Keep in mind, he used to watch a show where the opening title sequence involved Daniel-San, the original Karate Kid, jumping from a torpedo launched from a submarine to grab Mr. Miyagi hanging upside down from the axle of a prop propeller airplane.
Why couldn't they have made THAT into a movie instead of the one with Hillary Swank?
After the jump, he'll break down another episode and discuss what makes it good, what makes it bad, and what makes it just outright crazy. This week's theme? Nostalgia, remembrance, and growing up. Well, that and seeing how you design the Statue of Liberty so it's actually a horse. Yeah, madness awaits.
We start with the CMC (Cutie Mark Crusaders for those who forgot, it's been a while) doing their latest stunt to get their "cutie marks." In this case, it's homemade zip-lines. Now, two things:
1) If my understanding of cutie marks is correct (and yes, I've given this some thought as I try to puzzle this universe out), a cutie mark is something that makes an individual unique and special. For instance, Mr. and Mrs. Cake don't have the same type of cake on their flanks, one has carrot cakes and the other has cupcakes. Of course, one of them is also blue, so maybe my whole theory is off. But anyway.
If a cutie mark shows you being uniquely special at something, maybe attempting to do things as a group isn't the best way to discover that? They climb rocks tied together, they snorkel together, and this time they're actually tied to each other as they go down the zip-line. Unless they're attempting to all get the exact same mark, you'd think they'd switch up who does what each time.
2) Where the heck are their parents that these kids are allowed to build their own zip-line? ...actually, that's a good question. We've seen Rarity's parents, but Applejack and Apple Bloom live with Granny Smith, and Scootaloo...well, I don't think we even know where that kid lives much less ever seen her family. ...is she an orphan?
Okay, we're getting dark here. The zip-line fails, and the CMC determine that perhaps they're approaching the whole thing the wrong way (duh) and should talk to others about how they got their cutie marks.
I did chuckle a bit at the line "No matter what we do, we never get our cutie marks...and surprisingly often, we're covered in tree sap."
The kids start out to speak to Rainbow Dash (that's one thing we know about Scootaloo is she worships Rainbow Dash) about her cutie mark when they have a quick run-in with Applejack.
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| See what I did there? |
1) Apple Bloom's in elementary school. Who lets a kid that young go off by themselves?
2) Someone got paid to draw that thing in the background in this next picture.
Someone got paid to design a horse version of the Statue of Liberty. I'm not sure HOW it's standing up like that, or how it'd be gripping a torch (apparently it's just stuck on there like someone shoved a paintbrush into a Styrofoam dowel), but it just boggles my mind that some one's art assignment for the day was "hey, figure out how to draw the Statue of Liberty as a horse."
It's pretty obvious she doesn't initially fit in (since everybody talks like Thurston Howell the Third, including the women), and despite her best efforts, there are things that "Manehattanites" just don't understand. Things like "What's a rooster?" Seriously.
Applejack's feeling homesick the next morning as she watches the sun rise (her depressed "cock-a-doodle-doo" is actually a sweet moment), when the sudden appearance of a rainbow pointed right back at her home helps her decide it's time to go back. Yes, a rainbow. Don't get ahead of me.
So Applejack runs home, and the moment she arrives, her cutie mark appears because that's the moment she "knew who she was."
The CMC move on, and the next pony they encounter is Fluttershy (who causes them to crash again as she helps some ducklings across the path). Now, since this is a flashback episode, of course we're going to hear how she got her cutie mark. It turns out, Fluttershy owes her cutie mark to Rainbow Dash, which excites Scootaloo to no end, so that's how we start her story.
It turns out Fluttershy did once live up in that cloud city we saw before (no word on if she can eat rainbows like Pinkie Pie did), but apparently she struggled a lot with flying and was "very shy." ...moreso than now, I guess. She starts getting bullied by the two ponies we saw before who were picking on "Rainbow Crash." In this case, though, it's Rainbow Dash to the rescue. She winds up being challenged by the boys to a race, and Fluttershy is there to wave the flag for them to start.
But, when they zoom past her, it winds up knocking her from her cloud perch, and she starts to plummet to her death. No seriously, it cuts to commercial with her falling. And no, nobody from above soars down to get her, and she doesn't suddenly start flapping her wings to save herself...she's caught at the last minute by a swarm of butterflies.
You try doing a simple mosh pit dive onto some butterflies, you tell me how that goes.
After there's an explosion in the sky and a sudden rainbow (stop getting ahead of me!), Fluttershy discovers she has the ability to comfort and communicate with the woodland creatures, and thus she gets her cutie mark.
So yeah, we need another pony. Next up? Rarity.
Yadda yadda, looking for Rainbow Dash, yadda yadda, telling her story. We see Rarity is in charge of costumes for her class performance (which apparently involves ponies dressed as food doing the Commander Shepard dance. Not the animation department's finest hour. Her costumes are described as "nice," but Rarity insists that they have to be "spectacular."
She struggles over designing new costumes and starts to doubt herself, when her horn suddenly starts glowing and literally drags her across the ground towards some unknown destination. We see her leave Ponyville, cross a desert, go over some hills, and finally towards the rock quarry where we met the Diamond Dogs. I'll point out this took over a day for a child in school to be dragged out there. Again, where are the parents?
And for the record, that is the best "I am bored with these shenanigans" expression I've ever seen.
She arrives just in time for a large explosion and rainbow-like shock wave to shatter a giant rock in front of her, letting jewels spill out. They get applied to the costumes for her show (I'll admit, I never thought about bedazzling a costume that looks like a slice of cake before, and now that I have, I wish I still hadn't), and she gets her cutie mark for being a "fashionista."
