My Little Pony: Make Your Mark Chapter 1 – Review · 6:15pm Jun 4th, 2022
Izzy: “Yeah, this is fine. It's fine! Not like Sunny's creepy smile and Zipp's averted gaze could possibly be an indication all is not sunny – nailed it – with this special. Right?
“…Right?”
Obligatory spoiler warning is obligatory. Thing’s been out for over a week; if you’re reading this and haven’t seen the special yet, you either don’t intend to, or don’t mind being spoiled.
And yes, I could have easily gone far more technical as regards the animation, but we don’t need a novel, and we want it to be quickly understandable, don’t we? Hopefully the casual drops of terms from frame interpolating to render farms fly.
On the one hand/hoof/mitt, it’s profoundly unfair to attack something like the Make Your Mark special for the quality of its animation. The whole limitation of CG animation playing in the Pixar wheelhouse of largely realistic textures, natural lighting and authentic physics is that it costs an ocean’s worth of cash to look good, and even the smartest ways of getting around those limitations (as our very own A New Generation did, building only what they needed, reusing sets and falling back of matte paintings, among other things) is still going to set you back a hefty penny. TV and streaming has a much lower financial return ceiling than even that, and for what amounts to a toy commercial, you’re not playing on the higher end of even that. And yes, some series have been playing around with alternative approaches to texturing and lighting (hello, Arcane!), but that level of experimentation is well beyond the budget and stylistic freedom permitted to a brand like My Little Pony.
On the other hand/hand-like appendage, Make Your Mark looks rather bad. Now, this is far from the worst-looking CG animation around. We’re a long way above the likes of your Paw Patrols, your Barbies, your Filly Funtasias (nee Funtusia, see the comments). It is average for what it’s working with. That doesn’t change the fact that average within those parameters is still rather shabby, foregrounding the weaknesses and limitations well ahead of the merits and strengths. This is why, for all the stranglehold CG animation has on theatrical feature films, it is still mostly confined to preschool and kids-only cartoons on the smaller screens, audiences whose perceptive skills (in the eyes of the executives and investors) aren’t yet advanced enough to distinguish animation quality and its adverse effects on the given media itself.
And on top of all that, Make Your Mark also has to work against a direct visual comparison to a stylistically-similar-yet-properly-exquisite feature film, one sitting only a click away on the same streaming platform (oh, if the film has gone to cinemas! We wouldn’t feel spoiled for getting that level of animation the same way we’re getting this). Hardly a new issue, every tv cartoon spun off from a film faces this, as did all those Disney direct-to-video/DVD sequels back a generation. Some things never change. Though even they came out via a different method.
Reusing the film models brought animation benefits, but it also brought aspects that need high-fidelity to work. Like close-ups of the lips, which you don't need to worry about as much in a widescreen film made for cinemas anyway.
I’ve been telling everyone for months that the most obvious budget cut would be the actual character animation, having none of the nuance and perfection that comes from feature animators getting to spend a year perfecting 1-2 minutes of footage each. This is true, and telling in how often the movements between keyframes are automatically interpolated by the software with no manual adjustment. However, far more damaging is the texturing, rendering and lighting. Obviously this was going to drop, a major time sink in feature CG animation is letting a render farm spend dozens of hours polishing each frame, but I was still unprepared for how… inconsistent it would look. Mostly textures look smeary, colours oversaturated, and lighting muddled. There are good moments here, of course, much like the character animation (wherever this is outsourced to, x% of the sweatshop animators are so much better at getting the most out of the one pass they have to work with, it’s embarrassing); they’re just limited enough as to make the default standards irk more. Least eOne and Netflix were "smart" enough to cherry-pick stronger visual moments for promo purposes, a few exceptions leaking through.
