When the Cutie Mark Crusaders are magically transformed into grownups,they discover that growing up the right way means gaining experience and wisdom that simply can’t be rushed.
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When another author releases his own version of the events in AK Yearling’s Daring Do books, Rainbow Dash is furious, while Fluttershy is curious to know the truth.
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Starlight decides to hire a Vice Headmare in preparation to take over the School of Friendship from Twilight. But she soon realizes that hiring the right pony for the job is going to be a lot harder than she thought.
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Twilight's hopes of keeping her Trivia Trot winning streak alive are waylaid when she's unexpectedly paired up with Pinkie Pie, who has never been to a trivia night before.
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Rainbow Dash has been invited to the Rainbow Festival at Hope Hollow as a guest of honor. She and her friends hop on a balloon, but when they crash land, no one is there to greet them. The mystery grows at sunrise when the entire town and the ponies in it are revealed to have been drained of color. While Twilight Sparkle tries to find out what caused the town to fade, her friends help the local ponies plan a new rainbow festival, making friends along the way, and restoring the hope missing from Hope Hollow.
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This was a neat special. Don't have much else to say about it. I guess it's just one of those things that exists for the sake of existing, you know what I mean? That being said, I'm glad it exists.
...Though it was a bit grating that variations of the phrase "Wait, there's still a Rainbow Festival?" were spoken four or five different times within a relatively short span of time.
For some reason the pony pallete swaps were a little too obvious this time. Like that was ovious big mac in a full cyan color tone. Almost no non named background pony had complimentary or contrasting mane/fur colors.
The midwestern accents were adorable and Kerfuffle with an extra ffffff in the middle is my new favorite background pony.
I will admit I did somewhat enjoy the special, they were nice enough to use the same animation from the movie. But the few complaints that I had was just how 'simple' this plot device was, not to say it's a bad thing but having been used to 'epic adventures' or 'high stakes' or some 'villain of the week' held responsible, for me this just felt more like an hour long episode that follows the slice of life element we are familiar. Some of the new characters were enjoyable to watch, Kerfuffle especially is among my favorites mainly because out of ALL the town ponies in Hope Hollow she attracted my interest the most (Mostly due to the prosthetic leg, that screams for a story). The other point being is that I wasn't entirely a big fan of the writing, given that it felt more like it was targeting toward the younger audience, but what I will applaud is how it attempts to give the cast their own spotlight moment and no one feeling higher above the other. The songs for me were okay, I wouldn't go as far to say as memorable and one song in particular sounds more like it served best as an 'Equestria Girls' track.
Overall, for me this special was just okay as it is. Nothing bad, nothing good... Just kind of in the middle. I mean 'Hopeless Magic'... Is that really a legit circumstance, now? I mean I want to get where they were going with the whole message, hoping for something that felt relatable and I'm sure lots of people saw something with this special that I didn't. But honestly, I'm not a big fan of the 'simplicity' approach.
I really liked this. There was nothing particularly complex or epic or groundbreaking about it, but there didn't have to be. Basically a solid hour of everything I love about MLP.
Wish I could give it a higher rating, but it felt... kinda middle-road leaning towards lackluster to me. The concept is fine, but the execution felt like it has a lot of room for improvement.
The overall length of the special worked against it, I think. It feels like the kind of story that would've fit better into a 22 minute runtime for the series as opposed to a 1-hour plus movie, preferably focusing on a smaller bunch of characters. Each set of character subplots felt too similar to one another, all being some variant of needing to be friends and/or restore hope again.
The characters themselves were cool, but every time I was starting to enjoy their interactions with the Mane 6, the show then had to cut away to another subplot to run through the same routine of 'What happened here - this is my backstory - you need to find hope/friends' over and over again.
And the songs were... pretty mediocre; the last one sounded awfully repetitive. Not much more to say there.
And to top it all off, the whole concept of 'Hopeless Magic' felt very shallow and tacked-on, like they were forced to tie it in with Rainbows as a selling point for Marketing. We already have a locale with a magical artefact powered by the emotional state of its community in the main series: the Crystal Empire. I think the story would've felt a lot more sincere and organic without needing their emotional health to be literally colour-coded.
All in all, it really didn't do much for me. Would've been fine if it was just another episode in the series, but as a feature-length special, I expected more from it.
