Review Blog Double Feature: IDW Friendship is Magic #41 & S6E5: "Gauntlet of Fire" (SPOILERS) · 4:07pm Apr 16th, 2016
It's time for a double feature review blog! This time I'm doing a comic AND an episode!
Comic first.
So. This one's about Rainbow Dash having a really bad day.
Narrated in storybook form by Zecora.
There's some really nice art in this one, even if the art does shift back and forth disconcertingly between "beautifully illustrated storybook" and "comic book".
Rainbow's excited for the new Daring Do book, and planning out an awesome day in her head of meeting up with her friends for a Daring Do party, reading the new book, and spending the day reading the new book with Tank.
Unfortunately, things start to go wrong fairly soon.
The first thing that goes wrong: she flies headlong into a brick wall. In the clouds. Made out of compressed cloud bricks.
Gag: The pegasus construction pony who explains the cloud brick wall has the number "4077" on his hardhat. I guess they must be building a mobile pegasus hospital.
Anyway, Rainbow is rude to the worker pony, which causes a little grey cloud spirit called a "Dreary" to appear. Drearies are like Windigoes and Sirens, except that instead of feeding on hate/negative emotions, they spread like a disease and infect ponies with irritability and bad moods. There's a helpful montage of the Drearies spreading: from the construction worker to Time Turner, from Time Turner to Rarity, from Rarity to Applejack, from Applejack to Princess Luna, and from Princess Luna to Princess Celestia. Every time a pony infected by a Dreary is rude to another pony, the Drearies spread.
Gag: Rainbow slams into a wrecking ball and pinballs against a lot of other objects, racking up points with each impact before "tilting" when she hits the ground. Finally, she meets up with her friends, who are all at the end of the very long line for the bookstore because they waited for her; they're all in just as bad a mood as she is, so they end up yelling at each other.
At the end of a montage of Zecora describing (in verse) the woes of various ponies and their ill-tempered moods, we get:
Zecora urges Tank to go over to Rainbow to clear up her mood. Rainbow is so angry and agitated she yells at Tank in rage. Tank starts to cry, and Rainbow's bad mood instantly evaporates. Rainbow apologizing to Tank clears up the Drearies. She goes around making apologies to everypony she's ticked off, and they start apologizing to other ponies, and the spread of apologies eventually clears up the Drearies for everypony.
Oh, and we get some more of Bobby Curnow's WONDERFUL editing in this issue. He still hasn't learned the difference between a filly and a colt.
Gag: Blues Brothers ponies!
This was a pretty fun little issue, and a neat gimmick to do it half in comic format and half in children's illustrated storybook format.
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Season 6 Episode 5: "Gauntlet of Fire"
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic - Season 6 Episode 5: "Gauntlet of Fire" (SPOILERS)
Hooray! It's a Spike episode! Surely a Spike episode is just what we need to whip this season into shape, right? 
Well...actually, surprisingly, yes! Because for once, we got...a GOOD Spike episode! 
The episode starts with Rarity and Spike hunting gems down in a cave infested with bats. For some reason, Spike starts glowing, which agitates the bats.
Celestia and Luna are conveniently visiting Twilight when Rarity runs in with a glowing Spike. Luna, exposition fairy that she is, explains that the glow is the summon of the Dragon Lord.
Yes, friends, this episode is a sequel to "Dragon Quest".
Anyway, Dragon Lord Torch's reign is at an end, and he has to retire according to Dragon Law, so he's summoned all the dragons in Equestria to compete for succession to the throne. Spike wants no part of it, and since he's stopped glowing, he decides to go home. Meanwhile, the Dragon Lord's daughter, Ember, wants to compete for the throne, but Torch refuses to allow it.
While sneaking away, Spike, Twilight, and Rarity overhear Garble's plans to pillage Equestria if he wins the title of Dragon Lord. Spike decides that the only way Equestria will be safe from the dragons is if he competes and wins.
So, uhh...did they just forget that there are a bunch of powerful alicorn princesses that can, you know, protect Equestria from jerkass dragons?
Spike attempts to spread friendship to the dragons by helping Princess Ember make it through the Gauntlet. I'm not doing a blow-by-blow recap of most of this episode, because it's one of those "go grab a sandwich while the middle part is running" episodes, but it basically involves Spike helping Ember and Ember slowly warming to him while Garble is constantly buttmonkeyed.
I like how Ember lampshades Twilight and Rarity constantly catching up with them (like RPG NPCs), each time disguised as something else.
Anyway, the last leg of the Gauntlet comes down to Spike, Ember, and Garble. Ember and Spike work together to defeat Garble, and Spike takes the scepter, becoming the Dragon Lord. After humiliating Garble, Spike gives the scepter to Ember so that she can become Dragon Lord. (Dragon Lady?)
