Today's specials mark the final part of G3, the Core 7 era, where they tried to push Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, Starsong, Sweetie Belle, Cheerilee, Toola Roola, and Scootaloo as the faces of MLP, with Pinkie as the leader. A problem that Hasbro had with MLP for a long time was the inability to tie recognizable characters to the brand. With Transformers, you had Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Starscream, etc. who fans could get attached to and thus look forward to in new toy lines. It wouldn't be until G4 that these efforts would actually succeed. It's inevitable that G5, when it happens, will use a lot of G4 characters with their G4 personalities.
Pinkie Pie's Special Day
There's a bit of an art style shift, and some of the voices have changed. In particular, Rainbow Dash's voice and speaking style is completely different, and she's no longer obsessed with being fabulous and calling everyone darling. Anyway, the story is that everyone comes to Pinkie's house to congratulate her for all the great things she did. It's revealed that Pinkie has a weird ritual to come up with an idea called a squink (thinking + winking), and this thought is projected in a visible thought bubble. There's a maraca pony with an accent. Bizarrely, they start having flashbacks to A Very Minty Christmas... and also Positively Pink... and more. Was that first part with the squink another special I missed? Though these flashbacks do show that the differences in art quality between specials were more drastic than I realized.
I can't believe these specials needed a recap special.
(INSERT CHARACTER)'s Party
A series of five-minute shorts about parties held by each of the Core 7.
Pinkie Pie - Pinkie has a bad daydream about her party going wrong, so everyone comes over early to help. Oven mitts somehow bend at the fingers. Pinkie lists what everyone is good at, but their only characteristics besides those are catchphrases. Pinkie tells Rainbow that she loves what they're wearing, but they're only wearing party hats.
Rainbow Dash - Rainbow is giggling in a pile of clothes, so they have a hat fashion show party. The hats all do stuff. Rainbow can't decide who has the best hat, so everyone is declared the winner.
Cheerilee - Cheerilee is having a slumber party. They all dress up and do other stuff. Cheerilee tells a scary story, and the floor starts creaking, which scares everyone. It's just a mouse, which you'd think would be of concern anyway. Cheerilee did even less in the story than the previous two.
Scootaloo - Scootaloo doesn't know what kind of party to have. While Pinkie thinks, Scootaloo does a bunch of sporty stuff, so they decide on a sports party. Once again, everyone is tied in the competition, so they declare Scootaloo the winner for holding such a great party.
Starsong - Starsong repeats the song from "Come Back, Lily Lightly" to announce a karaoke party. Sweetie Belle is worried she isn't a good enough singer, but Pinkie reveals that Starsong used to be shy, and in the flashback, Starsong is singing another previous song, "Make a New Friend Everyday". The flashback has Pinkie tell her to hold a karaoke party, which made me think, "Wait, is this flashback from that very day?" but no, it's a different one. Sweetie Belle is encouraged by the story, and sounds a lot like G4 Pinkie at one point (same VA). The singing isn't as obnoxious, so the repeated songs are actually better here.
Toola Roola - Toola Roola holds a party where you paint your own plate. Everyone leaves to let the paint dry, and wind mixes up the cutie mark cards marking whose is whose. Pinkie and Toola try to fix it. It should be a complete nonissue, because they could just remember their own, and indeed, they do. They eat cake off of their newly painted plates, which seems like a bad idea. I now notice a lot of the background music is instrumental versions of previous G3 songs.
Sweetie Belle - Everyone is drawing cake they want for Sweetie Belle's cake party. They bring their ideas to her, which is good, because Sweetie has run out of ideas. Everyone starts putting their own ingredients in the cake batter, which results in one cake that tastes bad. Sweetie teaches them that following directions is a good thing. They work together to make a good cake, but by the end, everyone's too full to eat the final cake.
Starsong and the Magic Dance Shoes
Pinkie loses Starsong's shoes, and her own shoes. Starsong arrives, and they look together. As it turns out, the shoes got up and walked away on their own, dancing to music. After putting on music, the shoes come back without them noticing. They put them on and start dancing, and tell the audience to dance too. They dance for a while.
Rainbow Dash's Special Day
Everyone has forgotten Rainbow's special day, and they get ready for it. They draw her out of the house with a box they say is from Paris, France (I'd say this is weird, but FiM also randomly mentioned France once), but it actually has her friends. OK, this is a recap too, but will this change the voices in the old clips? Indeed, the voice has been dubbed over. It's pretty obvious that the old Rainbow had a completely different speaking style, since the new VA has to speak differently to match the clips. The different voice at least makes this a bit more interesting than "Pinkie Pie's Special Day".
