I'll have to echo @@Wind Chaser here. The pacing of this episode was all over the place. It comes across as wanting to put in a lot of content, but it got squashed to fit the twenty-minute time slot. Unfortunately, this hurts the comedy quality. Pinkie's narrating joke was good the first time, but it started to get stupid midway, and it felt like a contrived reason to push the episode forward.
The yaks are primitive, spoiled, clichéd jackasses. The second they didn't get one thing they want, t
Author's Note: Credit goes to @@The Second Opinion, @@Buck Testa, @@~StatesTheOblivious~, @@Wind Chaser, and @ for this analysis. Parts of this analysis were revised to clean up some inaccuracies and add some insight from other reviews. My critique of Fancy Pants was revised as a result of feedback from both @@Nuke87654 and @@Sunny Fox.
Also, thanks, Walmart, for the entry image.
Since season three, episodes starring Spike are very notorious for being the ones many folks don't look for
When Discovery Family doesn't show a teaser at any point throughout the week, that proves a complete lack of confidence they had for it. Even Appleoosa's Most Wanted had a teaser. After torturing myself to finish Act 1, I can see why. Besides all of the unnecessary exposition, the annoyances Spike had to deal with were incredibly painful to sit through. Rather than have the conflict flow naturally, contrived cartoon logic creates a ton of nuisances just to make Spike's assignment more difficult
Season five has its share of coming-of-age feels.
The Cutie Map marks a transition of the show. For characters like Twilight, rather than receiving lessons (of friendship), she's responsible for giving them. The map acts as a guide to spread the Magic of Friendship beyond merely Ponyville and the common lands of Equestria, landing a sense of adventure. What the audience got is easily the darkest, most mature episode of the show with several appropriately included allegories to real-l
Earlier tonight, I found this combined screenshot of Tweets on Reddit. It's a letter by Larson himself by confirming how much he and the rest of the staff really care for the brony fandom. They may not always publish the best stuff, but the fandom and DHX always maintain a very tight relationship. Larson's "Thank You" letter proves it.
Have a look.
My response?
Thanks, M. A. Larson. (Not sarcastic. ) That love letter you helped build was fantastic. No matter what content I re
Author's Note: This analysis has been revised a second time — published on June 15, 2015 — with a new addition about the layout of the audience during the wedding ceremony and overall moral. Credit goes to Reflective Vagrant on YouTube for noticing it.
This is what I wrote here, and I'll write a bit more.
If you're not into the core fandom, then chances are you won't get many of the in-fandom jokes.
Bon Bon's "secret agent" angle is a very subtle joke at her two names: Bon Bon and Swe
If you want to see the rest of the progress, head here for the start and eventual revisions of the character design and here for the pose examples and layout beginning.
Now the layout's in more progress. Here's the general layout.
To explain the design, there's a transparent drop shadow to make the stones feel more "grounded." If I had one drop shadow for Wise Ox and not for the ring of fire, then there's no point for one.
The other is the touch of adding a drop shadow to the po
A few days ago, I posted this blog showing off my revised ponysona with the preparation of making a layout for my video analysis.
Inspired by some other analysts like Voice of Reason, Silver-Quill, and Fiery Joker, I have some new poses.
First, the original, with one difference: the back leg is now behind all the fur.
Now, various three-quarter poses, some standing up and sitting down, including various poses of the front leg.
There are also variations of Wise Ox s
EDIT: The revision from last night was edited.
Here is my original design of my ponysona.
Below is my revision.
Differences:
Three-quarter view and standing up instead of sitting down. Will likely replicate the original pose later.
New nose/muzzle.
Bigger eyes/highlight.
More saturated color for the fur.
Simplified the fur edges.
As for the edits from last night:
The red has been dulled a bit to make him a bit rustic. Darkened the stroke color, too.
The steel gray
Many of you may be familiar with Daniel Powter's song, Bad Day. For those who aren't, here is the link:
Around 2010, after Mom and I had dinner at a Thai restaurant one Friday night, Mom began to sing the song's chorus:
As she finished the chorus, a fifties-something-year-old man, who was leaning on a store wall, heard her and replied, "Yeah, I had a bad day."