Now, this is all for budgetary concerns, and the fact of having the film’s assets to reuse does give it a leg up, having the expansive Maretime Bay streets set (even confined to mostly cramped camera angles) and quality pony model rigs, which are undeniable merits, make no mistake. Sadly, it also makes those parts that were designed for high-fidelity look worse, especially the manes (Izzy even got a manecut just to reduce particle rendering time), with the fuzzy fur textures absent except for the odd close-up (themselves hamstrung by the lips, usually). It also makes the freshly-designed parts here stick out more. The prominent new ponies have some design issues that result from lacking sufficient time to iterate after first translating concept art to CG, be it Posey’s facial proportions, or the colour combination of Jazz’s coat and mane turning out putrid in the salon’s pastel scheme and low-rendered lighting. Same goes for the new interiors, feeling far more cramped than their Tell Your Tale counterparts (the salon is night and day), with design, colour, texturing and lighting mismatches everywhere that only occur from lack of time to iterate during implementation. That the film built the bare minimum of sets (it never even had the sea, explaining the awful wave shot during the opening theme here) means we’re only going to be dealing with proportionally more lower-quality new ones as time marches on.
One of these things is not like the other
One of these things just doesn't belong
Can you tell me which one is not like the other
Before I finish my song
Again, I understand why all this has happened, even if it doesn’t change that both the average quality and constant shot fluctuation of most visual elements is distracting at best. It’s unfair to bring this all up, and yet that is why I do, for to understand why something is the way it is can let us look at means of improvement, if there are any. And there are; while the ceiling of improvement on this going forward is far lower than with FiM at its start, assuming it sticks with the same crew, budget and schedule (it’s far easier to get more adept at animating with 2D character rigs in a single pass over time than 3D ones), we will likely see tiny improvements in the character animation, or more accurately, not as many severe slips. That, and building up a backlog of stock movement actions, especially for background ponies. Compared to all the visual issues that will stick, it’s peanuts, but it’s not nothing.
Where I run out of ways to make excuses on the grounds of budget/schedule is with mistakes so shoddy and basic you can’t believe they’d happen in professional animation. Can I get technical? You wouldn’t have read this far if you weren’t game for that. There’s a reason much of the character movement seems stiff, jerky or otherwise off, at least more than it should: this special is also inconsistent in applying post-production blur. It’s one of those things you never notice when it’s there, but raw CG character movement without it (where the movement speed justifies it, of course) just feels off. It’s crucial to make movements feel fluid rather than snappy (and yes, some animation styles go for snappy for effect, but that’s an intentional thing different from what we have here). And when it is applied here, it’s often unadjusted, which I understand is not that time-consuming a task at all. LittleshyFIM has a great thread on this with visual examples (not overwriting an automated directional blur, one that mistakes what is moving in what direction, with a manual one doable in a minute?). Well worth looking at if I’ve lost you, which I expect I have! It’s a difficult thing to explain with just words. It’s another “we don’t have the time!” issue, but one that is telling on how in over its head the visuals are.
Related to that, despite all the obvious and clear-cut budget setbacks, you get the feeling they’re straining to even handle what’s onscreen. This is most evident in scenes with more than a few ponies, the camera cutting between shots far more than would be normally the case for such mellow chats, to avoid extra rendering time and character animation. This jerked-around juxtaposition is one of many things that has a pervasive effect on how scenes’ tone, flow and atmosphere build at the micro level, one of many examples where the lower budget does actively affect the effect the material has, largely because this script has not been tailored to what the budget can accomplish, and the straining it takes to bridge the gap is keenly felt. More on that later.
I've seen early-2000s licensed games with visuals less uncanny than those inside the void (not pictured here). It feels like it’s not even from the same special! Effects-heavy animated spaces need a good renderer to work even slightly.
This special needed all the help it could get from its visuals too, because on top of the script trying, in many ways, to be a feature film, one that depends on higher-quality rendering and especially more nuanced character animation to put across many of its character developments (writers, write to your limitations), this is one of the most hodgepodge 1st draft syndrome scripts I’ve seen in action in many an age, above and beyond having too much for its runtime.
This is not lacking for good ideas. In fact, were I put in charge of doing the immediate follow-up to A New Generation, I too would probably utilise the concept of earth ponies feeling jealousy and envy at their lack of magic next to the unicorns and pegasi. And maybe some aspects of the crystals glitching. This is where we run into problems. Notice how none of the Mane 5 are mentioned in that? Or, indeed, in the Maretime Bay Day plot (which is a poor lore addition, but let’s not start on that yet). Rather than having the Mane 5 tackle this together, as a unit, the special elects to have Zipp be the sole investigator for the first two-thirds of its runtime (on top of her own royal expectations subplot). I’m behind avoiding ‘Twilight and the Mane 5 Background Extras’ again, shuffling around the lead pony from status quo changing story to status quo changing story. I might be more behind it if it didn’t involve dematuring Zipp and giving her Sunny’s solo inquisitive personality.