At first I thought they were doing a knockoff of Pleasantville. As I thought about it more, I realized they're total opposites. Pleasantville was about people thinking they need to conform to some dated ideal in order to be happy. This was about Ponies realizing their past was better, then trying to retrace their steps and find out where they took a wrong turn in life. Both lessons work, depending on the situation.
Reminds me of something on the news recently. A whole lot of people got stuck on a muddy road that leads nowhere because there was a tiny mistake on google maps.
5083078 They were special "wing bling" covers, Kerfuffle sewed them for her! Even though she couldn't see the colours, she instinctively knew what they were.
Remember Student Counsel, and how Trixie was flipping out at Starlight? How Trixie was talking about the difference between buying a cake and making one, and we were all impressed at how funny they made it? Rainbow Roadtrip was like that, except if they were unable to make the mundane funny. For half and hour. I just stopped watching. Around the time RD meets her fanclub.
There was just NOTHING to this. The writer of this was Kim Beyer-Johnson. She recently gave us Sweet and Smokey, which was nice, but didn't rise to much of the heights this final season was delivering. But it felt like a bullet dodged at the time, since the only other episode under her belt was "Non-Compete Clause." But as much as that one made me angry, I never felt like standing up and going to do something else. It kept my attention, with physical shenanigans, getting to know the Student 6 more, and at least a conflict over being outdone by Fluttershy. It also gave us exotic killer fish at the end, but since I don't know what comes at the end of Rainbow Roadtrip, I can't in good faith compare the sections.
Besides actually being fun, what is even the point trying to be made with this town? With Our Town, the story was all about trying to penetrate a cult mindset. In the Crystal Empire, everyone was in a daze over the cruelty of a sorcerer king. The Hippogriffs/Seaponies had closed themselves off from the rest of the world for fear of their own lives. The Kirin hobbled communication and joy to avoid interpersonal conflict. Sire's Hollow had pointless tradition versus gentrification, and that became a highlight of the season! What is even going on with End of the Rainbow Town (or whatever the name is)? They all stopped caring about each other for... reasons. There's doesn't even seem to be physiological effects of having the color drained. They're just all boring pricks who for some reason don't care about anypony from the outside world.
The only highlight was the mayor. He seemed like a sweet guy, who tried so hard in the face of an unmoved community to bring joy to uninterested people around him, despite lacking confidence himself to meet with the person he was smitten with. Not only was he written well, that voice actor threw a whole ton behind this role. It's kind of sad he cared so much for this location, when I sure couldn't.
I opened another window to watch some EGQ shorts while looking for the new special with the Dazzlings. Even with the contempt I feel for the modernity of humanized Equestria, just the amount of ENERGY that comes from the characters lifts me up.
I wouldn't be surprised if Grogar partly didn't want to give Sombra another chance because he pissed him off with his utterly ungrateful attitude, and smugness, aside from Sombra not holding up his end of the deal.
This was a fun little special. While not exactly epic, it was a nice, low-key story. There were some good jokes, great songs, and a lot of the new characters were really endearing (especially Petunia).
It was good to see the movie's art style one last time, and the theme of communities staying close was really nice.
While not as awesome as the movie, this was a great adventure all the same, and definitely one I'll be watching again.
Sometimes I wonder if we get a bit oversaturated with episode plots that need danger and some big threat to constantly drive them. After this, I'd definitely say so.
This was charming and yet managing to catch me out at every turn. I mean we all saw the Sunny/Petunia ship hints but be honest, who actually expected him to propose to her? Or despite the indications, there really was no true threat here? Beyond that was the movie animation put to wonderful use, awesome new characters (especially Torque and Kerfuffle), admittedly some pacing and song issues but both of which improved as it went on. It doesn't quite reach the same heights as Best Gift Ever and possibly the movie, and maybe would have worked better with 44 minutes, but it was still a great special and redeemed Kim Beyer-Johnson after S8's best of the worst and complete failure to achieve the point of Sweet and Smoky.
Plus more bonus points for giving all the Mane 6 their dues for once, and keeping Rainbow from the characterisation trap I feared at the start.
This special was alright, middle of the road for me. The stakes worked against this special, lower stakes can work but in slice of life based stories you need something to keep the audience invested. There wasn't much to that here, if the mane six failed what exactly would be at stake? I have to wonder if the original script for this, back when it was going to be a sequel to the movie, called for something more sinister to be behind the disappearance of color?
