Spike Shits a Candy Cane [episode spoilers!] · 4:30pm May 14th, 2016
I couldn't actually bring myself to rewatch Newbie Dash. I caught up on Steven Universe instead. Now there's a show, lemme tell ya. :)
As for this week's episode, Big Jim's tweet about how great it is felt like preemptive ass-covering and set me ill at ease.
I needn't have worried. Dude wasn't lying. :D
Wow. I can't remember the last time I saw an episode and had zero complaints. (Wait, yes I can, it was Amending Fences.) Tons of excellent music, a very fun Christmas Carol parody, awesome Victorian pony costumes, and motherfucking Grim Luna. :D I found myself enjoying every moment of this episode; it's such a nice change from hating things, y'know? I don't have a whole lot to analyze here, let's see what I can remember.
I fucking loved Vinyl's appearance in the story. If you're gonna endlessly rehash background jokes, make them different. Plus I love her old-timey shades. (Plus I like that, at the end, she's not singing along with everyone else. Canonically mute!)
Starlight Glimmer really is Sunset Shimmer, in that no one will ever let her forget what she did even after supposedly forgiving her good fucking job, Spike.
That scene where Applejack walks through Starlight had better spawn so many clopfics.
This is such a better episode than Hearth's Warming Eve. It even came during a sudden cold spell here in Northeast Ohio! CHRISTMAS IN MAY MOTHERFUCKER :V I especially appreciate the much-improved carol at the start.
This episode may have made me give more of a shit about Starlight.
I LOVE PONY PINCE-NEZ
The only thing I can nitpick at is lampshading the last commercial break, but that's really a minor, minor thing on the list of bad ideas. It does nothing to drag this episode out of my good graces. Fuckin' fantastic indeed.
A Hearth's Warming Tail
Gauntlet of Fire
No Second Prances
The Crystalling
On Your Marks
The Gift of the Maud Pie
Newbie Dash
Luna's Future
everything else from A Hearth's Warming Tail (to be sorted later)
Out on My Own
It's a May-Christmas miracle, PP.
Luna started singing her goth song, and I felt a disturbance in the force. It was like thousands of Bronies fangasming at once.
3944012
You're goddamn right I did
3944020
In spaaaaaaaaaades~
I just started watching it yesterday. Right now, Amethyst is best Gem, purely because she knows how to have fun.
Something interesting I caught in the credits - Luna's singing voice was someone new, Aloma Steele. Maybe they wanted to make her a bit more distinct than Rarity.
3944064
You are 100% correct. :D
3944080
Oh snap! :O Good catch!
Christmas Story? Do you mean Christmas CAROL, or is Starlight at risk of shooting her eye out?
Luna's song was the highlight for me. Though.... why are the holiday's gobbling up more and more of the calendar? It's freakin' May!
One nitpick for is that Frost's saying about working hard and bettering Equestria isn't really a fault. With Scrooge it was easy: be a greedy asshole.
I personally found this episode to be "meh." But I still enjoyed it. That's the biggest strength of Pony: even when it's boring and doing a story the thousandth time, the visuals are appealing—Victorian ponies needs to be a bigger thing—, the music is catchy—except I was meh on the first song, something about how they rushed to fit in "once again" made it a bit grating—and the overal quality is great.
Even when it sucks, it's still awesome. This episode didn;t suck, mind you. I just felt bored because I've seen it a million times.
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Whatever :V
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Yeah, the "once again" would probably have been better as just "again".
3944323 Whatever nothing. One of those things is delightful, and one of them is annoying as balls and never shuts up about a stupid pellet gun :P
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Hey, that movie was one of the quintessential American movies... until fucking TBS and merchandising killed it forever.
MORIARTY WAS IN THE BACKGROUND!
3944330 So the quintessential American movie is unfunny, boring, stupid, and obsessed with merchandising?
Tell me about it, we're getting a low of 39 tonight in central Illinois...
3944330 I hated it before it was cool :P
Really liked this. Might even be my favourite episode of the season, ahead of "Gauntlet of Fire", but I'll have to re-watch to decide. I love A Christmas Carol take-offs, and while this isn't quite up there with the Muppets (seriously, that is amazing) it's easily good enough to watch again. Apart from the continuing marginalisation of Fluttershy and a few slightly awkward lyrics in the songs, I couldn't really fault "A Hearth's Warming Tail". Also, ponified Snape.