It’s the rest of the cast that suffer. Hitch and Pipp are given subplots to market new toys, and it’s hard to decide which is more egregious from a writing perspective; Pipp’s salon is mentioned once early on, then appears for one scene and song, and that’s it. Hitch, meanwhile, gets more focused screentime, as nurturing the dragon egg can’t take place alongside the other characters, but that only highlights how it has no relation to anything else going on here (plus, they’re devaluing his character early by sidelining him into a caretaking gig). Izzy’s lantern subplot has as little focus as Pipp’s, yet it might have worked had the new design looked even slightly like the old one. Instead it gives off the impression she had no care for what Sunny would have treasured, completely changing it or store-buying it, and is the one visual moment that cannot be excused under budget, instead coming off as indifferent by the artists. And Sunny… ostensibly, she’s trying to get her new powers under control, but this too is barely present until it resolves itself at the tonally off “climax” for stakes the script clearly doesn’t believe in.
Can you say ‘Five Ponies and a Dragon’? I don’t think Tom Selleck, Steve Guttenberg or Ted Danson were available. In any case, the dragon 'subplot' is enough to make Meghan McCarthy’s non-disguising of the toyetic plugs in Seasons 3-4 of FiM look subtle.
Obviously something like this has many executive, marketing and toy plug masters to serve, but that doesn’t do justice to how haphazardly assembled these elements are. It is exactly like an episode late in a sitcom’s run that is obliged to give all its characters subplots without a care as to tying them together. A problem far, far more egregious at a series’ start, when we’re still trying to define these ponies and see how they react and adapt in a time of change. To say these subplots do not talk to each other is an understatement; they barely interact. Coupled with the special’s refusal to invest in its own stakes until the end, the feeling is of something that is at once overstuffed and totally empty. One-third of the way though, I found myself actively wondering if anything of note was going to happen.
When I say the script has 1st draft syndrome, this is primarily what I mean, tossing in all your ideas and not yet having a handle on how they mix (and yes, there are story types where subplots can remain separate and work wonders, but this is emphatically not of that structural genre). But there is another aspect too, and that is the micro level of the writing. If A New Generation was akin to the classic Winnie the Pooh shorts or the 2011 film, something very much for kids but respectful to them and crafted with care such that an adult has minimal trouble putting themselves in a child mindset to enjoy it… well, this is like the mass of Pooh media produced from the mid-80’s to the late-2000’s, aimed at the very young: treating its characters as dim-witted rather then naive, and just coming across as so… infantile. Characters say stilted exposition dialogue, sometimes repeating points in the same sentence; humour is far less character-ingrained, and when it is, it’s usually not to their benefit; the characters themselves are distilled to either a single trait, or to a bland, undefinable mush, the writing not caring if they say or do something that doesn’t feel right. The conflicts are not cohesive, roadblocks are solved upon appearing, characters don’t earn what they get. And those conflicts remaining static until the end, when they get ramped way up, makes this largely low on tension and dull.
None of these issues are story-killing, alone. Piling them up that much, on the other hand…
It really is quite something, how much Izzy's different here. 'Klutz trying to crack jokes and keep up and be hip yet lacks the energy to do so' fits her new incarnation just about right, and even an adorable expression like this (one of the better moments in the special, though less good in motion) can only do so much.
Of course, this is not intended to be a standalone story, just the opening two episodes to the series. And it’s not like the two-parter opener for FiM wasn’t rather rough around the edges (though, I actually went back and watched the first six episodes, and while FiM was never a perfect show, and not nearly a great one at that point, the potential and spark and charm was there right from the start). In that regard, the characters really don’t serve to carry it through. Zipp leeching off of Sunny and Hitch’s film depictions is merely a mild annoyance, and her material has good characterisation ideas in isolation, even if it can’t put them over (Zipp wanting her mom to call her Zipp, for instance, would work if Haven actually didn’t call her Zipp a few times before the end).
