awkwardreviews

Hello and welcome to season 4 everyone! I’m thrilled to be here and doing these reviews of a show I’ve come to enjoy over the past few months. But, I don’t plan to keep the introduction long, let’s jump right into the review!

Season 4 starts with a hectic two parter that does more good than bad, in fact, I don’t have TO much to say about this episode that isn’t generally praising it for its robust and continues quality. Everything was sleek and animated wonderfully, voice acted believably, and was delightfully light-hearted in some areas, and grim in others.

The episode starts out with Twilight (seemingly both forgetting and remembering how to fly simultaneously) “learning” how to fly from her friend Rainbow Dash. It doesn’t take long for her to air her complaints about being Princess and how difficult it must be. Although the entire “we can’t spend time with you because we must help ponyville” excuse the other five friends tell Twilight is decently believable, I can’t help but groan at the forced lesson I’m sure to be treated to by the end of the episode.

The highlight of the first episode comes shortly after, however, when Celestia visits Twilight in her room and describes that the summer sun celebration is somewhat of a fresh slate for Celestia. How she wants to remember this ceremony as the return of her sister, and not the banishment of nightmare moon. The entirety of this scene was surprisingly heartwarming and felt natural. This is of course until a letter from Twilight’s friends arrives and Twilight (stupidly) ignores it for whatever reason.

Queue chaos! The everfree forest begins invading Ponyville and we soon find out that it won’t stop until the entirety of Equestria is under its leafy tentacle-ey grasp! The five other ponies try to help but it’s pretty useless, and after Twilight finds out from the hilariously voice-acted Canterlot guards that the other two princesses are missing, she fail-tastically flies over to her friends in Ponyville.

They of course bring in the seasonal guest star “Discord”, whom is brilliantly voice acted by John Delancie, and from then on the hilarity ensues. We see Zecora bring some random (seemingly out of no where) potion that conveniently needs an Alicorn to activate. Twilight drinks it, and then we get my favorite bits of the episode in sequential order.

We get a whole dollop of Princess and Equestrian lore that I just ate up. Needless to say, I loved every moment of it. We saw Luna’s transformation into nightmare moon (animated to perfection), the stunning battle between her and Celestia (surprisingly intense for a show like this), and then we saw discord stealing Celestia’s tail.

Twilight finds the special tree of harmony from where the elements came, and we get on a less-than-epic mini adventure. Here is where I can pick a serious gripe with the show. The five characters all tell Twilight to bugger off back to Ponyville, while they find the tree. And when she unwillingly accepts, they find that they are quite literally screwed without her. The five ponies are literally hopeless without their “savior” Princess Twilight Sparkle. Something I find absurd and silly as she was just as easily cornered by those perfume-spewing plants.

However, I suppose one could argue that without each other they are less-than-capable on such an adventure… but there could have been much better ways of showing that. Then the gang re-unites, and they easily stop the infestation of the black-scary-plant-tentacles.

As I said in my reaction, I believe that the third act is where the episode began slipping down and down, and it ended up with a hackneyed and downright dumb ending. The defeat of the infestation was underwhelming at best, and the entire idea of Discord “teaching her a lesson” was forced and stupid. Of course unless he has some ulterior motives, which should be interesting. May I just add that I’m surprised at how much I enjoyed his presence as sort of the “Anti-hero” of the show, it’s refreshing and fun.

We did get left off on what seemed to be a “seasonal arc” involving some random tulip-like flower sprouting from the ground and blooming in front of the ponies (and rescued princesses). A chest appears with six keys, and an obvious mystery pops up. In my opinion, we’ll be seeing an episode of each pony from where they gain one of these keys, and for the season finale we will have them open it and I’m sure something big will occur (Hopefully all of them DON’T turn into alicorns).

Overall, this episode succeeded in where it needed to. It needed to be an entertaining forty minutes of light-hearted pony goodness. It succeeded in providing the (unexpected) intensity and drama with flying colors. And the only honest missteps involve the third act being downright lazy compared to the rest. This is most definitely a good start to the season, one that I was very worried about. And I was pleasantly surprised to see the entire gang get enough screen time, and not having Twilight completely dominate the show. Make sure you stick around for more reviews to come, everyone, because if this is any indication for the rest of the season, we are still in the same good and comfortable hands that we were in previously!

 

Pros:

–          Princess Sparkle wasn’t as infuriatingly boring as I thought it was.

–          Discord makes a welcome return as the lovable anti-hero we see him as now.

–          Pinkie pie is present… that should be enough to warrant a “pro”

–          Each one of the characters got a decent amount of screentime.

–          An interesting concept for a villain in the episode.

–          Awesome princess/Equestrian lore

–          Great intensity and even sadness mixed in with decent humor

Cons:

–          Too much backtracking

–          The pacing was decent at best.

–          Unnecessary scenes that did more harm than good

–          The gang being useless without Twilight

–          The third act fumbled too much to be considered a success

–          Sonic Twi-boom? What the…?

 

Grade:

Episode 1: B+

Episode 2: B+