Thrond

I think Rainbow Rocks is head-and-shoulders above all of the others, though "Rollercoaster of Friendship" is also quite good. "Holidays Unwrapped" comes pretty close, but I don't think that should count as one special. 

14 hours ago, Funtime Splashee said:

It was a bad move to introduce couples in the very last episodes, in a show that didn't aim to do romance things

7 hours ago, HedonismBot said:

It might have if we had gotten to see some plausible transition from "platonic friends" to "lovers".

Honestly, I think the fact that suddenly some of the characters are couples helps with the idea that this is some time in the future and a lot has changed. Which is useful because this is an episode about friendship surviving major changes in these ponies' lives. I don't think the romantic angle is an important part of this story otherwise. 

On 10/21/2020 at 9:56 AM, Justin_Case001 said:

only to then throw away in the episode when Scoots parents showed up and were all, "Hi!  We're good parents, we're just gone all the time!"  

Honestly I think that episode was about how Scootaloo has bad parents. I mean yes the execution is weird but what happens in that episode is that her parents make a major change to her life out of nowhere despite having neglected her for years beforehand. Though perhaps that's a conversation for that episode's thread.

7 hours ago, HedonismBot said:

Plus others were talking about Yona getting familiar with the culture in which she had been living - implying that she was in the wrong for doing that seems like a not-so-great message to be sending.

The basic premise of the episode is that they're wrong to be saying that. Really not a fan of the mane six saying such things in the first place, though; I much preferred the previous season where they were standing against racism (speciesism?).

The early seasons, where Rarity was often kinda selfish, aren't really my favourite period for that character, but at best ("Sweet and Elite") you see her actively struggle to balance her ambitions with her values. I think that's one of the things this show did best. But I'm also not bothered by the mane six not sticking to their elements. 

People hold the mane six too closely to the Elements of Harmony, and those characters are better for not embodying their element all the time. 

Twilight Sparkle becoming a princess was never a good idea. 

I like a lot of CMC episodes but would never list them among my favourite characters in the show. They should have been more distinct from each other. 

I find it kinda boring how much pony culture and history seems to just copy human culture and history. The non-pony species are so much more interesting, especially later in the show when they actually started to be taken seriously. Ponies are still the cutest though. 

My opinion has shifted several times with these two since I first posted here; they've both gone through periods where I really liked them and where I really did not. At the end, I would say that I like them both a lot at their best, but find them both very inconsistent.

Starlight will probably never be one of my favourite characters, because she just doesn't feel distinctive; the only personality traits of hers I find entirely unique are her rudeness and her occasional disregard for others, the latter of which usually makes her unlikable. And those traits aren't always there. When she's more grounded, I feel it doesn't fit the show's tone, which leaves her feeling kinda bland to me. I liked her a fair bit in season 8, where she usually wasn't stealing the spotlight and was often a little rude in a way that was endearing and at times even productive. But then she was relegated to the sidelines in season 9 and was just Diet Twilight again in her few focus episodes, which was likeable enough but hardly something I was invested in. 

Depending on the episode, Sunset is either much better than Starlight or much worse. At her best, she's an appealing, well fleshed-out character nearly on par with the mane six. At her worst, she seems more like a bland avatar for the other characters to bounce off of. Whenever she develops a new interest or character trait, it tends to feel completely arbitrary because her base characterization is so inconsistent. I have a strong idea of who Sunset Shimmer should be, but not necessarily of who she is. A lot of shorts and specials strung throughout the Equestria Girls series made good use of her and establish what a properly developed version of Sunset might look like, but there were still too many where she barely seemed to have a personality at all. 

So I like both I guess but they both frustrate me. 

Ooh, it's tough. They all have their moments. Applejack seems like the most obvious pick to me, because she's tough and confident by nature - Twilight and Rainbow have both done more impressive stuff, but they're more self-conscious. But after some consideration I'm leaning towards Pinkie Pie, who is the only one who could wield Discord's chaos magic, however briefly. We all underestimate her because she's silly but she's capable of some crazy stuff. 

I even understand why some people might pick Rarity and Fluttershy - most of the time they would rather not be badass, but that makes it even more impressive when they are. 

Yeah, I just wasn't really into it by the end. In my opinion it peaked early and then mostly went downhill, with the occasional spike in quality. Honestly kinda felt like it went on too long; would have been just fine with it ending sooner.  

I still lean towards mane six, even though Spike is pretty close to all six of them. He's pretty clearly part of that friend group, and has been grouped with them pretty often, and yet I always feel the age difference in his interactions with them; he doesn't feel like their peer. Maybe I'm just distracted by the fact that he's not a pony. Plus he doesn't casually hang out with them very much in the later seasons, by which point he has gotten a separate friend group. 

