Has My Little Pony Lost Its Special Something? (ft. The Super Mario Brony)

Okay, my next post was going to delve into my thoughts on FlashShimmer, and I will get to that soon enough, but right now, I'm struggling to justify translating my thoughts without angering some shipping purists. So yeah, that'll be on the backburner for a while yet, not helping that I'm soon going to be working on a class final, cleaning up my room, as well as planning a few video reviews. So right now, there's a collab editorial regarding the current state of MLP.

As with us humans, nothing even in any forms of entertainment media seems to be perfect. Movies, television, video games, music, etc. Of course, if everything was perfect, then planet Earth would be a really boring place to be. Then again though when it comes to television, Friendship Is Magic didn't have to lose this much potential.

And that brings us to the question of this post - what happened with My Little Pony that caused it to lose the charm it had when it first aired? To answer that question, we'll be discussing everything that went on from the series after both season four and Rainbow Rocks; from season five to Legend of Everfree. (But to make things clear, we'll be doing them all in reverse order.)

Legend of Everfree is nothing short of the culmination of everything that's currently wrong with My Little Pony. That film was so bad that we're almost tempted to avoid the three specials, which are coming out this summer, like the plague.

In that sense, because of this disaster, we're really having less hope for anything in the EG franchise than we are for season seven and the upcoming movie of the main series of this fourth generation of ponies. But if Hasbro can surprise us in some way, who knows?

But let's be frank; not a single moment of Everfree made sense. Why wait until an hour in to make Midnight Sparkle relevant to the story? Why the emphasis on camp activities that have nothing to do with anything? Timber Spruce knew that his sister was doing something stupid, but why does he constantly hit on a student he'll never see again rather than make Gloriosa Daisy see sense? Why do Sci-Twi and Gloriosa put up with him at all? He's a terrible brother who'd rather have his own dreams than live up to family traditions. What was the point of Flash and Sunset's subplot if they didn't directly interact in the three films previous, and are probably never going to interact again? Is it simply to appeal to the haters (a.k.a. people not worth giving a damn about)? How come Gloriosa got away scot-free with scaring the campers? And most importantly, why didn't she think of holding a fundraiser to begin with?!

Actually, you know what? I don't really care about answers, especially for the last one.

And since everything considerably fell apart in the spinoff series after Rainbow Rocks, the one and only silver lining we can look at in both Friendship Games (more on that later) and Everfree is Sunset and her performances as she was equally as salvageable in both sequels as Discord was in season six's disastrous finale, as well Spike in the bankrupt season six premiere. Whereas Spike got at least a decent amount of development during his particular moments in the episode (with or without Starlight) whilst Discord was being, shall we say, his usual comedic self where he thankfully didn't go all OOC as to going to far with his antics like teaching a certain character about a horrible feeling like jealousy in the wrong way possible (I'm looking at you, What About Discord?), Sunset gracefully got both of these traits with some (if not more) development and thankfully never acted like something she wasn't meant to be. But to say the very least, you can remove them all in those sorry excuses of installments, and the plots would all be the same.

There are so many things we just can't get over in this season, that we still have so many particular questions for Hasbro: What happened to the Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash we both knew and loved? Why didn't Starlight get the development she deserved? Why did they air the finale this soon? The list goes on and on!

Season six may have been Hasbro's way of changing the show for the better, and yet, in an ironic twist of fate, it became the season that pretty much ruined MLP's positive reputation. Or at least, it tainted an otherwise good show.

When it comes down to our first question about Dashie and Twilight, we still can't blame them precisely for being either innocently tortured (*cough* Newbie Dash *cough*) or straight up hypocritical (that means you two, No Second Prances and 28 Pranks Later). This means it primarily comes down to how they're written, so writing for them is essentially how they develop. And sadly, based on that statement, it's easier for us to name enough good portrayals/episodes from both Andrea Libman's characters minus P.P.O.V. (Pony Point of View) for Pinkie Pie (obviously) (since Fluttershy was literally the flawless one of the bunch) than it is for us to name enough good portrayals/episodes from Tara Strong's character throughout all of season six. Although to be fair, Ashleigh Ball's characters were more or less the case since Applejack was at least redeemed greatly by the end of the season with Where the Apple Lies whilst Rainbow Dash didn't do so well despite having Top Bolt to fall back on with Twilight. And Rarity (Tabitha St. Germain)? Well, let's just say she hasn't done herself quite enough justice either after P.P.O.V. (Pony Point of View) and especially The Cart Before the Ponies (with Applejack and, separately, Pinkie and Rainbow Dash).

