spoiler FIENDship is Magic #3 - The Sirens

[Ashen Pathfinder 16,152]

With the coming of the third Wednesday of April comes issue #3 of FIENDship is Magic. This issue we're covering the Sirens; also known as the Dazzlings from Rainbow Rocks.

 

 

I'm actually highly anticipating this one as I expect it to be a welcome change of mood to the darkness of Sombra and Tirek. This one should be somewhat light-hearted; I think.

[Nuke87654 1,849]

I felt this was the weakest one out of the bunch compared to the brilliant start of the Sombra comic, the good but rather unfinished Tirek one, this one felt more silly but not in a good way. Mainly, my issues are in the Siren characters as they lack the chemistry they had going for them in the RR movie, and their threat edge they had in that movie was dulled here where it showed that they literally had no idea of the damage they caused with their music despite RR showing they clearly knew what they were doing. Also, I didn't like how the conflict was resolved where they essentially show Starswirl banishing them after he lost a battle of the bands showdown (which did showed the most hilarious scene in the comic though) to the mirror, causing him look like a sore loser rather then a necessary act to banish a big time threat as the movie showed. To make matters worse, the fact he never spoke to them about the issue (I don't care if he didn't understood friendship, he should've made his intention known to them to at least give them a chance to redeem themselves) only makes his actions look even worse for him.

Finally, while it did tried to resolve a plot hole in how the girls had stayed in Equestria for so long, it did it in one lazy possibility through unexplained time travel. Personally, I never felt it was an issue as the movie showed that the biggest reason why they aren't taking over stuff was due to how weak the human world is in magic so they couldn't really make themselves very powerful despite their abilities.

 

It had some funny moments, but if you're here to see the Sirens develop more as characters or even see some good Starswirl characterization, this comic won't satisfy those needs.

Edited April 15, 2015 by Nuke87654

[Megas 27,064]

This comic is the very definition of "meh". It does some stupid stuff, but not in anyway that offends me(like the RD Micro, FF #1, The Good, The Bad, The Ponies). On the other hand, something was "off" which caused me to not care about what happened in the comic

[FlutterDash4072 189]

Even though I wasn't expecting much out of this one it still managed to let me down. The Sirens didn't display any of the personality they did in the movie, and Starswirl didn't even feel like a character. The conflict was barely existant, and there wasn't any buildup to Starswirl's solution. It felt like he just said "Fuck it, let someone else deal with them" and then immediately claimed it was a mistake in his journal. One of the worst parts was how Anderson clumsily tried to answer the question of how long the Sirens were in the human world and ended up creating more confusion on just how the mirror works. Just a bad comic overall, unfortunately.

[Ashen Pathfinder 16,152]

Considering that this one has generally been regarded as the worst of the three thus far I was going in expecting to be underwhelmed.

 

Lo and behold my surprised to see that i actually really enjoyed it; probably more so than the Tirek issue, and I particularly enjoyed that one!

 

Of course it was much more lighthearted than the other two; that much I expected, though I don't see the complaints that the Sirens were THAT much less devious than they were in Rainbow Rocks. Granted they weren't AS devious, but I thought they were competent.

 

As for Starswirl...yeah, sore loser BUT whether he lost or not they had to go. For some reason this ending didn't bother me like it did others.

 

One other thing:

 

Roman Canterlot is canon. Period.

 

[Argumedies 1,748]

really, ocean liveing sea sirens... on land without so much as a reason

 

I was kinda on the sirens side and thought Star Swirl was being a bit of a D-Bag

[Castle Bleck 19,167]

Looks like Star Swirl was the Justin Bieber of music back in his day.

[Argumedies 1,748]

You know, it would have made more sense if they had disguised themselves as ponies with magic inorder to need the magic and have the music battle revile their true form and intentions.

 

To me, this punishment was overkill

[IcefireInfinite 227]

Anyone else catch Dr. Whooves and Rose in the comic?

[Unlikeable Pony 2,698]

Bleh. Really, really a letdown. I hadn't been expecting much from the previews, but this was much worse than I thought it'd be.

 

I really, Really liked the sirens in rainbow rocks. They were great, and formed a nice comedic trio, like the three stooges. Adagio was the bossy abusive leader, like moe. Sonata was a ditz who was too thick to understand Adagio's orders half the time leading to great chemistry of Sonata infuriating Adagio despite being inferior in the relationship (Like nappa and Vegeta). And Aria was just a mean bully who liked to take it out on Sonata and had a couple starscream moments, while still being cowed by Adagio. They had real chemistry.


But in this comic? Its like the writer didn't even watch rainbow rocks. Adagio is this head in the clouds dreamer who's WAY too positive, without her domineering nature from RR, Sonata is barely sonata, and Aria is somehow the worlds biggest scaredy cat of the bunch (what? that's nothing like her in RR). They have no chemistry, and none of what made them enjoyable.

