*wipes forehead*
Phew, the parts of this post written hours ago don't have to be modified to account for what you guys wrote.
Just finished watching Mirror Magic with subs. Thankfully, it's more on par with Dance Magic than Movie Magic in terms of quality-so long as you're able to get past the fact that Starlight is ultimately the one who saves everyone.
By and large, I enjoyed Sunset's interactions with Starlight in this short and I think this is the best example of characterization we get out of Sunset in these shorts, with her spending a good chunk of the short worrying over the magic that's appearing in the human world and why her and the HuMane 6 have all gotten those new powers in LoE. Essentially Sunset knows nothing is happening right now, but she's worried about what's to come.
There's also some good humor with Sunset having to get used to being a pony again and also some brief moments with Starlight adjusting to being a human (though tragically she doesn't have the shriek of terror that we got from Princess Twilight in the first EQG film).
Honestly, the weakest part of the short is Juniper Montage. She's a pretty meh antagonist and her redemption arc feels old, especially since we've all seen this Song & Dance before with Sunset, SciTwi and Starlight in previous EQG films and in FiM in general.
So it's a good episode... as long as you ignore literally half the episode, haha.
Mirror Magic
Juniper Montage makes vintage Trixie (back in her nefarious villain days with Snips & Snails) look like a rocket scientist by comparison. Of course, we've seen this exact plot involving Trixie in Season 3's Magic Duel (this episode's FiM corollary) so it's a natural comparison to make.
A major difference is that Trixie sought out the Alicorn Amulet intentionally, and wanted to use it to confront Twilight from the start. Juniper meanwhile is durdling around at her job and happens to trap the Humane Seven by accident. And then turned into an evil supermodel by accident too.
That said, I get the impression that I wound up enjoying this more than just about everyone here simply due to how this lofty premise managed to get pulled off without too many hitches.
Sunset's characterization was given some depth which naturally followed her progress in Legend of Everfree as the over-protective magic pony in a human world who is understandably worried about the continued influence of magic in a realm that's normally devoid of it. She's the only regular in this cast capable of playing this role because everyone else is a human being first.
This uniqueness was further highlighted by her return to Equestria, her meeting with Starlight Glimmer and being presented with an opportunity to bring somepony back with her to the human world that would be able to approach these challenges from a shared perspective. Starlight being curious about the opportunity to tag along felt natural (although let's face it - Twilight MUST have assumed this outcome was a possibility leaving her alone to play messenger) and the set up of having her as the only person capable of saving the day made sense. That and being able to reason with Juniper having gone through a similar experience herself.
I did appreciate what bits of characterization we got from Sunset and Starlight in this special. Sunset is worried about the future, while Starlight has learned to just relax and go with her gut.
Starlight's excitement at exploring Dougworld was fun too, but it still brings up the issue of why no one else has tried this.
Now that said, would all of this have benefited from being a two-parter? Of course. We were robbed of being able to appreciate a number of moments that should have been treated like a bigger deal (Sunset returning to Equestria, interacting with Starlight, Starlight going to Dougverse) and just about any possible tension of this situation was lacking due to time constraints and Juniper's undeniable vanity and overall ineffectiveness.
I don't think it so much needed to be a two parter, as the whole Juniper plot needed to be excised entirely. Plenty of room for Ponyland and Dougworld shenanigans then!
Approaching this episode on the terms that I went in expecting these challenges, I was even able to enjoy Pinkie Pie's zany antics in hammerspace mirrorspace and I haven't enjoyed much of her in either show of late. And one other positive I'll take away is that if this ever does transition into a full-length series I think adopting a storytelling approach that has more of a rigid focus on continuity (like a serial) would be a great way to help distinguish it from Friendship is Magic and its slice of life one-off episodes.
I found Pinkie amusing when they were first shown in the mirror world too, but that was just one scene. The references to the previous episodes did help make it feel different from FiM, but I would hope an EQG series would use them better than here.
