My little Pony: Friendship is magic

[Terrier]

Also reading a post that said MLP helped a guy regain his faith in Humanity's progress, made me lose my own.

May have to do with those charity projects that come from time to time. It's something.

Dem Elephants of Harmony.

Congratulations. Your reply is number 1964, the year "Mothra vs. Godzilla" was released. And that's relevant.

[HayesAJones]

The hell happens when I'm gone? Psychology, demographics, pachyderns, movie release dates...

I'M HERE FOR PONIES, DAMMIT!

Beyond that, Croc and SS4G are hardly haters. They're cool guys. If their occasional fun-poking sessions are the worst he get from now on, I'd be a happy man.

[Crocodile]

Also reading a post that said MLP helped a guy regain his faith in Humanity's progress, made me lose my own.

May have to do with those charity projects that come from time to time. It's something.

Oh okay, then I could get behind that.

I just thought he meant the show itself, I'm all for loving your favorite show and all. But there's a limit of how highly you should praise something ya know?

[Kiryu2012]

^See, THIS is why I don't come here much. I love it when people make threads like this and everybody enjoys them, but for goodness sake's, people, stay on the subject!

And on the subject of ponies and in order to stay on them, here are several pony vids to keep you guys occupied. Enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxOCphPs6wc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKeMCXKS ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLjpTtxH ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRx_iXgL ... re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiIYvcvbtJY

[Terrier]

Is it safe to say that "Hurricane Fluttershy" is the best episode so far this season? And a good one to get started? It feels like it has been unanimously well received among fans.

[JAGzilla]

^ It certainly has to be considered one of the best. I wouldn't say it's my favorite personally, but from a critical standpoint it's a hard one to top. It pretty much did everything right, and nothing wrong.

On a related note, it's a common practice on Toonzone to rank this season's episodes after each new one. Here's where my list stands at the moment:

High Tier

Luna Eclipsed
May The Best Pet Win
Sisterhooves Social
Hurricane Fluttershy

Upper-Mid Tier (In no particular order)

Family Appreciation Day
Sweet and Elite
The Return of Harmony (both parts)
Hearts and Hooves Day
The Super-Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000
Read it and Weep
The Secret of My Excess
The Last Roundup

Lower-Mid Tier (No particular order)

A Friend In Deed
Baby Cakes
Putting Your Hoof Down
Dragon Quest
Lesson Zero
Hearth's Warming Eve

Low Tier

The Cutie Pox
It's About Time
The Mysterious Mare Do Well


How would everyone here rank them?

[HayesAJones]

To spare myself the agony of trying to rank them all, my favorites so far have been Luna Eclipsed, Sisterhooves Social, Secret of my Excess, and Hearts and Hooves Day, and my least favorites are The Cutie Pox (just really forgettable) and The Mysterious Mare Do Well (pretty dumb).

Sweet and Elite, Dragon Quest, and Baby Cakes are up there too, while It's About Time is fairly low.

The rest fall in the middle, with no real order or preference among them. That's pretty much the extent of my rating system- "favorites", "dumb", "the rest".

[Godzillawolf]

My favorites so far are Hurricane Fluttershy, Baby Cakes Dragon Quest, Luna Eclipsed, Dragonshy, and Stare Master. I like the rest, those are just among my absolute favorites. I really don't have a least favorite to be honest.

However, Hurricane Fluttershy is my absolute favorite episode so far. As mentioned above, it did EVERYTHING right! I absolutely loved it!

[Kiryu2012]

My favorites are Secret of my Excess, Dragon Quest, Hurricane Fluttershy, Luna Eclipsed, Return of Harmony, and the pilot episodes.

Waitaminute, I just realized something. Fluttershy is terrified of dragons, yet she could handle Cerberus with no fear whatsoever?

Okay, there had to be some tragic dragon-involved incident in Fluttershy's life that would make her so scared of dragons, yet unafraid of Cerberus, who could be like 95% stronger or more.

[UltramanGoji]

I've been gone, so here are my opinions on the two latest episodes:

Dragon Quest:
Meh. Not a big deal. Didn't care for the whole life-search plot. One line made me laugh out loud: "We're following him right?" "Oh yes" (or whatever Twilight said)

Hurricane Fluttershy:
Am I the only one who really didn't think this episode was that great? Sure it was good, but IMO it wasn't the best of the season. Maybe my opinion will change when the season's over.

And so far, my favorite episodes are Sonic Rainboom, May the Best Pet Win, and Dragonshy.

[Shazam14]

I'm still not really use to the new time the new episodes are on.

[Kiryu2012]

What time do you mean?

