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[ph00tbag]

Rainbow Dash felt a little bit off for me at many points in this episode. I did love how she and Twilight nerded out regularly in this episode, and how their friends reacted to these sessions with utter bemusement, but Rainbow Dash being so definitively uncool around Daring Do felt just wrong. Yes, she'd be fangirling all over the place when Daring couldn't see, but Dash would be all about keeping up cool appearances, and genuinely trying to be helpful with combat. Like all of a sudden, when in this position, all of Dash's experience fighting off the greatest threats to Equestria means nothing, because it's more important to Dash that Daring get her hat back.

Ugh.

Despite that, I did enjoy this episode a lot. The Indiana Jones references were ambrosia to me. And the action sequences were amazing. I think these are some of the longest and most detailed action sequences we've seen in the show so far.

[itroitnyah]

I think the plot line was a little bit too much like Indiana Jones. I sorta get the feeling that they could have easily have copied an IJ movie and then added parts to make it be more pony and themed around the show. The ending was pretty cheesy though.

btw, it's getting kinda annoying how much they're trying to appeal to bronies. Shippers and cloppers in particular. Goodness gracious, I swear they were really going to make Dash kiss Daring Do.

[ClaviSound]

HEEEEEEARTS AS STRONG AS HORSEEEEEES~

So, this episode had a pretty great concept - definitely better than Daring Don't - but I feel that they could have gone deeper into the implementation and said things more meaningful than "eh cross that bridge when you come to it." Plus, the bit at the end about "quitters" sort of feels like a Twilifree pull where something relatively small is blown out of proportion by others just for the sake of advancing the story.

Also, it's probably bad that when "professionalism" came up I instantly thought they were referring to its status as a buzzword in the fandom. It honestly never went anywhere significant other than as a joke, so I don't know, could be, could not be.

Oh well, I was getting a bit jittery waiting for a CMC episode this season. Pretty good one. Plus, dat song is going to see some HEAVY remixing action. Great guitar line, and the vocal harmonies were well-chosen.

My verdict is: OH COME ON THEY STILL DIDN'T GET THEIR CUTIE MARKS ARE YOU JUST TOYING WITH ME NOW DHX

[Gray Ham]

I doubt that they'll get their cutie marks while DHX can still milk the whole "be happy with who you are" plotline for a few more episodes.

[ph00tbag]

About halfway through the episode I realized that Scoots could very well get her Cutie Mark this episode, and I was literally holding my breath the whole time. When she did that little gasp and her butt was out of frame, I became near apoplectic. Then... nothing. I am so mad right now. DHX for best troll.

I need more time to think about how I feel about this episode. That ending is making me hate it for no sensible reason.

Also:

[itroitnyah]

screw it, urling this

Here's the episode (link up there). Is it just me or did they try to copy the animation style of the one, umm... "fuck you I can't eat all these apples" hm, I can't remember the name, but that line is the more famous one from the series of episodes. Well, yeah. I've watched like half of it so far, but I gotta go sing so I'll watch the rest of it when Iget back.

[itroitnyah]

Ok, so the animation at the beginning with the mouths totally looks like hotdiggitydemon's .MOV series.

Anyways, this had to be the best episode of the season so far. It wasn't rushed either, so that's great.

We can now disprove that Scoots is homeless or orphaned (for the most part. When there's the scene inside of the house).

I sorta wish that they woulda shown Spoon and Tiara's performance, just to watch them fail. Hehe, guys let's guess what their performance would have been. Like, I totally think it would have been the two of them just standing up there strutting around and shit while the judges just sorta go "get out of here" and they're all like "Fuck you we can't bear the ponyville flag" and then they sorta walk around talking about how good they are.

[simonli2575]

It wasn't rushed either

For the most part it isn't, but I felt that the ending could have used some more time to showcase others' performances, not just Spoon and Tiara's.

[ph00tbag]

I dunno. Ponies are horses.

And technically, they're draft horses, so their hearts are pretty hardy--moreso than many hot-blooded breeds.

Who knows. This show doesn't regularly purport to make sense or anything.

[Gray Ham]

I think for what they want to convey in these episodes, they're too short.

^This. The ending seemed kinda rushed.

[Injustrial]

This! This last one! Power Ponies!!

HhhnnnnnhHHH!!

Best animated episode to date!
So much fun!
Proper action scenes!
Spike isn't annoying throughout the whole thing!
Self-contained story!
Flutterhulk!

AAAGH!


*faints*

[simonli2575]

Spoiler Power Ponies Spoiler:

Of fucking course, your mouths and eyes can still fucking move even after they've been directly sprayed.