One last observation... it probably doesn't help that we only went 8 days total between Starlight Glimmer helping Princess Celestia and Princess Luna work through their communication barriers via her Cutie Map mission to her saving the entire Equestia Girls cast. It only adds fuel to the fire of folks like DrForester who consider her to be an infallible tool of the writing staff even though I saw plenty of faults and lapses from Starlight in both episodes. In other words, I think Starlight was handled fine but the proximity of these two episodes and the significance of her impact within them only helps to encourage the perception that she's a Mary Sue trope being paraded around a little too liberally. I still love her, though.
Yeah, with the US schedule, it's been four weeks since "A Royal Problem" aired.
I am curious about something given Mirror Magic's official planned airdate (July 8th) and its role in Season 7's FiM continuity.
Was Starlight holding fort at Twilight's castle with her away on urgent friendship business intended to imply this was during her trip to Yakyakistan at Pinkie's request? With Twilight giving her permission to hang around Dougverse a while longer, perhaps we should expect Starlight to be MIA for the next few episodes starting with Discordant Harmony instead of keeping up her recent string of recurring appearances.
(Not that this will be any different from Season 6 where they habitually ignored her outside of her bucket episodes. Hopefully Starlight can help reform Dougverse Trixie before she returns.)
Now having seen both episodes, the timeline does seem to match, since they did have to rush over to Yakyakistan after Pinkie came back for everyone else's help. Well, I suppose there is some ambiguity about how much time passed in Dougworld (was the final scene the next day?).
With this EQG special, I think the first half is pretty great. Unlike Royal Problem were my issues with the episode were less centralized. I think it's easier for me to look at a pretty excellent first half and just ignore the 2nd half.
Once the Mane 6 get captured, and especially once Sunset gets captured, the thing just goes to crap for me.
So you liked the cuts to Juniper complaining about her job and obsessing over her mirror? =P
Though seriously, the praise of the "first half" I've seen everywhere made me think more of it would focus on Sunset and Starlight than it actually did. I'd say half of the first half was just Juniper.
This was definitely the upcoming EQG episode that people were looking forward to the most. It features a bunch of stuff that a lot of people were excited for: Sunset returning to Equestria, Starlight and Sunset meeting, and Starlight going to Dougworld, on top of a pretty high-stakes conflict featuring a new villain we haven't heard of before. Which is why it's bewildering that they passed it off to show newcomer Rachel Vine (Who has written 1-3 episodes for Dawn of The Croods, Wander over Yonder, and Rainbow Brite) and fairly mediocre veteran David Polsky. [...]
You know, this does make it sound rather similar to the path "Keep Calm and Flutter On" took, down to Polsky being one of the writers. Perhaps he's reliable as a pinch writer, that can produce a working script under tight time constraints. When you combine the obvious quality difference between "Dance Magic" and the rest of the specials with the fact that we now know "Dance Magic" was produced before Legend of Everfree and likely separately from the others, it's clear that the last two specials had to be rushed for some reason. I'm not sure why they always go for ambitious fan-requested stories when under a time crunch, but it is an established pattern for them.
I'll get the big problem I have with the episode out of the way right now: Juniper Montage might be my most hated MLP character ever, and she's certainly the worst villain. [...]
Yeah, I don't know what they were trying to do with her. I feel like they were trying to go the "Inspiration Manifestation" route with Juniper using it in benign ways at first and then losing herself to the magic, but every time she did anything, it was her doing it by accident, shrugging her shoulders, and going with it. It's hard to accept her reforming because it's hard to accept she can do anything intentionally.
[...]
On top of just being generally shit she is a completely unnecessary character that does nothing to justify her existence. [...] Why did they even feel like Juniper needed to exist? As they point out in this episode they've already got 2 ex-villains in the core group of 7, even more if you count the Shadowbolts and Starlight if she makes another appearance. Starlight at least was fairly unique in being an ex-villain in the main show and I feel was partially created so they could sort of have her be the old Twilight that doesn't exist anymore. Juniper doesn't fill any niche, and her story itself is so overdone (especially in EQG) that it doesn't come off as a surprise. Her character itself is so horribly unlikable that I don't really care what happens to her next. And they already have 7 main characters, they don't need her.