I recall Grogar bet Sombra would fail and said that if he did so, Sombra would serve him unquestioningly. Sombra Lost. Grogar just hasn't collected... Yet.
Fun and adorable new side-characters can't save the most outright boring MLP story in the series' 9 year history. With literally no conflict more intense than "he won't give us his fruit" presented throughout the 1 hour run-time, I have never checked the time remaining so many times while watching an FiM presentation. It makes recent Equestria Girls look like a masterclass of conflict and presentation. If it had been a normal 22 minute episode it would've been inoffensively dull but cute, as an hour long special showcasing the new animation software and style, it wasted both its time and its swanky new animation capabilities. Twilight Sparkle's magic has never looked better off the big screen, and yet she never gets the chance to DO anything with it because literally the final conflict of the episode amounts to "everyone's a bit unhappy".
It felt like the kind of crap Gen 3 was infamous for. The ponies in the town are kind of unhappy, so the main characters have to throw a party to make them happy again (with the Rainbow Generator acting as a red herring). That is literally all of the story we get, and it's just as asinine and limp as it sounds. The story can't even be bothered to give them some kind of REASON to be unhappy that needs to be resolved by the heroes. They're just... unhappy. So the whole episode ends up being a one hour PSA with nothing more to say than "cheer up, emo kid!"
Adorable new ponies like Torque Wrench and Kerfuffle were the special's only saving grace, but they can't save it from being the single worst piece of FiM media I've ever seen.
I didn't see much of it(just reading from summaries and reviews and such), but my only thoughts so far would be it kind of bugs me that Spike didn't go with the girls in the trip honestly.
I was really looking forward to Rainbow Roadtrip, to more movie style animation and (hopefully) to a longer and more involved adventure story. I got even more excited when I realised that it was a full 60 minute hour instead of the usual fake 44 minute hour.
However, I found the story to be rather simple and way too stretched out. The tempo was weirdly slow and you could see where the story was going early on. I expected it to throw a twist or two, but it never did. It just kept plodding along in a very predictable direction with nothing really exciting happening. I guess it could still have worked if it made better use of the mane six. They act about the way you'd expect, but we see very little of the eccentric behaviour that make them so enjoyable and relatable. I'd hesitate to call Rainbow Roadtrip bad – it was just bland and uninteresting.
Besides the thin script it also felt like the new animation studio played it too safe. The TV series tends to have a lot of visual gags and great facial expressions and likes to experiment with the cartoon medium. I like the movie designs and feel that they have the potential to be more expressive than their TV series counterparts. I mean, the facial expressions are good – you can tell they put a lot of effort into animating the faces – but there's nothing that makes me laugh or press the screenshot button. It's another thing that adds to the overall blandness of this special.
This was fun. Nothing epic, but I don't think that that was bad -- just an hour of humor, fun dialogue and fun characters, which in all honesty have always been some of the show's biggest strengths. It certainly would have been interesting to have an actual villain or another genuine threat behind everything, but I do not myself think that it was all that necessary -- a relatively low-stakes slice of life is a welcome enough change of pace following the movie and in the middle of one of the more plot- and villain-heavy seasons in the show.
That being said, it was very nice to see Twilight get to be the show's book nerd and science pony again. We really haven't seen that side of her very often lately, have we?
In hindsight, all the drama that sprung up about Twilight's new rainbow wings seems extremely silly.
If I'm going to be honest, though, the songs didn't do much for me. They just didn't feel especially engaging or memorable -- I hat to sound like a genwunner (seaswunner?) but I feel like the show's music kinda reached its heyday around seasons 2 and 3 and hasn't really hit the same quality since. Well, except for the movie, but still.
Almost no non named background pony had complimentary or contrasting mane/fur colors.
For what it's worth, I think that having all the characters' mane and fur colors being so close to each other was an intentional concession to the rainbow theme -- see how they were all split into groups by color in the final song, for instance.
Something I noticed is it has the same animation as the My Little Pony movie. I don't understand why the creators decided to change the animation style, I mean it looks fine but is there really a need for it to look different? Why change what has been used for almost a decade now? There was nothing wrong with how it looked before.
