Hey all! Before Season 3 ended, I used this blog to do analyses of MLP episodes. Welp, now I'm going to do one on Double Rainboom as if it was just another episode of MLP. Kind of.

So, what was so awesome about this?

Let's start with the obvious.

1) First brony fan episode! *squee*

This, truly, wins on principle. The idea, the very idea that we as a fandom could get together and make something just as awesome as our source material shows that we have reached a new pinnacle in creativity. And a cartoon TV show fandom in particular makes this an even greater feat in that we needed original music, original voice actors, original writing and story, but most importantly original animation. We should all be proud that we as a collective have reached this stage of awesomeness as a fandom.

2) Twi being a science-geek again.

As one major criticism of this episode is that it is focused more on references and humor--shallow' awesomeness--than deep character expansion and development, I am really glad this was a story element in this episode. We haven't seen Twi go all-out scientist for a while (I think the last time was in It's About Time), and it is not only very adorable but very refreshing. Through Season 3 we may have kind of forgotten about Twi's geeky science-y side, and this episode reminded us of that.

3) Rainbow Dash and Twilight being blatantly adorable. (As well as Pinkie, at the end.)

This actually impressed me about the episode, compared with episodes of the actual show. They managed to make these characters just as cute--if not cuter, which is something I always notice in episodes as a minor note.

4) The crossover with Powerpuff Girls and consequently the entirety of Hub Network.

This came completely from left field, and i'm guessing that a lot of people didn't like it as a result. Still, for me, it really made the episode. Before Rainbow crossed over into Townsville, the episode was going smoothly, but it seemed a little...off. I think the humor was just a bit too slowly executed and not the fast-paced slapstick that works so well in MLP. However, when Rainbow crossed over, it really started to pick up; something clicked. The action and humor both felt exactly like a normal (if not really good) episode of MLP. I legitimately laughed my ass off when the Powerpuff Girls started fangirling over Dashie but then again who wouldn't? I know I would /)^3^(\ Though before i had my doubts, afterwards I started to love it on the same level as a lot of the better MLP episodes.

I think that may be due in part to the sheer randomness of the humor and action afterwards. Before the trippy scene, everything seemed a tad...predictable. Afterwards i had no idea what was going to happen.

I've never seen it before, but...is this what the Powerpuff Girls show was actually like? It was that good? Hm. Maybe I should check it out. Are there episodes on Youtube?

5) Development of Pinkie's...um...craziness.

In an episode with a lot of humor/action and not all that much character development, I actually was really glad they added the little touch of Pinkie being able to cross-dimensional travel as a result of her special talent being amplified. That does something that story elements in MLP need to do: spawn questions in the viewer's head. Does Pinkie's being a party pony give her control over physics? That isn't all that out of the question, considering that magic is a huge part of the properties of the MLP universe. And that leads to another train of thought: If another pony has a special talent of partying, can they too break physics? Etc, etc.

7) References.

You knew this one was coming. The amount of references in this episode was, at my count, a whopping forty-seven. References to other TV shows, pop culture, past MLP episodes...you name it, they had it. I'm surprised and actually glad that they didn't use the obvious spoken references, such as increasing one's levels of coolness by a factor of about 1/5. And not just visual ones, either--if you paid attention to the music, there were a ton of sneaky or subtle references.

Here's a full list of the references i caught:

All in all, this combined everything good about fan animations with a lot of good things about MLP episodes. I freaking loved it. If you want to complain about the lack of deep character development, or about the crossover thing, go ahead and make your own animation excluding those elements.

We should be so, so proud of this beautiful work of creativity, everypony. Our fandom.community family made this. If not for the fact that we were so close together, this project could have never existed. In theory....we all helped make this, simply by being here and telling others that it's okay to like a cartoon called My Little Pony.

I helped make this.

You helped make this.

We all helped make this.

Let's be proud together.

...

If you read this entire review, thanks! It actually does mean a lot to know I'm not speaking at a wall. If not, here's a TL;DR:

-It's awesome

-It's awesome

-It's awesome

-It's awesome

-It's awesome

-It's awesome

-The animation is fantastic

If you got that reference, have a /).

Have a nice night! Or, day, as it were