I have absolutely no clue what kind of role Juniper can play in the future. If she was just some pesky student filmmaker that was secretly filming the Humane Seven for material, I could imagine future stories for her. Reformed villain that did evil acts because she wanted to star in a movie? Where do you go from there?
And since I'm on a bit of a mean streak, dafaq was that moral? Makes sense that Polsky was writing this because "don't think about planning ahead for stuff and assume everything will work out fine" is almost as bad as "there's stuff in the world that won't make sense for you so don't bother trying to make any sense of it and just accept it as true."
I didn't even register that was supposed to be a moral. It makes sense as Starlight's world view, post "A Royal Problem", but it doesn't work as a lesson here.
On to some other stuff that I did like, I felt like most of the scenes in this episode that didn't have to do with the moral, weren't part of the climax, and didn't have Juniper in them were really good. Granted that's a massive chunk of the episode that I'm excluding here but I thought up until Sunset gets sent into the mirror world things were pretty good when Juniper wasn't destroying all of my enjoyment of the episode. [...] Starlight is for the most part pretty good and Sunset shows a lot more vulnerability as well, which is nice since Legend of Everfree was displaying her as being a paragon of friendship that always knew the right thing to do. She's still firmly the "responsible" one but at least we're seeing how that role is affecting her emotionally which gives her a bit more depth. Still skeptical as to whether or not that alone will be enough to make her character interesting but at least in this episode she was pretty good.
Yeah, the Starlight and Sunset scenes were nice, but they kept cutting away to Juniper right as you were settling in. Having Sunset constantly have the magic problems on her mind was a nice bit of characterization, but I too am still looking for more to make her interesting in a potential EQG series.
Back to the bad, the climax is hot garbage. Apparently if you put the 7 magical elements in a mirror world together it makes the person outside of it super big and evil, and if anyone else besides the person that first picks up the mirror tries to use it the thing doesn't work despite it showing no indication of that being the case up until that point. Alright makes perfect sense to me. (Insert fluttershytwokeks.jpg here) Also all Starlight has to do is say the f word and Juniper instantly backs off and lets the mane 7 out of the mirror. The whole climax is just a total disaster and gives me zero investment in it. Frankly the thing has so many problems with it that that lack of agency from the mane 7 is, as I said before, not even in the top 5 things wrong with it I would say regardless of how you feel about Starlight.
[...]
What, you weren't impressed by Superstar Juniper making kids drop their ice cream at the mall?
I'm generally not a fan of situations where
everyone except one character is defeated and it's up to them alone to stop the villain, which is why I didn't like the climax of the Accord arc from the comics, and this situation was even worse than that. Not only were the defeated character unable to give information to the remaining hero, like in the comic arc, but they didn't even get a chance to try and fight back. But like you said, that's the least of the problems with the climax; Accord at least was a legitimate and logical threat.
[...]
The thing is, I really like Sunset Shimmer. I think she's interesting, and I think there's a lot of interesting things to do with her. Bringing her back to Equestria and having her forget how to walk or use magic was cool, and honestly, I'd have preferred she just stay there for the entire twenty minutes.
I want to know so much about her that the show will never touch on
Why doesn't she go back (even just to visit)?
How does she survive in human world?
What does she plan on doing with her life as a human?
There's more too, but the other questions are just offshoots of the above three. Sunset makes no fucking sense in a super interesting way, so I want to know more and I'll probably never get it. It sucks.
I did like Glim Glam in this one too. She was like the only character not demanding Princess Twilight's every thought. "What will the princess say?" "Bitch who cares!" is the right answer.
[...]
It's weird how they go out of their way not to actually examine the innately interesting aspects of Sunset. One of the tie in books (
My Little Pony Equestria Girls: Canterlot High Tell-All, I believe) even stated that Sunset and Celestia already reunited off screen! I really hope this is a priority in the EQG series, if it comes.