Pinkie Pie's Ferris Wheel Adventure
And now we reach G3.5, the part most G4 fans probably think of what they think of G3. This is where everyone gets new designs with freakish hooves and even bigger heads. One thing that's kind of interesting is that everyone is different sizes, which is more than G4 does. They also have unique hairstyles now, while they all had the same ones before. While the background art wasn't all that great before, it's gotten really flat and boring now. Surprisingly, we start to see some of G4 Pinkie's personality here, with her playing various roles in an amusement park.
Sweetie Belle's Gumball House Surprise
This is the one I've seen before, along with many other G4 fans. This is the one with the really dumb treasure hunt around the
playset house. How did they not see her when they rode the spinning elevator?! And other questions.
Twinkle Wish Adventure
AT LONG LAST THE END. It's winter again, but this time there's a narrator that the characters sometimes talk to. Oh hey, Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle are actually supposed to be fillies, that explains why they're smaller. I guess that didn't actually come from G4. Cheerilee is Scootaloo's older sister?! I'm kind of surprised this detail hasn't leaked into the G4 fandom. Everyone rushes off to do make decorations, leaving Cheerilee behind, so she gets depressed. Oh, here's where that dumb "stuffy stuff" clip comes from. I thought this would be the main story, but no, they remember Cheerilee soon enough and go to her.
Not!Mayor Mare judges the ornaments they put on the Winter Wishes tree, and Cheerilee wins, so she's given responsibility over the box holding Twinkle Wish. The box absolutely cannot be opened until the next day, otherwise Twinkle Wish will wake up early and won't have enough magic for the Winter Wishes ceremony.
This Father Ted clip about sums it up. Twinkle Wish is horrifying, and she brings destruction. A female dragon happens to be flying by and captures her. Cheerilee is upset at Scootaloo for causing all this, which forms a subplot throughout the special.
Not!Mayor Mare comes by again (hasn't it just been a few minutes?) to check up, and they lie to her that everything's OK. They see that the dragon has flown to a mountain that no pony has ever been to before. To get there and back in time, they decide to take Pinkie's hot air balloon. Rainbow Dash brings a bunch of luggage, which they have her leave. The balloon still only fits four ponies, so Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle are forced to stay behind (Starsong can fly). The hot air balloon song is alright.
Weather near the mountain causes them to crash, so they walk through the woods leading up to it. The narrator suddenly returns to say Toola Roola is afraid of the dark, which Toola Roola says out loud right after, so why? At night, Pinkie is able to get pink fireflies to light up the night and sing them to sleep. It turns out Pinkie can talk to anything pink. The journey up the mountain is incredibly easy, despite all the hype.
They go into the dragon's cave, where it turns out the dragon is only using Twinkle Wish to judge her dresses, and she warmly greets them. The dragon, Whimsy Weatherbee, just wants friends, and took Twinkle Wish thinking it was a toy that could be used to entertain them. The ponies sing to her about what friends are, and this isn't as good as the previous one. The narrator says that Whimsy knew she should give Twinkle Wish back, but was worried about losing her. Then Whimsy says it out loud. The ponies tell her to come to the festival, but the dragon thinks it's a trick, and refuses.
The ponies are forced to go back to the ceremony to explain their mistake. Everyone makes up with everyone. Whimsy decides to come to the festival after all, bringing Twinkle Wish. Twinkle Wish is too sleepy to grant wishes, but Pinkie announces that everyone's wish came true already. It's minor stuff like them finding the dragon cave in time. There's still one wish that didn't come true: snow. Whimsy is able to use cold breath to make snow, but fucking Sweetie Belle can't leave well enough alone, and is disappointed the snow isn't pink. Thankfully Twinkle Wish has enough magic left to grant that wish. There's another song at the end that takes place in spring I guess, and it's alright. Wait, never mind, it turns into winter at the end.
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In the end, there wasn't much good about G3 after all. It really was just generic girly stuff, and it some ways, it actually got worse as it went on. The earlier specials had a bit of world building and adventuring, for instance, even if it was lame and didn't really make much sense. However, as few as there were, the songs in the Core 7 era seemed to be much better than before. Still not G4 quality, though.
I kind of liked Starsong, even though it's mainly just due to her color scheme and voice, and perhaps superficial similarities with Fluttershy. I know Minty has her fans too, so I would appreciate them appearing in FiM.
If I absolutely had to recommend something G3 to watch, then I suppose it would be "Starsong's Party", which has decent singing. A Very Minty Christmas has its fans, but I personally wouldn't recommend it. But if you had to watch one of the movies, and not just a short, that would be it.
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On another note, the new My Hero Academia chapter briefly featured a character named Tsunotori Pony, who is an American transfer student. People at the MHA thread are pretty convinced that she's supposed to be an MLP reference, and that the creator even said as much, but they haven't been able to remember where he said this yet.
Here's where people start talking about her in the MHA thread.
The panels where she appears. Note that she's supposed to be speaking Japanese awkwardly, hence the translation. Read right to left.