[itroitnyah]

Lol, pinkie pie is racist, haha. (it's at the scene where all the ponies are cleaning and spike is all like "what can I do" and Twi tells him he can go read and pinkie skates by squealing "pony power!")

The part where fluttershy goes berzerk is awesome. The lines she's yelling as she does so are even better.

[simonli2575]

Another thing, why does the spray only fucking work for like 5 minutes? So much for making a spray to stop them in place.

On a side note, enchanted comics do sound like a good idea. I can imagine that there will be games made based on that very idea.

[Gray Ham]

I was happy with it. No obvious screw-ups, Pinkie was actually funny, Rarity was still a babe, Spike is still the character I love to hate and Fluttershy actually raged for a pretty decent reason this time. Pacing was good. Loved it.

[ClaviSound]

I've seen a couple of people around Twitter, Tumblr, Skype, etc. comparing this episode to Daring Don't, due to them both being action-oriented episodes. I'd say that the Daring Do episode's animation was superior to Power Ponies, but the fight scenes in the latter were much more organized, polished, and memorable (you really can't argue that the mane six running in circles tossing a ring back and forth is better than Flutterhulk). I also have to give PP bonus chips for introducing a new universe for content producers to explore in songs, artwork, or animations; it'll be interesting to see where people take it, especially combined with the Mare-Do-Well Mythos.

That said, I also have to ding Power Ponies for kind of just going through the motions on getting in and out of the main chunk of the story. It was "Enchanted Comics," really? From a plot standpoint, the entire episode was ultimately filler other than the lesson learned; it didn't even cover mane six interrelationships all that much. I was hoping it would advance the Harmony Box arc more (still no keys found?), but it seems that all we're going to get is the mane six cleaning up the Old Sisters' Castle. At least they put in the hint that the castle likely holds the secrets to opening that box.

Props for the lesson of "just because we don't need your help at the moment doesn't mean you aren't helpful," though, that was pretty solid. I'd have liked to see more development for the Humdrum character - the real one, not Spike - in the whole "comic relief but still saves the day every once in a while" fashion, as a bookend, but it didn't happen. Oh well, you can't win 'em all, I suppose, and Spike still did a good job actually doing something for once.

Finally, Fili-Second gets my vote for best superheroine. Radiance was the most meh; basically Rarity was Green Lantern without a downside, which kind of ruins the whole point. Maybe her weakness is bad fashion sense, and it didn't manifest? Applejack was kind of just... there (having such a generic name as Mistress Mare-velous doesn't help), the Masked Matterhorn was interesting enough, the Zap was fairly predictable as a derivation of Thor coupled with Rainbow Dash's tendency to fail at controlling tornadoes, and Fluttershy's Saddle Ranger needs no input from me.

I liked this episode, a lot more than I liked Daring Don't. It hit on a lot of elements the former lacked and nailed them. Favorite episode of season 4 so far in my opinion, but I'll probably change my tune looking forward; it's not impossible that that might change with the next few episodes.

[ph00tbag]

I found this episode actually to be fairly uninspiring. Everything just felt kinda forced the whole way through. Like they started out with a good idea somewhere down the line, but committed to a bunch of poor executions, and just had to work with them, except the idea itself wasn't especially compelling.

Call me crazy, but the thing I've loved the most about MLP is the world that we've already been exploring. It's why I never got the problem with Daring Do's adventures being real--that actually made the world more engaging for me. In this episode, on the other hand, it was a throw-away world, with no depth. It literally ended beyond each set.

Also, the dialogue was just... not great. Yeah, we get it, Humdrum is inept and powerless. Part of the problem was the fact that they had created this throwaway universe. It necessitated a boatload of exposition about the place, characters and plot, and nothing else was really talked about. At the very least, the hair puns could have been better executed and more numerous. It would have made Mane-iac's dialogue less redundant (which is kind of sad in and of itself). I was kind of disappointed to see that this was the result of work from McCarthy and Fullerton, who have in the past done some really good stuff for the show.

[simonli2575]

Dear Hasbro, please stop destroying my favorite character.

[simonli2575]

What a disappointment, we never see naturally born bat ponies in this episode, though Flutterbat is quite cool.

[itroitnyah]

It was pretty obvious that a few of the ponies had backup singers with the song in the beginning. Also, I'm quite surprised that Twi was against fluttershy. It seems like she would have agreed that the bats are helping the apple trees.

The episode wasn't really rushed either. What's this? No rushed episode in 3 weeks? Blasphamy! Anyways, it was pretty good.

