My Little Pony: FIM
- Thread starter tigros40208
- Start date
The other issue I myself had with Friendship Games is
Seriously, Sunset Shimmer? I kind of had it in my headcanon that she was some sort of supreme badass who let her arrogant side consume her and went to the opposite end of woobification post-zapping by the Elements of Harmony, but still should have been a VERY capable person academically otherwise. Like seriously, some of the Friendship Games shorts show her taking the initiative and trying to research magic. Instead, in the movie she keeps writing Princess Twilight for help until the very end, and gets a high school mathematics question incorrect.
I suppose it's a good thing I got The End of Cutie Marks out a week before this episode, then.
So I was intending to wait until the second half of the season releases on Netflix to watch it since Netflix actually has decent volume on its episodes, but I bit the bullet and watched Crusaders of the Lost Mark.
First off: the face of nightmares!
[img=400x383]https://derpicdn.net/img/2015/10/10/999069/large.png[/img]
After that...well, for the five-year anniversary episode, this is actually probably my personal best episode of the season, even more than Slice of Life or Amending Fences. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the episodes in Season 4 and 5 have just been KILLING it, but I get the feeling the writers have lost a bit of direction from the whole core 'Friendship is Magic' theme in favour of more 'adult' problems (sort of an 'age with your core fanbase' thing, where all the girls who were 5-10 when watching in 2010 are now 10-15), and the sheer amount of gags and visual puns and so on that are a wink at the adult fanbase. This actually gets back more to the Season 1 and 2 episodes of actual friendship problems.
There hasn't been that many songs this season, at least in the first half that I've watched, but it looks like they really saving it all up for this episode. Perhaps it's because Diamond Tiara's been in so many episodes and is really more a bully than an actual antagonist, and also because the episode hones in on her, but it's a better redemption episode than the ones for Trixie, Gilda or Discord. Now all we need is one for Lightning Dust, who I think suffered from the same problem as Trixie's initial appearance, in that she had flaws but the writing overplayed its hand in what was shown on-screen so we can't really hate or even more than mildly dislike her.
I like the CMC mark designs, too, given that they're each three-shape enclaves (heart within apple with shield or lightning bolt within wing within shield or music note within star within shield), again relating to the rule of three with the CMC.
(I might just be imagining it too, but I think the writer might have also been making a slight at student politics. There's that saying about how student boards, especially at universities, have the least on the line and yet are the most vicious. A good lesson to take from this episode!)
A couple of little things I will nitpick on: first, Filthy Rich had only one appearance and didn't say anything, though he was of course the guy who actually donated the money for the playground equipment. I was kind of expecting him to show up on-screen to side with DT and give his wife a little speech on friendship or something, since he's been shown to be an alright guy in his few appearances, if not exactly winning any Friend of the Year awards or anything. Second, I think Luna should honestly have gotten a little bit more of an appearance than that bit right at the end, considering she's had an episode with Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom each.
Really, the only disappointment I have is that I was honestly expecting the CMC to finally get their Cutie Marks in the season finale with Starlight Glimmer's return, given Starlight's first appearance she was stripping ponies of their Cutie Marks. Markless Crusaders getting their Marks against a Mark-stealing villain would have been so so good. I would have loved for Scootaloo to finally fly this episode as well, but I think that would have been a distraction (Sweetie Belle gets two uses of magic I saw, and lifting Pipsqueak was probably the biggest use of magic she's been seen doing so far, but she HAS used magic in prior episodes).
First off: the face of nightmares!
[img=400x383]https://derpicdn.net/img/2015/10/10/999069/large.png[/img]
After that...well, for the five-year anniversary episode, this is actually probably my personal best episode of the season, even more than Slice of Life or Amending Fences. Don't get me wrong, a lot of the episodes in Season 4 and 5 have just been KILLING it, but I get the feeling the writers have lost a bit of direction from the whole core 'Friendship is Magic' theme in favour of more 'adult' problems (sort of an 'age with your core fanbase' thing, where all the girls who were 5-10 when watching in 2010 are now 10-15), and the sheer amount of gags and visual puns and so on that are a wink at the adult fanbase. This actually gets back more to the Season 1 and 2 episodes of actual friendship problems.
There hasn't been that many songs this season, at least in the first half that I've watched, but it looks like they really saving it all up for this episode. Perhaps it's because Diamond Tiara's been in so many episodes and is really more a bully than an actual antagonist, and also because the episode hones in on her, but it's a better redemption episode than the ones for Trixie, Gilda or Discord. Now all we need is one for Lightning Dust, who I think suffered from the same problem as Trixie's initial appearance, in that she had flaws but the writing overplayed its hand in what was shown on-screen so we can't really hate or even more than mildly dislike her.
I like the CMC mark designs, too, given that they're each three-shape enclaves (heart within apple with shield or lightning bolt within wing within shield or music note within star within shield), again relating to the rule of three with the CMC.
(I might just be imagining it too, but I think the writer might have also been making a slight at student politics. There's that saying about how student boards, especially at universities, have the least on the line and yet are the most vicious. A good lesson to take from this episode!)