The rest haven’t a hope. Izzy is saddled with the same variety of weird “hip joke” moments she was in Tell Your Tale* (what’s with the rap and sing-song moments?), an odd mesh with her sedate Pinkie Pie writing. Hitch has it the worst, fully becoming the dorky, incompetent token male we all feared with the film last year, not even having the stomach to ward off Posey’s complaints, or resolve a beach complaint. Pipp is neither here nor there, just a plug-in “appeal to Gen Z” character peppered with slang I refuse to believe kids actually relate to (saying “feels” is one thing, but peppering every other sentence with words like “vibe” and “adorbs”?). Poor Sunny, meanwhile, shows how much she was designed as a film protagonist, not as an ongoing character. Without further (correct) personality expansion, and with her inquisitive, active nature taken by Zipp, she mostly is worried and inactive, needing others’ opinions constantly to decide on what to do. If she was previously an upbeat young adult, now she’s a well-meaning but clumsy teenager with a smoothie stand gig because she’d got little else in the way of talents. And that’s not by intent, but by sloppy writing.
* Speaking of, another mark against this is that this special expects the viewer to have watched that webseries. One on a different platform. If not in terms of the plot, then basic context and familiarity, most notable in expecting the user to be acquainted with the Brighthouse and the male salon (especially the latter; watched in isolation here, you’d swear you missed a scene building up to it). And it’s not like Tell Your Tale introduced these properly, it just got its viewers familiar with them through attrition. Franchises burying important info and contextualisation in minor spin-off media is something I have no patience for.
One of these things is not like the… wait, we've already done that? Land's sakes. A straightforward caption it is, then.
No, the 2D animation still doesn't look 'good', but ignoring the character designs, the backgrounds, set, lighting and colours really are much better, aren't they?
One does, at least, get the impression the voice actors are trying. Initial impressions on the voices in Tell Your Tale still hold true, with Sunny, Zipp, Pipp and Haven not being quite vocal matches but being close enough and evoking something of the same vibe, if not energy, that you stop comparing them pretty easily. Zipp, in particular, flat-out sounds better, despite the worse writing, though that’s mostly for Maitreyi Ramakrishnan lacking Liza Koshy’s weird voice fluctuations. Ana Sani’s Izzy still sounds like she’s trying and failing to impersonate Kimoko Glenn. Improvement and finding her own direction’s not impossible though. And with material like this, it’s hard to evaluate Hitch, so I won’t judge J.J. Gerber too harshly, though Hitch remains awkwardly off. The new voices are poor fits, especially for Posey, though the special has so little interest beyond the Mane 5 that it’s not worth dwelling on.
Meanwhile, the acting is… lacking. Only Zipp registers as having proper control of one’s voice that improves the delivery of her lines, though Sunny is sometimes there. Otherwise, it’s the same flat tone from Tell Your Tale, only far more egregious with a script that needs delivery fluctuation. Mostly it’s just a bland monotone, notable for how rarely a line came across spoken better than it was as written. If the voices and their acting are not as large a liability to the special’s effect as the visuals are, they’re barely doing anything to improve it.
To say the acting for the incidental roles feels like they plucked people off the street is being generous; I've heard and been in school plays with substantially better voice acting.
“But Ghost Mike, the lore and worldbuilding!” Hm, yes. Sidestepping personal preferences of desiring more legit, imaginative, immersive fantasy in My Little Pony, and getting away from the ‘humans in suits’ feeling common to MLP content the last few years, this counts as another misstep, primarily because like with anything, it takes more than just dumping it in our laps.
The generic nature of Bay Day with bland tents and activities around is merely an annoyance, but it's properly offensive what they do with the earth pony magic. Not enough that the envious earth ponies are written in a shrill and one-note manner that cripples a legitimate viewpoint, nor that the return of their magic is “because the plot says so” contrivance in setup and resolution, that’s to be expected. Even the earth magic being instantaneous growing, making it feels unearned to the point I wish they hadn’t bothered – this from someone who’s wanted more earth magic in MLP for many an age – pales in comparison to the real issue.
For something aimed so young, you don’t want to deliver a bad message, and on top of sidestepping a legit “you won’t have something that makes other special, and that’s okay” message in favour of “nah, magic!”, they do so by having one character literally say the line “When we work together, we can create new magic”. With writing like that, small wonder this makes ideas I like feel worse than ones I don’t. Which is a good euphemism for the whole special – even if one likes a lot of the ideas here, and is curious about where they’re going forward in this generation, the numerous writing issues means they do not play out in a manner that’s entertaining or involving to actually watch, thus dive-bombing any repeat value this one has. Even for the kids, judging from several parental reviews where said kids watched the film on repeat but didn’t show any desire to return to this.