Also also, yes, Steven Universe is brilliant. Doesn't get me quite the way Pony does, but that's partly fandom- rather than show-related.
I also think they really did a great job incorporating all the songs in this episode.
I say again, banish Glimmer to the hmanoid world where she can't get into magical trouble, bring Sunset home, season's arc becomes 110% better.
The more obvious parallel was that of Starlight ripping time a new asshole, causing harmony to break and turning Equestria into a barren wasteland, only to stop because someone guilt tripped her with a vision of the desolation she was about to unleash.
Starlight should quit hanging out with ponies who want to stand in the way if what she is so clearly destined to do. Every generation she will be reborn until she finally fulfills her karmic destiny as the End of All Things, and anyone who isn't willing to love her for that is not really her friend.
This episode is clearly propaganda from the big toy company overlords to get everyone to buy more gifts, spread capitalist cheer and increase wall street's invisible stranglehold over the American middle class! Feel the Equality. Starlight 2016!
But seriously, is the message of the episode you a bad person if you don't celebrate Christmas?
My wife and I actually found ourselves rolling our eyes through about 90% of the episode, and when it ended we both agreed it wasn't worth waiting up for (bare in mind we have to wait up until nearly midnight to watch the live streams)
Honestly, A Christmas Carol has been done to death, and I don't think we really needed another rehashing of it, even if it was pony. About the only thing we thought was decent was some of the background gags (Vinyl with the gramophone), and Luna's showing the death of everyone… but beyond that, the episode was a complete snore for us.
I couldn't bring myself to write a clopfic, but here's this.
There was a lot I liked about this one, but there was really stuff that missed, too, even if a lot of it is somewhere on the nitpicking spectrum. I don't think the Ghost of Christmas Past segment works as well when her isolation is based on a choice, and one she was continuing to make at that, than really externally imposed. The Present part seemed to be hitting her too early, when the big impact should have come with Fluttershy's line about what a better Equestria would look like came. And Starlight being confused about there not being more Hearths Warmings doesn't work like Scrooge's thing with Tiny Tim as a simple matter of narrative logic. Oh, and while the point is taken well, where
is concerned, I cut him some slack because he's actually on point there: it's hard to buy the idea that she should be incredulous at the overreaction unless she's failing hard at applying her own experiences to gain empathy for people in analogous situations.
All that said, between a pretty strong adaptation and two very strong songs (not sure if Starlight's first song or Luna's is my favorite) and some more good ones, it was one of the best episodes in a while. Maybe it's nostalgia talking, though, but I don't see this as surpassing the Mr. Magoo version as my top Christmas Carol adaptation.
Scary as Hell Luna is best Luna.
Everypony's dead. Happy?
I get ridiculously upset when people dig at pony.
Loved the episode! Scary-ass Luna singing a chilling song was epic! Especially since "I see" sounds exactly like "Icy" which gives double meaning to her message. But wow, yeah, go Luna!
As someone who generally does not like musicals, I was surprised to find that I liked most of the songs here. They felt genuinely fitting and were quality pieces. The acting and animation was also quite nice. It was good to see the background ponies doing their thing as well. Derpy never disappoints, and she was cuter than ever, this time around. Rarity's "for goodness sake" was a fitting laugh as well.
Interestingly, we got a chance to see several characters which haven't appeared in episodes in years. The final zoom out featured Rarity's parents. But we also got a chance to see Twist and Rumble! These two kids get very little screen time. Always welcome to see these and other rare appearance characters again. I noticed Flitter as well, which I appreciated since she's one of my main characters, as is Rumble.
Something else which may be a good sign is that Pound and Pumpkin cake appear to have aged slightly. Not a lot, but they're standing on their own next to their parents, singing along in the final song. No diapers or crawling, etc. No longer newborns, finally? It's about time.
But what genuinely surprised me was in that final shot, we see a rainbow maned stallion which can only be Dash's father! Odd that there was no mare with him. He can be seen directly between Bulk and the Doctor on the left.
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Much as I've enjoyed musical episodes before, I feel like this is the first one that truly works. It's not rushed, the story plays out in the music, there weren't any songs I disliked. :)