I believe that this special was originally meant as an actual second theatrical movie, but given how the first one underperformed rather badly those plans were scrapped and it was retooled into a tv special instead. This may explain the animation style -- it would likely have been animated like this to begin with when it was intended to be a new movie, and when it was readapted into a special it would have made more sense to keep it as it was than to scrap everything and waste time and money on reanimating everything.
5083142 Honestly, when I saw the promo, it gave me G3 vibes. I swear there was a trailer scene where the Mane 6 were in a room that looked exactly like the castle from G3.
5083186 The video quality was nice too. Same for the old Twilight and the background characters. 5083035 Who says she's entirely background?
It would be great if they put a bit more into why they stopped being such a close community, like what makes something become boring, or how slow changes creep in. Preferably how these factors all interacted. What if failing to fix Hope Hollow had a mental effect on the Mane 6?
5083186 Even if the movie had been more of a success, it took too long to make. It entered production after Season 4 wrapped up in 2014, and took over three years to make. With Hasbro planning to end G4 this year, a sequel would've had to have been rushed to completion to make it before G4 wraps up for good. And a rushed job would've showed. I don't know what exactly caused the movie to take so long to develop, but if I had to guess I'd say it was getting all those big celebrity talents onboard and getting them to come into the studio to record, not to mention using a new animation style that was still in its infancy (though apparently it is now becoming the preferred tool of animators instead of Flash).
5083186 Huge appeal to Rainbow's ego, gets the better of her again, turns back into a cocky self-centered showboat à la Mysterious Mare-Do-Well and takes until three quarters through to come to her senses and fix the problem. Given the writer, it wouldn't have been without precedent.
The MLP movie's long production cycle was due to them scrapping the movie halfway through and starting over with completely new animation software (which nobody on the animation team knew how to use, so they had to learn how to use it before they could even resume production). As long as they don't do THAT again, a new movie would take a fraction of the time the original did, especially since they can simply reuse puppets and assets from the first movie. I would be surprised if animating another Gen 4 MLP movie would take more than 1 year or so. Hell, that's basically why this special looks the way it does. They used a lot of the assets from the first movie, and this is almost a feature-length special as it is (the minimum for a modern movie is about 1 hour and 20 minutes)
(May as well talk about the special sometime, right?)
There's not really much to say on this one. Nobody was evil, Kerfuffle is a pony with a prosthetic leg (it's kind of surreal to note that Sombra Timeline!Rainbow Dash had a prosthetic limb before this).
As for Moody Root, something you might not have thought about, but was the case nonetheless is how he (one old earth pony) seemed to have quite a bit more success in growing apricots than either of the Hoofingtons (two unicorns) did.
Grogar wouldn't be going back on his word, because Sombra broke the deal at the exact instant he didn't decide to stop attacking after the Crystal Empire was freed by the Mane Six (again), hence Grogar saying that he "gambled and lost," so unless those two had a secret master plan together (kinda unlikely, but who knows), I think he has more than even odds of just being done, especially now that Frenemies opened up a potential plot hook of Mean Twilight returning, since they showed that Chrysalis kept her log.
"I don't do "ours". I only do mine. I will take back the Crystal Empire on my own, and I will destroy any pony who gets in my way!"
Grogar: "Such confidence. Go! Try to take back your kingdom. I shall send you there myself. If you prevail, you may keep it. But when you fail, you will submit to me!
5083219 Ah, I see. Well, that was a pretty boneheaded move on their part. As much as I grew accustomed to Toon Boom and as much as the movie showed its benefits, I feel like it took away what gave pony its unique identity. If they had stuck with Flash, yes people would've panned it for looking cheap, but this show has pushed Flash to its absolute limits and shown numerous times that you can make it look good in the right hands.
It was an alright episode. Okay songs, likable new characters, mane six getting equal spotlight, no character regression or flanderization, and a decent moral. Nothing special, but decent overall.
I don’t have a problem with the low stakes since that’s what slice-of-life episodes are usually for and it’s nice not every problem is caused by a world-threatening villain. That being said, the main problem is the length. It'd be alright if it was a 22-minute episode, but not as an hour-long special. The padding at some parts was really noticeable before they finally got to the point of the issue and resolved it. Also, they never really explained what caused the town to stop caring in the first place, sure Hopeless Magic is what made them lose all their color, but what caused the Hopeless Magic in the first place?
That sounds too much like sombra could he still be alive?
This was a neat special. Don't have much else to say about it. I guess it's just one of those things that exists for the sake of existing, you know what I mean? That being said, I'm glad it exists.
