Well, I never imagined I'd make it so far within two years! I've gotten up to 300 blog posts (excluding those I've deleted in the past), and I've made it to over 100 thousand views! All I got to say is... wow. Thanks to each and everyone of you for your support, and I've enjoyed hearing your thoughts on my views, and looking at both the positives and the negatives, as well as everything in between. Here's to another hundred!
Alright, let's get down to business. I know I said it would be a revisit of Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep, and I assure you it will be done eventually - most likely, I'll just edit the old review and rewrite it from scratch. But right now, let's deal with something else that's also big...
The Equestria Girls Holiday Special. No, it's not a TV special, it's a comic book. When it comes to My Little Pony reviews, I always go for the actual series and the Equestria Girls movies, but never anything beyond, not even the fan videos, which I'm not really sold on for some reason. I don't recall ever getting a request to do one of the MLP comics, but I'll be doing this because... why not?
Before I get to the actual review, I want to inform you all beforehand that this review will be quite angry, and not without reason.
It feels like yesterday when I reviewed Ponyville Confidential, and how much I despised how the Crusaders were treated. This was wayback before season five had aired on TV, and since then, there's been the likes of Slice of Life, Party Pooped, Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep (the worst offender of the lot), Scare Master, What About Discord, and the season finale, The Cutie Re-Mark. That didn't mean I liked Ponyville Confidential after that. No, I still hated that episode as well as Dragon Quest for the cruel treatment of the starring characters.
With the Holiday Special? It's the same thing, only far, far worse. How? It takes a serious adult issue (or should it be teenager issue?) and portrays it extremely poorly, and not to mention insultingly. I have read several other reviews prior to writing mine up, and I gotta tell you... they ripped it apart without mercy, literally (I'll bet) and metaphorically.
Just so you're wondering, I shall not be discussing errors in the spelling or the illustrations - I just want to focus solely on the story.
Alright, so let's begin. We kick off with Sunset Shimmer and Applejack walking towards Canterlot High School and talking about Christmas (yes, I'm gonna refer to it as such, I've no reason not to). Sunset tells Applejack she's been alone for the holidays for the past few years and the latter decides to do something about it. She texts the rest of the Human Five and they decide to throw Sunset five slumber parties, one for each of their houses.
The first one is at Pinkie Pie's, and apparently, Sunset has never been to one before. Alright, I should point this out; apparently, this takes place after Rainbow Rocks, but here's the first plothole this comic has - Sunset has been to one before in said film! So why are you telling me that she hasn't been to one now? The first film takes place in fall, the second in the spring, and this takes place in winter! I suppose you can argue that this takes place the winter after the first film, but... well, I'll expand on that later on.
Applejack then gets a call from Apple Bloom, and when they say goodbye, she calls her big sister "Piggly Wiggly", cause as a baby, Applejack played with some pigs... okay... Later, Sunset writes to Princess Twilight, and I say this - Twilight's role is completely pointless. If you cut it out, the story would be the same.
The next day, Applejack hears someone call her "Piggly Wiggly", and Apple Bloom reveals that someone called "Anon-A-Miss" posted it online. The talk of "Anon-A-Miss" becomes school gossip, and Apple Bloom suggests that it could be Sunset, but Applejack dismisses it - remember that.
Slumber Party #2 takes place at Rarity's home, and Sweetie Belle is sent to bed by Rarity, much to the little sister's dismay. Then Sunset records Pinkie, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash singing the "Cafeteria Song"... which is... weird, since it's a song about beating her in the Fall Formal. Pinkie does a stage dive that fails because... comedy, and later, all six girls dress up in ridiculous costumes.
Later in the week, the Human Five confront Sunset and instantly accuse her of being "Anon-A-Miss". Sunset tries to explain her innocence, but they don't listen to her and leave her in the hallways, a weeping mess.
Okay, that is just excessively cruel! Leaving your friend like that, chewing her out for things she may or may not have done without giving them the benefit of the about, and she's sobbing on the floor and you don't care?! All I can say is, screw you, Ted Anderson! Giving Sunset such treatment like that isn't funny, it's outright CRUEL! The Human Five are just written poorly and they're outright mean-spirited towards Sunset throughout the second act, despite that she helped in defeating the Dazzlings and saving the human world, YOU MORONIC, UNGRATEFUL JERKS!!! Effectively, this is like WhoBob WhatPants in which everyone in Bikini Bottom chews out SpongeBob just because he caused some small accidents!
More embarrassing gossip about the Human Five spreads across CHS, and Sunset confronts Trixie, accusing her of being "Anon-A-Miss". At this point, I should state that the Christmas theme is very much ignored for the rest of the story and they focus on the issues of cyber-bullying. That's all well and good since it is an issue that has plagued the internet since social media was created, but it is tackled in an extremely poor manner, as stated earlier.
Getting personal for a moment there, I had been a cyberbully victim back in 2014; some freak wrote "stories" to mock some of my own writings, and it pretty much killed me on the inside, opening my eyes to the harsh realities of the internet. I was angry, and the guy kept humiliating me until he was banned for stealing some of my art. He did make a brief comeback, however, but he was banned again. Long before that, in elementary and middle school, I had been constantly, and I do mean constantly, mocked by another student who was a year younger than me. Then again, my middle school years were nothing but three years' worth of hell and I never forgave the prick for what he did to me.
