My thoughts on S6E5 - Gauntlet of Fire. (SPOILERS)

It's the first episode of season six that I actually enjoyed... but it's technically the second episode I've seen and it's inspired me, a lot. So lets get into what I thought about it.

The story was different, young Spike is called to the Dragonlands and competes in a contest against other dragons for the right to become Dragon Lord. Spike is joined by Twilight and Rarity (regrettably without the Crackle costume) and must compete in the Gauntlet of Fire to obtain the Bloodstone Scepter, but Spke's nemesis, Garble is back (and he's hit puberty! ) and he plans to do harm to Ponykind once he has become Dragon Lord. But with help of the dragon princess, Ember, Spike take on the trial and becomes Dragon Lord.

that basically sums it up.

Now onto the setting and characters. We got the see the Dragonlands which was very underwhelming. I always thought it would different, I thought it would have something more to it, other than dark brown gravel and rocks and lava. But it did have an ocean with big nasty looking fish, and I love sea creatures, they're not my absolute favorite, but I love seeing new sea creatures. The Rock Slingers weren't interesting to me, and one of them made an FNAF Springtrap sound, plus their design was less than impressive to me at least. The insight into the dragon culture is interesting for the show, though the trial feels a little silly, even by the shows standards, especially after establishing the dragons as being somewhat animalistic in nature, it makes the trial idea unnecessary when they could fight it out Hunger Games style. But for the show's worth, I can dig it, even though I don't like it.

Garble is back, and as mentioned earlier, he hit puberty, his voice is extra deep this time around, and he's a bugger, he's annoying even more than last time, and for the shows worth, he's punished fairly well, it's hilarious.

Princess Ember, the first non-pony princess on the show is a pretty decent character, she's cool, she acts like she doesn't need anyone and she defies her fathers orders to go get the scepter but ends up working with Spike and becoming his friends, that's how the Dragon do. But she also ticks me off as after working with Spike, clearly bonding with him, she ditches him, only to have a change of heart later . I'm not going to lie, but I hate it when the show does this, it's an example of rushing things, why did she have to leave only to come back two minutes later? It's stupid!

then again, with two writers working on it, I can see why that part was rushed and unnecessary.

I didn't like the Dragon Lords design, it was way too cartoonish for my liking. Actually, I don't like any of the dragons designs, except Smaug from Dragonshy, and the green dragon from that one Owlowiscious episode, they were awesome, regardless of being a palette swap, the design was still better then what we got in this episode. They don't fully resemble dragons, maybe a few but not all. Ember looked great. Also, why the armor?! What Dragon forged armor?! Unless they were from a time long forgotten there's no reason for them to be there?! Writers, get on that.

But from the show's stand point, I can understand...

Anyway. The episode, regardless of my thoughts, might just be my favorite episode of Season six, but I have a lot of catching up to do, especially the past three episodes (Two part episodes are technically one episode split up, so The Crystalling is one big episode). This is Chaos Phantasm and maybe I'll do another blog like this next week.

Oh yeah, the princesses have tea with Sparkle Horse.