...Though it was a bit grating that variations of the phrase "Wait, there's still a Rainbow Festival?" were spoken four or five different times within a relatively short span of time.
Other than that, though, can't really complain.
Cute
For some reason the pony pallete swaps were a little too obvious this time. Like that was ovious big mac in a full cyan color tone. Almost no non named background pony had complimentary or contrasting mane/fur colors.
The midwestern accents were adorable and Kerfuffle with an extra ffffff in the middle is my new favorite background pony.
Did anybody else get a everything is awsome song vibe from the living in color song or was it just me.
5083037
I got it too.
I will admit I did somewhat enjoy the special, they were nice enough to use the same animation from the movie. But the few complaints that I had was just how 'simple' this plot device was, not to say it's a bad thing but having been used to 'epic adventures' or 'high stakes' or some 'villain of the week' held responsible, for me this just felt more like an hour long episode that follows the slice of life element we are familiar. Some of the new characters were enjoyable to watch, Kerfuffle especially is among my favorites mainly because out of ALL the town ponies in Hope Hollow she attracted my interest the most (Mostly due to the prosthetic leg, that screams for a story). The other point being is that I wasn't entirely a big fan of the writing, given that it felt more like it was targeting toward the younger audience, but what I will applaud is how it attempts to give the cast their own spotlight moment and no one feeling higher above the other. The songs for me were okay, I wouldn't go as far to say as memorable and one song in particular sounds more like it served best as an 'Equestria Girls' track.
Overall, for me this special was just okay as it is. Nothing bad, nothing good... Just kind of in the middle. I mean 'Hopeless Magic'... Is that really a legit circumstance, now? I mean I want to get where they were going with the whole message, hoping for something that felt relatable and I'm sure lots of people saw something with this special that I didn't. But honestly, I'm not a big fan of the 'simplicity' approach.
Cute and heartwarming as always. I like that it's the art style from the movie.
5083040
Everything is awsome when your living in color.
5083030
Sombra's still fuckin' dead, and unlike his comics counterpart, he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of reforming.
I don't think Sombra's ever appearing again.
I really liked this. There was nothing particularly complex or epic or groundbreaking about it, but there didn't have to be. Basically a solid hour of everything I love about MLP.
I was very impressed (and not just for selfish reasons!) how quickly Fimfiction added character tags for all the awesome new ponies from the special!
A decent and enjoyable special. Not much else to say.
5083045
Hehehe
5083045
Good special ^^
5083049
Same here. It took a while for Grogar to get a character tag, and even then his name was left uncapitalized for about a week or so.
Way to bounce back, whoever makes the character tags!
Overall I liked this special. I give it an 8/10.
Wish I could give it a higher rating, but it felt... kinda middle-road leaning towards lackluster to me. The concept is fine, but the execution felt like it has a lot of room for improvement.
The overall length of the special worked against it, I think. It feels like the kind of story that would've fit better into a 22 minute runtime for the series as opposed to a 1-hour plus movie, preferably focusing on a smaller bunch of characters. Each set of character subplots felt too similar to one another, all being some variant of needing to be friends and/or restore hope again.
The characters themselves were cool, but every time I was starting to enjoy their interactions with the Mane 6, the show then had to cut away to another subplot to run through the same routine of 'What happened here - this is my backstory - you need to find hope/friends' over and over again.
And the songs were... pretty mediocre; the last one sounded awfully repetitive. Not much more to say there.
And to top it all off, the whole concept of 'Hopeless Magic' felt very shallow and tacked-on, like they were forced to tie it in with Rainbows as a selling point for Marketing. We already have a locale with a magical artefact powered by the emotional state of its community in the main series: the Crystal Empire. I think the story would've felt a lot more sincere and organic without needing their emotional health to be literally colour-coded.
All in all, it really didn't do much for me. Would've been fine if it was just another episode in the series, but as a feature-length special, I expected more from it.
5083046
I mean he got obliterated before, so in theory Grogar could summon him back.
Why would he even want to after Sombra threw his offer back into his face the last time is another story.
So where did Twilight's rainbow wings come from again?
At first I thought they were doing a knockoff of Pleasantville. As I thought about it more, I realized they're total opposites. Pleasantville was about people thinking they need to conform to some dated ideal in order to be happy. This was about Ponies realizing their past was better, then trying to retrace their steps and find out where they took a wrong turn in life. Both lessons work, depending on the situation.