Adding onto this, the plot is bad. Like, really bad. The dazzles are utter failures as villains, being essentially booed out before they even begin forcing them to think up pop music in a very poor joke. Its just not well done. Add in Starswirl being a useless twat who basically just says in the end "I really suck at my job. Hey, other world? You guys handle things" instead of jsut resorting to lasering them or alerting Celestia or the guard or ANYONE. He basically decides that, if he can't beat them at music, he's not going to beat them at all, which makes little to no sense.



This comic feels like its meant as a parody, but doesn't do it well enough. Additionally, this is a VERY bad time to do a parody comic; These fiendship is magic comics are meant to flesh out the characters backstories, not screw around. This one told us little to nothing about the dazzles or their backstory, with no payoff from it either. Bleh, 3.5/10

[FlutterDash4072 189]

I really, Really liked the sirens in rainbow rocks. They were great, and formed a nice comedic trio, like the three stooges. Adagio was the bossy abusive leader, like moe. Sonata was a ditz who was too thick to understand Adagio's orders half the time leading to great chemistry of Sonata infuriating Adagio despite being inferior in the relationship (Like nappa and Vegeta). And Aria was just a mean bully who liked to take it out on Sonata and had a couple starscream moments, while still being cowed by Adagio. They had real chemistry.

 

 

But in this comic? Its like the writer didn't even watch rainbow rocks. Adagio is this head in the clouds dreamer who's WAY too positive, without her domineering nature from RR, Sonata is barely sonata, and Aria is somehow the worlds biggest scaredy cat of the bunch (what? that's nothing like her in RR). They have no chemistry, and none of what made them enjoyable.

 

I know, right? That's what I was looking forward to the most in this comic. Since it wouldn't make sense to make it dark like the first two, I thought we'd get a comedic issue focused on their interactions and the backstory would be a nice little bonus. But it ended up feeling like a lazy cash-in. But at least the next two will hopefully be much better than this one.

[Steve Piranha 28,782]

Man, I really didn't expected much either, but it was worse than I though. I mean, UNLIKE Sombra's this one is far too evident the writer didn't bothered to check the source material

[Unlikeable Pony 2,698]

Man, I really didn't expected much either, but it was worse than I though. I mean, UNLIKE Sombra's this one is far too evident the writer didn't bothered to check the source material

 

Agreed about the source material bit; it seemed like the writer really didn't even watch rainbow rocks but just read a basic summary of the characters. They just seem WAY off the mark. its only a single movie, its not like it'd be that hard to watch it a couple times first, so I hope they did: but its hard to think they didn't.

 

 

On that note, this comic was REALLY unkind to starswirl the bearded. He comes off as this really pathetic and useless twat who can't do his job right. You're a powerful wizard and you have magic: BLAST THEM, or at least call the guard or Celestia to handle things. Even TWILIGHT jumped straight to trying to defeat the dazzles with magic as Plan A in RR: She only decided on the counterspell idea when her attempt to summon the mane six's magic Failed horribly (Though admittedly that scene where she just yelled FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC! was kind of funny).

The fact that he decided, almost randomly, that if he couldn't beat them in a music contest he needed to just make them someone else's problem makes him come off as insane and senile rather than a hero. Though it HAS given me tons of hilarious images of people making fun of his "Solution" (Like below XD)

 

 

On that note: While I applaud them for trying to delve further into the idea of "Starswirl didn't understand friendship" with the ending saying that he failed because he lacked friendship... The way this comic comes off as is as if Starswirl could have redeemed the dazzles with friendship or something, which RR never even implies; The dazzles are just as evil at the end of it as they were at the beginning, its just they have no power to continue mind controlling people. So the hackneyed attempt to imply the dazzles just needed a friend comes off as Forced.

 

[Steve Piranha 28,782]

Agreed about the source material bit; it seemed like the writer really didn't even watch rainbow rocks but just read a basic summary of the characters. They just seem WAY off the mark. its only a single movie, its not like it'd be that hard to watch it a couple times first, so I hope they did: but its hard to think they didn't.

 

That's what I meant with readin the source material. It's far from forgivable that he didn't bothered to watch Rainbow Rocks, while in Sombra's case, they could have easily used another character as the ruler of the Crystal Empire, but they stuck with Princess Amore, an obscure character that many still not know of her existence, because the source where she came from is as obscure as her, which is the Journal of the Two Sisters. If they used an obscure source of the FiM canon, while they could have easily used another with no obstacles, it's far from excusable this issue deviated far too much from Rainbow Rocks, which is NOT, an obscure source material to take from