Littlecolt Reviews Season 4, Part 2!

Here I go again! On the chopping block today: Castle Mane-ia and Daring Don't!

Episode 3, Castle Mane-ia

It seems like this episode is either loved or hated by fans, I haven't met too many people who just think it's "alright." I am deep, deep, deep into the group that love it.

So, the episode starts off with Twilight and Spike heading to the old castle in the Everfree Forest after Celestia suggests they go there to research in its library. We are quickly followed up with Rainbow Dash and Applejack heading out there to try and prove who the most daring pony is by seeing who would be the first to chicken out and run back home. Conveniently, we also see that Rarity and Fluttershy are headed there as well, because Rarity wants to find some ncient tapestries to restore. Pinkie Pie runs off on her own because she had been invited to ring the new school bell.

But lets back up a bit and talk for a moment about the bee scene at the start of the episode. Rainbow Dash and Applejack were covered in bees, first one to blink loses, but neither of them blink, and the beekeeper pony comes and gets his bees back... revealing that they were both wearing beekeeper uniforms that were protecting them from the beed anyway! How is this daring, exactly? Also, Pinkie's math seems pretty questionable.

Back to the castle, we find that Spike and Twilight have found the library and are looking for information on the princess box thing. Fluttershy and Rarity have arrived and are wandering around looking for tapestries. Applejack and Rainbow Dash are apparently trying to go as deep into the castle as they can.

Fluttershy, meanwhile, has triggered the castle's first trap by causing a wall to spin around while she was trying to pull a big tapestry down for Rarity. Her movement behind the tapestry on the other side is seen by Rainbow and AJ, who both freak out and run away. Somehow, Fluttershy doesn't even notice all of this, rotates the wall back around, and is told about it by Rarity. Is she really that clueless?

So, we start to learn slowly but surely that the castle is full of traps and secret passages.

Eventually, Rainbow Dash and Applejack find a hallway that is lined with disembodied pony legs holding torches. Yikes! Whoever designed this place was a pretty creepy pony. Meanwhile, Rarity and Fluttershy get dumped into a hole by Angel when he steps on a secret switch in the floor... and then he just runs away! What a jerk! Angel ends up finding Spike and Twilight and just chilling with them. Seriously, Angel... you have issues.

Rarity and Fluttershy are in that hole, which seems to be some sort of detention cell, complete with a hole in the wall. Look at the wall itself! There's scratch marks, like somepony was in there counting the days! That's a lot of days! That is kind of freaking dark! In any case, the two of them end up hearing Applejack and Rainbow Dash on the other side of the wall, but for whatever reason they don't recognize their voices.

The episode continues in this crazy, slapstick fashion. Rarity's scream at the ripped tapestry when she gets launched out of a trap door is HILARIOUS! I won't go into every single thing that happens, but it's all classic, cartoony fun.

AJ and RD find themselves in a hall of pony armor. PONY ARMOR! And it's big, full body armor. I love this. Real world building. You have to wonder about the force that used this armor. E.U.P. as mentioned in a later episode this season? Hmmm!

Twilight and Spike find a secret room, and Twilight finds Celestia's old journal. She reads all about the castle in it. Apparently Celestia and Luna were actively adding things onto this castle to make it like a fun house. I LOVE THIS FREAKING CONCEPT! It's ridiculous, and playful, and not to mention contains some utility if you think about it. Especially the "Organ to the Outside" thing. The organ playing certain notes could be recognized by those in the castle, and they would know which traps had been activated, therefore enjecting enemies and knowing where they were ejected to. It does seem a little too easy to re-enter the place, though, so who knows what the whole idea behind it could have been.

Fluttershy sees something she thinks is Angel in a later scene, and then it gets crushed by a stone pillar... AND THEN APPLEJACK JUMPS ON IT AND STOMPS! Okay, two things.. first of all, way to go AJ, as far as Fluttershy knows you just further pancaked a bunny. Second, poor Flutters. This isn't the first time she's thought she saw a critter die. First Philomena, now this. Just terrible, but I laughed because I am a terrible person.

They eventually find out that it was Pinkie Pie all along who was playing the organ and setting off most of the traps. She even mentions that she was only able to ring the school bell for a little bit, and can't imagine why they told her to stop. And then we get a scene of her ringing it... like, constantly. With her head. WTF Pinkie, you're so WEIRD!