Reminds me of something on the news recently. A whole lot of people got stuck on a muddy road that leads nowhere because there was a tiny mistake on google maps.
5083078
They were special "wing bling" covers, Kerfuffle sewed them for her! Even though she couldn't see the colours, she instinctively knew what they were.
Remember Student Counsel, and how Trixie was flipping out at Starlight? How Trixie was talking about the difference between buying a cake and making one, and we were all impressed at how funny they made it? Rainbow Roadtrip was like that, except if they were unable to make the mundane funny. For half and hour. I just stopped watching. Around the time RD meets her fanclub.
There was just NOTHING to this. The writer of this was Kim Beyer-Johnson. She recently gave us Sweet and Smokey, which was nice, but didn't rise to much of the heights this final season was delivering. But it felt like a bullet dodged at the time, since the only other episode under her belt was "Non-Compete Clause." But as much as that one made me angry, I never felt like standing up and going to do something else. It kept my attention, with physical shenanigans, getting to know the Student 6 more, and at least a conflict over being outdone by Fluttershy. It also gave us exotic killer fish at the end, but since I don't know what comes at the end of Rainbow Roadtrip, I can't in good faith compare the sections.
Besides actually being fun, what is even the point trying to be made with this town? With Our Town, the story was all about trying to penetrate a cult mindset. In the Crystal Empire, everyone was in a daze over the cruelty of a sorcerer king. The Hippogriffs/Seaponies had closed themselves off from the rest of the world for fear of their own lives. The Kirin hobbled communication and joy to avoid interpersonal conflict. Sire's Hollow had pointless tradition versus gentrification, and that became a highlight of the season! What is even going on with End of the Rainbow Town (or whatever the name is)? They all stopped caring about each other for... reasons. There's doesn't even seem to be physiological effects of having the color drained. They're just all boring pricks who for some reason don't care about anypony from the outside world.
The only highlight was the mayor. He seemed like a sweet guy, who tried so hard in the face of an unmoved community to bring joy to uninterested people around him, despite lacking confidence himself to meet with the person he was smitten with. Not only was he written well, that voice actor threw a whole ton behind this role. It's kind of sad he cared so much for this location, when I sure couldn't.
I opened another window to watch some EGQ shorts while looking for the new special with the Dazzlings. Even with the contempt I feel for the modernity of humanized Equestria, just the amount of ENERGY that comes from the characters lifts me up.
img.youtube.com/vi/pVfQRE_D9Ig/mqdefault.jpg
5083069
I wouldn't be surprised if Grogar partly didn't want to give Sombra another chance because he pissed him off with his utterly ungrateful attitude, and smugness, aside from Sombra not holding up his end of the deal.
This was a fun little special. While not exactly epic, it was a nice, low-key story. There were some good jokes, great songs, and a lot of the new characters were really endearing (especially Petunia).
It was good to see the movie's art style one last time, and the theme of communities staying close was really nice.
While not as awesome as the movie, this was a great adventure all the same, and definitely one I'll be watching again.
It wasn't the best, but it also wasn't the worst, which counts for something
Take a shot for every time you hear the words 'Rainbow Festival'
Kerfuffle was the cutest, Petunia in a close second
Sometimes I wonder if we get a bit oversaturated with episode plots that need danger and some big threat to constantly drive them. After this, I'd definitely say so.
This was charming and yet managing to catch me out at every turn. I mean we all saw the Sunny/Petunia ship hints but be honest, who actually expected him to propose to her? Or despite the indications, there really was no true threat here? Beyond that was the movie animation put to wonderful use, awesome new characters (especially Torque and Kerfuffle), admittedly some pacing and song issues but both of which improved as it went on. It doesn't quite reach the same heights as Best Gift Ever and possibly the movie, and maybe would have worked better with 44 minutes, but it was still a great special and redeemed Kim Beyer-Johnson after S8's best of the worst and complete failure to achieve the point of Sweet and Smoky.
Plus more bonus points for giving all the Mane 6 their dues for once, and keeping Rainbow from the characterisation trap I feared at the start.
