Canterlot Boutique Review · 12:44am Sep 13th, 2015
So we're back from the latest hiatus! ...There sure has been quite a few of them since season five started back in April, hasn't there? I still have no idea why that is. O.o Well, not only that, but this is just one of the three consecutive Rarity episodes!
...O-kay? I'm not against having three episodes for one character in the same season, far from it! But in rapid succession? That's kind of odd... But okay! Oh, and Friendship Games is going to be released in two weeks!
...But not in theatres. Awww... it was becoming a tradition for me to go see them in theatres! :< Oh well, I still look forward to it! But for now, let's jump right back into MLP with our latest episode, Canterlot Boutique!
We start off with Rarity hard at work with her latest design, before she gets interrupted by Pinkie, and has received a letter. It turns out that she had been trying to purchase a property in Canterlot so that she could open another shop there. Interesting, so Rarity is going to be branching out! That does seem like something she would do in order to expand her business. How cool is that?
So everything goes off pretty well, with Rarity having successfully opened her new shop, the Canterlot Carousel. Her manager is Sassy Saddles, who's a little bit overbearing. Pushing for several orders to be done, having a signature dress, and treating it like this is a factory of sorts.
Rarity goes along with it for some time, despite how tough it is and how much it feels a lot less like she's used to working. Which makes a lot of sense, since Rarity had always been known for creating unique dresses. It's especially telling considering that she is a one-man show. It's not easy transitioning to working your own way and then having someone else work alongside you.
What also hit the point home was definitely how things turned out, coupled with the moral. The mass production of the same dress leaves Rarity feeling uninspired and enjoying her work less and less. She achieves something she feels is her ultimate dream and finds that it's nowhere near what she hoped. This is something I know a lot of people can understand, since some goals we end up achieving don't meet up to our expectations. It doesn't mean it ends up being a bad thing, but sometimes there are setbacks to our goals that can end up making us feel miserable.
Sassy Saddles, from the get-go, does come off like an evil businessperson. Like she's only out for herself and completely blind to the needs of others. But surprisingly, the episode didn't go there. She was just misguided and didn't quite realize that mass production and a signature design wasn't Rarity's style. It was nice to take a little more human approach, that sometimes the ideas you have don't always work for the people around you.
I know a lot of people were hoping for this idea, for Rarity to open her own shop in Canterlot. It was something Lauren Faust herself had envisioned. Now while I admittedly forgot about that, I guess I can see that people had high hopes for this episode. Does it hold up? Well, I'm not sure. It kind of depends who you ask, really.
This isn't a grand and amazing episode, but it's very enjoyable. I would say that it's not the end of Rarity's arc. Far from it, I think it's just beginning. And I don't mean because this is the first of Rarity's episodes, I mean that there's still so many possibilities to be had with this idea. So it's more or less planting a seed and finding ideas for it. I think we can all agree that there's going to be a lot of fanart and fanfiction based on the concepts this episode presented.
It was a great Rarity episode, and it was an interesting setup that I think worked out very well. It still had some nice laughs, it was a nice look into Rarity's character, and handled the situations very interestingly.
Plus, the fun part was that I watched this episode with my friend and co-writer Poison Cure (over Skype) and we were just laughing and having some fun with it. XD So overall, this was pretty fun and a nice little start back into the series!
Couldn't agree more!