In the end, they all learn a lesson about staying grounded and not letting their imaginations get the best of them.

And to keep the "Dear Princess Celestia" thing going, there are now going to be entries in a diary rather than friendship letters to the princess. I have to say, I like this way better than if they had gone with "Dear Princess Twilight" - even though that's basically what this is.

We finally see the supposed "Pony of Shadows" flash on the screen at the end. They haven't touched on it since, which is a bummer. And no, it wasn't Tirek. Know why? Because if it was, he'd know about Twilight in the finale, and he didn't. So it's not him. Nyah!

The episode overall is hilarious. There's a few plot holes, if you want to call them that. Little things like characters not recognizing other characters' voices, characters donning the idiot hat for hilarity, etc... but it's all to accomplish some awesome slapstick and running around, which I really appreciate.

Fantastic episode, 9/10.

So, let's move on to what will no doubt be a much less positive review, Daring Don't. This episode has some super super glaring issues that I just can't let slide.

It starts out great enough, though. The introduction of the fact that Rainbow Dash is counting down the months until the release of the new Daring Do book is really relatable to anyone who's counted down to a new thing of whatever you're reading or watching. I am sure most of you out there can at least relate from waiting around for season 4. This was a fantastic little tidbit, and it leads us into the story.

Rainbow Dash finds out from Twilight that the author of Daring Do, A. K. Yearling, isn't going to have the book finished, and it's been pushed back. Rainbow Dash reacts like any crazed fan, first with disbelief, and then with depression, the finally panic/bargaining...

A word about A. K. Yearling, though most dedicated fans have heard this before: Prior to this episode coming out, many fans had the idea in their heads that Twilight's mom, Twilight Velvet, was the author of Daring Do. This was because in one panel of the official comics, she had a plaque on the wall that said "Daring Do Award" or something like that. We are now finding out that she isn't the author, but to be honest, it makes way more sense this way. Why would the author of Daring Do have a "Daring Do Award"? If anything, that award likely was given to Twilight's mom by an organization connected to Yearling. So yes, it all makes sense still.

Rainbow Dash figures that the reason Yearling can't finish the book on time is because something is taking up all of her time. She decides that in an effort to help her put the book out faster, she will go with her friends to Yearling's house and help her do the mundane tasks of her life such as cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc... so Yearling can spent her every waking minute writing.

This is a HILARIOUS proposition. I love this part of the episode. I wish it could have continued on this route for the whole thing, because seriously, by this point I was blown away. As a writer, I know procrastination is a thing, and real life responsibilities are a thing too. However, if I had someone doing them for me, it wouldn't make me write any faster! That's part of the hilarity. It's also worth mentioning that I have heard people say similar things to wht RD is suggesting here about author George R. R. Martin, who writes the Song of Ice and Fire (more commonly known as Game of Thrones due to the TV show) series. I'm sure he finds it just as laughable.

So, we've got a REAL NERD PROBLEM right off the bat. As a princess and huge Daring Do fan, Twilight just happens to know where Yearling lives. Sure. I'll buy it. So off they go to her house, Pinkie Pie painting a red line the whole way so it would be visible on a map for us. Wasn't that nice of her? Yearling apparently lives somewhere in the northwest corner of Equestria. I'll buy it! Since the map of Equestria is very loosely based on the map of North America, I guess she either lives in the equivalent of the Pacific northwest or western Canada. Seems like a pretty nice place for an author to live. I'd love to live in Washington, to be honest.

Moving along, the ponies find Yearling's house and it has been trashed by someone. The door is busted in, things are thrown everywhere, windows broken out, and Yearling isn't home. However, she gets back home a few minutes later. The six ponies deny having trashed the place, and are worried for Yearling's safety. The author mostly ignores them. She seems pretty cold and uncaring. Hah! I can feel the writers reaching into the darkest parts of their beings at this point to create this character.

Yearling finds a book that can only be opened by combination lock. She opens it and finds a golden ring and seems glad that it's safe. Rainbow Dash and Twilight are having little fan freakout moments the whole time, utterly hilarious, but then the story takes a turn for the worse in more ways than one.

The mane six leave the house and three ponies come back into the house from an upper floor window, and we find out that they are criminals trying to steal that golden ring from Yearling. They also refer to her as Daring Do, and we see her start to fight the bad guys. The m ane six stand outside the window and all decide, for whatever reason, to don their idiot hats and just watch as Daring Do is eventually beat up by these guys. Three against one? Should we go in and help immediately? Nah, let's just watch. Seriously, this did not need to happen. One of them eventually decides to mention that they should go help, and they finally do, but not before the bad guys get away with the ring. Daring Do says she doesn't need help and runs off on her own.

