School Raze S8E25 and 26 Review · 8:54am Aug 30th, 2018
Time to officially end the season with watching the episodes. I'd read transcripts and skimmed them, so I figured the finale would be decent.
I was mistaken.
Let's start with the good - Neighsay. We see here that, racism aside, he's a decent guy. I think it says something that when magic begins to vanish from Equestria, he comes to check on Twilight's school, and then takes command of it in the name of protecting the students. His redemption is obvious but its fine. It actually makes him a complex character, to see that he actually does care about the school and the students in his own way.
The bad, unfortunately, is everything else.
Tirek is here for a publicity stunt. He is entirely unrepentant, which is good, we don't wanna redeem him, Tirek was an awesome villain. But he does nothing, he just skulks around his cage taunting the six. He has no development, no new insights on his backstory or personality, and by his own admission, no reason to help Cozy except he was bored and found her plan amusing. Tirek is literally just here to be a distraction from the main plotline to keep the Mane Six occupied. Seriously, that is is the plan, Cozy Glow tricks the Six into going to see him to get them to trap themselves in Tartarus while she plots at the school.
The CMC are here to collect a paycheck and then get locked in a closet. They do even less than Tirek. Cozy immediately realizes they're trying to trick her and tricks them back. Whatever the VAs got paid for this two-parter, it was a waste of money on Hasbro's part and a waste of time on theirs.
The Student Six save the day, not through any trial or development or big hero moment. They're saved by a Tree Ex Machina - the Tree of Harmony activates, infuses them with power, and frees them from the magic sphere to take the six artifacts and deactivate the ritual. You can tell the writers wanted to make them into a secondary group of Elements, with how they glow the proper six colors and each of them gets one of the six artifacts to claim for their own. You can practically see the storyboards where those artifacts turn into necklaces for them to wear. I like to think even the writers realized what a horrible idea that would be and cut it before the episode was handed in.
I'm also disappointed at the manufactured pathos of their efforts to save the day possibly destroying the school. Because it didn't, not even close. And wouldn't that be an awesome way to end the season, the Six stop Cozy and save the day in an explosion that destroys the School of Friendship? But nope. Not even sure why the possibility was brought up.
And finally... Cozy Glow.
What Cozy Glow? Why Cozy Glow? How Cozy Glow? Nothing about this villain makes any damn sense! How did she keep in touch with Tirek, how is she so smart and manipulative despite being such a filly, how is she able to conduct this ritual with no innate magic of her own, why is she evil? And what exactly is her plan, to go to another world, to absorb all the magic, to get lots of friends because somehow she thinks having friends just means you have power, and I don't mean social power, she hears the words "friendship is magic" and somehow thinks that translates to actual usable power gained by having friends.
Cozy Glow is an awful villain, she makes no sense at any point of this plot and the only reason she's able to pull it off is because all the other characters have been thrown the Idiot Ball. Cozy somehow incapacitated Starlight and trapped her in a magic sphere, and the show goes out of its way to point out the CMC have no idea how she did it, and that's that. Cozy Glow is a Villain Sue of the worst kind - charming and manipulative enough to fool literally everyone into obeying her every word, cunning and smart enough to pull off a magic ritual that would absorb all the magic of Equestria, and she has no motivation, backstory, or depth, beyond "MWHAHAHA POWER!"
I legit though this finale would be decent from what I had seen so far, but I was wrong. Too many plot holes and contrivances to count, this episode is a leaky mess of a story held together by two strips of duct tape and a lot of prayers that viewers try not to think about what's happening for more than five seconds.
Interesting review. What made you think you would like the two parter? Was it the trailers? Or synopsis?
I liked it but I really need to see it in English. Also cozy steals the magic by using the magic within the artifacts she doesn't need magic of her own to set up the ritual.