And then there's Starlight Glimmer, who... we've moaned about enough already.

But when it comes to the topic of To Where and Back Again, the episode, actually, isn't too bad on it's own, but it's still one of the worst because Starlight's development leading up to it was sloppy at best. They could've easily spread her story arc over two or three seasons to expand on the following: her friendship with Trixie, Thorax's character being expanded upon, explanation to the Changelings' history, an episode or two Starlight and Discord, and above all else, give us justification to why they'd be working together when To Where and Back Again came around. It might still have problems, but if it aired later, then maybe we'd give it a pass, but as it stands, it feels like the reverse Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep? - more on that later.

So if season seven wants to be more conclusive of things like Starlight, an episode with her and Discord sounds like the best idea for her character arc (especially if it was Joanna Lewis and Kristine Songco writing for it), or to bring back the real Mane Six, especially Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity, give them the same good development they had before seasons five and six (sort of), and most of all, take our letter of avoiding terrible writing into account, Hasbro.

Okay, so where do we start with Friendship Games? The idea behind the film was to showcase school rivalries. Great idea, right? However, that wasn't to case as instead, guess who hogs the spotlight in her official debut?

Yep! The human counterpart of Twilight Sparkle, or more commonly nicknamed "Sci-Twi"...

She could've had that possible potential for this sequel after that brief glimpse of her and her dog Spike after the credits of Rainbow Rocks. And we don't exactly know what those at Hasbro were thinking (or should we specifically say the film's writer Josh Haber), but apparently with Haber's idea of writing for the film and its characters (except maybe for Sunset to an extent) instead of the chairwoman of the show's writers Meghan McCarthy (and the less said about her writing 28 Pranks Later's story the better) something unfortunately went wrong.

They could've given focus to the quintet known as the Shadowbolts, but instead, they came off as one-dimensional and forgettable. I recently watched this video by Brass Polish, "Flash Sentry Outshines Timber Spruce" where he comments that with the exception of Flash, every character introduced in the Equestria Girls universe - and this is excluding the background humans for a moment - had no counterpart in either the human world or Equestria. He also adds that whilst Sunset and the Dazzlings were seen as humans for the majority of the first two movies, we had acknowledgement that they had Equestrian origins, as a pony and a trio of sirens, respectively. With the Shadowbolts, Cinch, Gloriosa and Timber, we don't get pony counterparts for them, almost as if they wanted to keep Friendship is Magic and Equestria Girls separate.

Unfortunately, that's easier said than done as it feels like they're going against what they've established.

What other episodes do we have to blame for season five being the start of MLP losing what it once had? Well, to name the others besides that episode that season six's finale reverses; Bloom and Gloom, Scare Master, Slice of Life, Party Pooped, What About Discord?, and especially season five's finale that's practically good compared to To Where and Back Again known as The Cutie Re-Mark.

There's not a whole lot I can say about Bloom and Gloom, really. Sure, it's repetitive at best and downright disturbing at worst, but if you ignore that, the episode's just boring and forgettable. Kind of like most of the episodes we've mentioned, but mostly the latter.

With Scare Master, it's the prime example of why season six surprisingly did Fluttershy more than enough justice to get her back in the good character standards. I mean seriously, freaking out from candy?! Sure, her attempt to scare her friends in that maze was a lot more realistic than her attempt to scare them in her house, but derailing Fluttershy or just any other character who has loads of potential in store for themselves is never okay.

Then we come to Slice of Life - many fans wanted to see background ponies take the spotlight for once... Well, be careful what you wish for, am I right?

As we've stated before, basically everything about it was rushed. So much so, that it could very well be the most overrated episode of series in general. And not only will we say it's rushed, it's also confusing, uninteresting, unfunny, and convoluted. And really, we've already discussed this in our countdown of MLP Characters That Lost Major Mojo, but if Hasbro's really going to give them some charm, they're going to have to develop them one at a time. Don't cram them all together with various sections of nearly each and every single one of them in one episode next time, writers. Try again! (Or better yet, maybe not!)

Speaking of poorly written characters, does anyone remember the yaks from Party Pooped? If your answer is "no", then perhaps we don't need to spell out their problem, but we will for those who've no idea what we're talking about - they're stereotypical jerks who whine over little things. Not even Garble in Dragon Quest was this despicable! Not only that, but Party Pooped suffered from an extremely confused plot and Pinkie's journey led to nothing. The less said about an episode banned in Canada, the better.

