A -true review- of Wonderbolt Academy by KitsuneRisu · 9:17am Dec 17th, 2012
So, I rewatched the ep again.
Because I do stuff like that. You know, watch stuff twice.
It's crazy, I know.
But here's the thing. Since the start, since the leak, since I watched a crappy TV rip with the stupid HUB logo plastered over its face, I have had mixed feelings about the ep.
Certainly, there are those who have claimed that the episode is the 'best' this season, but then again, every episode seems to outshine its predecessor.
Certainly, there are those who claim to entirely HATE this episode, but I certainly can't tell which is which. And I will tell you why.
Wonderbolt Academy is simultaneously the best and worst episode of the season.
There are so many things that are right and wrong about the episode, and things that have/will happen(ed) that will invalidate everything else that it just causes intense mental anguish, brought about by cognitive dissonance.
So let us investigate what the good and the bad is, and let us see why we are so confused.
GOOD THING/BAD THING THE FIRST - Wonderbolts
Finally. It's about damn time. It's finally an episode that, honestly, most of us have been actually waiting for. It represents growth, evolution and the willingness of Hasbro to actually bring in background commentary and irrelevant side-quests as the focus of an entire episode. This should be a good thing. Or is it?
Firstly, we see that Dash finally has a role in her life. She seeks out and accomplishes something that she has never been able to before. This is change. Right? This is good. Things are moving ahead. But yet, we also see that what it represents has been thrown out the window so casually that it makes the whole episode pointless.
What the Wonderbolts represent is something more that just the cliched stereotype that they were portrayed as - the military organization whose leaders have their heads so far up their asses that they can't see anything at all. It pleasured me greatly to see the organization as a whole, breathing, living and basically being a REAL THING, but then it got TOO real, and when you see Spitfire being all BAWS and signing glossy photos of herself instead of working... it beings to dilute the reality of the Wonderbolts into something very shallow and pointless.
Their role in the story was stupid as hell. I simply can not agree that they would be so blind as not to know what was going on with Rainbow and Dust. I almost wished that, at the end, they'd done the whole 'It was just a test!' thing to clear the air and make things right, to at least give them some credibility back. But no. Rather than that, they just hung around like idiots and only when one of their members threatened to quit did they suddenly take action. They really should not work like that.
It had gone to the point where it was better off that they were just being mentioned in the background. At least they then still maintained that level of eliteness, and weren't just a... well, a cartoon.
I found the Wonderbolts entirely destroyed as an organization the more fleshed out they became, and I don't even know WHERE Soarin' was. I cannot even see Soarin' as part of this new image of the Wonderbolts. I can only see him eating pie.
GOOD THING/BAD THING THE SECOND - Characters
We see the return of SO MANY awesome background ponies, especially the one that tickled me the most - Mr. Musclehorse. I love him so much, and I loved that he made an epic return. That said though, with the fact that the show was based around caricatures, why didn't they put in some ponies that actually would have been funnier in that situation? And no, I'm not saying that they should ALL have been more established ponies, but what I'm saying is...
well...
I really wanted Derpy to have been in the roster.
I mean, it's not to say that it would have made a difference, considering how cut-and-paste all the other ponies in the line-up were, and some of you probably will disagree with me in that she should be in there. But what I'm saying is that it was a wasted opportunity to give her some really GOOD screen time with some ACTUAL content, and she wouldn't have had to speak at all, even. But she'd be doing something, and we would have a bit of character development and interaction.
The logic of why she WOULD join is irrelevant. There is no logic as to why any of the other backgrounders would have joined either, and Derpy would not have necessarily had to really have 'passed' either, so it wouldn't have changed her character that drastically.
Which brings me to my next point.
GOOD THING/BAD THING THE THIRD- Rainbow Dash is WHAT?
Balls to Hasbro for actually letting her join the Wonderbolts PROPER. Her status has changed. It is not an arbitrary thing, and it really clears up one of those things that characters have to have. She actually GREW as a character. So balls, props, ALL my fucking props to Hasbro. Way to go.
So why am I so mad?
Because you just know, you just dread and know that due to the fact that this is a cartoon made to sell toys and all that rubbish, this will never be mentioned again, this will never be touched on again, and everyone's statuses will reset back to zero as it does EVERY OTHER EPISODE.
How annoying.
GOOD THING/BAD THING THE FORTH- Merriwether Williams
I do not like this writer. I do not like her, no sirree. Her first episode was a travesty that I watched once and never again. Her other episodes were average at best. This one, however, was Glorious. I do not even know how something so awesome managed to get so wrong. I loved how she treated Dash, I love how all the characters were in character and were given respect, I love how they took the tone of her relationship with Dust and the whole dichotomous nature between them. It could have so easily been done the other way around, with Dash being the idiot and learning the lesson. But no. It was done WELL.
But then, in every episode this Williams idiot writes, she always HAS to insult at least ONE party and make things shallow and stupid and nonsensical. In this case it was the Wonderbolts and the insulting treatment they were given. In her first episode, it was.. EVERYTHING. Essentially there were just so many small stupids in the ep that took away from the brilliance. For example, the scene where Rainbow uses a cloud to save her friends basically invalidates lore up the arse and should not have been cleared.
And yes, my friend argued that Twilight could have just cast the cloud-walk spell on them before they went up.
BUT EVEN THEN, the fact that Rainbow had to make THAT assumption in the split second she needed to formulate a plan and execute it... it was a pretty big assumption to have made. That scene REALLY bothered me. It honestly did.