Gave us a ton of laughs then. Still gives us a ton of laughs. XD
Prior to TakeOver: Unstoppable, NXT's Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch have had a fierce rivalry. At the contract signing, they had a brawl that ended in Lynch twisting Banks's arm backwards, making her tap. If any of you are unfamiliar with the NXT Division, it competes with Ring of Honor as the tops of professional wrestling despite being a "developmental league." This is no exception for the women's division, whose athletic "divas" developed into holding matches as great as the men. At least two w
When I wrote down the best and worst episodes of FIM (which should be updated), I called out One Bad Apple's wretched moral. Part of the problem was how it was treated as the solution to the whole child bullying problems in not just Ponyville, but also our own world. It's a dangerous false pretense because bullying is much more complicated than that, and there's no one right way to curb it.
The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone's moral may not be as screwed up as OBA's, but it's still screwed up
On April 2, 1915, Bill Alexander was born. A World War II veteran on the German side, he was captured and painted portraits of the Allies' wives. Once WWII was over, he immigrated to North America where he would spend the rest of his life. One of his greatest treasures was reviving alla prima (now called the wet-on-wet technique), a technique many of his mentors past and present use today. One of them is the late Bob Ross, whose twentieth anniversary of his death will be on July 4. Although Alex
On the forums, there's been a really bothering trend when it comes to the characters' actions. Whether they were in character, out of character, or whatever, one of the more common excuses for explaining their actions is "they're flawed." Sometimes, this logic is used fallaciously.
To an extent, it's understandable why it's used. A key reason we became so attached to these characters is how relatable they are. We can connect to these characters because they have challenges, goals to attain,
That was my immediate impression upon watching CSC via this status, but I'll comment a bit more.
To be very honest, the fact that the feels are really subdued until the end is really one of the biggest strengths of this episode. It takes the concept of mourning and gives it a really refreshing twist without feeling too clichéd. Yes, we still see the characters feeling very sad about the Golden Oak Library, and it was great about how they didn't ignore it while not getting that sappy. Not ju
Source: S05:E01+02 - The Cutie Map
This was from a little while ago. Now I'll get a little deeper into The Cutie Map.
Even though I was a critic of various executions of Season 4, one of the bigger pluses is how much they approached maturer and grayer morals. Rarity Takes Manhattan talked about how you shouldn't quit your most positive qualities because someone took advantage of you. Pinkie Pride delved into the very mature theme of jealousy over an individual who can not only do the sa
Earlier today, I watched a YT rant by a fellow brony analyst. In it was a very harsh, inflammatory rant about Cuddlepug, a brony reviewer found only on DeviantArt. In it was a bunch of crap that gave me a headache. The YouTuber used fallacies to support his own, dismissed valid criticisms of various episodes/direction of seasons three and four, shamed fellow bronies who criticized various aspects of the show (including releasing their 'Net handles), threw cheap shots at the brony fandom (includi
The Adventure Begins is marked as the epiphany of the Brenner Era. Being the 70th Anniversary special of The Railway Series, Brenner and crew revisited Thomas's beginning days on Sodor. There are plenty of really well-done Easter eggs to attract older fans (the classic music remixes, the "70" on Thomas's bunker) without pandering to them. It's not a total retelling of the first two books, but instead an adaptation. It takes the first two books and "revises" them in a way that better streamlines
If there's one component from season four that I hate, it's the forced exposition. Rather than building up conflict subtly, too many episodes spill out the details to the audience long before it even started. This sucks out the tension and makes the ability to watch the episode a chore.
The S4 episode to do it the worst was Trade Ya! The prologue had Pinkie Pie act as the vessel for exposition ten seconds in followed by Twilight spilling everything. But it only gets worse.
The worst part
Thank this thread's topic for giving me the muster to be angry.
For a while, Just for Sidekicks was my most hated S3 episode. Two reasons: Spike Torture Porn (and a bastardization to boot) and royal disappointment. I could barely think about JfS without feeling bitter despite Spike at Your Service being much worse.
Today, the bitterness is gone, and I only dislike it. Now I have one S3 that I now truly hate(and this is more recent): The Crystal Empire.
My friends know why, but I'll a
Last year, HiT Entertainment's Railway Consultant, Sam Wilkinson, uploaded a revised Thomas & Friends map of the Island of Sodor to the Sodor Island Forums.
If you look at the upper-left hand corner, one of the more interesting railways is the Small Railway, which is connected to Duck's branchline. Starting in Arlesburgh West, a trio of miniature engines would roll along a short little railway that the standard and narrow gauge engines can't get to.
In TRWS, there are three (and late