But for those of you who haven't seen any of these episodes we're now discussing, if you thought the yaks were straight up awful, you haven't seen just how terrible Discord was in his only unacceptably bad role known as What About Discord?. (And Twilight's friends were terrible as well, but at least they came to their senses and sympathized with her at the very end.) And don't get us wrong. It did have one of the best ideas of a plot of showing my personal overall favorite character getting along more with those he hasn't got along with much (since he's only really come close to Fluttershy), and was honestly supposed to increase my favorite character's likability. Instead however, What About Discord? was an episode that nearly destroyed my favorite character's likability! (The same can also be said for Twilight in No Second Prances, the Wonderbolts in Newbie Dash, and even Rainbow Dash in 28 Pranks Later, but I digress.)

It's bad enough that we get an episode with sluggish pacing, untold humor that's far more questionable than it is funny, and an atrocious moral delivered in the worst way possible, but derailing a favorable, redeemed character into something cruel is a whole different story. If they're really going to make this kind of plot a good one (the next time they attempt to), they better show Discord's actual bondage with whoever he hangs out with. (One specific suggestion of a character that would make for something greatly interesting as we said would be Starlight, but let's move on...)

Then there's The Cutie Re-Mark - there are many, many problems with the episode which I've already described, but let's make it brief.

The various timelines were untold and completely confusing, Starlight's motives for being evil were absolutely pathetic, and to add insult to injury, Part 2 gave us an equally atrocious song of just how terrible her redemption was randomly pulled off and executed.

Now, don't get either of us wrong - I do genuinely believe there were good intentions, but it's one of those things, you know? Something ambitious starts off with good intentions, but the execution is extremely sloppy.

And last but not least, as the main example of why Luna lost pretty much all of her mojo she could've had by now if Hasbro would've treated her more properly instead treating her like some plot device or bad guy who's literally innocent on both the outside and inside, and is by far the most overrated princess of Equestria's royalty, Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep? is one episode we could view as controversial based solely on its dangerous moral.

But you know the sad fact? It didn't have to be controversial!

Remember when I said that To Where and Back Again was the reverse of this episode? By the time Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep? came around, Sleepless in Ponyville and For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils had already aired, the latter implying Luna had gotten over the Nightmare Moon incident. If Magic Sheep had aired during the second season, it still would've had problems back then, but if it led to her episodes with the Crusaders, showcasing how much she'd learned herself, that would've been fine, especially if Celestia had more involvement and if Luna didn't create the Tantabus!

But no. It came years too late and felt pointless that far into the show.

And both disasters are huge examples of why good episodes not only depend on how their plots are written and paced, but also when they're timed during one season or another during production. And these two were timed pretty badly. What else can we say?

Of course, final thoughts are going to be personal, and something tells me this will all be hugely controversial. For me, the major thing wrong with MLP at this point is that it feels like Hasbro has let the show's popularity get to their heads and cared more about selling toys and less about telling cohesive stories. Sure, the voice acting is good, the animation is almost flawless and the music tends to be spot on, but frankly, that's not good enough anymore. You can make bad episodes or films out of good scripts, but can you even make good episodes or films out of bad ones? It's very much like getting cats and dogs to breed - impossible, and downright ludicrous.

Then there's the fact that last October, Jim Miller shamed the older fanbase on Twitter, by saying it's for little girls and not them - well, that's funny since they dedicated Slice of Life to the older fans! (Calm down; this wasn't an insult to those who liked the episode, I just wanted to point out hypocrisy on Miller's part.) My guess is that he's more concerned with viewership and blindly thinks that everything's fine when, spoilers, it's not. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he had no concern for fan's criticisms at all.

And believe us when we say this is only the first topic we're discussing about the show's crisis. As next time we'll be discussing how 2017 can save not just the main series, but the whole franchise in general. On the other hand though, at the same time, we'll also be pointing out those things that could kill the series (and yes, even the smallest of consequences). So all I can say is I have the exact same thoughts, and above any writers who can't get either characters or plotlines in an episode right (or even both), I can also say that Hasbro's next move should be to fire Miller for his unreasonable insult on the fandom. Because really, if The Ren & Stimpy Show can do this with their creator for its controversial episode known as Man's Best Friend, then I think Friendship Is Magic can do the same with its creator (except this reason would be for how straight up rude he was to a fandom like us bronies instead of an episode that pushed itself too far, but that's beside the point).

Bottom line is, those at Hasbro need to get their act together and fast; if they can make a few changes that can bring back even one fan they drove away, then maybe faith in MLP will be restored.

Or at least, it'll be higher than it already is. This has been Zack Wanzer and Tyler Smith, and we'll see you next time!