Other small idiosyncrasies also wore down the overall fun of the ep, like how noone ELSE was seemingly upset with Dust, and how the subplot was rather... silly as well. It was an excuse for them to have gone up there only to be bashed by a twister... it could so easily have been their trainee colleagues and have made more sense ultimately.
Sure, I'm nitpicking, but in the end, the tone is just so neither here nor there that the brilliant parts of the ep are truly brilliant and the bad parts are truly bad.
I'm left in the middle wondering what the hell was going on.
The only determination that I can come up with was that the directors and the animators did the best with what was ultimately a shoddy script, which once again convinces me that Merriwether Williams shouldn't be writing for the show.
And then there's this.
This one thing that, when I saw, filled me with so much 'yes' and 'no' that it broke my brain entirely and gave me herpes.
In the end, my feelings about the episode really can be summed up in one, simple screenshot:
Pinkie?
Wat r u doin?
Pinkie.
STAHP.
Heh, you know my opinion on this already.
I was more annoyed with how they dealt with Lightning Dust in the end. I mean, to just throw her out was kinda hard, and it felt like a deja vu of Gilda and Trixie. Lightning Dust was by no means...bad or something, just misguided.
But I think all this over-analyzing of episodes just makes it worse. We should take the episodes for what they are; silly little cartoons that don't always follow the laws of logic and physics. I'm trying to stop with thinking too much into the episodes and just enjoy it.
And about Merriwether Williams...I'm just glad that she didn't fuck up Dash even more than she did in MMDW. That's all...
Hahaha yeah I kinda feel the same, I don't think that this was the best episode of the season, I mean like you said by the next episode anything and everything of this episode will be left out and ignored as if it never happend, which is probably why you can watch the episodes in any order after the first two, but in saying that it is a cartoon.
Anyways, I didn't like this episode, I just didn't even though it was based on Dash, so maybe that's why is is so popular with people. Because lets face it, people love a twisted pony such as Dash for more reason then I like to remember.
Anyways,
COOKIES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Lightning Dust was made for one specific point - to be thrown out. Again, this is the nasty work of Ms. Williams. Everything has a very 'discard-able' nature to it. She wasn't bad, and she certainly deserved to be given another chance.... another testament to Williams' personal views of the organization of the Wonderbolts.
YEAH WE'RE GONNA THROW HER OUT BECAUSE... YEAH!!! WE'RE THE WONDERBOLTS! WE IS SPITFIAAARRRRR!!!
And I can't help but think of stories like that... it's my inner writer, wanting to smash Ms. Williams in the face with a steel folding chair.
I could ignore EVERY episode until this one. This one just.... sat wrong.
Even in the Trixie Episode, and I'll tell you a pet peeve of mine... I hate the term 'alicorn'. When they actually said it, I got so pissed off that I wanted to just take off my pants and urinate on my computer. But I didn't.
Because computers are expensive. Also, because I could eventually ignore it. But this ep... is just... sad. Too sad.
In answer to "Rainbow Dash is what?" the best answer I could formulate is that she isn't a Wonderbolt yet, that this is basically ROTC. It's probably required (or recommended) that you pass if you intend to become a Wonderbolt, but she still has to wait for a position and go for it. She just has a better chance now that she has a shiny Academy record to point to.
That's how I'm writing it anyway.
Anyway, what I loved at this episode has nothing to do with The Wonderbolts, which they still didn't really answer my questions about. It's got to do with Dash herself. I loved giving her the chance to take something really seriously, to show that when it comes to the Wonderbolts she is not messing around, and she'll put aside her pride and actually sacrifice. And I loved her telling off of Spitfire. When Dash knows what's right, and gets the chance to turn her bluntness and, well, independence (for lack of a better word that I can think of right after I woke up), on someone who deserves it, I love seeing that side of the character.
What I didn't like- I was having some flashbacks to Griffon the Brush Off throughout. The plots aren't exactly the same, but they hit enough of the same notes both in character choices and situations that I kind of thought it could be handled better.
Ah haha. Purple nurple. Pony chestboobs are canon.
Also I heard Derpy is axed for good.
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WHAT. SON, YOU BEST BE KIDDIN'.
It wasn't a few months ago that there was all the rumor that Derps was gonna have her OWN full silent episode, which we KNEW was a pipe dream, but... this is the polar opposite! What the Dongledingle!?
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As with all rumors, I take it as uncomfirmable till it happens or doesn't.
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Excuse me. I have to clean a gallon of piss off the floor.
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Then there's the other rumor that Starswirl is being voiced by John DeLancie and therefor may be Discord.
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I would be OK with that, actually.
I actually kind of like that idea... that's a pretty neat twist.
I just... I just want more pony nurples ;_;
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Yeah, true, it does seem more like a training camp.
But still... the fact that hasbro might just invalidate everything is something that grates my face. =(
Truly, everything you said about why you liked the ep was the ONLY reason why the ep was carried. The wonderbolts and their camp was just... frosting. It was NICE to see them, but Dash's character growth was what was surely the key of the episode.
And then they had to sort of ruin it all by making her excited to join a corporation that she clearly already found fault in...
I saw it like this
Dash: "Hey, you guys suck! You have no integrity. I don't wanna be a part of you guys anymore."
Spitfire: "Um... alright, but do you wanna stick around anyway? Uh... guess we'll fire that other one, sorry for not paying attention. Um... we'll also bribe you with this promotion."
Dash: "Do you guys have integrity now?"
Spitfire: "Nope"
Dash: "I'll join anyway! YAY!"
Just.... no, Merriwether. No. Go and die in a hole. ><