering the fact that Starlight Glimmer appears only as a background character in a few scenes, it’s fair to say that this movie was made only with up-to-Season-Four in mind.

While only a few members of the show’s regular cast have speaking roles, there are a number of odd cameos. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom are in a cage in one scene, and Apple Bloom appears very briefly in the opening. Starlight Glimmer and Trixie Lulamoon appear as background characters and even highlight one of the stills in the credits, but neither have speaking lines or any other actions in the movie. Discord fails to appear, but in the beginning Pinkie Pie makes a balloon Discord, and both his silhouette and him in the background appear in the credits. Very few of these characters get any speaking lines. Ironically, the most infamous “muted” character, Muffins/Derpy, gets plot relevant device in this movie.

The first time Canterlot Palace has had two thrones of equal size and stature in it for Celestia and Luna. In Season Seven, Celestia and Luna sit on the same enlarged throne.

Britt McKillip, voice of Princess Cadance, has a grand total of two lines in the entire film.

While never stated directly on the show, it’s canon that Cadance was adopted by Princess Celestia as a filly. Her reaction to Cadance being “crystalized” is one of the few moments that seems to punctuate that relationship.

The movie hints that the alicorns of Equestria are themselves the ultimate source of magic in Equestria. This was vaguely referenced way back in Season Three’s “Magical Mystery Cure” when part of the reason Twilight became an alicorn is because she created new magic, and the book version of “The Journal of the Two Sisters” had the unicorns of Equestria get their magic restored when Celestia and Luna (both alicorns) gained their Cutie Marks.

When Capper suggests that the “illness” the Mane Six have will cause those infected to have their extremities fall off, the fish man grabs for his nether regions off screen.

The sounds made by the spell when Fizzlepop attempts to contact the Storm King resemble old 56K dial-up modems.

In the movie’s official prequel, it is revealed that Fizzlepop Berrytwist was the one who caused Queen Novo to hide herself and her kingdom when she and Grubber first attempted to steal her pearl, by pretending to be homeless and destitute travelers in need of shelter. The queen initially thought she’d make a good playmate for Princess Skystar. In effect, it shows another parallel between Twilight and Tempest–in Twilight’s case the incident caused her to turn around, while in Tempest’s case the incident led her to believe she was at the “point of no return” and where she became a monster. The prequel, however, is somewhat at odds with the movie version as well as the show’s timeline. It hints that the reason Fizzlepop joined with the Storm King was partially because he and Grubber appreciated her power in spite of her broken horn, and there was some indication that she thought of Grubber as her only friend. In the movie, however, she treats him like a disposable lackey. On an additional note, the prequel is told entirely from Fizzlepop’s perspective, so that her real name is never mentioned.

Sia is so far the only person ever to play the pony version of themselves. Her Cutie Mark bears some resemblance to that of Countess Coloratura from ‘The Mane Attraction”, indicating extremely musical Equestrians may share similar Cutie Marks.

Fizzlepop Berrytwist shares many similarities with Darth Vader. She abandoned her own identity when she turned to evil, changing her name to Tempest Shadow and becoming “more machine than man”. She’s scarred and unable to use her full potential as a result. The area where she cages Twilight Sparkle is similar to the carbonite pit in “The Empire Strikes Back”. She uses “Force Lightning” as her primary weapon. Finally, she’s seduced by an offer of power by her master, and in the end sacrifices herself for the sake of the protagonist as part of her redemption.

Fizzlepop Berrytwist’s movements and demeanor are very similar to Maud Pie’s, including her way of walking, keeping her head still when talking, and even her Crystal-Pony-like eyelashes.

After being fired out of the Confetti Cake Cannon, when Pinkie Pie crashes into Fluttershy she emits a “squee”.

The show “killed a villain” arguably as early as Season Three with King Sombra (ignoring the IDW Comic), but he was portrayed so subsentient and as such a force of darkness rather than an individual that I don’t feel that counted. To me, the first real death on screen happened in this movie with the Storm King. Way to use the PG rating. 🙂

The actual “Queen of the Hippos” appears in the end credits.

Rating:

3.5 Stars out of 5