Music Chart Fan

Overall, this episode was very "meh". The way in which all of the characters conveniently went to the abandoned castle on the same day at the same time seemed contrived, and the sights in the castle and the actions of the characters when they were there were almost never more than mildly entertaining (and often cliche and boring), which killed much of the interest in a slice-of-life episode like this. I could make a much longer list of "nitpicks" I thought of during the episode, but here are some of the larger inconsistencies, contrivances, etc. I noticed. The castle library has very open holes where the ceiling used to be, and yet, other than that and the library being a little messy, the books seem largely readable and unharmed. Wouldn't there have been inclement weather (rain, high winds, etc.) in the Everfree Forest many times since the castle was abandoned that would have damaged the books and the library? The books and tapestries which Twilight and Rarity think are so valuable were just left behind, exposed to the elements and allowed to rot as though they were worthless. If they're so valuable, why weren't they transferred to the new castle in Canterlot, or if not that, at least auctioned off or donated or something else other than just leaving them there? Why wouldn't have Celestia taken her and Luna's diary with her to Canterlot? On a similar note, why would Rarity go through the work of restoring the tapestries only to return them to the abandoned castle where they would be once again left unappreciated, exposed to the elements, and allowed to rot? Why not, say, seek permission to sell them or to put them on display at the Canterlot castle? The multiple trapdoors, etc. really don't make much sense. Were they created solely for the purpose of pranking? If so, what prank was intended by, say, the tiny trapdoor in the secret study which gave Angel more carrots, or the tiny springing floor tile that launched Spike? Furthermore, why are the trapdoors activated by playing certain keys on the organ? How would the organ player know the right time to activate the traps to prank someone? I'm not sure how the organ player could see whether anyone was on Luna's throne or walking down the hall of armor or in the secret study. I didn't see, for example, any cameras or wall of monitors in the organ room to be able to tell such things. It was very nice of Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie to "borrow" the beekeeper's bees (and possibly his beekeping outfits) without his permission, or at least seemingly without him knowing what they were going to do with them. Rarity was able to reach her foreleg through a hole in the wall and feel Rainbow Dash, but yet she and Fluttershy didn't hear or didn't recognize Rainbow Dash and Applejack screaming and running down the hallway through that same hole? Finally, most of Pinkie Pie's "antics" continue to grind on me with every passing episode. I don't find them funny or entertaining, just stupid and annoying. Near the beginning of the episode, when Pinkie is doing her "calculations", she mumbles about moving the decimal and carrying the two, and says "Numbers don't lie!", then shows Applejack and Rainbow Dash (and the camera) a page with no numbers on it, just unintelligible doodles and scribbles. Does Pinkie actually know that those aren't numbers? Does she know that they make little or no sense to anyone else, at least not without an explanation? If so, why does she show them as if they self-evidently prove her point? Secondly, why does Pinkie think that she would be asked to ring the school bell all week non-stop, and then actually try to do so? What possible reason for that would there be? Does Pinkie actually know what the purpose of a school bell is? Those were just two of the worst of Pinkie's "antics" this episode.

I like reading more in-depth analyses like this one, and I've done a few of them myself. Your calculation is largely predicated on the theory that three human years have passed since Sunset Shimmer first went through the portal and when Twilight went through the portal, and that theory, as far as I can tell, is based on the fact that we see that Sunset Shimmer was crowned Princess of the Fall Formal for three years. First, that theory still leaves a fairly wide margin of error for the human time elapsed between openings of the portal; it could be significantly different than three years if, say, Sunset Shimmer first went through the portal sometime close to the end of the school year and waited a few months (or longer) before starting high school and first winning the vote for Princess of the Fall Formal. Also, do we know that the time that Twilight entered the portal is the first time that the portal has opened since Sunset Shimmer first went through it? Or could it be that the portal has opened and closed several times in between, and Sunset Shimmer, say, just wasn't ready to go back through it yet? Those are just a couple of potential issues that I thought of which your theory would have to account for. There was another forum member who made a topic a while ago with an entertaining theory of what Celestia and Luna really do when they "raise the sun" and "raise the moon", since it would be extremely unrealistic for them to actually move the sun and moon around the planet. That topic can be found here.

