friendship games Sunset Shimmer

[KatonRyu 1,033]

I like Sunset. Since Rainbow Rocks she's become one of my favorite characters and I honestly think her development has been pretty good in both RR and FG. My main issue with her is actually more of an issue with the first EQG movie in general than her character in particular. Everything about the first movie was mediocre, pretty much (although I do like some the songs) and that went for Sunset most of all since she was the movie's antagonist. She had no personality at that time, just a generic mean girl motive about her, and then she became a demon, was rainbowed, and suddenly she was a good person. Yeah, no.

 

The reason I like her, then, is because I've twisted my personal reality to only include the general lines of the first movie, but not the details. She was bad, but saw the errors of her ways. The manner in which that happened is irrelevant to me because I like the dynamic portrayed in RR, where she is truly remorseful yet the school hasn't forgiven her. I like how she slowly gets accepted, how she and Twilight still have parallels in how they feel, for entirely opposite reasons (everyone expecting Twilight to solve everything, everyone expecting Sunset to cause problems). Unlike the first movie, I think the characters were handled really well in RR.

 

In FG, I think they continue that trend. Sunset is clearly more confident about herself, but when magic shows up she still feels she needs Twilight to help her out. The way she reacts to SciTwi after the race, scolding her for endangering her friends was just as much her shouting at her past self as it was scolding SciTwi, and when she realized what she did she felt really guilty about it. Then, of course, the ending to FG being a mirror to the ending of the first movie, which works because it shows that Sunset has really understood what friendship is, and has come to believe it is indeed the most powerful magic. It's a nice way to round up that particular part of her character arc. I really want to see where they'll go next, and I hope they'll be addressing her past in Equestria in the next one.