All this time, I've been ranting and coming up with excuses as to why the Twilight/Tirek fight scene doesn't work for me. And, the reason I keep doing this is because I have a constant fear that Twilight's friends will become irrelevant and useless, and might as well be brutally murdered to advance her character-arc.

I've had that fear before in past episodes (and comic book story-arcs) come to fruition. Shining Armor and Cadence save Canterlot instead of Twilight's friends. Twilight fights Queen Chrysalis alone, while her friends are reduced to leverage/moral-support. Spike is the one who saves the Crystal Empire. Twilight's friends couldn't accompany her into the mirror because "all six Elements of Harmony entering the mirror would disrupt the balance of the other world". And now, just recently, the Twilight/Tirek fight scene, which is constantly compared to my most hated anime series, Dragon Ball Z, right down to the same problems as that series, such as a useless, irrelevant and disposable supporting cast and an overpowered main-protagonist Mary Sue.

I have that constant exacting standard that the Mane Six all make equal amounts of contributions to saving Equestria, and if that doesn't happen then it's a betrayal to the show's friendship motif, even if it's somepony else who helps Twilight save the world, and thus restoring the friendship motif. The reason is because I grew so accustomed to DBZ turning the main-protagonist into a Mary Sue, and all of his friends into disposable extras, that I didn't want any other anime series to fall into that pitfall (alongside the other one where the fights drag on for too long, and the villains are generic psychopaths with no reason to blow up entire planets other than that they can).

DBZ was one of the many examples of a sequel/franchise running out of ideas on what to do with itself, and so resorts to cheap, unhelpful tactics to raise the stakes. Killing off and disempowering supporting characters. Making the main-villain overpowered at the expense of a personality. Making the main-hero overpowered as well. Dragging the fights for too long and making them lack any variety other than just "planet-destroying energy beams". The only good I can say about this is that, at the very least, other anime that were inspired by DBZ would eventually fix most of those same problems, like One Piece and Fairy Tail. But even then, DBZ is nothing more than an inferior sequel to an otherwise superior manga/anime series that could've premiered on Toonami before DBZ, not after.

And, it's that same kind of thing I keep fearing in MLP. Twilight's friends all get killed or disempowered in some way, while Twilight alone becomes the number one solution to almost absolutely everything, like the Mary Sue that she is. And, they make the main-villains overpowered as well, like what they did with Tirek. To me, the show is no longer about friendship, but rather who has the highest power-levels in the universe, and those who have low-to-nonexistent power-levels all go to die or become disempowered. In other words, nothing but that "survival of the fittest" bull-crap that made DBZ so bad for me.

In fact, there's an entire episode of Extra Credits that revolve around such a thing I described, called "Spectacle Creep", which you can watch here:

Technically, Spectacle Creep is the need to raise the stakes so ridiculously sky-high, that you run out of creativity and imagination on what to do with all that. DBZ was one example of Spectacle Creep, due to all the tactics I've mentioned above, and it's now what describes My Little Pony, where there's even more of a need to up the stakes at the expense of its own friendship motif.

Which is why, when you think about it, I'm just ridiculously obsessed with this. I have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, in that I have that constant compulsion to rant about all the aforementioned stuff, hoping that the writers would read my blogs and fix the mistakes made in the MLP show. I need psychological help more than anything, and if I don't get it, I'll probably keep on doing this and annoying you to death about it until the show's series finale.