This special was alright, middle of the road for me. The stakes worked against this special, lower stakes can work but in slice of life based stories you need something to keep the audience invested. There wasn't much to that here, if the mane six failed what exactly would be at stake? I have to wonder if the original script for this, back when it was going to be a sequel to the movie, called for something more sinister to be behind the disappearance of color?
5083102
I recall Grogar bet Sombra would fail and said that if he did so, Sombra would serve him unquestioningly. Sombra Lost. Grogar just hasn't collected... Yet.
I really liked Torque!
When they first got to town and were being shown the... attractions... of the festival supposedly in honor of Rainbow Dash...
...was anyone else reminded of another infamously "Dash"-ing event?
Fun and adorable new side-characters can't save the most outright boring MLP story in the series' 9 year history. With literally no conflict more intense than "he won't give us his fruit" presented throughout the 1 hour run-time, I have never checked the time remaining so many times while watching an FiM presentation. It makes recent Equestria Girls look like a masterclass of conflict and presentation. If it had been a normal 22 minute episode it would've been inoffensively dull but cute, as an hour long special showcasing the new animation software and style, it wasted both its time and its swanky new animation capabilities. Twilight Sparkle's magic has never looked better off the big screen, and yet she never gets the chance to DO anything with it because literally the final conflict of the episode amounts to "everyone's a bit unhappy".
It felt like the kind of crap Gen 3 was infamous for. The ponies in the town are kind of unhappy, so the main characters have to throw a party to make them happy again (with the Rainbow Generator acting as a red herring). That is literally all of the story we get, and it's just as asinine and limp as it sounds. The story can't even be bothered to give them some kind of REASON to be unhappy that needs to be resolved by the heroes. They're just... unhappy. So the whole episode ends up being a one hour PSA with nothing more to say than "cheer up, emo kid!"
Adorable new ponies like Torque Wrench and Kerfuffle were the special's only saving grace, but they can't save it from being the single worst piece of FiM media I've ever seen.
I didn't see much of it(just reading from summaries and reviews and such), but my only thoughts so far would be it kind of bugs me that Spike didn't go with the girls in the trip honestly.
I was really looking forward to Rainbow Roadtrip, to more movie style animation and (hopefully) to a longer and more involved adventure story. I got even more excited when I realised that it was a full 60 minute hour instead of the usual fake 44 minute hour.
However, I found the story to be rather simple and way too stretched out. The tempo was weirdly slow and you could see where the story was going early on. I expected it to throw a twist or two, but it never did. It just kept plodding along in a very predictable direction with nothing really exciting happening. I guess it could still have worked if it made better use of the mane six. They act about the way you'd expect, but we see very little of the eccentric behaviour that make them so enjoyable and relatable. I'd hesitate to call Rainbow Roadtrip bad – it was just bland and uninteresting.
Besides the thin script it also felt like the new animation studio played it too safe. The TV series tends to have a lot of visual gags and great facial expressions and likes to experiment with the cartoon medium. I like the movie designs and feel that they have the potential to be more expressive than their TV series counterparts. I mean, the facial expressions are good – you can tell they put a lot of effort into animating the faces – but there's nothing that makes me laugh or press the screenshot button. It's another thing that adds to the overall blandness of this special.
I like the episode, but I have some questions, as far I know this one I from a book, when and where that book was sold? Or it was only digital?
I search in my country's Amazon but I didn't found it, and I have bought almost all the books.
This was fun. Nothing epic, but I don't think that that was bad -- just an hour of humor, fun dialogue and fun characters, which in all honesty have always been some of the show's biggest strengths. It certainly would have been interesting to have an actual villain or another genuine threat behind everything, but I do not myself think that it was all that necessary -- a relatively low-stakes slice of life is a welcome enough change of pace following the movie and in the middle of one of the more plot- and villain-heavy seasons in the show.
That being said, it was very nice to see Twilight get to be the show's book nerd and science pony again. We really haven't seen that side of her very often lately, have we?
In hindsight, all the drama that sprung up about Twilight's new rainbow wings seems extremely silly.
If I'm going to be honest, though, the songs didn't do much for me. They just didn't feel especially engaging or memorable -- I hat to sound like a genwunner (seaswunner?) but I feel like the show's music kinda reached its heyday around seasons 2 and 3 and hasn't really hit the same quality since. Well, except for the movie, but still.
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For what it's worth, I think that having all the characters' mane and fur colors being so close to each other was an intentional concession to the rainbow theme -- see how they were all split into groups by color in the final song, for instance.
