I’ve spoken about how brazen Studio-B can get with their source material before.

How they are approaching that rare status of critical invulnerability for their medium, achieved before only by a select few like Trey Parker and Matt Stone.

Remember the whole “Godzilla because we can” thing? Well you can now replace that with “Clever metaphors about bronydom, whilst simultaneously making a completely unrelated point about personality traits and social stature”.

“Because we can”.

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It’s about time I resumed regular reviews again. I know there are a small handful of you out there on the other side of this screen who have been pestering me to flick the uber-charge switch and pump out more content like quintuplets from a golden galvanised womb of the gods, so after this review I’ll do my darndest to resume regular posting.

It’s just a little bit disheartening for me here on my little blog when shows like Moviebobs “The Big Picture” over on The Escapist do this kind of nerdy social commentary so much better.

Anyway, on to the review…..

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I’m curious as to just how many pegs Studio B plan to take Rainbow Dash down before they lose the character they created in the first place. Previously I have stated that the whole reason characters like these ones are introduced as such over the top caricatures is so the writers have somewhere to go with their story development.

The trouble here is that often times we love so dearly the characters they start as that we don’t like to see them change in the slightest. At least that’s how I feel anyway.

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This episode succeeded in precisely the same way that “Find a Pet” did.

It didn’t overcrowd itself with things to do. In fact, this episode had an even more anorexic plot than that one did.

Rainbow gets hurt. Reads a book. Discovers the joy of reading. Yay. What’s next? Eat your veggies?

The less you crowd yourself with plot threads, the more room you have to focus on what makes a pony episode so entertaining in the first place…namely….Indiana Jones homages… new character designs….eating food with your mouth open…all that great stuff.

Where the real meat of the episode lies however, is in the using of its own plotline to closely mirror how most people generaly describe becoming hooked on the show.

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It really is the perfect setup, and could not have been done nearly as well with any character besides Dash, because she’s the sporty, brash one who best resembles a person who would never in a trillion years consider watching a show like My Little Pony……erm…I mean….reading a book. Because books are nerdy and lame and have stupid pages that you have to turn which is lame because it’s gay just like your face.

It’s really brilliant, especially from a storytelling standpoint, to be able to do two things at once and make it look effortless, because let me tell you, writing episodic thread lines is much harder than it seems. To anyone who wasn’t looking for or didn’t understand the references, it would seem like just another colourful candy coloured cartoon for kids. Inserting undertones that resonate with one person yet sails over the head of the next is A-grade storyboarding.

I love how far the writers go in assimilating bronydom into the episodes. Not just because I’m a fan and it makes me squee like Fluttershy whenever it happens, but because they really don’t HAVE to do it at all.

Remember that. They never HAVE to. But they do.

Also, it might seem like shooting yourself in the foot when you promote the joys of reading on a CARTOON, but what I think was really being promoted was the power of a well told story, and a story can be told in any format.

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As to the overarching character development of Rainbow Dash, it’s hard to say at this point whether or not they are slowly chipping her down to become a softie, or just adding more hidden substance to acknowledge when you look into those same wild eyes we met in episode one.

Does her character arc end with her settling down, halting her daredevil attitude, and marrying Bulma?

Or will she remain the same electric adventure Pony she read about in her newfound book?

Either is possible, but all signs point to the latter.

And that’s good, all stories are better with sonic rainbooms.