Luna Reviews FIM S3: 05. Magic Duel · 6:39am Dec 13th, 2014
I honestly don’t have much to say about this episode. It is a sequel to an earlier episode, which I didn’t see, and it apparently references “Winter Wrap Up”, which is another episode I did not see. Being a fictional sequel to a real-life incident, it’s got to be rather weird to some of the participants to see this.
In general, magical duels are real life things that ponies engage in, much like the sort of code duello incidents so influential to your own human history. (The Americans even lost the man on their $10 bill to one.) In this case, it went much as duels often went in our history: the winning pony was a scoundrel who made everypony’s life miserable, until the loser talked the winner into a rematch, and used blatant cheating to win.
This goes to show that duels are a rotten way to prove who the better pony is in a conflict. Although they do make for interesting stories.
Monday’s episode will be “Sleepless in Ponyville”. Researching the origin of the punny name, it looks like this will be a romantic story based around a case of mistaken identity. I can’t wait to see it.
Notes
00:07: This is nicely ominous.
00:58: Ooh! Nicely ominous!
01:01: ...And back to the cutesy opening with Twilight and Spike in their pink balloon. Bit of a cognitive dissonance, there.
01:08: OK, this scene again. I’m looking where I’m supposed to look now, at Twilight and Spike. Twilight has her eyes closed in this frame and her mouth open, like she’s giving Spike a gentle rebuke she knows by heart. And Spike...looks like he’s sound asleep. You’re the drake, Spike.
01:43: “Don’t be scared, little friends. Twilight is wonderful with magic.” Run, run before she turns you all into citrus monstrosities! Also, the raccoon in this still looks disturbingly wrong, like if we zoomed in we’d see he has live action human eyes or something like that. Maybe I’m just not used to seeing animals with whites to their eyes in this show’s style.
(Hope: It is the first time I’ve seen the eyes like that in one of these episodes. I wonder if we could hunt down any other examples?)
01:47: Fluttershy turns on Twilight to threaten her: Ha-ha-ha-ha! Oh, that one was good! What are we up to now on the laugh count...six?
01:54: “Twilight’s magic has gotten a lot better since she accidently smashed me and Applejack with a giant snowball.” I paused the video at that point to make note of the line, and caught sight of Twilight’s absolutely perfect reaction to it. Laugh #7. (Oh, and that was before the blush. Animators, the shock that somebody would still remember embarrassing details is the really funny part—as I can demonstrate practically on demand with my big sister.)
(Hope: Now I’m curious what embarrassing stories you might have on her! But I won’t pry.)
(Luna: Oh, they’re absolutely no good telling in isolation, plus it feels a bit unfair, without her there to rebuke me. No, you simply must accompany me in four months to my sister’s “surprise” birthday party. There will be plenty of embarrassing stories to be told on that night.)
02:04: “Oh, look how scared they are!” No, I am not imagining it—that raccoon on the right is creepy!
(Hope: Almost like it’s from a different cartoon altogether.)
02:34: Twilight uses ridiculous amounts of magic to juggle less than a single adult pony worth of mass: Well, they’ve got that part right. I’ve told that mare over and over again that she needs to learn how to conserve her power. Someday she’ll need to sneak into an enemy lair equipped with a magic detection spell, and the moment she has to scratch her barrel she’ll bring down every mook in the enemy army. I bet Rarity would have absolutely no problem doing what Twilight is doing here, while simultaneously sewing a wedding dress together.
(Hope: I’m curious, besides lots of shiny stuff flying off her horn, how do you tell that she is using up a lot of energy?)
(Luna: It is all the shiny stuff flying off her horn. This is a standard convention in pony art, adopted here for the cartoon.)
02:59: Twilight has been entrusted with entertaining the Saddle Arabian delegates. Hmm...well, they are inordinately fond of watching live animals being juggled…
03:10: Wow. I know absolutely nothing about fashion, and even I know that dress Rarity has suddenly been burdened with is awful on her. Also, why are there two copies of the same brown stallion earth pony in the crowd? Is this subtle proof given by the animators of a wide-reaching conspiracy to be revealed in a later episode, involving use of the forbidden magic of time trav—no, wait, I also see two copies of the same lavender mare earth pony with cotton candy manes, which are obviously copy-and-pasted versions of each other. So obviously, this was just a bit of forgivable laziness by the background artists.
03:26: Periwinkle pony reveals herself. I get the feeling that this reveal is supposed to be significant. I reviewed the opening credits once more, and she’s not in there. Although she does look familiar…
(Hope: The great and powerful Trixie!)
03:29: Yup, Twilight knows her.
