MLP FIM Season 1 Episode 6 Review "Boast Busters"

This is the first episode that’s controversial in the show, as most people had relatively positive thoughts on the first 4/5 episodes. I feel like this is mostly because of the characters being mad at Trixie’s boastfulness, even though that’s pretty much her job as a stage performer.

But I’m not most people, so don’t expect me to just repeat what everyone else says in my review. As for my actual opinion on the episode, that’ll have to wait for later.

Scale of Ratings

 1 - Absolutely Terrible; so disgustingly bad it made me want to stop watching the show
 2 - Really Horrible
 3 - Awful
 4 - Very Bad
 5 - Bad
 6 - Below Average
 7 - Average/OK
 8 - Good
 9 - Great
10 - Amazing

Story

Twilight is practicing her magic, and Spike gets a mustache. Unfortunately, Twilight zaps away Spike’s mustache, and then they head out, where they encounter Snips and Snails, who tell the two about the newest unicorn in town, who is apparently the best unicorn ever. Twilight and Spike check out Trixie’s stage performance, and they find the rest of the Mane 6 there as well (expect for Pinkie and Fluttershy), and they all just can’t seem to stand Trixie’s boasting and flaunting of her talents. Applejack, Rainbow, and Rarity try to show Trixie up, but she just embarasses them. When Twilight’s challenged by Trixie, she decides to run away because she didn’t want to look arrogant like Trixie. Snips and Snails get the brilliant idea of bringing an Ursa into town, and when it’s night time, they do just that. An Ursa Minor is awoken and gets mad at the two colts, and then it chases after them and rampages across town until Trixie faces it. As expected, she can’t do anything to it, and the situation seems hopeless until Twilight arrives and uses some of the spells she’s been practising along with a new one to send the Ursa Minor back to its cave. Twilight learns it’s okay to be proud of your talents and even to demonstrate them sometimes, and Trixie flees.

So that’s the plot in a nutshell. And what do I think of it? Honestly, I don’t think it’s as bad as people say. Sure, it’s still not great, but it’s perfectly fine to me. The pacing was good, the dialogue was some of the best of the season, Twilight’s conflict was much more believable and therefore engaging than Applejack’s in Applebuck Season, and I thought the climax of the episode was pretty good. I think this is actually one of the stronger stories so far. I also like the fact that not all of the Mane 6 or just 1 of them was the main focus. It makes the series feel more realistic, and in general, I think it was a good writing decision because I’m not sure how they’d work in a plot like this. I don’t even think the characters bashing Trixie was that bad. It set up a way for Trixie to show her more aggressive and rude side and made it more satisfying for her ego to be taken down a notch and for Twilight to best her. I’ll get into the morality of it in the next two sections. But for now, I’m going to end this by saying this is an interesting story with issues that aren’t even really issues.

8.5.10 - Really Good

Characters

Something I’ve noticed is that Season 1 Twilight really likes teasing Spike in a friendly way. First, it was “Casanova,” and now it’s “Romeo.” And it’s really funny. Also, like I said in the story section, I liked Twilight’s inner conflict here. Sure, you do have to somewhat suspend your disbelief at the fact that a grown adult doesn’t know when and how to be modest, but that’s unavoidable in a show with morals mostly for kids. And it’s engaging all the same. I also don’t think it’s really out of character, since Twilight is still learning about friendship at this point, so her not being her usual rational self when in a struggle about how her friends will think of her is perfectly believable. Beyond that, I think this is one of Twilight’s more unique Season 1 appearances. She doesn’t really have the same quippiness and level headedness that she usually does, and obviously she doesn’t feel shoehorned since this is her episode (mostly). It’s refreshing, even if I do like her quippy lines generally. It was also cool seeing how much magic she has, and obviously she handled her victory with grace. I was really rooting for her here.

I think Spike was handled pretty well here. He tried to help Twilight to do what was right, and though he mostly failed, it was still nice seeing him as the one in the right as opposed to Twilight. But his only role in the episode is trying to convince Twilight to prove Trixie wasn’t the best unicorn in town, so he doesn’t have much actual personality demonstrate here. Expect for his trying to impress Rarity, which was amusing.

Applejack mostly just appeared to have someone for Trixie to embarass, so obviously only her basic personality was shown here, unless you count the way she was acting with Trixie. She was being a bit arrogant herself for trying to show up Trixie, but sometimes you have to do things that don’t make you seem like an angel if it ends with a more positive outcome in the end. I mean, it did seem like Applejack was enjoying showing off, but that’s natural, and besides the point anyway. I know ends don’t justify the means in a lot of situations, but this is different. It’s not like anyone really gets hurt by Applejack showing off.

I mostly have the same thoughts about Rainbow Dash as I do about Applejack. She has her basic personality, and she’s there for Trixie to embarrass her. However, I do have somewhat different thoughts about her showing off than I do with Applejack. I don’t really feel like Rainbow was doing it to stop Trixie, even if that was her intention, because it fits her to just try to outdo Trixie to seem better. It did kinda seem like she was trying to defend Applejack’s honor as she said there’s no need for Trixie to act the way she was after Applejack had just left the stage, but I’m not completely sure.

