"Surf and/or Turf" Review: The Movie Sequel, Part 2! · 4:43am Apr 22nd, 2018
My Cutie Mark Crusaders got sent by the map! :D They really did! :D This is something I didn't see coming! I heard theories by others that they might get sent and I hoped for this to happen, but didn't really believe they would get sent by it..... But now they did! :D This adds further confirmation to it that they have great and epic futures ahead of them and will help protect Equestria eventually! :D
And what an epic and deep mission it was! Not only did they get sent to Mount Aris, they even got to help a hippogriff colt with deciding with whom of his parents he wants to live after they got divorced!
A divorce is something new we didn't have in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic so far and even though it was very subtle, one could easily see that the parents of Silverstream and Terramar were acting, although friendly, quite distanced towards each other. They were surprised to see each other, like they hadn't seen each other for a veeeery long time, which is a clear indicator that they don't live together anymore and even their hug they shared later was very formal. But they also did not fight and they treated each other nicely, so it was apparently a divorce on good terms, because the realized they just don't fit to each other anymore and decided to end the relationship before it starts to get complicated.
And both of them are very good parents. They let their children decide who to live with and while Silverstream apparently decided to live with her dad on land on Mount Aris, they were perfectly fine with Terramar alternating between Mount Aris and Seaquestria and didn't expect him to decide for one of them. They showed how a divorce is done right, peacefully and not at the expense of the children.
It was also interesting that we got to know to Silverstream's parents so quickly..... That's a first for a new character in the show.
What I found more interesting than this, though, is the worldbuilding the episode contains! We already knew Mount Aris from the movie, but now it is like a completely new place after the Storm King was defeated and the hippogriffs returned on the land to live there again because they don't have to hide anymore.
And it's really beautiful place now! Last year when I saw the movie, I imagined their village to be similar like Canterlot, with lots of stone buildings and streets and only the occasional tree, but it is the very opposite. It is a breathtaking place full of nature with buildings on the trees and grass and flowers everywhere. It looks like a village hidden inside an enchanted forest.
And enchanted even seems to be literal for one place there, the Harmonizing Heights. It's a huge area full of hills and small creeks with a mysterious music in the air of which even the hippogriffs don't seem to exactly know where it comes from and what is making this music..... And we could not hear the legend behind it Terramar was about to tell as Sweetie Belle interrupted him by gushing over the place, so we have a big mystery here.....
Also interesting, if you look closely, you can see that the Harmonizing Heights are located exactly where Twilight and her friends heard Princess Skystar singing when they arrived on Mount Aris to get help against the Storm King. What looked like a secluded cavern during the time their village was destroyed, is now a beautiful landscape full of meadows, hills and creeks, so this shows the most how much Mount Aris has changed.
It's a wonderful, mystical place and to my surprise, I like it even more than Ponyville and would like to live there even more than I would like to live in Ponyville. Well, at least if it wouldn't be for the fact that my Crusaders live in Ponyville..... But, luckily, a train goes there now since Mount Aris has been connected to Equestria's railroad network, so I guess I could easily alternate between both places.^^
This new railroad connection also let me realize something. Originally, I thought that the hippogriffs had rebuilt their village very fast via magical means, as Twilight decided to open a friendship school only very shortly after the events seen in the movie, just right after they had returned to Ponyville after the Friendship Festival. But the new railroad connection made me realize it had to be a few months until they were finished.
Since we know from several episodes like "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" and "Pinkie Pride" that classical construction work isn't done with magic in Equestria, it is clear that building these train tracks from Appleloosa down south to Mount Aris must have taken a few months. And in "School Daze", we have only seen Mount Aris being rebuilt when Silverstream had already been at Twilight's friendship school and had left it again because of the trouble Chancellor Neighsay caused, when Applejack was there to convince the hippogriffs of letting her return to the school. In the same episode, we saw Twilight going from deciding to open the school to having it built and welcoming the first students in there. But the school is very big and building it and then adapting it, putting in furniture, getting the necessary equipment, ect. must have taken a long time.
If we assume that all of this took about three months, this means that right at the beginning of the first episode, we had a timeskip of three months, perhaps even more, before we saw how Silverstream and the others arrived at the Friendship School. This gave the hippogriffs plenty of time to rebuild their village, which took just as much time as building the Friendship School did as Silverstream Dididn't yet live long enough on land to get used to stairs, and the construction of the new train tracks probably took place during the same time.
And not only the look and condition of their village has changed, apparently, something has changed about their rulership as well. When Terramar talked with Applebloom, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle shortly after their arrival, he told them that the pearl was split up among their "kingdoms". Plural, not singular, so this means not only did some hippogriffs return to Mount Aris, like his dad, a few of his cousins and Silverstream, and others stay underwater in Seaquestria, like his mother, they also split off into two separate kingdoms. Apparently, Queen Novo is now only ruling over one place anymore, either Seaquestria or Mount Aris, depending on where she has decided to stay after the Storm King's death.
I wonder who the second, new ruler is?
And, interestingly enough already, my hunch that Silverstream got a piece of the pearl by Queen Novo after I watched "School Daze" turned out to be right, except that it wasn't just Silverstream, but that all hippogriffs who returned to Mount Aris got one!
Back to my Crusaders, this episode finally has a song from them again! I have starved to get one, as we didn't get a proper song by them since "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" aired, with Season 6 having the spotlight stolen from them in "Derby Racers" by their big sisters and in "Find the Purpose in Your Life" by Gabby and with Season 7 having had no song from them at all!
And it's not just any song, it's a duet between Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle! :D This is a first, we heard group songs by them and solos by Applebloom and Sweetie Belle, but never two of them singing a duet together! This was really refreshing and a perfect, epic comeback for their singing! :D
Although, I wouldn't mind if they have another song this season and hope for that to happen, to compensate for the drought the last two seasons.^^
And I guess this covers the most important aspects of the episode, for now. Even though this still wasn't a Student Six episode like I hoped for and how it looked like at first, it was similarly refreshing as "School Daze", by showing new locations and introducing us to some interesting new characters and, of course, the first Cutie Mark Crusaders episode of Season 8 and a long overdue, new Cutie Mark Crusaders song, so I enjoyed this tremendously and it is a contender for my favourite episode of Season 8! :D
Interesting Background Details
- At the beginning of the episode, before Applebloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle and Twilight get onto the train, we saw Dinky and Sparkler together with a huge suitcase, talking to each other while trotting away from the train. It looks like they just came back from an interesting travel and I wonder where that travel took them.^^
- According to Terramar, the hippogriffs hold their "Glad to be a Hippogriff" festival every weekend. They have a great pride in their nation and I hope we get to see and hear more about that!
- Hippogriffs have, unlike ponies, very intriguing and unusual differences in size between adults and foals. While pony foals reach up to the chest of adult ponies, hippogriff foals are so small that they barely reach up to the knees of adult hippogriffs, both in their natural and in their seapony form. They are unusually tiny, which makes them look incredibly cute, and also adds another unique aspect to their species!
- At the end of the song, a heart appears behind Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle and then it breaks into pieces after they sung how they don't want to talk with each other anymore..... Serious love hint or just shipteasing joke by the animators of the episode?
By far my favorite episode of the show so far. I really liked Terramar, I thought he was cute and I would love to see interactions between him and Silverstream!!! That would be hilarious!
And god when Scootaloo was happy with becoming a sea pony because she thought "this is what flying feels like", that hit me in the feels. Overall, great episode!