Nurturing and growing flora being near-instantaneous now rather than passive and gradual but important, as was kind-of the case in early FiM, annoys a great deal. The writers and story people couldn't be bothered to do anything beyond "rapid plant growth!"
I think it would be difficult to love something with this script under any circumstances, but the fact that it’s receiving no boost from the animation is what really makes this a slog. What do I mean by that? It’s not that the script is so bland and weak at holding one’s attention that frequently there’s nothing onscreen but stiff, smeary, flat visuals, though that is a big element.
Down to the micro level, in just about given scene, the timing of dialogue beats, ideal layout and staging within the frame, and well-chosen bits of animated acting are just not there, not nearly enough for a script that, as written, needs all that to land (as opposed to, say, Tell Your Tale, which would not be more then incrementally better animated like the film, if it had the same scripts). Sunny will say something and Zipp will respond right away rather than having a telling moment of silence; the latter will walk away while talking but do so for the wrong bit of her sentence; characters will turn to something else a smidge too early or late, making it feel not quite right; camera layouts are not chosen in a manner that benefits the shot’s visual language and effect all that much. And so on, till the cows come home. All the sorts of things one never notices when done right, and even getting a decent handful of these mistakes won’t have them lingering in the mind beyond the moment. But when they’re this frequent, they build up, and even when the script is sufficient (as it is in bits and pieces, when a bad line doesn’t leak through for a little bit), it’s not landing with as much impact thanks to all that. A stronger script could disguise poor visuals, and stronger visuals could boost a script. When they’re both lacking, they just bring out the worst in each other.
Again, a lot of this is why television/streaming animation rarely uses this “chasing photorealism” style, if trying to keep the attention of older kids or adults, there’s usually too much working against it to make the style’s limitations not detrimental to the product (assuming you’re not allowed to by stylistically creative, of course). Sadly, after Hasbro and Entertainment One had no choice but to make the film CG for marketing reach (it’s just harder to get signoff when executives and investors are convinced traditional animation is a theatrical no-go), they evidently felt the series had to be in the same style for branding consistency. Well, that works in one aspect; it’s easier to justify more on those marketing renders than an equivalent from the product, which is why all the marketing poses of late are made with the same rendering engine and time as the film, looking 98% the same (the 2% accounting for somewhat more saturated lighting). Works at convincing parents when picking up that it is the “same” visual quality, anyway.
That unicorn at the side looks so much better than Donut Steel in the middle that it's not even funny. And yes, if the special's going to use modern slang, no reason I can't to condemn it.
Even if I’ve done my best to phrase all these points from a honest, sincere place of constructive criticism, focusing on why something is problematic and the effect that has on the special, rather than just listing off bad things, I’m aware this may well still have come across as rather negative. Maybe even rant-y. The multiple revisions and edits I’ve done to this review may not have alleviated that. Let me try and sum this all up concisely.
A part of Hasbro and Entertainment One wants to keep the older audience around. Not enough to target Bronies as they used to, they want to distance themselves from that. But they wouldn’t have “connected” the film to G4 last year otherwise, cheap marketing ploy it may be. And that did its job, hence those “nods” being dropped now, with not a single G4 connection in this special (can’t be sure going forward, but I’m guessing not for now). And whatever the film’s faults, and its simplicity and lacking some strengths of FiM… it works for an older audience.
The people who made this, at Atomic Cartoons and in Los Angeles, didn’t get the memo. It’s right back to targeting 3-7-year-old kids like prior MLP generations, and with only marginally more effort. And it’s not even targeting them well, short-changing a potential message about living with not getting something in favour of an actually-harmful message instead. This makes the crude insertion of a watching villain at the end, in a scene totally disconnected from the rest of the special, all the more egregious for trying to keep older viewers “hooked” for a few more months. And not just because her design is the pits and gives off the feeling of being hidden in shadow to disguise how low-rent and smeary it looks. It’s enough to kill the excitement of getting a higher-stakes story and lore/worldbuilding months in its crib (plus, y’know, the false hopes promised at the end of Grogar’s first appearance have primed us).