[Shazam14]

What time do you mean?

It went from 10:00 to 1:00

[JAGzilla]

^ That is absolutely a good thing, IMO. I don't usually get up until at least 10, so having to wake up 'early' and try to beat enough consciousness into myself to actually enjoy/critique the episodes was somewhat less than fun. The new time is a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

And since we're apparantly ranking Season 1 episodes, too:

High Tier

Suited For Success
Winter Wrap-Up
Look Before You Sleep
Party of One

Constantly Fluctuating Upper-Mid Tier

The Rest

Low Tier

A Dog and Pony Show (Bland and forgettable, with annoying antagonists)
A Bird in the Hoof (I'm constantly forgetting this one even exists)
Fall Weather Friends (Memorable and had its moments, but just poorly and awkwardly put-together. It felt like it could've been a lot better.)

All of S1 has pretty much attained High-Tier for me, though. I had no expectations the first time I watched these eps, and didn't start seriously looking at them from a critical standpoint until later. And by this point, they've become 'classics'. Screw quality, y'know? Old-school pony is best pony. These are the episodes that started it all, and they deserve to be respected accordingly. That just about all of them are legitimately good doesn't hurt, though.

[Terrier]

It seems like Hasbro has high hopes in the Princess Candence character and her husband, as merchandise, because the publicity they are getting is insane. Not only are they getting a mandatory episode, two in this case, the season finale no less, around them, but said episodes are being trated like the next big thing.



Both episodes will premiere the same day, and there have been many previews so far... Hasbro must really want ratings from them.

But what about the episodes themselves? How is the studio handling all this? We know this Shinning Armor unicorn is Twilight's brother; we know the episodes will somehow involve the mane six (Sorry) fighting clones of themselves, with Pinkie Pie using Twilight as a magical machine gun; and thanks to the synopsis we know that Candence (The third Alicon anounced out of nowhere) has a 'dark secret'.

But that's not the best part. Aparently, one of the animation directors posted on his twitter that the last episode (The one were the 'dark secret' is revealed) features the most disturbing animated scenne of his whole career:
https://twitter.com/#!/BaloneyBrony/sta ... 4341380097
https://twitter.com/#!/BaloneyBrony/sta ... 2269130752
https://twitter.com/#!/BaloneyBrony/sta ... 8540795908


On top of all that, Tara Strong striked again by no less than revealing a fragment of the script:



My reaction more or less.


So we'll have to wait to see what's up with this Princess Candence, though this fancomic compares her to a certain Dragon Ball Z character: http://shiki01.deviantart.com/art/APBP- ... 7403&qo=11

After reading it, I proceeded to waste the rest of my afternoon in nostalgia.

[JAGzilla]

A dark secret, huh? Maybe it's that she has Luna tied up and gagged in her basement.

Seriously, Luna had better show up in this episode. Even if she just stands in the background and doesn't say anything, there doesn't seem to be any logical excuse for her not to be at her niece's wedding. And if she isn't there, we'd better get an explanation.

[Kiryu2012]

We REALLY need Luna now. Seriously, Hasbro, it's been, what, MANY episodes since Luna Eclipsed. They should have her fight Discord for a starring role, perhaps.

EDIT: Perhaps Cadence is Discord in disguise? Just food for thought...

Damn, new episode was good. I liked how Big Mac and AJ switched lines.

[JAGzilla]

I don't really have a lot to say about this one; I'll defintely need to rewatch it to be able to properly judge it. My first impression, though, was that the story was pretty bland, and I really didn't care about the CMCs at all. That said, I appreciated that they felt bad about their actions and didn't go on a power trip, and that they ended the incident with an apology.

Pros:

- The Great and Powerful name drop. Sheer awesome.

- Mac and Applejacks' dialogue reversal scene.

- Diamond Tiara as the paper's editor. This was a good role for her.

- Lots of screetime for the other school kids. Though no Twist or Silver Spoon, unfortunately.

- Mac still has Smarty Pants. That's a really great callback.

Con:

- I don't have a lot of specific problems with this one, but it just generally felt kind of lame and poorly slapped-together. Again, I think I'll like it more on a rewatch, though.

For now, it gets a 3.5/5, and added to the Lower-Mid Tier of my season ranking list.

[Shazam14]

I liked the new episode. Good to know Trixie is still alive out there.

[HayesAJones]

Let's see....

Trixie.

Smarty Pants.

Baby Cakes.

Force field.

Awesome.

Seriously though, nice little peer pressure episode with cute Sweetie Belle-Rarity interaction and a vengeful Rainbow Dash. Pretty cool in my book.