awkwardreviews

Okay guys if you’re reading this then you probably already know what happened to my commentary, that is if you’ve even heard of me. If not, then hello! My name is KyleThePale and if one of my videos ever gets unwatchable I will probably end up posting a review here. Anyways, that’s what happened to last week’s episode, “Bats!”. Which is why I’m here, so let’s not fill up this review with nonsense about me and get on to the episode!

The episode starts off with Applejack eager to start off Applebucking Season, but when she goes to buck a tree and apples start raining down, they’ve all turned to mush! This could only mean that something terrible has happened, so she calls in the rest of the main six, and Spike. That’s when Applejack explains that a colony of vampire fruit bats has invaded the entire orchard and that they should be stopped before they eat her blue ribbon apple, which is even bigger than Twilight. That’s another thing I should bring up, if you look closely you can see that Twilight is now taller than the rest of the main six. I guess with alicornism you also gain a growth spurt. Fluttershy, being the element of kindness and all, decides she should go talk to the bats and see if they’ll leave the blue ribbon apple alone. This of course fails and complications arise at how they should deal with these so called “vermin”.

This is when Applejack creates the second song of season 4 about how bad the vampire bats are. Fluttershy joins along, instead singing about how they are just trying to use nature’s most basic instinct, survival. Rarity and, not too surprisingly, Rainbow Dash are the first ones to agree with AJ. And then so does everpony else. They just… spontaneously agree with AJ, simply because she sang a song. Anyways, they plan on rounding up the fruit bats while Pinkie is busy breaking the forth wall. AJ then tells them a story of the previous infestation that happened long before the main six were born. When Rainbow learns that there was no cider, she is even more determined to stop them than ever. Twilight, trying to be the voice of reason, has an idea to use magic, which will probably backfire in some way.

Her plan involves having Fluttershy do the stare on the bats so they will focus their full attention on her. Twilight will then cast a spell that makes them stop sucking out all the applejuice from the apples. They go through with their plan and it works, kinda. The vampire bats have stopped eating the apples, but now something else is attacking the orchard instead. The main six decide to wait around at night to find out who, or what, is destroying the orchard. However, even more complications occur when Fluttershy turns out to be a vampire. The main six don’t know this yet and they all freak out when they see a shadowy figure flying around them. These reactions range from cowering in fear to attacking a scarecrow. When they find out figure it out, Rarity makes a horrible pun that leads to way too much fanart within a short period of time.

They try to capture “Flutterbat” by sacrificing AJ’s blue ribbon apple and having Flutterbat look at her own reflection. Which, there shouldn’t be one if she’s a vampire, but what do I know? This causes her to be shocked and stare at the mirror, giving Twilight the chance to reverse the spell. Pinke decides to confuse everyone by answering questions with yes or no only. So in other words, she became a magic 8 ball. The episode ends with Spike having to write their diaries, which they are perfectly capable of doing on their own, and Pinkie pouncing at an apple while wearing false teeth. And they try to hint that Fluttershy is still a vampire, but I’m pretty sure it was just a small little cliffhanger at the end. Nothing major.

All in all, this was an okay episode. It had a good story, a catchy song, and gave birth to a new character. Not sure whether or not to call that last one a pro or a con though. The fanart is pretty disturbing, but the idea is pretty cool. My main problems with this episode are ones I’m finding a lot throughout season 4. Spike is so minor that he’s pretty much a background character at this point, they try too hard to make Pinkie funny, Twilight can’t seem to do anything right, and the songs aren’t that good. Yes, they are indeed catchy, but they aren’t that good in terms of what they are about. I liked this one until all of a sudden everyone agreed with AJ. They didn’t even give a second thought. I don’t really use the same grading scale as Awkward, so I’ll give this episode a 6.5/10. Good in terms of narrative, but rather lackluster in all other places. And one last thing before I go, why are the writers so obsessed with changing Fluttershy? Do they want to have disturbing fanart of her? I mean, Flutterhulk was a shock to me enough I didn’t even need to look at fanart of that thing, but Flutterbat? There is too much of it! Well I hope you guys enjoyed my hostile takeover of this website and I hope you all have a great day!

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