Back to the story. It turns out that more students have been victims of "Anon-A-Miss" as friendships begin falling apart... yet again. At the library, Sunset writes about her concerns to Princess Twilight, and in the morning, people accuse her of being "Anon-A-Miss", so she runs to the street cafe and meets up with the Human Five and convinces them they're her family, asking if she'd do something so atrocious. And then, the real "Anon-A-Miss" turns up - the Crusaders! And they did it out of jealousy towards Sunset...
Alright, that is the final straw. Where do I begin? Let's start with the fact that the Crusaders, in this story, are outright sociopaths! They make it look like Sunset was Anon-A-Miss, and they blame it on her! It wasn't made subtle early on, it was stated point blank! And they had to cyberbully her just because they felt ignored by their big sisters! What a load of rubbish! That's Starlight Glimmer levels of pettiness when she tried to destroy the world because she was a lonely crybaby, and it completely destroys their likability as characters! And you know what really destroys it further? They apologize to the Human Five for going to far and are automatically forgiven. Once again, DAMN YOU, ANDERSON, YOU MONSTER!!! You're outright suggesting that if a cyberbully apologizes the moment he or she reveals him or herself, they're expected to be forgiven straight away?! IT TAKES DAYS, WEEKS, POSSIBLY MONTHS TO BE FORGIVEN FOR COMMITTING SUCH ATROCITIES!!! And once again, it's further destroyed by the fact that the Human Five NEVER apologize to Sunset for being outright jerks towards her!
In short, Sunset is accused of being Anon-A-Miss, the Crusaders admit what they did, and are automatically forgiven, without an apology given to Sunset by the Human Five! Before anyone mentions A Canterlot Wedding, Applejack apologized on the Mane Six's behalf towards Twilight, and the story was structured a lot better! Also, why the hell did Scootaloo join her friends in the cyberbullying? She's just there because... reasons. And the ending does bring back the Christmas theme, but it's too little, too late to fix anything. Principal Celestia should've been involved in some capacity, but she wasn't! Yeah, it's mentioned that she gave the Crusaders detention, but it's not good enough. Also, Rarity is a hypocrite for apologizing to Sweetie Belle; she apologizes for making her sister feel alone, but again, she doesn't say so to Sunset!
Yeah, this is very much a rip off to Ponyville Confidential, but it's a terrible rip off. At least with that episode, the Crusaders did show a sense of morality - at first, it was fun making tabloid newspaper stories, but as it progressed, they wanted to stop but they couldn't since Diamond Tiara blackmailed them. Oh, and never once did they act like petty brats. In here, it seems they had no sense of right and wrong. "Oh, but they aren't the same as the ponies!" Granted, but they should at least know what's right and what's wrong when it comes to using the internet!
Meanwhile, when this comic isn't ripping off Ponyville Confidential, they're essentially wrecking continuity within the Equestria Girls universe. Like I've said, this supposedly takes place after Rainbow Rocks, but if you bring forth the fact that the Human Five and the rest of the student body torment her and accuse her of being Anon-A-Miss, then I don't believe that. It's absolutely jarring, and it leads to a lot of confusion. If this took place between the first two movies, then I would probably be more forgiving towards it, since Sunset was working to redeem herself at the time. And maybe if the Crusaders created Anon-A-Miss and framed Sunset out of spite for something she did in the past to them (maybe humiliated them in front of the school body?), it'd be credible, and it would show kids that two wrongs never make a right. Instead, they dropped the ball on this one.
And I will bring this up cause I'm sure people want me to - "No matter how big your family is, there's always room for one more." That is an excellent moral to teach children, but it's pretty much shot in the face since there was so much emphasis on cyber-bullying and so it's completely lost.
And so, my faithful readers, that was... whatever the hell this was supposed to be. It's absolutely reprehensible. The characters (except Sunset, who I'm actually sympathetic towards) are unlikable jerks for the sake of being jerks, the story makes literally no sense, the message on cyber-bullying is handled extremely poorly, and the cruelty is over the top! I don't know what those as IDW were thinking when this got published, but imagine if a kid read this and got ideas! Yeah, once again, "It's just for kids" shouldn't be used as an excuse, cause this comic is definitely not for children! Hell, it's not even for people with psychological problems or those who were cyberbully victims! Even the Grinch would hate this.
The only thing I'm (somewhat) grateful for is that Jim Miller has said the comics are a separate canon from the actual show. Thank goodness for that, because if the comic was translated onto the TV screen, people would've thoroughly destroyed it without mercy, probably as much as they did with the comic.
The show is called Friendship is Magic, but this clearly goes against the main series' title. If this was the first thing that was MLP-related parents bought for their children, they'd think the show on whole was hypocritical considering what goes on in the story! Yeah, One Bad Apple might have botched up its own bullying moral, but at least here, the Crusaders knew right from wrong, and they realized the consequences of their actions (or, what could've been) a lot sooner and knew when to stop.
On whole, I can safely say this is the worst thing to come out of My Little Pony (and that includes Generation 3), and I would not recommend wasting your money on this piece of crap. Yes, I know I was angry throughout my review, but if this spreads the word of how dangerous this comic's "morals" can be, then it was worth losing my cool over it. If I could give it a rating, it'd be -10/10 (yes, negative 10 - it really is that bad).
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