Would've done this sooner, but it came out the night before my family and I went on vacation, so I barely had time to watch it. Now that we're here and I have time to relax, I watched it again so I could watch the details.

As I've said in the past, this is not a review blog, but since Double Rainboom is pretty major in the fandom, I decided to break the rule again (last time I broke it was for the Season 3 finale). I'll probably continue to do so in the future, but only for highly polarizing episodes, or for ones where my opinion differs greatly from the majority and I feel a need to explain my reasoning.

To start off, it had great animation and art. All the things we saw seemed like they could be (or already are) part of the show. The animation was smooth, and except for a few minor errors, was very well done.

The music itself was also great, but I don't think it was used very well. For example, we had the music rapidly switching back and forth between RD and Twi's themes while they were talking, so much so that it started to clash together. On the flip side, we had parts where nothing was happening audibly, that could've definitely used music, but had none. The voice acting was about as good as any fan made project is likely to get.

As for the plot... well, at least it was a good concept. I feel like Twi making performance enhancing drugs a talent potion and then RD stealing it to achieve even greater feats of flight, but going too far and fucking up tons of stuff would be a great story for a canon episode. I'd just like to see Studio B do it, because Double Rainboom had worse storytelling than the goddamn season 3 finale (and if you read my review of that, you'll know just how bad that is. For those who don't want to read it, I think it was the worst episode in the series so far). The dialogue was minimal and didn't flow at all. The best analogy I can think of for the characterization is to visualize Twi and RD's personalities as actual, 3 dimensional objects. Their personalities in Double Rainboom are like grainy, low resolution photographs of these objects; 2 dimensional, and low-quality.

Most of the story was conveyed through implications. Nobody talked about the Double Rainboom, or how time and space were split, or how Samurai motherfucking Jack (fuck yeah) and other characters were floating around. They just were, and we had to figure it out for ourselves. Instead of an explanation of, you know, THE ENTIRE FUCKING STORY, we had 10 minutes of the PPG chasing RD around because... they want a pet pony? Okay, I can see Bubbles doing that, but the other two are mature enough to know you shouldn't just force something, especially an intelligent being, to be your pet (although I could be wrong, I haven't watched much PPG). This was probably an attempt to get out of actually writing enough story to fill 30 minutes, and while it was entertaining, it would've been much better as a standalone animation.

One redeeming feature were all the little nods to the fandom; Scootaloo on the chicken billboard, Derpy and her muffin, and several of the most widely paired ponies being on screen together multiple times. The references to other shows were pretty nice too, if totally unnecessary.

I think I'll make it a tradition to say what the best part of otherwise horrible episodes is whenever I review them. In the S3 finale, it was RD's pimp hat during the coronation at the end. This time, it was Pinkie saying "I can travel through time and space!" in her scary voice. Well, and Samurai motherfucking Jack.