This is where I have to get really critical on the writers, which I normally hate doing. If Daring Do wouldn't accept help anyway, couldn't that have happened when the mane six jumped in to help her IMMEDIATELY, which would be way more in line with their characters? I'm sure they wanted to stretch out this whole "Fan awe" thing as much as they could, but this seriously grated on my nerves. This scene could have been written way better and still end similarly, but we'd all be feeling a lot better about how it had gone down.

After arguing about Daring DO canon for like 5 minutes, Rainbow Dash decides to charge off and find Daring Do in order to help her. When she finally comes across Daring, she has more fan freakouts, can't stop saying how big a fan she is, and other such nonsense. I mean, seriously, there's a limit to how idiotic I will believe Rainbow Dash is, and that's saying a lot considering she's been portrayed as not-too-bright plenty of times in the series. I will be honest, I've only seen this episode a couple of times, so I am trying hard to remember things. I want to say that Daring Do was attacked again and Rainbow Dash just stared in a celebrity-induced stupor again. THERE. IS. A. LIMIT. TO. HOW. STUPID..... SERIOUSLY.

So, Dash tries to help Daring again, and gets told to get lost again. She follows along anyway, which is actually IN character for her, so that's fine. Hard headed, that's true of her. Very true. But now we find ourselves at some sort of huge ancient ruins. And now I'll bring up the thing that was mentioned earlier, about the golden ring. It's apparently the last key needed to do some sort of evil ritual that will cuse "the valley" to a 800 years of sweltering heat. What valley? Where is this valley? It's up there in the northwest? The canon map of Equestria doesn't have it, but okay, I'll buy that it's not on the map. That it's somehow secret. Sure, why not. I am forgiving viewer for the most part. I'll even turn a blind eye to the fact that a villain like Ahuizotl who is doing some sort of ancient ritual like this in what is apparently a jungle in the northwest hasn't fallen onto Celestia's radar yet. We can assume Daring Do has defeated him each time and so Celestia has never heard of him or at least never had to bother.

So Daring Do tried to charge in, and Ahuizotl is on top of a pyramid throwing a bunch of random weapons at her. We're talking swords, spears, knives, maces... It's pretty ridiculous, but whatever. Long story short, Daring Do gets caught and locked in this chamber where we get one of the only good scenes left in this episode.

So, okay, Daring is shackled to a wall in a stone chamber that is not only slowly filling with sand, (EDIT: Okay, it was filling with water and had piranhas. I am halfway remembering the scene from the first Daring Do episode, which is all the worse since even what I remembered being good about this episode was not even from this episode...)but also has walls closing in, but also has spikes coming out of the walls, but also has spiders coming out from the holes where the spikes are coming out from. This is a freaking hilarious little tribute to the ridiculousness of Indiana Jones and James Bond style villains all in one. I really applaud this scene. I can give credit where credit is due, and it's due big time here.

Daring Do frees herself, but can't manage to get out of the place. Luckily, Rainbow Dash didn't listen to her when she said to buzz off, and saves her. I do like the exchange here. "I told you I work alone." "I just came here to give you your hat." - Great stuff. But it's the last great stuff left in the episode.

From here on out, Daring Do, Rainbow Dash, and the rest of the mane six who have arrived, have a big fight with Ahuizotl and his crew of incompetent baddies. Eventually, Dash and Daring slide all the gold rings off the rod they are around and then everyone escapes just in time before the pyramid collapses. None of the villains escape, though, which is... questionable, but it lets us have the scene of Ahuizotl screaming "Cuse you, Daring Do!" or whatever he screams.

I'll be honest, this episode had some decent moments, and some really relatable hilarity... but that can't save it. It's really forced and bland most of the time, and I find myself constantly facepalming at Rainbow Dash the whole time. I am not upset that Daring Do is real, although it brings in an awful lot of complications. I mean, if Daring Do is saving the world over and over, how does nopony know who she is? I have this feeling that Celestia has to know.

So yeah. Idiot plot, very few good moments, and some real big plot holes make this one of the biggest stinkers in the entire series.

What a bummer, 2/10

Next time, I will review and recap the next couple episodes!