Reflections Arc Review
Entry posted by DarkSwap7701
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I was bored one day. I had been banned from a forum which I frequently went on for expressing a lot of strong opinions, and all of my friends were either offline or busy. I was hyped for both season 5 and the FEINDship is Magic comic series, but the truth of the matter was that they weren't out yet. So what did I do? I went to Comixology, and shelled out a few dollars for the Reflections arc.
And your probably wondering. What did I think of it?
I want to first start out by saying what a cool idea this was. I loved the Gothic and dark design of AU Equestria, I loved the idea of Celestia and Luna being evil and Sombra being a kindly man, I loved the idea of developing Celestia a bit more and making her have more faults, and I actually really loved the idea of having a love story between Celestia and AU Sombra. A lot of these ideas really worked, and where this arc shines, it really shines. However, as much as anybody likes this arc, nobody can deny that it has HUGE problems.
So what did I like about it? Well the idea's were really cool, and every theme and plot this arc tries to convey were done superbly. Twilight's eternal conflict about what her dream was and what she ended up becoming was very well done, and I loved how she sought help from AU Sombra, with the answer being that as long as you mean well, you can be a great leader. He also mentions that Starswirl could have made a great alicorn too if he'd asked to become one.
Another thing I thought was fantastic was Celestia. It's great that she's actually portrayed as having faults and weaknesses in this arc. She falls in love with AU Sombra, but yet she lies to and disobeys the instructions of her only friend at that present time: Starswirl the Bearded. It's also great to see Celestia have these great faults, because in the show she never had any. I love how Twilight says at the end that she respects her more now that she's made a mistake, because it show's that she doesn't have to be perfect to be a great princess. It's heartwarming, touching, and is a great piece of character development for them both which should have really been in the show. The best scene in the entire arc was when Celestia was getting frozen in crystal and she said to Twilight that her and Luna were in charge of Equestria. In fact, it made me want to write a fanfiction about if that really happened. It also establishes a beautiful mother/daughter relationship between the two. Celestia's mistakes lead to her near death, turning a near Mary Sue into a borderline Shakespearean character.
I also loved the character of AU Sombra, and just the whole other world in general. It's bleak, dark, depressing, and the complete opposite of Equestria in just about every way. And yes, although the ending was shit, I thought the sacrifice made by AU Sombra proved how selfless, humble, and kind he really was. In fact, I may have shed a few tears.
It was really great how they couldn't kill evil Celestia and Luna, because it added a no win situation for the mane six. It was executed very badly, but I have to commend them on this idea because it drove a lot of tension for the majority of it's run time. Another thing is that Starswirl the Bearded was very cool. It's not exactly how I imagined him, I kind of imagined him more of how AU Sombra was portrayed in this comic, but hey, it's not my vision, and I still think that this version was very fun to watch and hilariously goofy in a really good way.
The last thing I'll say is that, as always in this comic series, the artwork is fucking beautiful. This is some of the best artwork I have seen in a comic book, and I strongly believe the artists should receive awards. It was actually a major part why I kept on reading this comic, the sheer eye candy.
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Now for the bad. And there's a hell of a lot of it.
So we'll start off near the beginning, when the mane six are in the library trying to find out about the portal. Somebody says "I wonder what it was like down here hundreds of years ago." We then jump to hundreds of years ago, and we see Starswirl the Bearded and Celestia. Then Celestia speaks of Luna growing distant and that she hasn't been able to talk to her that easily.
CONTINUITY ERROR!
Everyone who has ever watched the pilot episode of MLP knows that Luna was banished one thousand years ago. This is a well known fact, and is consistently referenced throughout the show. Why would anyone forget this fact. She's apparently growing distant from Celestia hundreds of years ago but was banished one thousand years ago. WTF? This is such a pitiful mistake that I already had low expectations from this arc from this point forward. Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
So after that they see Celestia jumping out, and apparently Sombra thinks that it's Celestia from the other world, so he was attacking her. However, this is never mentioned again and is contradicted throughout the arc because Sombra clearly knows the difference between the two. This plot is just set up and never mentioned again to give the mane six a reason to be there, when in fact it completely overwrites and forgets this fact in the next part. This is so convoluted and such a stupid mistake to make that it is a pure insult to reader. Another one of these in this comic continuity problems is that it says at one point that Starswirl never forgave Celestia, however later on, it's revealed that all he wanted to do was just forget about it and pretend it never happened, which means he totally forgave Celestia. Did this issue seriously have one writer, because I'm convinced it had at least three.
