awkwardreviews

Well it’s about time Season 4 arrived.  I will be doing these reviews along side Awkward on this site, but instead of using his system I will be using a 5 star rating system.  So let’s begin.

The premiere of Season 4 is acting as the first impression for the fan base and everybody else viewing, so the importance of this episode being good goes without saying.  And the reality is, it actually is pretty good, but it goes on an up-and-down roller coaster of quality throughout each act, making plenty of room for improvement.

The episode starts off rather lighthearted, as usual, this time with Rainbow Dash giving Twilight flying lessons.  I’m not even going to state the inconsistency with the Season 3 finale since it’s probably been played down to death. That scene pretty much declared that the tone of the show would remain the same through season 4, which I’m rather glad for.

The first portion of the episode, mostly deals with Twilight addressing her newfound responsibilities as a princess and dealing with them, mostly through an expression of stress (glad to see she hasn’t changed yet).  This makes for a rather touching scene with Celestia later where they recap on the Summer Sun Celebration and it’s definition, establishing a relatable connection with Celestia and Luna.  It was a rather fantastic part of the episode for now the two main princesses are actually being built up, and in a good way if I might add.

However, random chaos eventually ensues when thick black vines each with a sense of consciousness kidnap Celestia and Luna and wreak havoc throughout Equestria.  Of course these vines originate from the Everfree Forest, and the reasoning why is addressed later on in the show.  This leads to the Main 6 trying to solve the problem to no avail, as the vines continue to command and conquer.  The main 6 then claim Discord to be the problem and try to get him to fix everything.

Now Discord is reintroduced again, and throughout the episode he is actually executed rather well to atone for the pathetic attempt the writers made at reforming him in Keep Calm and Flutter On.  Throughout the episode he is still as free-spirited and taunt-full as ever, while still retaining some control over what he can and especially cannot do in Equestria.  He is practically the prime source of humor throughout the episode and the animation for him is still as imaginative and funny as always.  He was overall a fantastic addition to the episode.

Zecora then comes in with a potion that, when combined with alicorn magic looks like milk or some other white liquid that certainly won’t be taken out of context, and allows Twilight to see into the past to find a solution to their problem.  This leads Twilight to witness the battle between Celestia and Luna during Luna’s corruption as princess a thousand years ago, and ultimately in the most intense action sequence this show has had.  This revealed nothing useful for Twilight, so she takes another swig of the substance and is shown the confrontation between the princesses and Discord that also took place a thousand years ago.  After that, Twilight is zoomed out into another event of the past where Luna and Celestia approach the “Tree of Harmony” that brings forth the origin of the elements and suggests several things about the nature of the elements and what they overall represent. Overall, a huge plus to this episode was the world building aspects it brought up, elaborating on past events that were only talked about but never shown.

However, beyond this point is when the episode begins falling on it’s face.  Twilight is convinced the Tree of Harmony has something to do with it, so the Mane 6 begin their quest through the Everfree.  Here the pacing is insanely poor where every attempt at creating emotional and sentimental moments with the Mane 6 is rendered weak and useless.  Not only that but that lead to pointless backtracking that lead to wasted time that could have been used to develop the sentimental moments properly rather than throwing them at us, expecting us to bite.  Basically the biggest problem with these scenes was that they wasted a huge amount of time doing hardly doing anything eventful and failing at whatever they tried to do.

From there, Twilight and Spike begin searching for the others (they got separated in the mix of the backtracking) and in the end of the search Spike ends up finding the rest of the Mane 6, but renders Twilight vulnerable to a set of giant facehugger-like plants.  These plants emitted a blue gaseous substance that KO’d Twilight, leading Spike to get the others to rescue her.  In a disappointing fight sequence the others manage to deal with the facehuggers to save Twilight before said facehuggers could eat her.

I’m going to shorten the rest of the events beyond this to save space on here because frankly I see that this review is getting a bit big.  They reach the tree, another weak attempt at a sentimental bonding  occurs between the Mane Six, Twilight saves the day by sacrificing the elements of harmony to kill the vine monsters and save the princesses, the Mane 6 receive a box with 6 locks that nobody knows how to open, and the Summer Sun Celebration occurs with Twilight miraculously and randomly performing her own version of a Sonic Rainboom.  These scenes did both good and bad, where yet again potentially fantastic moments were rendered unimpressive, while on the other hand the rest of the season has a new story arc to work on.

So overall, this episode was pretty good for a premiere.  Much like the one from the first season, it set up the rest of the season in a lot of different ways, acting like a true premiere unlike the previous two.  It had a decent first act and a fantastic second act, but it’s third act was simply pathetic, hurting this shows grade dramatically.  The unnerving amount of plot holes and inconsistencies this episode were more than present, but the majority are certainly overlookable by the quality of the acts they were presented in.  In general, this episode did a lot of good and a lot of bad, but overall a lot of the bars this episode had are rather forgivable.

Overall Grade: ~FrogFinest