Pony Think Tank takes on “Dance Magic”

 

As the author Equestrian City, it’s no secret I’m partial to Equestria Girls. In my humble opinion, it’s got far more potential for storylines that are relatable to modern issues, not that the MLP show isn’t good at it, but it feels more real.

 

That and it has Sunset Shimmer. 😉 Sunset is by far the most 3 dimensional character they’ve ever made, even more so due to the fact she was, by best I can tell, supposed to be a throwaway character for the one off movie “Equestria Girls”. She turned into something must more, my adoration for her is no real secret either.

 

Each year, it became like a superbowl like wait for that years “Equestria Girls” movie, the best being, again in my own opinion, Rainbow Rocks.

 

So when I heard we were doing three shorts, immediately my hopes of a unlimited series for Equestria Girls soared, as most are aware. The Polish dubbed versions came out to give us a sneak peak, and of course then the English dubs came out, followed by the actual reveal recently on Discovery Family.

 

The first of which, I’ll give my two cents on now, since, well everyone and their brother, sister and mother have already posted theirs, why not me?

 

Dance Magic

 

The title and theme song are, lack luster, but I imagine it will be that way, since it’s really just prototypes.

 

My initial thoughts were “Oh great, they are just doing this one to burn off a song they didn’t use in Friendship Games” and thankfully, it was more amusing than just that. The feeling of familiarity came back immediately as I watched the opening, listening to all the voices I’ve come to love. I was thrilled that we were going to see Rarity do something rather than be window dressing. I’ve always thought she needed more work, thankfully, they seem to be listening recently in the main show 😛 But, I was further overjoyed by the fact that one of the biggest letdowns of the Friendship Games (one of many) was the lack of use of any of the Anti-Mane 6 they worked on hyping up and then barely got any interaction with.

 

This time we get to see Sour Sweet, Lemon Zest, Sugarcoat and Sunny Flare, the analogues to various Mane 6 members. Sunny Flare was nice to see, as she got one line in the movie, and oddly, by the midway point, they felt twice as fleshed out as they did in the 3rd movie.

 

I’m still a bit in the middle about how quickly these girls reform (it seems we’re all about reforming people, if we keep this up we’ll have no villains ;/ ) But, by the time we get to the solution of the problem in a tidy package of 22 minutes, it doesn’t even feel like the dance number (which includes a set of repeated animation, but I can forgive that for this time, it’s all proof of concept it seems for a series “Can we do it” sorta thing)

As the episodes winds down after Pinkie’s rather epic rapping, we come to the conclusion that these four of Crystal Prep are in fact now friends, despite all the hopes some had that they’d return like the Dazzlings might, later.

 

Overall, it’s a lovely episode, feels a bit typical. Here’s something I’ve somewhat noticed having watched them all several times in various languages. Each episode seems to be a audition in a way. This one is a typical MLP-ish episode.

 

  • Problem presented.
  • Solution Given
  • Speedbump.
  • Readjust Solution.
  • Epilogue.
  • Sprinkle in a song somewhere and you’re done.

 

The 2nd one is more an homage to Scooby Doo, although the mystery is really easy to guess, and the third one is trying to compress a movie battle AND a cross over into 22 minutes, which, well I’ll go into that later 😛

 

Anyway, thanks for the read, and by all means, please discuss in a civil way, I LOVE to interact and bounce ideas off.

 

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