They redeemed Neighsay of all characters?! I was expecting Cozy Glow's reformation, but I honestly thought they weren't going to redeem Neighsay. I get that fans have been speculating about redeeming Spoiled Rich, but redeeming Neighsay would be like the Harry Potter Universe redeeming Umbridge after all the horrible things we saw her willing to do of her own accord.
And this just makes "Mean Six" all the more pointless, because Chrysalis is not at all related to this finale and nothing her plot does at all foreshadows what the Tree of Harmony does here.
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Not true, the tree-destroying the copies foreshadows that the tree has gotten more powerful than it was in the past. Also, Neighsay may have been a jerk but it was mostly done out of concern for the safety of Equestria, he never did anything near the same level as Umbridge.
4928465 Umbridge thought what she was doing was for the safety of the Wizarding World too, that's the entire reason she was put into power within the Ministry of Magic and made Defense against the Dark Arts teacher in the first place. The argument of being for the greater good doesn't exactly excuse deplorable behavior, it's just an attempt to disguise a saying "The end justifies the means", and history can attest that such thinking often leads to horrible atrocities. Plus, if Neighsay truly cared about the safety of Equestria, he wouldn't have made such speciesit remarks to the leaders of the nations allied with Equestria. His actions in the premiere nearly caused an international incident, and considering Equestria had at that time just recovered from an invasion by a foreign power, it was definitely not in any position to handle another international conflict let alone a war.
I do quite appreciate how they made her cutie mark a chess piece, though
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Neighsay was at worst a well-meaning jerk, Umbridge straight up tortured children. They are not on the same level.
That's really all he needs. He's not really a main villain in the episode afterall.
It's there to demonstrate the level of intelligence that Cozy has. Almost all other MLP antagonists would've/have fallen for something like that, but not Cozy.
Well, it's kinda the conclusion to an arc developed throughout the whole season, especially because of episode 22. It was heavily hinted there that the young 6 now have a connection to the tree.
It showed that they're willing to make a sacrifice for the greater good.
Well, no one said Tartarus residents can't receive mail. She's around the age of the CMC, which would likely make her around my age. It doesn't seem that hard from that perspective. It's just her appearance which makes her appear so young. The artifacts. Why is Tirek evil? Why is Sombra evil? Why is Neighsay racist? Why is NMM evil (jealousy shouldn't have made her so evil)? Basically, with all of the MLP villains, you could ask why they're evil, but it's not really necessary to explain that. Fleshing out your villains completely doesn't leave enough time for the core conflict to be developed. The friendship=power part is a good point, but Cozy doesn't seem to know how friendship actually works, and if she does, she doesn't believe it.
Why doesn't she make sense? I don't think they're all idiots. In fact, very few of them are. Yeah, magical artifacts are pretty damn powerful. That was a big part of this finale. But they didn't obey her every word. They questioned her. She was just good at putting those worries to rest. You don't really need to be smart or cunning to do a ritual, you just need the knowledge. And I'm pretty sure Tirek said he gave detailed instructions to her on how to absorb all Equestrian magic. Well, that's kinda true, but Tirek did that and he was very successful. Sure, he had a bit of backstory, but it wasn't much. Also, Cozy's return was pretty heavily hinted at the end, so she may be developed more then.
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Umbridge straight up tortures people. What’s the worst Neighsay did? He closed down Twilight’s school for a ton of reasons. Sure one of them was racism, but Twilight also actively hid the truth then down right lied to him, had completely unqualified teachers, and couldn’t remotely keep track of her students. Heck, said students nearly hurt others and cause property damage themselves. Heck, even the incident that almost happened wasn’t Neighsay’s fault, as the kids chose to run away and their guardians couldn’t keep track of them. If anything, it’s a point in his favor as most of them were at each other’s throats and what would happen if one of the students got hurt on campus, say by the neglect of two teachers who were too busy one upping each other to stop the kid from drowning.