Rarity was pretty meh in this episode. The biggest problem with her character for me is that when it’s not her episode and she only has her basic personality as she’s in the background, she reverts back to her episode 1 stereotypical high society persona sometimes, and this is one of those times. She’s not that bad, but the only thing stand out about her was that she caused some humorous moments. The first was misinterpreting her friends’ words and thinking they wanted her to go up against Trixie, the next was when she got angry at Trixie’s insult, and the third (and funniest one) was being mortified because she had green hair, and the camera moved to a green-haired mare. Seriously, that was hysterical.

This episode introduced us to a pair of recurring characters. Snips and Snails. I think they work well together, as Snails has a lot of lines so stupid, they’re funny, and Snips has good reactions. It’s sort of like the dynamic between Twilight and Spike.

Trixie is a very popular character, but when she first appeared, the opinion on her was mixed. Some people really liked her, while some people really didn’t. I’m sorta in the middle. Obviously, I didn’t like her as a person, since even beyond her somewhat understandable boastfulness, she was mean and rude. But as an antagonist, she was fine. She was a good opposition to Twilight’s incredible modesty, and because we grow to dislike her so much, it’s rewarding seeing her unable to do anything against the Ursa Minor, like I said earlier. Her overly showy personality is also pretty amusing at times. And of course I love her talking in the third person and calling herself “The Great And Powerful Trixie” There’s nothing extraordinary about her character here, but she worked as an antagonist with her negative qualities, and her “defeat” was satisfying.

Overall, I pretty much have the opposite opinion of most about the characters here. While some of them were a little worse than usual, by and large the characters ranged from perfectly fine to quite good.

8.5/10 - Really Good

Themes

The moral of this episode is that while you shouldn’t boast and show off too much, it’s okay to be proud of your talents and even show them off in the right situations. On its own, the moral is great, but the delivery was a little flawed. I know I said I wouldn’t repeat what 95% of the fanbase says about the episode here, but I guess I will have to this one time. It is a little weird that everyone was so mad at Trixie for doing her job, but I always thought of the message with Trixie more being that you shouldn’t be a jerk, rather than that you shouldn’t show off. Kids could take it either way, and anyway, kids will learn to not show off and abuse other people when they get called out for it. It could discourage people from being a stage performer, but theres so small a percentage of people that want to grow up and be the kind of stage performer that boasts a lot that the message isn’t worsened that much by the flaws of the delivery.

And I guess another moral is that you shouldn’t bring danger to the people near you for your own personal amusement. But I think even kids knew that. Although if the message is translated into regular people version, the message would be more like you shouldn’t bring others down for your own gain, which is an important thing to learn that has practical uses.

So even the themes of this episode aren’t really that bad if you think about it. Though I am a positive thinker, so I might be a little too lenient on these ratings. Even so, I do actually think the themes of Boast Busters are good.

8.5/10 - Really Good

Misc.

The animation is awesome here. There are a lot of beautiful effects in the stage show part, the visuals in the climax against the Ursa Minor are intense and really good looking in general, the expressions were conveyed perfectly as always, there were lots of little details that other episodes don’t have (such as Twilight’s lips moving as she struggled to think about what to do) and just throughout, the animation is above what many of the previous episodes had.

I also loved the music. It’s hard to fully explain since I’m no musician, but I feel like the music was more standout than the music in most other episodes. It was grand and showy sounding with Trixie’s scenes, intense during the Ursa Minor scenes, and just...great throughout.

The voice acting was similarly great. You can really hear Twilight’s inner conflict in her speaking, and while none of the others except Trixie are standout, all the voice acting is really good. I mean, it’s still nothing special compared to later, but it’s not really that much worse either.

As for Trixie, her voice acting is sorta like Rarity’s, in that it’s super over-the-top, so much so that it’s funny, and it’s not irritating either. It’s the perfect balance of charismatic, showy, and in the scenes where she’s frightened, it has a nice mix of fear and desperation and her voice sounds more natural than her showy persona. Trixie’s might be my favourite voice acting in the episode. It’s so good.

This episode doesn’t really get better as I watch it more, but it remains interesting no matter how many times I watch it, and I sometimes notice small details in the music and animation that keeps the experience somewhat fresh every rewatch.

I also didn’t have any problems with the writing when I was younger, so I really loved it back then.

The little things about this episode were executed to near perfection, and really elevate the experience for me.

9.5/10 - Really Great

Conclusion

Story - 8.5/10
Characters - 8.5/10
Themes - 8.5/10
Misc. - 9.5/10
Overall - 35/40 - Great

Wow. I’ve gotta admit, before I rewatched this episode, I really didn’t think this episode would get a great rating. But lots of things, like how engaging the story was, how interesting the characters were, the moral by itself, the animation, the music, and the voice acting made the episode really good.

Personal Rating - 9/10 - Great
Yeah, the worst episode for most people so far is my favourite episode so far. I promise I’m not just doing this to spark controversy and gather attention. I just love this episode. Sure, it’s not the most well written episode, but it’s so entertaining, that I can’t help but give it a 9/10.

This episode was controversial, and I loved it, while the next episode is mostly considered one of the better episodes of the season. What I think of it though (positive or negative) will have to wait till next time. See you then!