Castle Mane-ia
It started out as a pretty fun little haunted house episode, and it reminded me a bit of Scooby Doo. And the animation and environment design was noticeably better. But at around the 11-minute mark, the premise of exploring a spooky castle starts wearing thin, and you remember why Scooby Doo has a mystery to solve and a monster to catch. So this episode would have worked better in an 11-minute format.
Remember when The Everfree Forest was this dangerous, forbidding place? I remember. It was last episode, when one encounter with the local fauna convinced them to send Twilight back to Ponyville. It really seems like The Everfree Forest is only as dangerous as the plot requires.
This whole episode basically exists tie in The Journal of The Two Sisters. I didn’t end up reading it until long after G4 had ended, but I’m glad I finally did.
Daring Don’t
Daring Don’t is a weird episode. It doesn’t feel like it takes place in the same universe that Celestia raises the sun, or where Rainbow Dash has helped save the world multiple times.
I’m not entirely sure how to engage with the climax of the story. We’re never given any context for the ring-placing ceremony. “800 years of unrelenting heat” sounds bad, but the ponies that live there seem perfectly fine with the ritual. Daring Do basically goes to another land, takes their relics, and causes their building to collapse, and we only have her word that she’s even doing the right thing. Pretty sure “unrelenting heat” is the natural climate of a jungle, and this is a setting where ponies are responsible for maintaining the natural condition of the environment. The episode glosses over any potentially interesting worldbuilding in favor of a surface-level Indiana Jones knockoff. It’s also notable that Twilight, who now represents Equestrian Royalty, just goes along with it and doesn’t question anything. And none of the natives even notice or care that she’s an alicorn.
I guess it just feels kind of surface-level. Season One had a “Cowboys and Indians” episode, but it was about listening to both sides.
Also Twilight remembers she can teleport.
Overall, I didn’t enjoy it as much on a rewatch. I’m glad that they end up deconstructing Daring Do later on. If you don’t care about my complaints, then it’s funny commentary on fanboyism, and the action scene at the end is pretty solid.
Flight to the Finish
It’s rarely a good sign when nothing happens for the first third of the episode. Props to them finally addressing Scootaloo’s disability, but this is an episode that would have benefited from a B-plot. I think this is one of those cases where not addressing it for a long time works in the show’s favour. People adapt to their limitations, to the point where they don’t even think about them. But it still hurts to be reminded of them. I think there’s an all-time great in there, but this really did not have 22 minutes worth of materiel.
Power Ponies
There’s not a whole lot to say about it. I like the character and costume designs, and they probably had a lot of fun making it. It’s kind of distracting that for at least half of the Power Ponies, their powers are just things the characters could already do in Season One.
There’s a lot of exposition for things that will never come up again.
Bats!
This episode isn’t great, but I enjoyed it. It’s trying to be about stuff, and it’s at least interesting to talk about.
The visual storytelling is a bit confused. It would be one thing if the bats were just eating a bunch of apples. But the wilted trees in the background make it look like they’re actively killing the trees. If what Fluttershy is saying about the bats is true: that new and better trees will grow, then you would think that’s something Granny Smith would have noticed. It also seems like Sweet Apple Acres already has plenty of apple trees. There’s a potentially interesting bit of character development; while Fluttershy knows a lot about animals, she doesn’t understand the business of running an apple orchard. There is such a thing as an invasive species, and that might have been an interesting angle. Or if it turned out that they only drain trees that are already past their prime.
This episode makes me miss Twilight’s Season One characterization. She was the skeptic of the group. She was always the one to challenge the convictions of others, and she preferred to do her research and develop an informed opinion before taking action. There was a persistent thing where using her magic would backfire if she used it impulsively or didn’t think things through. None of that is present here. She doesn’t even think back to the last time she used magic to tamper with the appetite of a flying pest.
Also, The Stare is back. That might have come in handy in Princess Twilight Sparkle.
Yet despite its flaws, I had a good time. It helps that this is an episode with some stakes that are personally relevant to the characters. Applejack has by far the best “portfolio” out of The Mane Six. She has stuff going on socially outside of the core group. And despite the fact that all her friends have magic powers, “runs an apple orchard” is somehow the character aspect that’s the most persistent source of stories.
One thing that’s notable is that Meghan McCarthy was incorrectly credited for this episode. It was pretty well-received, but it suddenly wasn’t liked as much once it came out that Merriwether Williams was the one who wrote it. Almost like whose name is on it mattered more than what was shown on screen. If I could find my tinfoil hat, I might suggest that they were deliberately testing to see if our opinions would change based on who wrote the episode.
Rarity Takes Manehattan
So I was all geared up to dislike Manehattan as a location. When you compare it to locations like Cloudsdale, Canterlot, or Ponyville, I don’t think it “fits”. But I do think it “works”. The point of the episode is to take Rarity outside of her comfort zone. The fact that Manehattan feels like such a departure really sells the idea that things “work differently” here; it feels more impersonal and “realistic”.
So far, this episode has the best writing of Season Four. What’s really neat is how it uses favours as a sort of “power scaling”, and it uses this to show that Rarity hasn’t acclimatized to Manehattan. It took Rarity two favours to barely make it in time, and she still has to go last. Rarity can be a bit manipulative, and I think this makes her a more interesting character. However, her ability to manipulate is completely outclassed by Suri Polomare, who uses Rarity’s own generosity against her. So Rarity’s own generosity dead to rights cost her the win at first, and she was only able to get it back by taking advantage of her friends. That’s a really cool way of deconstructing the idea of Generosity, and showing us Rarity’s dark side. But ultimately, she cares more about making things right with her friends than she does about winning.
This is an episode that really rewards you for thinking about the implications. It shows how screwing people over can net you an advantage in the short-term, but it will come back to bite you in the long run. Suri is never getting her hooves on that special fabric again, and she was only able to turn the fabric into a win with Coco’s help. Suri is done. The episode very much plays by its own rules. Rarity accepts a costume-making gig that will keep her in Manehattan for awhile. She commits to it, not even knowing if the private showing will be enough to make things up to her friends. Then, Coco sacrifices her job so that Rarity can have the win, so Rarity gives up her costume gig to Coco. I really like the nuance; the costume gig is a great opportunity for Rarity’s career, but it also means that she has to be away from her friends.
The episode is so good that I don’t even care that no one noticed that Twilight is an alicorn, or that taxis in a world where everyone is a horse doesn’t make a lot of sense.