Many of the issues here are down to impoverished budget and schedule, yes, but there are enough that reek of indifference or laziness (how do you redesign a lantern that looks nothing like the original, when you had to use that original model Boulder Media gave you in the same special?). Thus, outside of most of the cast and whatever animators(s) are responsible for the shots with much better character animation, one gets the feeling the staff don’t care about what they’re making. I’m not saying they don’t, just that said care does not come across. Even for cartoons aimed this young, it’s just not all that respectful and sincere and fair to those kids.
There’s elements that work. A joke or character moment will land, some voice delivery will zing, the critters remain largely immune to the visual drawbacks afforded to the ponies (sadly not the toyetic dragon critter), and so on. Very little of that is strong enough to stick after a viewing, though, especially with bones this rickety.
Very little in here actively upset me. It’s just a dreary, flat, indifferent product that intends to claim a victory if you watch it once. I still care about these characters, and will be watching them going forward. Depending on how much the 8-episode season in September is slaved to its plot, or how much it gets to have episodes not beholden to that or marketing purposes, we may be able to get stories not trying to serve so many masters, which can only help. I actually anticipate something smoother than this. How much smoother, who knows.
If you actually enjoyed this, and are not bothered by some (or all, somehow) of the issues discussed here, that’s great. Honest, it is. If something gives one pleasure, that’s enough. And goodness knows I’ve watched, and still watch, plenty that is objectively not good in my time. Just as long as one doesn’t deny the problems something has, and doesn’t try to say it’s better than it is.
Taking something potentially sweet and thoughtful in Izzy fixing Sunny's lamp, and ruining it through sheer indifference by making it totally different, is a pretty accurate encapsulation of the whole special, sadly.
Stray Observations
- No official reason has been given for why Boulder Media isn’t producing this, but I think I know why. Like most studios producing their first film, Boulder Media had to assemble a crew from the ground up, doing recruitment drives across Europe and elsewhere, the works. And as Hasbro didn’t have another film lined up for this crew, they largely disbanded after production wrapped. Many of them had worked on other feature films (the storyboard artists, in particular, have Hollywood credits to their names, and quite a lot from Sony Animation), they weren’t going to downgrade to TV pay! And, since Boulder Media didn’t have a dedicated CG television division, and Hasbro couldn’t justify assembling that given the money and time pressure for a series next year, they had little choice but to subcontract it out like with FiM, despite buying Boulder Media for the strict purpose of producing more shows in-house. Least this means I don’t have to temper my reaction here for national pride, though I do wish Hasbro had had another film lined up, I’d have been eager to see what Boulder Media could have made next. As another film will mean crew reassembly, it’ll be at least several years before we see them getting another crack at that. For what it’s worth, Hasbro and Boulder Media did want to set up a studio in 2019, but their bid on an old ferry terminal near Dublin was rejected. Dunno if they continued or abandoned that plan.
- After her tics being almost fully absent from the film, the “style” of Gillian Berrow is back in full force. From forced, lame horse puns to the juvenile, infantile tone, to not hesitating to sacrifice character for jokes, to lazy and “eh, why not” plotting and lore, and emotion-based magic that is not remotely organically-integrated, it really is quite something, how much this functions as a “highlights” reel of her tics seen across her MLP writing career, from chapter books to a few FiM episodes to Pony Life.
- The gentle, chuckle-inducing humour that was the film’s saving grace just isn’t here, showing how much that was the result of iteration over several years. Oy.
- Despite Pipp having more dialogue here than in the film, and in half the runtime, she feels even more minor and less fleshed-out, doesn’t she? Obviously a lot of that is because she (and Izzy)’s character-specific subplots show up twice in the whole special, and otherwise they get generic scene lines that could have been given to anypony, but even then, she comes across as a limp parody of her film self, who at least projected genuine hurt at being left by Zipp.
- The opening stealth scene is easily the best-written and animated (though even there it’s shoddy, with good motion blur only applied for one of Zipp’s wings unfurling). You all know I’m capable of praise where it’s deserved, this just gets there by being totally unnecessary to the special, with nothing lost if we started in on the others waiting for her, as all the early info relevant to Zipp’s arc gets repeated many times throughout the special.