I still see a few issues with this explanation. For one thing, if Celestia was in the room the whole time, then not only did Twilight (and the camera) not see her, she also must not have said a word or made a single sound that would have alerted Twilight for the whole first part of the flashback. We don't hear Celestia walking in the room at the very beginning, even though the big room has an amplifying effect and hoofsteps are heard elsewhere in the scene. Was Celestia supposedly standing silent and still for several seconds before Luna stepped out? If so, then Luna's proclamation of "Not another step!" wouldn't make much sense. We also don't hear Celestia say anything (or make any other noise) even though there were silent gaps in Luna's speech where she might naturally say something. Furthermore, if Luna were addressing a distant Celestia across the room, wouldn't we expect Luna to focus on her when she's addressing her? When I watch the first part of the flashback, it seems more like Luna is looking down at where Twilight is most of the time (except that during the actual event she would be looking at empty space), rather than across the giant room. And if Luna did focus back at Celestia, wouldn't Twilight be curious about what Luna was looking at and turn around to see? If someone were ostensibly talking to you, but was actually focusing somewhere behind you, wouldn't you instinctually turn and see what he or she was looking at? How did these events fade into myth and legends when Celestia, the primary source and major participant in the events, is still living, and furthermore, when she oversees an annual Summer Sun Celebration where, in Celestia's words, "for my subjects, it has always been a celebration of my defeat of Nightmare Moon"? Where did the inaccurate version of events in the book originate, and how did it go uncorrected, given the above? Was the book's author just not curious enough or interested enough in accuracy to know that the legend is about Celestia and to run the legend by her to see what she thought about it? Was no one over the centuries interested enough in the actual story behind the annual Summer Sun Celebration to ask Celestia what really happened? Celestia's statement quoted above (coupled with the fact that she oversees the Summer Sun Celebration) would seem to indicate that it should be common knowledge that it was Celestia who defeated Nightmare Moon, rather than some unknown made-up pony who exists only in a legend. For that not to be the case would seem to imply that Celestia has overseen the Summer Sun Celebration for centuries without letting anyone know that the basis of the celebration was her banishment of her sister who had transformed into Nightmare Moon, and moreover, that Celestia is unaware of or doesn't care that no one knows the real story. Simply saying "Oh well, the book is inaccurate. It was just telling a myth anyway." misses some interesting questions and concerns about how that would come to pass, given the unique situation of this story, which differentiates it from the typical myths and legends.