A couple of little things I will nitpick on: first, Filthy Rich had only one appearance and didn't say anything, though he was of course the guy who actually donated the money for the playground equipment. I was kind of expecting him to show up on-screen to side with DT and give his wife a little speech on friendship or something, since he's been shown to be an alright guy in his few appearances, if not exactly winning any Friend of the Year awards or anything. Second, I think Luna should honestly have gotten a little bit more of an appearance than that bit right at the end, considering she's had an episode with Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom each.
Really, the only disappointment I have is that I was honestly expecting the CMC to finally get their Cutie Marks in the season finale with Starlight Glimmer's return, given Starlight's first appearance she was stripping ponies of their Cutie Marks. Markless Crusaders getting their Marks against a Mark-stealing villain would have been so so good. I would have loved for Scootaloo to finally fly this episode as well, but I think that would have been a distraction (Sweetie Belle gets two uses of magic I saw, and lifting Pipsqueak was probably the biggest use of magic she's been seen doing so far, but she HAS used magic in prior episodes).
So the Friendship Games DVD is out, and with it the deleted scenes and audio commentary.
Some interesting stuff is they had Cinch dragged into a portal in one of the earlier scripts but thought that too harsh. They cut out an entire 'Sunset Shimmer is homesick' subplot, and I'm vindicated by my idea that SciTwi should have gone back to Crystal Prep and make friends with the Shadow Five as that is the alternate ending, and presumably was the original ending too before Hasbro decided they like the money even alternate Twilight makes for them.
I'm just glad that they've breached the subject more personally for Twilight.
I mean, the pregnancy that the Cakes went through was pretty much almost entirely off-screen since they were secondary characters, so the concept of sex was almost entirely sidelined. The fact that they're bringing it to the forefront with this new baby is actually nice because it infers that Shining Armor and Cadence actually DO have functioning genitals, have been able to get over any issues involving sex (some stories have inferred that Cadence's Alicorn status would make it dangerous for her and Shining to get it on; while others have thought that there might be lingering issues with the fiascos caused by Chrysalis) and have actually gotten down a few times.
Of course, this now re-raises the question of whether or not Blueblood actually IS related to Celestia.
I mean, the pregnancy that the Cakes went through was pretty much almost entirely off-screen since they were secondary characters, so the concept of sex was almost entirely sidelined. The fact that they're bringing it to the forefront with this new baby is actually nice because it infers that Shining Armor and Cadence actually DO have functioning genitals, have been able to get over any issues involving sex (some stories have inferred that Cadence's Alicorn status would make it dangerous for her and Shining to get it on; while others have thought that there might be lingering issues with the fiascos caused by Chrysalis) and have actually gotten down a few times.
Of course, this now re-raises the question of whether or not Blueblood actually IS related to Celestia.
My personal headcanon (and I've seen this in a couple of fics) regarding Blueblood is that when Equestria absorbed the three tribes from the play in Hearth's Warming Eve, Princess Platinum's family was given a perpetual peerage and Blueblood is her distant but direct descendant. Alternatively, he could always be Celly or Luna's many-greats-grandcolt. It'll be interesting anyways to see if the offspring of an alicorn and unicorn is an alicorn or a unicorn.
The real plot twist will be if Cadance has a colt instead of a filly.
(The show only really has three notable recurring male characters (Spike, Shining Armor and Big Mac), one whom suffers from poor writing, one whose main talent (raising shields) shows competence but hasn't really done anything since the start of Season 3, and one whom barely speaks and the writers seem to love showing doing girly things. Seriously, give us a Big Mac episode where he's freaking awesome and everything. Looking at old threads, people LOVED IT when he showed up in Pinkie Apple Pie and Filli Vanilli! Not that a newborn would really be able to do much anyways but it would be a start imo)
The real plot twist will be if Cadance has a colt instead of a filly.
(The show only really has three notable recurring male characters (Spike, Shining Armor and Big Mac), one whom suffers from poor writing, one whose main talent (raising shields) shows competence but hasn't really done anything since the start of Season 3, and one whom barely speaks and the writers seem to love showing doing girly things. Seriously, give us a Big Mac episode where he's freaking awesome and everything. Looking at old threads, people LOVED IT when he showed up in Pinkie Apple Pie and Filli Vanilli! Not that a newborn would really be able to do much anyways but it would be a start imo)
Braeburn is one of those characters that just doesn't get much love.... outside of yaoi fan circles. Not sure if I should blame Brokeback Mountain, timing or just yaoi fangirls, but anytime I run across a picture of him going through Derpibooru, he's often shipped with other males more than females. Couldn't tell you why.
Of course, perhaps the most favorable pic I found for him placed him into the spot Kif had in that episode of Futurama where they went to the planet of giant amazons: Link here.
But that is hardly the only picture on Derpibooru to reference that episode.
Of course, perhaps the most favorable pic I found for him placed him into the spot Kif had in that episode of Futurama where they went to the planet of giant amazons: Link here.
But that is hardly the only picture on Derpibooru to reference that episode.