Help! My Heart is Full of Pony! - Yona, Pt. 2 · 8:28pm May 17th, 2019
She's a Yak is a heart-warming tale, and a heartbreaking tale. Like Sonic Rainboom, it takes a creature known for her overconfidence, and explores her insecurities.
As I mentioned in my last essay, Yona's sudden obsession with conformity stems from the fact that she comes from a strict culture that takes pride in tradition. She also has two hooves in the pony world, and this dance is her first formal pony event with traditions of it's own. It's only natural that she feels pressure to honor those traditions and to perform its rituals well.
The interesting thing about this episode is how it explores the troubles of "the foreign kid" in class, as Yona struggles to assimilate. In any situation, "fitting in" always means, to some extent, a diminution of the self in order to belong to a whole. For someone like Yona, who is, in every way, "other," conformity amounts to a drastic destruction of self.
How does one strike a balance between the desire to participate, and the need to preserve one's core self? It's a difficult question with no easy answer.
Even if you don't account for the complexities of cultural differences, the further that *any* kid is from "the norm," the more destructive that forcing conformity will be. I related to Yona in this episode because growing up, I was always a weird kid. I reveled in it - defined myself by it - my fun little eccentricities. But my "otherness" was both my greatest strength and greatest weakness. While it liberated me to think outside the box, it also left me feeling like an outsider looking in.
Yona offers us a lot to relate to here.
To Be Continued...
-Sprocket
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