Yeah that’s not quite what they did.
No, this harkens back to the Disney Sequels, specifically the ones that were TV pilots cobbled together into short films. Now, to their credit, they aren’t representing this as a single story (although disclaimer, we’ll come back to this). But it’s very specifically structured as TV episodes, each short is 22 minutes long, each one has two transitions that are in fact commercial act breaks, they have cold opens, there’s an intro that is almost identical to anime-style commercial bumpers.
It’s distracting, is what I’m getting at.
Since there’s only three of them, we’ll just give each episode its own little blub.
Dance Magic
Honestly I think I like this one the most? It’s super slice of life-y, and feels like they had an idea for a ~5 minute short (probably to attach to Legend of Everfree) that got too big and turned into a proper episode. It’s a Rarity piece, which I’m usually lukewarm on, and trying to focus Crystal Prep characters doesn’t really work for me, but on the other hand?
Pinkie Pie: Still the best.
Movie Magic
All the issues with the “TV pilot condensed into movie form” crop up in this one. There’s a straight exposition dump about the geodes from the last movie, because using those powers is going to be a recurring gimmick in the series! And we need to have a recurring misguided friend to teach lessons to, so bring on the jilted fangirl! But we also need to make this kinda look like a movie for some of the marketing materials, so let’s make “movies!” a gimmick and have the cast visit sets of MLP-verse films! Please ignore that only Daring Do and the Power Ponies make obvious “would be films in modern times” cases, we can wing this.
Honestly though it all frays at the seams. Juniper’s motivation is just beyond stupid and kicked me right out of the short. Dashie’s fangirlism wobbles precariously between funny and annoying. And they give this huge detective rant to Twilight despite this not really being her episode? Just not good decision making here.
And of course there’s an exceedingly clumsy transition into the next short because oops we actually did want to pretend this was a movie.
Mirror Magic
I should disclaimer here that I’m behind on the regular show: haven’t seen Season 6 yet. So I don’t have a great handle on the post-evil Starlight Glimmer. Still, the first part of the short works well, despite having a sense of being obligatory. “Okay we’ve gotta do SOMETHING with Twilight having two students but only acknowledging one most of the time, so… cameo? Yeah cameo.” Honestly I could really go for the reverse more than anything, but I legitimately don’t think that’ll ever happen. Still, Starlight’s endearing enough in the role, partly because they have no qualms making her look dorky as fuck.
This is all a bit undercut by the whole magic part, mostly because we don’t have any meaningful sense of why or how. Like, okay, magic is crossing over and spontaneously generating, that’s fair. But this feels really specific except there’s no explanation? Oh wait, yes there is: it’s the pilot, it’s a hook!
The whole distraction thing keeps coming up.
Anyway, having most of the cast sidelined in the mirror dimension is kinda lame, and the sudden rush at the end of “okay everyone admit to past dealings as a supervillain” is… I dunno what to make of it. Did they cancel the EQ show and had to wrap up material they already had? Was this short the original pitch for a full scale fifth EQ movie that they pared back because FiM is getting that slot? It’s weird.
Really that’s the final take, as much as I have fun guessing at the production process of the show despite never doing silly things like research, I’m really a bit lost at this one. What’s here is largely fine, with a few good moments, but there’s also a lot of material that could have stood on its own if it were given a chance and I’m kinda sad we’ll probably never revisit most of those concepts. So just kinda decent on the whole.
Rating- 6/10
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