There is also so much stuff that doesn't add up.
For example: it's said that the AU universe use to be a bright and merry place, but ever since Luna turned evil it became nasty. Now, this implies that before the Elements of Harmony, Equestria was barren and destroyed, when it clearly wasn't. There is an amount of stuff that doesn't add up that I would be willing to expect from an arc like this, however, this completely overdoes this. Why are there no Elements of Harmony? I was expecting there to be some kind of Elements of Disharmony, hell even the cover art showed evil versions of the mane six, implying that the Elements of Disharmony existed in this world. However, the fact there is none of this is just a cheap ploy to get the mane six into the other world, and in doing so, creates something which is huge missed opportunity and a big mistake. This is suppose to be Reverse Equestria, not just a random other universe in which you can add anything you want in it to make you have to try slightly less hard with the writing. It's a real shame too because the Elements of Disharmony has been something that the fans have been wanting to see pretty much since the show started airing. I almost feel scammed by the fact that AU mane six were on the cover but don't appear in the comic.
And I haven't even got to the ending yet have I?
This ending.... Is probably one of the worst endings in all of MLP. For the whole special I had been left scratching my head at so many things from the inconsistent continuity within the comic and the show, to how many things were forgotten about, to how the two worlds didn't add up properly, but this completely took the cake.
So the mane six and AU Sombra think of this plan to trap Celestia in crystal. Now, it's suppose to be a twist that both Celestia's would end up in crystal, but I knew this from the moment this plan was put forth and Twilight was more of an idiot in this comic than ever before, due to her clearly learning nothing from the whole fiasco about physical impact (which by the way, when that's first established, Spike gives the letter to Twilight before Celestia and Luna even write the letter. Epic fail.) So after that dumbshit plan, the worlds are apparently merging with each other because the mane six are in the AU. Even though Celestia spent so much more time in there than the mane six and until now there were no breaks whatsoever. Evil Celestia then has a plan to force Sombra's deal on him by using Luna as bait to get good Celestia in the AU, which she hopes the mane six will mistake as her and use the Elements to freeze in crystal. So Prime Luna smashes the portal as she was sitting near the portal when evil Luna being thrown off the castle, and something more drastic happens, the worlds completely merge because of the broken portal. So then the Elements of Harmony freeze both Celestia's (which we all saw coming,) and then somehow Sombra uses the Elements of Harmony to remove the evil from evil Celestia and Luna and put it into himself, which will somehow fix the world merge.
I have so many questions, that it's going to take a hell of a long time.
1. Why can Sombra just wield the Elements of Harmony without friendship, I thought in the pilot the Elements became permanently friendship bound.
2. Why when he applies the Elements on evil Celestia, the opposite doesn't happen to good Celestia. Although the lack of the Elements of Disharmony was another problem I brought up.
3. Why does the evil from evil Celestia and Luna need to be absorbed somewhere else, when they permanently got rid of the evil from Nightmare Moon.
4. WHY THE FUCK DOES THIS STOP THE WORLDS FROM MERGING.
This was such lazy writing that it makes me think the person writing this had half a brain cell. The reason why the worlds were merging was because people were world hopping too much. So why the fuck does this not only solve the problem, but also close the portal forever so they have to get back quickly? It's never explained, never foreshadowed, doesn't make any sense, and feels like a scenario where the writers had made the mission so hard for the mane six that they didn't know how to wrap it up, so they just came up with the first idea that came into their heads. Fuck this comic! I don't think I can quite describe how much I loathe this ending, because it is singularly, the worst ending I have ever seen in any media ever. Yep, worse than Emerald Star.
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You don't know how much I wanted to love this comic. It had so many great ideas, and a lot of them were executed very well. However, the comic has so many major problems that I don't see how weren't avoided, that all in all it's just a massive waste. It feels like the writers of G1 wrote this arc, I'm not joking, it had that many narrative problems. Despite the sheer beauty of some of the plot elements in this arc, the way the main plot was executed was so awful that I kind of became weary of the comics all together from this point, and I have to admit I'm much less hyped for FEINDship is Magic than I initially was before I read this. How can I trust that they won't completely screw that up? Great artwork and ideas, ruined by sloppy, shitty writing. There was stuff I enjoyed in this comic and stuff which was well written, I spoke about that a lot. But overall it's let down so much by it's flaws, that it's not good.
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