You make a good point that the discrepancies between the flashback and the Season 1, Episode 1 narration can be considered from two different angles. One angle is from our positions as real-world viewers, i.e., the show's creators didn't ensure consistency between the two accounts of the night Nightmare Moon was banished. The other angle, as you point out, is from an in-world perspective, i.e., the book's author couldn't or didn't make the book's account of that night reflect what actually happened. From the in-world perspective, though, there is reason to think that this event (the banishment of Nightmare Moon to the moon) is somewhat different from human attempts to make accounts of historical events. The big difference is that Princess Celestia, who was the major participant in the event and the primary source for learning what happened, was still living whenever the author wrote the book. This fact raises a few questions about why the book still doesn't recount the event correctly. Was the author unable to ask Celestia to recount what happened or all the details of what happened? If not, why not? This is a very important event; after all, the annual Summer Sun Celebration was celebrating the defeat of Nightmare Moon. Considering that, plus Celestia's likely desire to note the lessons from this ordeal to make sure such an event doesn't have to happen again, I would think that Celestia would want an accurate account of the event to be made. Was the author able to ask Celestia about the event, but she didn't remember all the details correctly? That raises the question of how good a memory Celestia has, particularly given that she's an immortal being who has lived for over a thousand years. But even if Celestia has a fallible memory, this event would surely be one of the most memorable she's had in her lifetime, especially when the annual Summer Sun Celebration serves as a recurring reminder. Further, many things that the book's account gets wrong are relatively simple details that should be easy to get right. On that day, did Celestia look any different than the present? Did Luna raise the moon to block out the daytime sun or did she refuse to lower the moon at the end of the night? Were the physical Elements of Harmony used to blast Nightmare Moon to the moon? These seem like pretty basic questions that, with a decent memory of the event, Celestia should be able to answer. And in the unlikely case that any account of the event from Celestia is unavailable, that raises still different questions about the inaccuracies of the book's account of the event. First, what are the secondary sources of the event, if Celestia doesn't provide the information? In the flashback, we don't see any other ponies around who would serve as direct witnesses and who would have, say, written their recollections of the event for the author to use as sources afterward. Did their former castle have staff who might have overheard or seen a few things and written them down? Was anything that happened visible to other ponies unrelated to the castle? In those cases, I can make the same point I made before about being able to get simple details correct. What did Celestia look like at the time? Was the moon raised to block the daytime sun or was the moon just not lowered at the end of the night? Again, even secondary sources of this information should be able to get it right. With regard to the color and type of Celestia's mane, tail, and wings, even if the author were unable to get an account of the event from Celestia, why would the author change those things from how Celestia looks in the present? I would think that there would be many accounts over the centuries of Celestia's appearance (descriptions, paintings, pictures, etc.) which would match the way she looks in the present. So what reason would the author have to think that Celestia's mane, tail, and wings were different at the time of the event, and if they were different, that they were the specific color and type depicted in the book? In conclusion, from the in-world perspective, it is still puzzling to me why the narration from the book in Season 1, Episode 1 is inconsistent with the flashback, and why the inconsistencies include basic details which I would think that sources of information about the event should have gotten right.