Plus, Neighsay’s racism is perfectly justified. Ignoring that the mane six were pretty darn racist throughout the earlier seasons, the show has painted every other species in a negative light. 99.9% of griffons were jerks because they were griffons. Same with the dragons, except some of them actively threatened Equestria. Same with yaks, except they threatened war with Equestria and were shown to be really dumb. Changelings did attack Equestria twice. And the only time hippogriffs popped up in recent news is not helping Equestria when taken over by the Storm King but Equestria saving them anyways. So of the 5, 3 of them are comprised of 99.9% assholes, two of which were an active danger in the earlier season and one was a threat that attacked twice (and only Spike was willing to give Thorax a chance at first).
Plus, all the positive interactions with the other species have been almost exclusively with the main characters. I doubt Neighsay or most ponies knew child Gilda or that one chef or Gabby. Even Celestia had issues with yaks iirc. Ponies barely know anything dragons and Spike was very much treated as an exception and not the standard, with Ember or writing to him and Twilight and visiting him (plus, if greed growth was still a thing, any random child dragon can wreck the school by accident). How many ponies have met the reformed changelings? Even the hippogriffs were a relative unknown until the Storm King (which the school opened shortly after).
The show actively justifies his racism and based on past actions of the mane six, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be. The worst thing he did was try to shut down Twilight’s school (gotta love how they sweep everything else the school did wrong under the rug because Neighsay was racist). Him being redeemed was perfectly sensible and it would be beyond hypocritical for the show to not give him the chance.
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From my skimming of the episodes without a full watch, I think it was a clever and well-played twist that Cozy had nothing to do with Neighsay and was actually conspiring with Tirek, she seemed to have a clever plan to get the Mane Six out of the way while she does stuff at the school, providing a perfect chance for the Student Six to step and be heroes, and I liked that Neighsay was truly confirmed to be a decent pony in his own way and would not be an antagonistic force but a third party that inserts himself into things.
I had numerous questions about these plot developments, but presumed that they would be answered when I watched the episodes in full and could understand the dialogue. This turned out not to be the case, so they were just giant plot holes.
I mean, I’ll give them credit that they went all the way with Cozy being a villain. I was sure they’d just keep her a one trick pony.
Also, you got any decent link to the episodes here?
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they're on EqD
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Yup
Heh. And first ever pony, a filly no less, to get sent to pony hell prison... as she bloody wanted to as she clearly Sue'd her plot into being sent straight there.
I see why they wrote Diamond Tiara out the show. She would have exposed this filly for being the worst manipulator in all of Equus.
Starlight, gets a pass.
Filly that thinks friendship is literally power and whose goal was to control the school of friendship that had ahella lot of crazy places to hold rituals and make for really good villain hideout.
She sure had a load of expressions they had a ball playing with. Not to mention she's dark as hell. The kine she said just as she pulled out what looked to be a foal's cracked skull... whoa nelly! That's some grimdark stuff, especially given the chancellor's look of disgust and fright as she even huggles it.
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I did not save the mortified look since that came right as she was finishinghugging the skull.
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Also, the Equestrian guards sure act tough when their opponent is a filly. Lol
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If Cosy Glow had just been Chrysalis all along the finale would've made so much more sense. I don't need to explain why.
If Parcel Post can find Discord's Domain, then Derpy can keep correspondence between Tirek and Cosy.
I just want to know two things.
1) how could Star Swirl possibly know the exact timeline of Equestria's magic depletion?
2) where was Discord?
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More good questions
I defend though that Discord would be allowed to send mail. Who let Tirek get mail?
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I'll one up you on Star Swirl: how did he know the exact timeline, but have no clue about what was causing it?
Also, it really seemed throughout all this that it didn't really reflect how Tirek's magic worked, or the effects it had.
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True that. From what I can tell, it didn't seem like Cosy wanted to absorb all the magic when it had culminated together. She just wanted it gone. That's like the opposite of Tirek's style; instead of making herself insanely more powerful than everyone, she just wanted to make them all weaker than herself.