03:59: I, uh...merging two unicorns by their horns is just so...dirty! Just like with Sombra, I’m uncertain if the humans making this program are innocent, or extremely good at getting things past the magic detector (unlike Twilight).
(Hope: This one... There’s been a lot of fan debate about horns, and I won’t go into all that. But Narcie has been most informative.)
04:24: Oh, good. After “Babs Seed”, I thought for sure that Twilight would do something stupid like taking up a bet that could only bring disaster upon her and those closest to her.
04:48: Oh! I remember this Friendship Letter now.
(Hope: It was quite the event! I hope the real life Trixie took the event better than this fictional version did.)
(Luna: No, no she didn’t.)
Hope: What do you think will happen when Trixie sees this episode?)
(Luna: Well, considering the rather infamous incident regarding McPoodle and his very first fanfic, I think a defamation of character lawsuit is rather to be expected. But also thanks to the precedent set by Trixie the Great and Powerful vs. McPoodle the Small and Puny, MLP Animation probably has nothing to worry about.)
05:08: Trixie snatches Pinkie Pie’s mouth with a pointer: It’s a good thing I recently saw a web video about Flash, or this would have gone completely over my head.
05:25: She threatened the Library Tree? You can’t threaten the Library Tree! If she put one smudge on Twilight’s telescope, so help me…!
05:28: Pinkie cries because she can’t eat cupcakes anymore. Yeah, nevermind the breathing issue—I’m pretty sure she doesn’t.
05:59: Drop the Library Tree on her. Seriously—displays of immense magical strength are your strong point, Twilight—play to them!
(Hope: Is there some law that would prevent Twilight from blasting Trixie directly with a knockout spell or something?)
(Luna: None. You can’t kill or permanently maim your opponent or any bystanders, but otherwise, it’s no holds barred in these confrontations.)
06:07: I heard a Wilhelm’s Scream! Are you surprised that I know what that is? I picked the odd sonic element out of Star Wars when I re-watched the original trilogy recently, and the Internet satisfied my curiosity.
06:22: Twilight summons up a parasprite to eat some flying pies, then zaps a pair of parasprites “back to the mirror pool”. You know, I would place even money that that phrase is already being used in an ironic manner by those who watched “Too Many Pinkie Pies”: “Mob Boss Calzone needed to balance the books, so he sent two of his less competent goons ‘back to the mirror pool’.”
(Hope: I will neither confirm nor deny my use of that phrase.)
06:27: Trixie drops a field’s worth of snow onto Twilight: Nice callback to that “giant snowball” reference. Also, snowmare Twilight is adorable—I’ll have to remember to do that to Pinkie Pie next time I visit—she still owes me after that angel food prank.
07:08: Trixie uses age magic: Oooh, nice move by Trixie—demonstrating that she could easily do something much worse than she’s demonstrated, at any time she wishes.
(Hope: Hehe...highest level unicorns.)
08:45: “Without Spike, I can’t get a message to the Princess [singular] in Saddle Arabia, so who else do I know who understands strange and powerful magic?” Ahem? Of course, without Spike, she couldn’t contact me, either. But still.
(Hope: I’d like to think they just shortened it because the sentence would sound odd otherwise.)
09:28: Training under Zecora: This is an interesting development. In real life, Twilight has never physically trained under anyone other than Celestia. So hopefully, seeing this episode might put some ideas into the real Twilight’s head.
09:33: Hmm...there’s a lot going on in this still, which shows how Trixie is transforming Ponyville in her image. There’s the banners which Rarity is sewing, and Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash and Blossomforth are hanging, which of course for a children’s cartoon are obviously sinister in design. There’s Mrs. and Mr. Cake pulling in a new throne for Trixie, constructed mostly of giant cookies! And there’s the Mayor, imprisoned in a cage that looks like it was made for Philomena.
10:24: Twilight levitating water over a pool. The animators stole this scene from Empire Strikes Back, obviously.
(Hope: Skillfully repurposed for a similar situation. A situation that shows up a lot in our culture, honestly. A secretly powerful but untrained hero is trained under an exotic teacher, and by the end of it all the Hero defeats the bad guy instead of having the teacher do it.)
11:14: Well-done atmosphere in this scene, showing the wind-swept Ponyville under Trixie’s sway. Never mind of course that Ponyville is under a jar, and so Trixie herself must have generated that wind for entirely irrational reasons.
11:51: “She wants me to grow apples with no peels!” Hey, that’s a good idea!
13:21: You know, chariots are supposed to be wheeled.