Starlight is clearly important to the show, but she was never integrated with the mane six. First she was connected to them solely through Twilight, then she started making her own friends outside of that group. When she saves the world, it's never with the mane six, except for the season 7 finale two-parter. She was hired as part of the school staff and then promptly went on to continue doing her own thing in most of the episodes she appeared in. 

Though in retrospect "main six" was a bit of a misleading phrase, since most episodes didn't feature all six of them, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders were almost as prominent. Later we had the student six taking the spotlight as well; by the end, it could be argued that there were as many as 17 main characters. I'm under the impression that this is a relatively small cast for a show which exists to sell toys. 

Very, very carefully. 

I'm partial to "The Best Night Ever." I think it really embodies everything that makes the show great, especially in this period. I feel like I've watched it a hundred times. 

1 hour ago, CloudMistDragon said:

I can relate since I was in a minority of people who actually did not like Maud Pie then, but since her appearance in Make Friends But Keep Discord, she started becoming an acquired taste for me. 

I still don't really like that first episode, alas. 

Seeing this thread revived is funny to me because at the time I would have disagreed but then every other time she appeared was gold. 

A long enough period where I wasn't enjoying the show at all, I guess... if any specific event were enough to have made me quit, I would probably have dropped the show a long time ago.

Though changing the art style too much was apparently enough to keep me away from Pony Life. 

Still not 100% sure what the criteria are for becoming an alicorn but if Twilight meets them then the other five surely do as well. Though it's a little different if we factor in how every alicorn we see is a princess...

On 9/3/2020 at 6:14 PM, Splashee® said:

P.P.O.V. (Pony Point of View) was, for me very meta. I like the humor, but I think it stole a lot of attention from other episodes of Season 6 because of that.

 

Of course Bronies will like an episode like that more than all other episodes, because it is funny to see Twilight sweep, and Ponies sitting up like humans, and Pinkie clones.

Do you mean "The Saddle Row Review"? "P.P.O.V. (Pony Point of View)" is the one where Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie have different stories about what happened on their boating trip. I do not believe that one was popular. 

2 minutes ago, Splashee® said:

Them being at a convention and in an Indiana Jones jungle and temple setting. It just doesn't seem like it was in Equestria at all, but rather at BronyCon and a movie set. Even the hotel felt non-Equestria to it

The show's setting seems to have become more modern over time. Considering that, I find it makes sense for them to have conventions in hotels. Plus I don't think it's so crazy for this world to have different biomes and cultures in it, though having all of that within one country is slightly odd. 

47 minutes ago, Splashee® said:

It's a good Rainbow Dash episode where her new friend doesn't just love her because she is Rainbow Dash. It made me watch the episode many times over, which I normally never do.

I don't recall there being many times where Rainbow Dash befriends someone who likes her because she's Rainbow Dash. 

48 minutes ago, Splashee® said:

It also places the entire world outside the normal setting, and makes you think it is actually on Earth and not in Equestria. Very meta.

What do you mean? I didn't see it that way at all. 

49 minutes ago, Splashee® said:

I still think Fame and Misfortune did it better, and got under people's skin

See, I really didn't like that one. I found it rather bitter and mean-spirited, and it didn't seem like a self-contained story. Even "Slice of Life" is appealingly absurd on its own terms; "Fame and Misfortune" doesn't even try to be allegorical. That episode makes some fair points but I don't want to see strangers hijack a children's cartoon to vent about other strangers harassing them. 

23 minutes ago, Splashee® said:

I don't know how much MLP really meant to people in the past, since I wasn't part of any community at that point, but I feel like people were too hyped about cute ponies and fantasy elements, and Lauren Faust, to actually bother questioning the quality of story telling. Many of the earlier episodes where very basic compared to what people think MLP did after season 4.

Look I started watching at the end of season 2, so I wasn't there for the earliest hype, but to me those early seasons have a lot more depth than people give them credit for. Their stories may seem simple, but the characters are three-dimensional and relatable, and often showed unexpected sides of their personalities in one-off gags. And I would argue that, despite all of the worldbuilding and the more ambitious morals, the storytelling never became that much more complex than the early seasons. 

31 minutes ago, Splashee® said:

but by then they were spoiled by cool events like Twilight versus Tirek, or Starlight time travel stuff and the cutie map.

Even later on, I don't think that stuff is a big part of the series, but I do think that a lot of people who started watching later were attracted by those tidbits of fantasy action-adventure. It certainly seems like a lot of people who post on these forums want different things out of this show from me. To me the best episodes of the later seasons are the same as the best episodes of the early seasons - grounded stories about the ponies coming to terms with their insecurities. 