Okay, that's three down. Let's just jump ahead to the next pony...which is pretty convenient, because that's exactly what the episode does.
Twilight Sparkle is attending a ceremony for when Princess Celestia uses her magic to make the sun rise...and it turns out she actually does make the sun rise with her magic. The part of me that loves space, physics, and LOGIC is demanding an explanation for how this works. I mean, the next thing you know, they'll say that you travel to the moon by throwing a lasso around it and pulling it close enough to walk a tightrope to it.
....GYAH.
So anyway, Twilight hits the books so much that her parents enroll her "Princess Celestia's School For Gifted Unicorns" and- ...
...
I see what you did there, My Little Pony. Well played.
Anyway. Twilight Sparkle has to pass an entrance exam first, which apparently requires hatching a dragon's egg. Because that sounds completely reasonable, doesn't it? It turns out she doesn't have much control over her magic yet, and is about to completely tank the test when, you guessed it, there's an explosion and a rainbow out the window, and somehow that triggers Twilight's magic to kick in. Like someone opened the floodgates on the Amazon river.
I think my favorite part here is when her magic goes so out of control, she turns her parents into a cactus and a fern.
Princess Celestia shows up and manages to calm Twilight down (thus reversing all the magic she did, saving her parents' lives in the process...I think I see why the parents are willing to let the kids go off and do stupid things, it increases their own odds for survival). She even asks to make Twilight her own personal protege. Oh, and in the process, Twilight also happened to get her cutie mark.
Remember all this, I have the feeling this whole deal of "raw magical potential" might come back some day.
So, that leaves Pinkie Pie before we get to Rainbow Dash. Let's see what her childhood was like.
...sheesh.
So yeah, Pinkie Pie apparently lived with the My Little Pony equivalent of the Amish (complete with the dad having funky hair), and worked on a rock farm where the only thing they did was move rocks from one field to another, then to another, then to another, then back around. That's it.
We cut pretty quick to the action, though, as Pinkie Pie spots an explosion and a rainbow (yes, we're getting there), it puffs her hair out with the resulting shock wave, and she's so overcome with joy at the sight of the rainbow she pledges to make others happy, too. She tries to throw her family a party, and it's been so long since anybody on this farm smiled, their muscles forgot how to do it.
That's depressing, is what that is.
So yeah, they get to Rainbow Dash, and can I just point out the phrasing of the words "defending Fluttershy's honor" when it came to her taking part in the race? I mean, sure, there's the modern connotations, but in this instance I really get more of a medieval feeling from it. I think everyone was just lucky that there weren't any convenient lances around for a jousting tournament.
Rainbow Dash races and...you know, it's really hard to build up to something that we've already seen happen. She goes fast enough that she winds up causing a "sonic rainboom" which, you might recall, we've already seen her do before and they even talked about her doing it when she was young. Perhaps they should have swapped the order of this episode and the one where Rarity almost causes her death and the deaths of several other ponies by being a show-off.
The important thing though is that it appears that none of the main characters ever told each other their cutie mark story, and when they realize they were all linked by the sonic rainboom, it comes across as quite a revelation to them. We get a sappy letter to Princess Celestia that pretty much boils down to "if you're feeling lonely, remember that there is a friend out there for you, and you'll find them eventually."
The Good:
It's always nice to get flashback episodes to when characters are young. It helps us learn their motivations, what shaped them to become what they are now, and establish plot hooks and themes that might carry over into later story lines. I'm sure that rock farm will come up again. The fact that even exists needs to be addressed.
I love the little in-jokes in this episode. The fact they threw in an X-Men reference caught me completely off guard. The fact that when Rarity finds the giant rock, it presents in front of her like the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey, complete with similar-sounding fanfare is amazing, because no kid would ever get that.
I also appreciate the fact that they threw in an underlying theme of it being important to know who you are, as each pony seems to provide that as being key to what got them their cutie mark. It's something that was sorely lacking from a lot of the entertainment I had growing up, which might explain why I ever had an answer for "what do you want to be when you grow up" when I was in school.
The Bad:
This episode really feels like it should've come ahead of the "Sonic Rainboom" episode. If we hadn't known what a "sonic rainboom" was before this episode, it might have been a really great mystery about what that explosion was, or if it involved a battle, or magic, or anything else this world could present. Maybe it was the result of the last time anybody successfully defeated an Ursa Major. The opportunities would've kept kids guessing. Instead, we're left just waiting for the big "reveal" so we can get on with it.
Also, I feel kinda bad for Pinkie Pie and how rushed her story was. "Hey, life was terrible, then suddenly it got good." That's pretty much the only way it could get shorter.
Overall:
A quite solid episode, for its flaws. Standing on its own, I think it performs really well, it's just in the context of everything we've already seen that it trips up a bit. Providing us with a hint at just why Twilight Sparkle has a "pet" dragon is a nice touch, and every series does need an origin story at some point. Putting it here near the end is fine...it's just that one detail about the "mysterious rainbow" that sticks in my craw.
But hey, there's only three episodes left and then I. Am. Done with this season! And I can, with 99.9999% guarantee that I'm NOT doing the second season! ...even if it does have John de Lancie playing a mischievous god-like creature who messes with the cast for two episodes. Even if it does bring back Nightmare Moon and establish what Halloween is like for this world. ...even if it does introduce an Indiana Jones-type character. ...even if it does involve a Twilight Sparkle from the future sporting an eye patch like Snake Plisskin.
...maybe someday. But for now, let's just look at what happens in the next episode. It appears to be a lesson about jealousy and has an owl in it. ...well, I do like owls.
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