13:30: “The Great and Powerful Trixie doesn’t trust wheels. Now pull faster!” Wow, she’s crazy. And I unfortunately know crazy quite well.
(Hope: Did you randomly stop trusting wheels? Because that just seems odd to me. Not even crazy, just...in need of further explanation.)
(Luna: It was U. Clydesdalean geometry in general. Look up “The Day Nightmare Moon Turned the Moon into a Hypersphere.”)
14:26: That is a “dangerous mission outfit”? Does that utility belt even work?
16:50: The animators are really doing a good job with this atmosphere business. They make me wary of Trixie despite her occasional goofiness in this episode. The imprisoned mayor is placed in the foreground, for those who missed her in her earlier scene. And the earlier statue of Twixie has become a double statue—a sign of her growing mental disintegration?
(Hope: I almost missed the double statue. I wonder who she has carving all those for her, or if she is creating them with magic? Is that a thing that could be done, creating stone with magic?)
(Luna: A unicorn can transform dirt into granite with relative ease. And she was working for a rock farmer…)
17:59: Twilight massively out-magics Trixie: You should see the size of my grin right now.
18:18: Hey, Lyra! Yes you, in the back! The fate of your town is at stake. You can drink your wheat shake later! At least Bon Bon agrees with me on this.
18:29: The animators have fun drawing an exasperated Trixie. It looks like she’s about to fall out of the frame entirely.
19:24: That...that was supposed to be a death beam, wasn’t it? In case there wasn’t any doubt as to the evil nature of the artifact by this point.
(Hope: A death beam looks like multiple lightning bolts? That is reminiscent of Star Wars’ Sith torture thing.)
19:34: “That was supposed to make you writhe in agony!” No, it was supposed to kill her. Nice try, show.
20:34: “That’s not magic, that’s just Pinkie Pie!” Oh yeah, sure—nopony bother to notice that she was playing a tuba...without a mouth. Also an invisible clarinet, if the soundtrack is to be believed.
21:05: Trixie asks for forgiveness. Well! It appears that we are rehearsing some very well-worn material. At least for this pony. Also, my droopy lip is far more irresistible than hers.
21:28: Oh, pan up from Trixie’s exit straight up the the moon, in case there was anybody left on the planet watching this who hadn’t already starting thinking of me yet. Brilliant.
(Hope: I’m sure it isn’t anything bad...)
21:36: Twilight breaks the fourth wall to give Pinkie her mouth back. Pinkie opens wide to...be cut off by the credits. Laugh #8.
(Hope: Probably the biggest laugh it’s got out of me yet, to be honest.)
Questions for Hope
1. Was the “giant snowball” incident covered in a prior episode? I’d also ask about Trixie’s earlier appearance, but I’m fairly sure from context that it must have been an episode as well.
Hope: No snowball episode that I can remember. There was an incident with Winter Wrap Up, but it didn’t hit Spike as far as I know.
2. What about an episode based on that time that the Apples nearly lost their farm to those two con artist ponies? I was with Tia when she received the letter that Applejack sent about the incident afterwards, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better letter-reading reaction than I did then.
Hope: Ah, yes. That episode is out there, and the reaction most of us had was “I hope they get thrown in a dungeon somewhere.” Though really the competition shouldn’t have been agreed to in the first place.
3. So, how many fanfics do you think are out there that reveal that Trixie the Great and Powerful is Twilight Sparkle’s long-lost sister, accompanied by wavy-maned fanart? On second thought, don’t answer that question. It’s too depressing.
Hope: A near infinite amount. I would say it’s just below the number which try to say that Twilight is your descendant and your secret plan for (Insert goal here) is hinged on her becoming a princess.
I'm pretty sure Spike got hit by the snowball as well. It was his fault too for egging Twilight into using her magic.
There's also plenty of fics that pair up Twilight and Trixie.
...And we also have an Alternate History serie where you, Princess Luna, are the reigning monarch and took Trixie as your apprentice.
2650159
Really? Well, that's better than the stories about Nightmare Moon and Twilight...
Fun fact: The animators actually thought of the tuba problem. The mouthpiece was replaced by a squeeze bulb that Pinkie was hitting with her face. Granted, that shouldn't work either...
2650473 Hah, I didn't notice that bit, excellent.
2650184 I don't know, princess. Some of them are pretty well written, I could find them if you want.
I now expect the Wilhelm Scream to be commented on every time it appears, because it appears a lot.
2650835
NO.
2651195
Well, that would get boring, wouldn't you think? This isn't the Wilhelm Scream Blog after all. (Now I wonder how long it will take before somebody either directs me to that blog, or founds one from scratch and refuses to give me credit for the idea...)