by John Tillyard, Contributing Writer
Before I begin the review, I should talk about my experience with the My Little Pony franchise. I watched the first five seasons of the Friendship is Magic show and was a full-fledged Brony. I gradually lost interest during season five and stopped watching after that. I’m not sure why the show no longer interested me; I think I just got bored. But I have enough knowledge of the previous show to compare it to this one.
This 45-minute special follows the movie My Little Pony: A New Generation andacts as the first episode of the Make Your Mark show before the first season drops in September. This means that this special has the unfortunate role of bridging the gap between the movie and the show.
Picking up a few months after the movie’s events where magic returned to Equestria, unicorns can now move objects without touching them, and pegasi can fly. Still, many find it hard to adjust to the new way of life. Meanwhile, many Earth ponies who have acquired no new abilities from magic are unhappy with this change. The setup for conflict between the different pony races did seem compelling during the opening. But the special quickly forgets about this in favor of setting up possible character arcs for the upcoming season, reintroducing the five main characters.
We told the story through the eyes of five different characters that are only sometimes seen together. There are essentially three subplots that never really connect, giving the special a disjointed and convoluted feel. It’s difficult to be invested in a lot of it because, except for what the character Zipp (Maitreyi Ramakrishnan) is doing, none of it seems essential. It all feels like they are just showing the main characters for its sake.
The primary setting for this show, Maretime Bay, appears to be a bit more contemporary than Ponyvillie from Friendship is Magic, with public transport, buildings set out in city blocks, and characters using smartphones. Coupled with the animation being CGI, there is a much more modern feel to this show, which could appeal more to the target demographic, but certainly gives it a rather unoriginal look. The town does look nice, and I like the designs of the main cast, though I feel like there was a more diverse look to the main cast’s depictions in Friendship is Magic. I’d have thought CGI animation would give them more freedom to make each character look different.
A few things they established in this special make me interested in what they have planned for the show, but in this special, they are nothing more than an idea. Don’t get me wrong, I am not against setting things up at the start of the series, but given there will be nothing more from this show for another four months, it leaves things feeling hollow. For example, the town’s sheriff, Hitch (James Marsden), has to settle a dispute on the beach because a sandcastle has been destroyed; yes, a sandcastle apparently needs the sheriff’s attention! But as he’s leaving, he finds something on the beach that will be relevant later in the series. It’s the only exciting thing that happens in the scene, but it’s also not crucial to the special’s plot.
The climax and resolution provide a reasonably predictable lesson and act more to establish new abilities for certain characters, which will likely be important in the show going forward, but feel tacked on in this special. The last few minutes have four separate things that happen to set something up for the main series, and the final scene is the characters asking why any of it happened. Not the worst way to end a pilot episode to entice people into watching the show, but I wonder why they couldn’t have at least a couple of these things in the movie.
Overall, the actual story of this special is a bit jumbled and uninteresting. Four of the five main characters spend most of the runtime doing things that don’t seem that important, and despite being only 45 minutes, I found it a slog to sit through.
Score: 4/10
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