It's also weird how reverent everyone is of pony Twilight in Dougworld, even after the events of Rainbow Rocks. In that light, Starlight's opinion was refreshing.
To Mirror Magic's credit, at least it was a weak Equestria Girls story as opposed to a weak Equestria Girls story masquerading as a shitty Scooby Doo knockoff.
Having an episode based entirely around Sunset experiencing culture shock and trying to reintegrate to life in Equestria after spending x amount of time in Dougverse would have been far more compelling. I didn't have any issue with her being disoriented as I tend to consider the timing of all this stuff elastic and this did feel like her first time as a unicorn since developing a real social identity as a human. Plus, it made for some amusing gags that served as an icebreaker for her intro to Starlight Glimmer.
Both good points. This followed the general pattern of the movies, but super condensed and mixed with more interesting stuff that should have gotten more focus.
I hadn't considered the idea that Sunset is now trying to actually fit in as a human, which is why she had a harder time adjusting to being a pony this time. I can imagine that before, she kept practicing being a pony and mentally focusing on how to cast magic for the one day she could go back to Equestria for her convoluted revenge. Now that's far from her mind, and she is able to feel comfortable in the human world.
[...]
It was really bizarre how Juniper over and over again kept shoving the mirror in people's faces and saying "look at this shit! Isn't this shit dank!" and it was obvious that there was nothing there for them to see, and also the scene where Juniper chases down Starlight was kind of laughable. And the fact that everyone is super obsessed with Princess Twilight apparently. But at the end of the day, there were some things I enjoyed, so it was ok.
Do more stuff like Dance Magic please and less pure redemption-fodder villains.
Yeah, that was pretty ridiculous. You'd think she'd realize it was a mirror, so if anything, it would show the other people as superstars.
It seems like they're setting up the magical girl premise of evil magic corrupting random people that they have to purify every episode, so you're going to get an evil gardener that gets redeemed and you're going to like it! Well, unless they incorporate the other part of the magical girl set up and completely forget the corrupted people after the end of the episode. I hope that's what happens with Juniper.
The thing that always confused me is that the narrative in the fandom is that Boast Busters was a bad episode that established Trixie and that Magic Duel was way better. Even back when I first watched the episode and I was a lot less analytical in watching things I never really cared for the episode. I feel like with a bit of rewriting in No Second Prances the Magic Duel could be taken out altogether and little would change.
Is that really a common opinion? I feel like people care about "Boast Busters" more because it was her introduction, but I haven't watched any analysis videos about those episodes. Anyway, I prefer "Magic Duel" over "Boast Busters", but that's because I think "Boast Busters" is honestly a pretty weak episode.
It's true that going from "Boast Busters" to "No Second Prances" would make more sense, since one of the main complaints about that episode is how Twilight is inexplicably antagonistic toward Trixie. That said, it would have been really weird for Trixie to have a stronger presence in Equestria Girls than the actual show for years.
[...]
Also there's some new info on some movie merch which actually foreshadows a plot point for the movie. Looks the the Mane 6 are going to become pirates. Really like the designs (Rainbow's looks so cool) but where's best pony's outfit? I'm curious if Rarity is going to end up making the outfits or if they're just going to be ones they find. He's some pictures of the new toys:
I skipped a big chunk of your post, but I feel like I addressed a lot of it above.
As for the movie merchandise, we have seen pictures of the Main Six in pirate gear before, but it was in a collage of other vectors, so they were hard to see. I personally adore Twilight's coat and hat. As myself from eight years ago would hate for me to say, I love it when the ponies get pretty new outfits.
Lastly I'm stealing this from you Sigma
http://i.imgur.com/jQrq5st.png[/IMG
[URL="http://pre03.deviantart.net/7c82/th/pre/f/2017/189/4/5/luna_fo4_by_captainpudgemuffin-dbfj0my.png"]source[/URL][/QUOTE]
I've been saying you guys are free to post fanart without me!
