Сообщения от Captainping

Wowzers. At a minimum, the two-part opener for S4 should assuage the fears of anyone who felt that S3 was a sign of the show in a tailspin or who believed that Princess Twilight Sparkle spelled the end of all good things pony. McCarthy outdid herself on this one, writing a two-parter that will most likely hold a spot in the top ten best pony episodes of all time, while simultaneously providing backstory on a number of key points of Equestrian lore that had only been hinted at before.
The Good
Ponies are back, and more new ponies will keep appearing every week!
The animation from DHX is top-notch – a noticeable improvement from even S2/S3
They’ve set up an season-long arc!
Continuity, Continuity, Continuity!
John De Lancie is always a delight
Exploration of more mature themes
Twilight got a signature move, the “Twilight Sparkboom”
The Bad
The split-up/reunite plot in the second part made little sense and was resolved much too quickly
So much epicness… but no songs
The Ugly
The sound of a million headcanons crying out and being suddenly silenced
Episode Synopsis

The story begins with a callback to fan favorite episode Sonic Rainboom, except this time it’s Twilight practicing her flying skills for a big upcoming public event while Rainbow Dash and the others cheer her on. It turns out that the Summer Sun Celebration from the pilot is happening once again, except this time both Twilight and Luna will be helping Celestia perform the sun-raising ceremony. Twilight is apprehensive about her newfound role as Equestrian royalty, and not altogether happy that her royal duties require her to stay in Canterlot while her friends go about their business in Ponyville.

Things quickly go downhill for her, however, when both Celestia and Luna suddenly go missing and the sun and moon are left sharing the sky. As the only princess left in Canterlot (Cadence, we are informed, is busy up in the Crystal Empire) it falls upon Twilight to rise to the occasion, which to her credit she does admirably. However, things go from bad to worse when news hits that the Everfree Forest is invading Ponyville. Twilight decides to return to Ponyville to assist with the problems there and reunite the Elements of Harmony, believing they’ll be needed to deal with whatever’s behind all the ill tidings.

Twilight’s first inclination is that Discord is behind all the problems, and together with her friends and the Elements of Harmony she summons him to Ponyville. However, he protests his innocence and redirects their questioning to Zecora, who they find being forced to flee from the twisted black vines that have overtaken the Everfree Forest. Zecora conveniently has a magic scrying potion that only an alicorn can activate, but fortunately Twilight now meets that criteria. The potion has the effect of letting the user see events from long ago – more specifically for Twilight this means seeing many things that occurred a thousand years earlier – namely the fall of Princess Luna into Nightmare Moon and her banishment to the moon, and the original gathering of the Elements of Harmony by Celestia and Luna and the defeat of Discord.

Twilight learns that the Elements of Harmony were actually taken by Celestia from the Tree of Harmony deep in the Everfree Forest, and rightfully concludes that this tree is in some way involved with the forest going crazy. The Mane Six set off to find the tree within the Everfree Forest, but quickly run into trouble when Twilight angers a crocodile-like monster that tries to eat the ponies. Worried for the Princess’s safety in such dangerous circumstances, the group votes for Twilight to return to the relative safety of Ponyville while they continue the hunt for the tree alone. Twilight, clearly offended and saddened by this turn of events, regretfully agrees to the plan and trots off with Spike in tow. However, back in Ponyville, Discord of all creatures shames her back into rejoining the others.

While Twilight searches for her friends, they finish up the search for the Tree of Harmony, finding it nestled in a cave under the Celestia and Luna’s old castle, last seen back in the pilot episode. The same black vines attacking Ponyville have the Tree surrounded and are choking the life out of it, leaving the five friends puzzled as to what to do and wishing they had Twilight there to figure it out. At about the same time the friends realize that they do, in fact, need Twilight to lead them, Twilight gets ambushed by a group of these evil plant monsters. Spike is fortunately able to get the attention of the five friends and lead them back to rescue Twilight, and the reunited group hugs out some apologies for having split up before.

Back at the Tree, Twilight realizes that the Elements of Harmony need to be returned in order to restore the Tree of Harmony’s power and save it from the crushing vines. Once the Tree is restored, the vines are quickly dispelled and the group discovers both Celestia and Luna had also been trapped in the mass of vines near the base of the tree. What’s more, the Tree sprouts a magical treasure chest for Twilight with six keyholes, a mystery that Celestia hints will be Twilight and her friends destinies to work together and solve.

With the Princesses returned and the menacing black vines gone, things quickly return to normal. However, Discord finally comes clean and admits that he really had been behind everything that had happened, or at least the old “evil” version of himself was. It seems that the vines were the fruition of a plot from a thousand years earlier to defeat Celestia and Luna and destroy the Tree of Harmony, a plot that might have succeeded if not for Celestia and Luna showing up and defeating him just as he was enacting it. For reasons not entirely explained, the Tree finally weakened enough for the seeds he had planted which had lain dormant for a thousand years to finally sprout and attempt to bring this evil plot to fruition. Discord’s loyalties and “reformation” are left murky as while his excuse for not sharing this rather important information earlier was pretty weak – claiming he wanted Twilight to learn valuable lesson by figuring it out herself – he also doesn’t immediately return to his blatantly evil ways even after learning that the group no longer has possession of the Elements of Harmony and thus no longer can threaten him with harm to keep him in line.