We will remember her name.
Let the Ember/Spike shipfics commence!
Like I said in the SA Admin chat:
It was definitely cute with Ember and Spike.
Also, I feel sorry for Ember because of the endless spam of letters with questions she'll get from our favourite Princess of Friendship.
I do believe that was the best Spike-centric episode, like, ever.
What you did there. I see it.
And yes, this was quite fun. Adventure! Dragons! Dragons having adventures! Though given Torch's belief in the primacy of size and strength, I'm surprised that the biggest dragon to answer the summons was Crackle. What happened to all the big ones from "Dragon Quest"?
3874168 Indeed, Twilight will go crazy. On another note, it was interesting how Twilight referred to Ember as an ally. First it was befriending the Yaks, now the Dragons. I'm quite surprised Celestia, being a supposedly tactful politician, failed to secure any long-lasting relationships with these groups. Instead, the less experienced but more amiable Twilight Sparkle had to do all the work. Again.
On second thought, I'm over-analyzing a kid's show.
3874200 Well, to be fair, Celestia spent a thousand years singlehoofedly ruling an entire kingdom and handling the sun AND the moon. That does tend to cut into your diplomacy and interspecies bonding time.
Thank goodness we got a good Spike episode. Now we've got to wait two weeks for an episode we know nothing about to come out (I guess Discovery Family didn't get the message about the break between episodes).
Ember reminds me of Cynder from Spyro the Dragon.
I was kinda hoping that Spike would grow wings in this episode or something like that, but oh well, it was still a good episode
3874200 What Mythril Moth said.
Also it is reasonable to assume that Ember was only born recently, a bit older than Spike I assume, and most other dragons are, in fact, less positive in their views of ponies and would make diplomacy with them VERY hard.
Notice how Twilight was super-afraid of the dragons pillaging Equestria? Remember how 3 episodes ago those "powerful alicorn princesses" couldn't beat clouds? I know its a popular fanon idea, but it really doesn't look like Celestia and Luna have the power to just swat a flight full of dragons.
Honestly, I disagree with the idea that we've had no good Spike episodes.
Spike episodes so far have been evenly split between "great" an "okay".
And I'm making this comment before I finish the episode, for reference.
3874690 Are you kidding? Most Spike episodes range from "below average" to "garbage". The closest thing to a good one we've had is Power Ponies up until now. This one was actually good.
3874737 I completely disagree. Spike episodes are often either "great" (Just for Sidekicks, Equestria Games, Inspiration Manifestation, this episode) and "okay" (Owl's Well that Ends Well, Spike at Your Service, Power Ponies, and Princess Spike).
The character that has the weakest overall track record for focus episodes is Applejack, who's only had two really great episodes: Simple Ways and The Mane Event.
3874757 ...yyyyeah I think your tastes are wildly incompatible with mine. I'm not going to say anything that might insult or offend you, so I'll just say that you're going to find more people who disagree with your opinion on those episodes than you'll find people who agree.
3874762 Oh trust me, I'm aware of that already. This isn't the first time (previous times have involved the episodes Mysterious Mare-Do-Well, Rainbow Falls, and Rarity Takes Manehatten (the former two I find are overhated, the third one I find to be kind of overrated).
I stand by what I said, though.
I respectfully disagree with that statement. I stand by that Inspiration Manifestation and Equestria Games were great Spike episodes, mainly cause the first one had Spike as a consistently good focus character of the episode, the second one had a scenario I could identify with, and both taught really great morals for both younger and older audience.
Yeah, I kinda agree with you on the whole "first good Spike episode" because I honestly think that the only good part in Equestria Games is the moral, and Inspiration Manifestation is kinda...meh. But that's just me, I guess
3874200 Eeyup, just leave it all to Twilight.
3874284 One can dream, can't they?
3882646 Yeah
3882649 I did kind of have a feeling Garble was gonna get what was coming to him.
3882657 Eeyup
that guy was a prick
3882733 I did like it how that one dragon was all giddy from the hug Garble was ordered to give him.
Share the love, Garble.
3882745 Yeah, I liked that too
3883390 Cool.
Well, to be fair, from what we've seen lately in Friendship is Magic, alicorns are significantly stronger ponies than normal, but nothing really hints at them being all powerful. People like to say that alicorn Twilight was able to fight Tirek to a standstill, but she had the magic of FOUR alicorns stacked on top of one another. I'd like to think that without that, she wouldn't have stood much of a chance.
Also, even if the Princess could defend Equestria from the dragons, there would still be a lot of damage done in the proceeding battle. I think Spike wanted to avoid war as much as possible, which is why he joined the contest. Honestly, I can see Celestia, Luna, Cadance, and Twilight getting overwhelmed by the dragons if they just went all out.
It's a catchy song. But everyone's already made the joke.