I found my review of The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone! · 11:34pm May 28th, 2015
Wrong Neighborhood by invertigo35
Now I was going to watch this episode earlier, and get a review out on Tuesday, but events soon transpired that prevented me from doing so. In other words, my brother came into the room as I was about to watch the episode and said, “I’ve just downloaded Castle Crashers, want to play?” So… yeah, that’s why this episode is a little late.
In other news, I’m really looking forward to Splatoon, also in other news, I’m ticked that some jerks have gone and stolen the lorry containing my special edition of the game.
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Thejboy88
Episode Review of The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone
This episode has managed to remind me of something important; why I used to watch episodes when they aired through the live streaming. Aside from it simply being an enjoyable experience, it also assured that I could watch the episode, as recently I have struggled to find a video of The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone. Eventually, I gave up trying to find a YouTube video of the episode and instead went to DailyMotion… which was actually pretty decent this time. Enough of that though, onto the episode review.
The episode begins with Pinkie Pie baking one of her grandma’s recipes, when her cutie mark glows, thus starting up the first map related event since Cutie Map. Pinkie Pie heads off to Twilight’s castle, where it’s revealed that the location of this next friendship problem is located within the Griffin kingdom, specifically the griffon city of Griffonstone. Another thing the map shows is that it only has Pinkie and Rainbow Dash’s cutie marks hovering over the location, meaning that the map only wants the two of them to head off and solve this problem, much to Twilight’s disappointment. After a history lesson from Twilight regarding Griffonstone, a reluctant Rainbow Dash and a… happy Pinkie Pie (so not too different from usual there) set off for Griffonstone. Upon arriving at Griffionstone, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie find the place to be… a dump for lack of a better term, and soon encounter Gilda once again.
I love the opening to this episode, which is always a good thing to start off with. It’s simply Pinkie baking whilst talking to Gummy yet it is full of sweetness and cuteness and by gosh, Pinkie Pie is simply adorable in this entire scene. In fact, Pinkie Pie’s adorable throughout the episode, and of as to be expected funny as well. The funny moments with Pinkie I feel were truly well done through this episode, something I’ve feel has been harder to accomplish in later seasons. If I had to pick a favourite funny scene with Pinkie Pie, it would probably be a certain joke towards the end involving a statue, look forward to it if you haven’t watched the episode yet. Overall, the humour is fantastic, and whilst Pinkie Pie will probably get the most laughs, Rainbow Dash, Gilda, and the griffins often had me snickering.
My next positive is one that I’m very glad is a positive, as when the Griffin kingdom was revealed to be the focus of an upcoming episode, I was rather concerned about how it would be presented. Now whilst it was not perfect, something I will mention in better detail later on, it was in-depth and genuinely interesting. It offers up a nice little take on the Griffins, with certain general aspects of their race such as their natural pride being things I actually expected. We get some history as to the establishment of their monarchy, learn about landmarks they have, aspects of their culture such as a hilarious no singing rule.
One of the greatest things about the backstory offered up for the Griffin kingdom though, at least in my opinions, is that it does something I rarely see. It establishes pride as being a positive virtue. In regards to the history of the Griffins, the Griffins were constantly squabbling and fighting with one another, until one of the Griffins found the idol of boreas. The idol was a great treasure, the envy of all other races, and the collected pride the Griffins had in this treasure untied them together, establishing their monarchy. I love this concept! Many other morals can also be interpreted from this episode as none is ever specifically spelled out; never give up on trying to establish friendships, friendships can promote good unions and through this improve livelihoods, but most of all, that some problems take time to solve. At the end of the episode, a solution is provided to the problems the Griffins are facing, but it is not one that can happen immediately. It will take time, and we are left with only seeing the start of things, which I thought was nicely done and made sense given the scale of the problem itself.
That last comment about the scale of this episode makes it the perfect line to lead onto the negatives of this episode. For my first negative is that the scale, the scope of The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone, is big. In fact, for a single episode, it is unfortunately too big, as the problems faced here and the aspects introduced would have been perfect material for a two part episode. Within this episode we have the introduction of a whole kingdom, history and lore provided to a key race, a culture and community based crisis, and an end solution that knows that things can’t be resolved immediately. The elements within this episode feel too important to be constrained to a regular episode, and unfortunately feel cramped within a single episode; throwing off the pacing, particularly towards Gilda at the end.
Along with problems with the pacing, the severity of the situation at hand also leads to confusions in regards to the series as a whole. The crisis that the Griffins faced certainly feels like something that would have been more known and established, particularly given the inclusion of Griffins in important events such as the Equestria Games. To add to that, given the severity of things, wouldn’t there have been attempts to intervene prior to the maps instructions to send Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie. Again, this all feels like way too much and too big of a matter to suddenly introduce in a single, regular episode. I also feel that it undermines the Griffins somewhat, that their kingdom and culture was so easily damaged and that they’ve been in the state their seen in this episode for what has been seemingly a long time.
Ultimately this episode is pretty amazing, so amazing in fact that it is constricted by its length and suffers as a result. Luckily, whilst the stories pacing for is harmed and the world building has some issues, positive attributes such as the humour, character interactions, animation, concept, lore, potential morals; all of these remain superb. I truly wish that the matter of the Griffin kingdom could have had more time, or perhaps more build-up to it, but the episode focused on it was at least enjoyable with many qualities. My verdict on The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone, is that it is a Fantastic episode, and I award it 8.5/10.
Out of curiosity, did anything about Gilda happen that would contradict your backstory in 'Magnetism'?