But I also wonder if people who got into it later might have been more accustomed to the idea of Twilight as an alicorn princess, so they didn't question it when they actually watch that episode. 

23 minutes ago, Splashee® said:

To me, "gauntlet of fire" felt like a real adventure episode that we hadn't had since season 1. ... But until that point, there hasn't been any interesting adventure or world building episodes for a while

That episode does have some neat ideas for dragon culture, but what about the map episodes of season 5? Surely those count as adventures, and they had plenty of world building.

27 minutes ago, Splashee® said:

Spike did everything right but learned nothing from it, also typical season 1 behavior. 

I don't understand how you came to that conclusion about season 1, where every episode was about one of the main characters making a mistake, or at least facing a dilemma, and learning a lesson from it at the end. Meanwhile Spike in "Gauntlet of Fire" barely even seems to doubt himself. 

Best: Ooh, there's a few really good ones to choose from. I'm really partial to Applejack and Rainbow Dash, whose rivalry only seemed friendlier and friendlier over time, except for that awful season 8 episode. The mane six have very different personalities that are always at risk of clashing, so I've always found it appealing to see them bond over their similarities, which these two were at the forefront of. 

That said, I've also really enjoyed when characters get along in spite of their differences, or even find unlikely common ground. Every time that Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash are geeking out about Daring Do is great; the season 5 Rarity/Rainbow Dash episode is delightful in large part because we get several scenes of these two very different people being close friends; the season 2 Rarity/Applejack episode is their only good episode together because they bond over the experience of being sisters.

The friendship between Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash is probably the exemplar of that: I don't think they have a single interest in common, but they bring out the best in each other. Rainbow pushes Fluttershy to be more courageous, and Fluttershy inspires Rainbow to be more sensitive. It's a shame that, by the time Fluttershy episodes started being about things other than her fears, the two stopped hanging out as much. 

Worst: Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy is probably the right call, in large part because the episode the two shared was so disappointing. They don't spend a whole lot of time together, and their most memorable interactions - "Filli Vanilli," for instance - are clearly negative. To be honest, I wish we got more of these two so we could get a better sense of their friendship; of every mane six pairing, they're the only two whose relationship I don't feel I know much about. 

Then again, the fact that they spend so little time together leaves room for imagination, whereas Applejack and Rarity hang out all the time even though they bring out the worst in each other. A lot of the time, it seems like the two of them don't really respect each other; people sometimes cite "Honest Apple" as an outlier, but every Rarity+Applejack episode plays that way to me. They always seem actively annoyed by each other's tastes and interests. I've never really understood how they could be friends if that's how they treat each other. Rainbow and Twilight sometimes come across that way to me too, by the way; "Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3" has a lot of those two disrespecting each other. 

On 8/26/2020 at 12:36 PM, Splashee® said:

Why "Gauntlet of Fire"? Was it because of Twilight and Rarity acting too Season 1-5 again?

It's mostly because that's an episode where Spike is noble the entire time, has very little doubt, and doesn't learn anything. And also because we never see anyone other than Twilight and Rarity hanging out with Spike anymore. To me it seems like a very stale, formulaic episode, though not without its charms. After that point there was "Newbie Dash," "Applejack's Day Off," and "Spice Up Your Life," all of which I found a little disappointing.

Though in retrospect those are outliers in what was already a pretty strong season; not sure why I was complaining about the show lacking character development after "Flutter Brutter," which was a massive turning point for Fluttershy. By the end, season 6 had pretty comfortably become one of my favourite seasons of the whole show. 

On 8/28/2020 at 6:05 PM, Splashee® said:

Am I seeing a division of unicorn supporters that actually followed the series from the start, vs people that accept alicorn Twilight because they started watching the series after Season 3?

Or am I looking into things too much?

The tone of the show has shifted a little bit over time, and I suspect that a lot of newer fans are attracted by the fantasy adventure elements or by the more mature morals, both of which were less prevalent earlier on. Meanwhile I felt that a lot of the stuff the early seasons did well got worse over time and I didn't care enough about the fantasy adventure or mature morals to compensate. 

That said, I've come to terms with the wings; it's not their fault that Twilight spent three whole seasons as a boring nag, or that her coronation arc never made sense, or that the characterization became really inconsistent by the end. It would be cool to have wings. 

I'm not entirely sure which episodes qualify as "meta," because there's a lot of light self-referential humour throughout the show, but I am a big fan of "Stranger Than Fan Fiction." I like how it presents different types of fans, and how it's critical of them without insulting their tastes or interests. Putting aside the meta aspect I think it's really clever, and I like the idea of a Daring Do fan's nitpicking helping to solve a real adventure.