- My personal hope for the animation some time back was that it would be close, or not too far off, to something on the level of the How to Train Your Dragon tv series, or Skylanders: Academy. Both shows where the rendering and movement limitations of the budget are very present and keenly felt – especially for the former, coming off one of the best-animated modern film(s) – but which otherwise acquit themselves very well. Especially the latter, using similarly versatile fantasy creature designs in technicolour pastels as this. And neither of them are new, both having finished in 2018, and started in 2012/16, so technology has improved. Obviously that hope didn’t remotely pan out.
- I barely mentioned Posey, didn’t I? There really is nothing to say about her. I don’t care about the connection to old Posey or Fluttershy, but between her awkwardly modelled face, an ill-fitting voice, lacklustre acting, the obvious “why aren’t you using Sprout again?” question (his dorkiness and gags being against him is something to work with), and the writing, there’s nothing here, and that she has a point about earth ponies getting the short shrift doesn’t compensate for that. Any character that does a full U-turn on something they believed in that deeply isn’t a character, they’re a plot device.
- Many aspects of the writing were rather unnerving, but chief among them is the same desperate-to-be-hip writing common to modern media. Obviously the handful of parental reviews on IMDb isn’t much of a reliable endorsement, but that they all (as of the time of writing) cite their kids loving the film and watching it endlessly, but showing no desire to return to this… it ain’t good, folks, and I’m not convinced they’re outliers. Kids will watch this, maybe even be intrigued enough to want to watch any forthcoming episodes, but even for them, it’s not going to have staying power beyond its run or their age range. They know when they're being pandered to, even if they can't express that feeling.
Depressing, but I can't find much in your review to argue with. One thing I'll add is that the director's role is also critical, and (as far as I can tell) on a par with everything else in the production.
Being primarily an artist and animator, I really hate to admit it but I could forgive almost all of the visual shortcomings if the script was really good. An engaging, well-written story could be acted out with puppets and still be wonderful. There's no budgetary excuse to fall back on with the writing because it takes just as much money to create a bad script as it does a good one.
I give this a three-star rating* and I'll keep watching and hoping it improves, probably through the first season, no matter what.
BTW, the first comic was pretty good, but it's only a fragment of a story so far.
------------------
* My one-to-six scale is asymptotic rather than linear, so take that however you like.
I just hope that doesn’t mean that it was depressing to read, or that I’m coming off that way! And finding little fault is weird – it means I did my job well, but it gives little to talk about beyond the fact down here. Mixed bag, my friend. Feels odd.
I mean, this director has been directing for over 20 years, yet half his resume is Barbie video films and Monster High. Which, ah, let’s just say that’s… telling.
Aye. I didn’t drill it in because there’s no sense in repeating points without a clear benefit in a… 5,000-word blog (help me…), but good writing really can make technical and visual shortcomings not nearly as much of an issue. Heck, that’s the state for most television animation (though the visual shortcomings are rarely this severe), though usually with a good mix of turning stylistic limitations into a strength. Even just sticking to CG television/streaming animation, there’s lots of shows that have to deal with just as much stuff movement and quick rendering (the inevitable shortcomings), yet manage to mostly make the viewer not focus on that, so involving is the baseline content, characters and scripts.
And I feel you on the artist point, I’m easily won over by anything visually involving, but you do need a least a sturdy foundation to carry it.
I didn’t want to turn this into a “traditional animation yay, CG animation yuck” thing either, but it’s the main reason, at least for me, why the former (even if it’s all digital these days) is just so, so preferable when you haven’t got a sea of cash to work with. There’s near-infinite ways to work around budget limitations, and make a style out of them. And you have the benefit of being able to fall back on lovely character design and background with warmth to tide the viewer over even when the material is faltering. Even Tell Your Tale isn’t totally exempt from this!
I’m not even sure what rating I’d give, honestly, though it wouldn’t be that. I’d have to rewatch it again to evaluate in on that front, and why would I? It has no replay value once you’ve gone through its plot once. Besides which, this review-cum-discussion was less about where on a scale it landed anyway.
I’ve read it! It was definitely a fair sight better than this, and it was really nice to get these ponies in 2D art that’s consistently nice to look at too (not a given with the IDW comics, as some artists, including the one for this very issue, had trouble with the G4 cast in the past – I suspect this cast being designed to work from any angle, and there being many stylistic fluctuations with them across mediums such that there’s no “core” standard, is to thank for that). Not Andy Price levels of lovely (I am forever in love with how he draws Celestia and Luna, for one thing), but pretty nice.