Overall, these episodes were decent. They did drag a bit, and there was some clunky dialogue and plot points, but there were some good moments, and the overall episodes were entertaining enough. First, some observations about the events of the episodes: It's hard to understand why the disappearance of Celestia and Luna would cause the sky to be half day and half night. If Celestia's and Luna's duties are to raise and lower the sun and moon, why wouldn't the sky just stay in the state that it was in when the two of them disappeared? Since Celestia seems to have been grabbed by the vines shortly after leaving Twilight's room at night, and Luna was taken away some time after that, I might think that the sky would just stay night, that is, the state it was in when Celestia and Luna disappeared and were unable to raise the sun and lower the moon. I made a topic here about the discrepancies and oddities I noticed in the flashback to the banishment to Nightmare Moon. When Applejack and company suggested that Twilight split from the group and go back to Ponyville, I seriously thought that they were being possessed by dark spirits looking to split up the group and make them easier to conquer. That idea was out-of-the-blue, contrary to what they had said throughout the two episodes, and against the lessons learned in previous seasons. Did they not even consider that the vines were a serious problem that they were unable to stop before back in Ponyville, and that, therefore, they might require all six Elements of Harmony to work together to defeat? Even if the writers were trying to make a point about Twilight needing to stay safe so Equestria would have a leader, that point wasn't well-made, since it was tossed aside and not really explored much further later in the episode. Overall, that whole sequence just seemed like a rather weak plot device. I also don't really like the statement that Rarity made about the Mane Six being simply lost without Twilight, and the implication that the Mane Six can't do anything without Twilight to come up with and direct the plan to save the day. Applejack asked a very good question when she said "Why did all this happen now?", and that question isn't really answered in the episode. The flashback shows that the vines sprouted from Discord's seeds, but it isn't explained why the Tree of Harmony kept the vines at bay for thousands of moons, but only in this episode was suddenly unable to do so. Was the Tree of Harmony continuously losing magic over time, and it just so happened that at the time of the episode, the Tree's magic dipped below the critical threshold to keep the vines back? Finally, giving the Tree of Harmony back the Elements of Harmony enabled it to obliterate Discord's vines. But with that done, why couldn't the Mane Six simply take back the Elements? After all, Discord's vines were a one-time problem that is seemingly resolved now. Even without the Elements of Harmony, the Tree of Harmony was able to both contain the Everfree Forest and keep Discord's vines at bay for thousands of moons, so why couldn't it continue to do so without the Elements now that Discord's vines are gone? Now some random one-off observations I made throughout the episodes: I see that the writers continue to use Pinkie as "comic relief" by making her act like she has mental problems. Pinkie zones out thinking about frosting for over a minute without paying the slightest bit of attention to her friends' concerns and conversation. Also, while the rest of the Mane Six are reading and trying to come up with ways to solve the problems at hand, Pinkie is busy coloring in a coloring book like a 5-year-old. Why can't Pinkie focus on serious matters like solving the vine problem or paying attention to her friends when they're talking rather than doing childish things like imagining dreams about frosting or coloring in a coloring book? Early on in the episode, Princess Celestia says to Twilight "Though you may no longer be my student, Princess Twilight, but I hope you know that I'll always be here if you need me." This seems to be a bit of a stronger statement that Twilight is not Celestia's student than the statement Celestia made in "Magical Mystery Cure", where when Twilight asks if she won't be Celestia's student anymore, Celestia says "Not in the same way as before. Though I'll still be here to help and guide you, we're all your students now too." Spike's fainting routine got a little old, especially when he did it three times in the course of one minute. Why would Discord's seeds/plants produce spiky black clouds? What are the clouds made of? How do they produce their lightning? When Spike said that there's another way for he and Twilight to get to Ponyville, my first response was "teleporting!" After all, we've already seen Twilight teleport multiple beings across large distances. I suppose flying there did the job, but how long did that take compared to taking a few seconds to teleport? On a similar note, when Twilight and Spike were nosediving toward the library, and Twilight realized she was going to crash, she teleported herself inside the library but left Spike to smack against the outside window. That was very nice of her. When Fluttershy tells Twilight that "we normally wouldn't go through your books without permission", are those actually Twilight's personal books, or are they library books for public use? Applejack calls the vines "rabid rhododendrons", but do they actually resemble rhododendrons in any way?

I noticed a few discrepancies between the flashback of the banishment of Nightmare Moon in Season 4, Episodes 1 and 2 (Princess Twilight Sparkle) and the story of that event as told in the narration at the very beginning of Season 1, Episode 1 (Friendship Is Magic). First, the Episode 1 narration says that "one fateful day, the younger unicorn [Luna] refused to lower the moon to make way for the dawn"; that is, it's nighttime and Luna refuses to lower the moon and allow daytime to come. However, this is not the way it's portrayed in the flashback. When the window/wall is blasted away, the sun is already up, as though it's daytime, and Luna raises the moon to block out the sun. In the flashback (and elsewhere in "Princess Twilight Sparkle"), the Elements of Harmony are portrayed as 5 "rupee"-shaped gems, with the sixth being in the shape of Twilight's cutie mark. However, in the Episode 1 narration, the Elements of Harmony are portrayed in two different ways, neither of which completely match the flashback, as seen below. In the picture on the left, the five Elements of Harmony each have a unique shape, while in the picture on the right, the six Elements of Harmony all have the same "rupee" shape. In the flashback, Princess Celestia looks like she does in the present, with a flowing multi-colored mane and tail and white wings to match the rest of her body, whereas in the Episode 1 narration, Celestia has a pink curly mane, pink tail, and pink wings. Also, when Celestia is fighting Nightmare Moon, in the flashback, she uses the physical Elements of Harmony and has a pink-purple spherical aura around her when she's doing so. In the narration, however, neither the physical Elements nor the aura are present, as seen below. I also noticed a few other oddities with the flashback itself. The way the flashback seems to work is that the characters in the flashback (i.e. Celestia and Luna) are not supposed to see Twilight, talk directly to her, or acknowledge her. So, in the beginning of the flashback, from when Luna says "Not another step!" through her transformation and blasting the ceiling, who is Luna supposed to be talking to and interacting with? It's not supposed to be Twilight, and it appears that Celestia only walks in the room immediately after Twilight jumps back from the collapsing ceiling that Nightmare Moon blasted. When Twilight first enters the flashback, a wide-angle shot of the room shows it to be empty. Further, Twilight looks around for several seconds before Luna steps out from behind the throne; if Celestia were standing there, wouldn't Twilight have seen her and tried to talk to her? Also, whenever Twilight is talking, Celestia and Luna conveniently stay silent, even for several seconds at a time, despite the fact that the scene is supposed to be playing out as though Twilight isn't there. Such long pauses in the talking and action would be unnatural if Twilight weren't there to talk over them. Finally, when Celestia is blasted by Nightmare Moon and falls down, Twilight seems to simply assume that she's dead (or gravely injured) and just sits down and cries, rather than, say, checking her vital signs or looking for injuries. What do you think of these discrepancies and oddities? Did you notice any other ones that I didn't mention here? Thanks for reading!

