>> For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils:
Oh wow, another Sweetie Belle episode, and so soon. If I may be so bold, the CMC are really taking center stage this season. From as early as Flight to the Finish up to this episode, every so often the CMC have gotten some really well done and compelling episodes. They really stand out more as characters of their own and dealing with problems not related to getting cutie marks (either directly or indirectly).
On to this episode in particular. I really liked this one (Sweetie being my favorite of the CMC probably had no small part in that...). I liked that the animators had Sweetie use her magic in various instances, such as opening and closing the box flaps. It's a nice small nod to Twilight Time and a fun little way to provide continuity. I also liked the dream sequences and felt they were really animated well and had really smooth and creative transitions between the various segments, though I will say seeing the same scene (the birthday) twice in a row was a little much... tl;dr: good job animators.
This conflict was a really enjoyable one. Not only was it interesting, it was also relateable. Despite not being something I've experienced on a personal level, it's something I can understand quite well and have seen in action many times. Conflicts like these are the best since when you can relate so well to the conflict at hand, it bears more emotional weight. The end result is an episode that lands close to home and that makes you feel really good when you're done.
I do think the resolution was a little weird. What, Sapphire is suddenly okay with everything just becuase of a dolphin stitch? And it really doesn't even look that good... There's this whole Egyptian thing going on but suddenly a dolphin somehow makes sense? Maybe it's not my place to say as I am far from fashionable myself, but I just didn't like it. But back to the matter at hand, I just didn't find it very believable that having her lucky animal on the headdress would make Sapphire okay with all that had happened.
Something else that I liked was seeing Luna again, and what's more, relating Sweetie's conflict to that of her own from when she became Nightmare Moon. It really gives solid reasoning to why she would've taken such an interest in such a small conflict. (especially small for a princess) Though it's a little weird in two ways. Firstly, how would Luna know about Sweetie's fifth birthday? It's weird enough that she knows, but it would have happened while Luna was locked away in the moon... The other thing is how she would know that Sapphire's lucky animal was a dolphin. I guess it just adds up to Alicorn princess / Dreamwalker powers... It's still weird though.
Overall: 9/10 - I wouldn't say perfect, but overall I quite liked it. As stated before, I wouldn't be surprised if the CMC got their cutie marks sometime S5.
So here it is: AJ's key episode. This leaves only Twilight. Let's just hope they actually make it good and don't just make all the key's combine to form her's like with the elements... we've already seen that, so we need something different this time, but I digress. My first thought when we got to the inciting action of this episode was, "oh great... just great... not these two again..." Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000 was FAR from my favorite episode. In fact, its one of my least favorites. It stood as my all time least favorite for quite some time and was only recently removed from its place of personal infamy by simple ways, but once again, I digress.
I will say this: Flim and Flam made a much better appearance here that last time. In the last episode, there was never any real conflict. Sure, AJ's ideals were challenged, but she never doubted them, wasn't wrong about anything, and didn't learn anything at the end. We end up right back where we started excepting for the fact that we just realized we wasted twenty-two minutes of our lives on a poorly written episode with no emotional weight to the plot. (pununintended)
This time is different, not only is there a solid, and pretty believable conflict, but it causes AJ to doubt herself and her ideals and comes to learn something by the end and walk away a stronger character who's been reaffirmed in her ideals. These are the makings of a strong conflict and a good resolution and I'm glad to see the writers incorporating them as they usually do rather than a repeat of last time.
This episode deals with a very real truth, that sometimes the truth hurts. (which, by the way, is a truth that hurts. "the truth hurts" is autological!) AJ's whole honesty thing seems simple enough, but it's when the rubber meets the road that things can get pretty sticky, and often times people may actually be better off were you to lie, or at least refrain from telling them the truth... Everyone knows it's wrong to lie, but sometimes out there in real life situations you can reach grey areas where you begin to question your ideals. What you do when you are confronted with these types of conflicts isn't always easy to decide, and sometimes you find yourself compromising your ideals, often to your own regret later on. This is the situation AJ finds herself in in this episode, and she has just as much trouble with is as any normal person would. This is why this episode's conflict is so relateable, becuase it's real.
The way AJ first responds to the seemingly too-good-to-be-true miracal tonic is really in character. Just like classic AJ, she grabs control of the situation and takes the initiative with a non-nonsense approach. In this case, going back the the Flim and Flam tent in order to determine just what is going on.
Critically, I don't have much to say about this episode. I liked it, but there wasn't too much I thought was especially good or bad, except for what I've already written. So overall, 8/10 - a nice episode and a pretty decent key episode.
I apologize for the delay in ep19, I've just been busy this last week, but I made sure to go back and finish it this week.
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