https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=62jOuktK0O8

By now, you have come to know me as the brony who hates My Little Dashie, and everything related to it. This would be my fourth blog post on the subject, not counting my unfinished decon fic that I swear I'll finish someday. This would also be a very special blog post.

See, don't go expecting a long-form rant, or a wall of text. Not because I've run out of things to say, or I've changed any of my views, or anything like that, but for one very simple reason.

I actually liked this short. I didn't love it, I wouldn't rank it among my favorite pony animations, nor did I even cry at the end, but I still liked it.

The animation was fluid and lively throughout, with RD's flying scenes in particular looking quite epic, and even the human character exuding far more personality than either the original fic or Storm's live action minimovie ever could.

It doesn't waste its time with backstory, or cliches, or plotpoints that go absolutely nowhere, or even dialogue. This may come as a shock, but this short tells its story entirely through its visuals. There is no hammy narrator, or awkward dubbing, or even any "daddy," and yet the animator still went through the trouble to animate the mouths of every character as if they were actually saying something. It's alot like the Charlie Chaplin silent film City Lights, which had hardly any dialogue cards and left the viewer to make up his or her own mind about what the characters were saying, aided only by the on-screen action. It worked for Chaplin, and I've gotta say, it worked for this short as well.

But what about the story itself? Surely, it must be impossible to adapt such a broken piece of literature in a way that's anything other that cringeworthy, right?

I though that, too. But this short actually does its best to fix that. The melodramatic plotlines that irked me in the original have been thrown out in favor of a tighter, more concise storyline that could fit into 7 minutes. Granted, the human still finds RD in a box, and that's still silly, but from then on, the characters actually act pretty realistically. There's a part where the human just makes her a pancake, and puts it into a plate she's holding in her mouth. Once again, no dialogue, he just flips the pancake, puts it on the plate, and she trots away. Short, sweet, to the point, and dare I say, even a little bit heartwarming.

There's other parts too, like the infamous scene where she finds out she's a cartoon character and runs away like an emo, but even this got a surprisingly well-thought-out twist. Kudos.

Hell, it even has the common sense to save the ending scene for the ending. It doesn't take up half the runtime, like it did in the fic, it occurs where it logically should. Now, like I said earlier, I still didn't cry, but I at least felt connected. It felt like the human was a guy I knew, and I could feel his pain, even if only a little. The short didn't drag it out, it didn't sap it up, it didn't even show any of the characters crying. And in showing restraint, it actually came off as decently poignant, even if, again, it still fell short of its goal.

In a short like this, you'd probably expect the music to be some kind of sappy, violin-heavy ultra-blues, but it averts that as well. The backing track is actually a mild vocal/electronic piece. It's not particularly interesting, and even a bit boring on its own. But in context, it comes off as very soothing, and allows the viewer to relax and enjoy the short the way one would a slice of homemade cake.

You may have noticed that I actually referred to the pony in this short as Rainbow Dash in this review. That's because she actually does feel like her namesake in this short. There's a massive sequence in the middle of the short where she's flying around and doing tricks reminiscent of How to Train Your Dragon, albeit on a significantly lower budget. She's always moving, often with a great sense of her trademark speed, she always has an air of light-hearted unseriousness about her, she never says anything stupid or out of character (or anything at all, for that matter), and she doesn't even appear too reluctant to return to Equestria when the time comes. She still isn't completely in-character, but she's definitely close enough that her personality no longer feels butchered.

I guess if I was to reach, I could criticize the fact that the human character was played by the Scout from TF2, but to me it adds just a wee bit of levity and self-awareness. It's like the short knows the story is silly, and that's its way of winking at the issue.

I think I've covered most of what I liked about this short, how how about you just go watch it and see how you like it for yourself? It won't blow your mind, or change your life, but it'll probably at least put a good-natured smile on your face.

And hey, when has that ever been a bad thing?