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I believe that this special was originally meant as an actual second theatrical movie, but given how the first one underperformed rather badly those plans were scrapped and it was retooled into a tv special instead. This may explain the animation style -- it would likely have been animated like this to begin with when it was intended to be a new movie, and when it was readapted into a special it would have made more sense to keep it as it was than to scrap everything and waste time and money on reanimating everything.
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What trap would that have been, out of curiosity?
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Honestly, when I saw the promo, it gave me G3 vibes. I swear there was a trailer scene where the Mane 6 were in a room that looked exactly like the castle from G3.
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The video quality was nice too. Same for the old Twilight and the background characters.
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Who says she's entirely background?
It would be great if they put a bit more into why they stopped being such a close community, like what makes something become boring, or how slow changes creep in. Preferably how these factors all interacted. What if failing to fix Hope Hollow had a mental effect on the Mane 6?
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Arcane and elemental magic confirmed!
5083186 Even if the movie had been more of a success, it took too long to make. It entered production after Season 4 wrapped up in 2014, and took over three years to make. With Hasbro planning to end G4 this year, a sequel would've had to have been rushed to completion to make it before G4 wraps up for good. And a rushed job would've showed. I don't know what exactly caused the movie to take so long to develop, but if I had to guess I'd say it was getting all those big celebrity talents onboard and getting them to come into the studio to record, not to mention using a new animation style that was still in its infancy (though apparently it is now becoming the preferred tool of animators instead of Flash).
5083186 Huge appeal to Rainbow's ego, gets the better of her again, turns back into a cocky self-centered showboat à la Mysterious Mare-Do-Well and takes until three quarters through to come to her senses and fix the problem. Given the writer, it wouldn't have been without precedent.
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The MLP movie's long production cycle was due to them scrapping the movie halfway through and starting over with completely new animation software (which nobody on the animation team knew how to use, so they had to learn how to use it before they could even resume production). As long as they don't do THAT again, a new movie would take a fraction of the time the original did, especially since they can simply reuse puppets and assets from the first movie. I would be surprised if animating another Gen 4 MLP movie would take more than 1 year or so. Hell, that's basically why this special looks the way it does. They used a lot of the assets from the first movie, and this is almost a feature-length special as it is (the minimum for a modern movie is about 1 hour and 20 minutes)
(May as well talk about the special sometime, right?)
There's not really much to say on this one. Nobody was evil, Kerfuffle is a pony with a prosthetic leg (it's kind of surreal to note that Sombra Timeline!Rainbow Dash had a prosthetic limb before this).
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As for Moody Root, something you might not have thought about, but was the case nonetheless is how he (one old earth pony) seemed to have quite a bit more success in growing apricots than either of the Hoofingtons (two unicorns) did.
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Grogar wouldn't be going back on his word, because Sombra broke the deal at the exact instant he didn't decide to stop attacking after the Crystal Empire was freed by the Mane Six (again), hence Grogar saying that he "gambled and lost," so unless those two had a secret master plan together (kinda unlikely, but who knows), I think he has more than even odds of just being done, especially now that Frenemies opened up a potential plot hook of Mean Twilight returning, since they showed that Chrysalis kept her log.
(Bolded parts have my emphasis)
5083195 Incest is wincest?
5083236 That question mark is unnecessary.
5083219 Ah, I see. Well, that was a pretty boneheaded move on their part. As much as I grew accustomed to Toon Boom and as much as the movie showed its benefits, I feel like it took away what gave pony its unique identity. If they had stuck with Flash, yes people would've panned it for looking cheap, but this show has pushed Flash to its absolute limits and shown numerous times that you can make it look good in the right hands.
It was an alright episode. Okay songs, likable new characters, mane six getting equal spotlight, no character regression or flanderization, and a decent moral. Nothing special, but decent overall.
I don’t have a problem with the low stakes since that’s what slice-of-life episodes are usually for and it’s nice not every problem is caused by a world-threatening villain. That being said, the main problem is the length. It'd be alright if it was a 22-minute episode, but not as an hour-long special. The padding at some parts was really noticeable before they finally got to the point of the issue and resolved it. Also, they never really explained what caused the town to stop caring in the first place, sure Hopeless Magic is what made them lose all their color, but what caused the Hopeless Magic in the first place?