[ClaviSound]

I actually had to download this episode rather than watch it live or streamed because I'm on vacation and don't have a good enough connection for streams, but ponies don't take a vacation.

Spoiler Some commentary or something:

-I swear I was just waiting for the intro bit to have Applejack doing snow angels in a giant pile of apples. Seriously, she's never been subject to torture in grimdark fanfiction because she just bleeds apples and "a pool of Red Delicious slowly tumbled out of her body" isn't scary

-During the song, Fluttershy makes the argument that vampire bats are really good at heart and have families and whatnot... and then that sort of goes nowhere and it's generally accepted that they're just bad news that have to be corralled in a certain section of the orchard. Sorry Fluttershy, I guess you really were wrong.

-Flutterbat is going to get ALL the fanart. All of it.

-0/10 for DHX trying to make Fluttershy scary when we all know that's just impossible

-Honestly, even though she's not scary, they could have made her more intimidating. Where are the scare chords? Where's the struggle as Fluttershy grapples with Spike? Where's the close-up of her fangs so, so close to biting through another mane six's neck? Where's the knocking others to the ground with force far beyond what she should be capable of? Really, all she does is kind of swoop toward them, what does she expect that will do? "Maybe if I feint towards them they'll leave me alone"? Puh-leeze.

-Dat Twilight lecture. I'mma start calling her the Tron Wizard, cuz she totes is

-I swear, first the shadowy figure at the end of Castle Mane-ia, now this. How many untied plot points are we going to get? DHX had better resolve these by the end of the season, or I'm going to be disappointed, because they're better writers than that.

-I hope the erroneous crediting of the episode's writer helps Merriweather vindicate herself in the eyes of the community. I swear, I never understood people's dislike of her writing. Wonderbolt Academy's in my top five episodes. Maybe people will actually stop judging her episodes based on who's writing it now, or at least that's what I hope.

My overall verdict?

...Juicy.

MwahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA yeah i liked it eagerly awaiting next week's ep

[itroitnyah]

- Pinkie stop trying to be funny and just be normal. Because you're at your funniest when you're just being your normal Pinkie self :/

Thank you for reminding me. The people running the show are really trying way too hard to make Pinkie random. And it seems to rarely work.

[simonli2575]

Which kind of reminds me...
Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, do you even grammar?

[Magnitude Zero]

- Pinkie stop trying to be funny and just be normal. Because you're at your funniest when you're just being your normal Pinkie self :/

Thank you for reminding me. The people running the show are really trying way too hard to make Pinkie random. And it seems to rarely work.

This is my one real complaint about this season.

Pinkie is SUCH a great character when the writers don't try to flanderize her into some one-dimensional side-gag. Give me "sweet but strange" Pinkie over "lol i have no idea what's going on i'ma say some stupid shit" Pinkie, any day.

The rest of the season has been pretty great though I'm loving it so far. And that song was brilliant.

[ph00tbag]

Well, we went seven episodes without Applejack even once mentioning apples. I guess she decided to make up for lost time this ep.

And we're back to Rainbow "Ned Flanders" Dash. Seriously, why can't Rainbow Dash's motivation be simply because she, oh I don't know, knows how much Applejack's orchard means to Applejack, and wants to help her friend succeed? This cider thing blows a previous episode's gag way out of proportion and makes her seem selfish and simpleminded. Wait, what? This episode is written by MWW? Why am I not surprised?

Spoiler words:

I did rather enjoy the Flutterbat segments. That was a creative way to create that tension.

I'm really starting to worry about these teases at the ends of episodes. Castlemania, Power Ponies, and Bats! have both had this thing, and it's really messing with the continuity for me. So what, is the Pony of Shadow going to be coming back? Is Mane-iac coming out of the comic to attack or something? Is Fluttershy still a vampire pony? If they're not, then stop implying they are.

These teasers don't work like they do in shows with no continuity. If something like that happened in Regular Show, it wouldn't matter in the next episode, because each episode is its own continuity. But with Pony, they're in a continuing world. When an ending like that happens, those decisions ought to last, otherwise the continuity of the world is broken.

When it happened the first time, I was excited, because it suggested a continuous villain. Then it happened again, and I was confused, because it wasn't really necessary, but it seemed possible it was the work of the Pony of Shadow. Now I'm just concerned, because the assumptions I have to make are compounding, and there hasn't even been a payoff yet for the first teaser. I mean, are we ever going to see Flutterbat play into future episodes? I'm growing increasingly concerned we won't, and that marks a worrying change in the show's approach to continuity.