The actual content’s gently enjoyable, though I must confess, the future of the arc is really uncertain for me. Not for usual apprehension reasons, but as you probably know, I just… don’t want anything to do with the G4 -> G5 connection, and especially not with the G4 Many Years Later Epilogue. A ghost’s allowed his personal reasons. I can see ways all this can be handled delicately and done in a way that doesn’t flounder and won’t piss me off, but given the mantra for the G5 comic (in the more serious, multi-part issues, anyway) seems to be to do timeline connections to G4 that the mainline series can’t/won’t (in other words, to be fanfiction – something the comics have always been, frankly), it’s quite the uphill battle to get into my corner. But I admit, this first issue started off fine, even if it ends in an unnerving way for moi.
I love that this typo combines fantastia with both 'fun' and 'contusion'.
5662285
Tempted to leave that one be now.
I do have a tendency, when I make typos, for them to be funny blunders, heh.
EDIT: I corrected it but also preserved it. It now says “your Filly Funtasias (nee Funtusia, see the comments)”. A typo like that deserves to live!
5662271
Depressing in that you're right.
Well, what else is? I'd be happy with nothing but a stream of Price/Cook comics in place of the current animated shows.
It's like anything else, it depends on how you do it, and I firmly believe that low budget 3D can be attractive and well-done. Jeeze, look at Dynamo Dream for luscious 3D environments on a shoestring budget. Pretty much done by one guy in his garage!
A good one would be fine by me, but going by what we've seen so far, that's very unlikely. I think I'm going to pretend that G5 is set in a The Good Place sort of afterlife, and the world is set up for the purposes of... oops! I should have asked if you've seen The Good Place yet. Not a show to spoil!
5662357
For sure, which is why I often have to not only add "when chasing photorealism the normal way" to discussions like the above, but also "when done for young kids by studios averse to anything stylistically unusual". We're certainly seeing changes in how things and done and what styles are used, especially by smaller companies and those working independently, but it'll be a fair while before that bleeds into productions like this.
Well, now I have someone to thank for a very immersive 20 minutes!
Even if I'm a year late to the party.
Even after watching the behind-the-scenes video, and its original green-screen footage, my brain is refusing to process this as totally computer-generated (whether it would hold up projected on a cinema screen is another matter, but it wasn't made for that, so it's a moot point). And the world building at the margins! The bleak yet hopeful tone! Like a trip to the sci-fi novels and comics of my youth, except realised in a manner you'd never think possible on resources this limited.
I really need to watch more diverse stuff and keep an ear out, it would seem.
I remember you mentioning that on a post on Louder Yay a few weeks back when we got a promo clip for this special. No familiarity with it. I do see it's on Netflix, so I suppose it's not out of the realm of possibility to give it a look in at some point… maybe.
Anyway, for better or for worse, I'm pretty good at just ignoring questionable "canon" elements and treating them as though they didn't happen. So I have a fallback. Plus, the comics aren't even canon anyway, despite occasional "official" statements to the contrary.
5662390
That's one of the things about G5 that weirds me out; the cross-continuity between two completely tonally different shows. I don't know if the comic will be part of that, but the first issue doesn't rule it out.
BTW, I highly recommend The Good Place! Every aspect of that show is top-notch, and the episodes are short and paced perfectly. I wouldn't be far off the mark by calling it a live-action cartoon show.
I haven't watched this or Tell Your Tale, but what little I've heard worries me.
My biggest worry, character-wise, is how Izzy seems to be shaping up to be Pinkie 2.0 when she's better when she isn't .
5668325
It’s a worry that has more or less panned out, and frankly, in a manner that is worse than when Pinkie was over-written in G4. And not just because Pinkie was usually still funny in such cases, whereas Izzy here… isn’t.
In fact, the writing and energy is so lethargic here that she doesn’t even feel like a Pinkie clone, but a clone of a Pinkie clone. Coupled with trying to give her weird character tics like doing unfunny rap and rhyme numbers constantly, or theoretically-sweet moments like the lantern getting ruined by artist indifference and thus painting her as an insensitive braindead dummy, and it’s not a pretty picture. If Izzy continues like this, goodwill from her film depiction will only last so long, both for watching G5 and for fanfiction inspiration.