Speaking of songs about learning to fly, this song also comes to mind: [video=] Of course, there are many other hit songs about flying in some fashion, but yours and mine are probably the best matches for the topic.

I can be counted among those who don't particularly care for the songs in the show. My issue isn't with the music per se; generally, the melodies, chords, instrumentation, production, etc. of the songs are pretty good, and many of the songs are relatively catchy. I think my main problem is that having songs with cheesy lyrics and singing and over-the-top choreography in the middle of episodes disconnects the viewer from the unfolding events and serves as a conspicuous reminder that we're watching a show targeted to little kids, which is unfortunate when the episodes otherwise strive to be realistic, engaging, relatable, mature, etc.

I'll gladly act as the contrarian! Your question doesn't really specify if the choice between pizza and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is just at this moment or for the rest of my life, but either way, my choice would be pizza, no contest, really. If the choice were for the rest of my life, then I would have to consider that my enjoyment derived from the show would be moderate and would probably only last for, at MOST, a few years. My enjoyment derived from eating pizza, on the other hand, would be more substantial and would likely occur tens or hundreds of times over the course of many decades to come. So, all things considered, being able to eat pizza would give me much more enjoyment in the long run. Even if the choice were just for right now, I think that the immediate pleasure of satiating my hunger with a food like pizza which I significantly enjoy would probably be greater than the moderate pleasure of the show. If need be, I can find other means of entertaining myself.

I wrote many of my thoughts on the episode in response to another topic, which attempted to explain why this episode was not terrible. http://mlpforums.com/topic/41798-this-episode-is-terriblewhy-it-isnt-2-feeling-pinkie-keen/?p=993331

Upon investigation, this looks to be partially correct. The shot with Fluttershy front and center and the rest of the Mane Six around her is from "Dragonshy" (Season 1, Episode 7), as seen below. However, during that segment in the episode (approximately 13:34 - 13:39), I don't think we ever see Fluttershy smiling, and Rainbow Dash has an angry face, so it seems that both Rainbow Dash's and Fluttershy's facial expressions were changed for the picture on the lunch box. It's still a bit of a mystery to me why this shot from this episode, with the alterations to Fluttershy's and Rainbow Dash's facial expressions, was chosen to be the large picture on the side of a lunch box.

I saw this tin lunch box recently, and I thought the design is a little curious. I'm not sure how long it's been on the market. Does anyone have any idea why the front of the box has Fluttershy front and center smiling while the rest of the Mane Six are in a circle behind her with dismayed/confused looks on their faces? What is the marketing strategy behind this design? Has anyone else seen it? Post here if you know anything about it or have any theories about it.