Originally posted at the DL April 2015
Season 4, ie the one that pissed off the fanboys with Princesses. But fuck those guys. So instead, Season 4! ie the one where the show fully shifts into predominantly continuity based storytelling with occasional slice of life rather than the other way around. While for this show it was either that or start focusing way more on non-main characters at this stage in the game, it is nice to see such transitions. The other major distinguishing mark of this season is that when it decided to go shonen, it went full on Dragon Ball Z which is honestly pretty amazing, but that's just me.
Anyway so I do want to note that the whole box thing is kinda... dumb. As in specifically what is in the box is really dumb. Why is there a castle and superpowers in a box. Hopefully Season 5 does a bit better in justifying the whole thing than Twilight's Kingdom itself did. However, Princess Twilight Sparkle and the five Key episodes are a reasonable backbone for the season as a whole, so in that respect the box is fine for tying the season together in this strange continuity-laden world. Of course, there's not only another plot thread through various episodes, but it ties into an episode... IN THE PREVIOUS SEASON! GASP. The Equestria Games thread is kinda weird, especially since most of the season was actually done in 2013, while Equestria Games itself would have been summer 2014, meaning at no point did the buildup actually coincide with an actual Olympic Games. Weird. But it's a cute idea, and most of the tie-in episodes were decent.
The remaining episodes were uneven on the whole. It includes some good ones like Filli Vanilli, or at least I really enjoy that one, but also two rather tedious CMC episodes in For Whom the Sweetie Bell Tolls and Somepony to Watch Over Me and my least favorite episode of the season. Season also has some just... strange episodes. What even with Bats! ? I'm not sure what the inspiration was there. Then again that immediately followed Power Ponies. Between that and the superpower forms from the box... Did... Hasbro like dump some of the paint your own pony designs on the writers and say "These gotta be in the episode"? If so then I guess props for working them in as palatable a way as you could.
Best Episode: Oddly... I gotta give the nod to Testing Testing 1, 2, 3. It's rare for Aesop episodes to get my attention but... holy fuck "everyone learns differently and you have to find what works best for you" is a message that I am very, very happy to see. The season has a lot of episodes that are solid to good, and among those being pretty decent while also being an immensely rare and also VITAL message like that is just enough to stand out a bit.
Weakest Episode: Simple Ways. So anyone watching the show enough will probably tell you that the weakest combination of three characters is the CMC. 'cause y'know. But for my money the weakest combination of two characters is Applejack and Rarity, because the writers seem incapable of giving them a dynamic beyond Country Gal/Prissy Pants culture clash that every combo episode between them since season 1 has featured with the same tedious bullshit each time. Just, dammit, no. Stop that. Either don't make them feature together by themselves in episodes or give them an updated character dynamic that fits their more developed characters. It doesn't have to be THAT different even. Like, Castle Mane-ia, in part, had an Applejack/Rainbow Dash dynamic that was pretty similar to their season 1 episodes. Except the conflict in those episodes was that they were taking it very personally, which isn't true in the Season 4 episode. Just... yeah. We're five seasons in, don't recycle old Season 1 scripts, you're not going to pull it off now.
Grade: 7/10. Overall good, a small handful of weak episodes and no true standouts. Probably slightly worse than season 3 overall, but not meaningfully so.
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