The episode ends with the culmination of the Summer Sun Celebration that Twilight had been practicing for in the teaser. Luna lowers the moon while Celestia raises the sun, and Twilight – true to her namesake – unleashes what can only be referred to as a “Twilight Sparkboom” as the two celestial bodies meet halfway.
P is for Pony

Let’s not beat around the bush, these were some very good episodes even by pony standards. In terms of epicness, this is up there with A Canterlot Wedding, with only the lack of songs knocking it down a little. What’s more, this is the first of many new episodes of Pony, and it introduces the new season in style! For the first time, we have the makings of a full-blown season-long arc, with an honest-to-goddess mystery left unsolved at the end of an episode that doesn’t have an immediate follow-up, with the implication that the Mane Six will need to work together for the foreseeable future on unraveling what this all means.
One… Two… Three… Draw!

DHX’s animation just keeps getting better and better – they’re doing things in Flash that I’d be willing to bet they’d never have even considered attempting a couple years ago. The use of dynamic lighting in the castle was remarkable, and the myriad of action sequences on display were as fluid and detailed as anything we’ve seen them do before. They’ve come a long way from the time when they had to compromise over how to animate Apple Bloom simply spinning in a circle. Some of the work done in this was on par with Children of the Night, except this was well over a half an hour of animation with the expectation of nearly a dozen more hours to come in the next few months.
Back to the Future

Continuity played a big part in these episodes, which both sought to continue Princess Twilight Sparkle’s journey after her significant evolution at the end of S3 as well as fill in Equestria’s epic but previously only hinted at backstory. These major points of continuity were handled deftly and should please fans who had been clamoring for just such reassurance and expository detail. However, the episode also made a point to include other nods to continuity, such as showing Pinkie’s Pinkie Sense in action (without it needing to be pointed out or made a plot point), seeing the beautiful stained glass victory windows in Canterlot castle again, and even having the ponies come back to the old castle in the Everfree Forest where Nightmare Moon was defeated back in the pilot, complete with the rickety wooden bridge having come loose again where Rainbow Dash had previously tied it to help her friends cross. DHX knows that we eat this sort of thing up, and it’s a joy to see them take the time to include such attention to detail.
Growing Up

MLP occasional hints at some darker themes, but for the most part the episodes remain pretty light-hearted. It’s been said that the comics are the place to go if you’re looking for a blending of ponies with more mature issues, but I don’t think that’s the case any longer. In these episodes you have Twilight dealing with very adult issues like the fear of alienation, the sacrifices borne of leadership, and having to weigh the needs of the many against the needs of the few. Sure we saw a little of this in Party of One, but that was primarily driven by Pinkie Pie’s craziness – in this case Twilight is going through the real concern that her new station in life might very well take her places her friends cannot go, but at the same time she can’t simply shirk the responsibility as much as she might want to – this is something that many of us have faced as we grow up. I spoke at length about the Growing Virtues of MLP before, and these episodes further strengthen my belief that it’s no coincidence that the characters continue developing into more mature versions of themselves, something that’s exceedingly rare in animation. We even get to see Celestia’s facade slip a bit, revealing how much the Summer Sun Celebration – an event celebrated across Equestria – has been a painful reminder of the worst thing Celestia has ever done, and yet she’s continued to put on the ceremony year after year for literally hundreds of years in spite of the pain and tragedy she feels about it.
Refer Madness

MLP wouldn’t be complete without references and nods to sci-fi and fantasy classics. Celestia and Nightmare Moon’s epic aerial battle reminded me quite a bit of X-Wings battling TIE Fighters from Star Wars, and the look of the plant monsters attacking Twilight in the Everfree Forest felt inspired by the facehuggers from the Alien franchise. I’m sure there are quite a few more I missed on top of that, but I look forward to trying to spot them out on repeat viewings.
All that Glitters…

While the episodes excel in many ways, not everything was perfect. The plotting of the second part gave me some troubles, notably how out of left field the decision to effectively vote Twilight off the island was. On top of this, I don’t understand why Discord would want to urge Twilight to reunite with her friends – generally as the spirit of disharmony he seeks to encourage anything that splits ponies apart so this was quite bizarre behavior coming from him. Also, the ponies pretty clearly stated that their plan was to scout ahead and locate the Tree, and then get Twilight and lead her straight there. However, once they found the tree they tried and failed to solve the problem themselves, and then stood around lamenting not having Twilight there with them. Hello! Weren’t you supposed to be going back to get her? This entire sequence made little sense to me, and it resolved itself in what felt like moments, leaving me to wonder what the point was. There’s enough going on that it didn’t seem necessary to manufacture another crisis on top of everything and then fully resolve it just a couple scenes later.
Ending on a High Note – The Twilight Sparkboom

It should be no surprise that a lot of the major elements of MLP were thought up and planned with a level of depth that’s unheard of in a children’s cartoon. One such item comes from the names of our main princesses – Celestia from “celestial” representing the heaven and sky and Luna from the Latin “luna” literally representing the night and moon. Well, if names have meaning, then consider that “Twilight” literally means half-light – representing the halfway point between day and night – something I’ve long thought was no coincidence, but a point nonetheless that these episodes and possibly this whole season will see brought forth to culmination. This is one reason I don’t find the ascension of “Twilight” Sparkle to be wholly unprecedented, given that she fits the motif of our other alicorn princesses in representing a part of the natural cycle between day and night.

This is subtly referenced here by having Twilight be the pony in charge while both the sun and moon share the sky during the period of permanent twilight, but what better demonstration of this could there be than when Twilight detonate her spark, her very symbol of power, just at the sun and moon pass each other while night turns into day during the celebration event? The Twilight Sparkboom is a symbol of great things to come, and I believe is a portent for the rest of the season exploring Twilight’s role and destiny. It kicks S4 off with a bang, and I for one am eager for what’s to come.