Review: My Little Pony Season 9 Episodes 1 and 2: The Beginning of the End

Once upon a time I loved this show more than any other, but in recent years I've began to see some issues with the writing, characters, and even the setting. As this is the final season of the show that was one of the largest influences of my art I decided to take a good look at some of the episodes in this season.

Today I start with the first two episodes in this season. A quick summery of the episode is; Twilight Sparkle and friends are tasked becoming Princess Luna and Princess Celestia's replacements as they want to retire out of the blue. Twilight struggles with this sudden task and responsibility as King Sombra returns to take over the world. 

Out of that summery let's first tackle the major issue I saw right away. The only pony upset about this new responsibility is Twilight Sparkle, everyone else was fine with it. Given what we know of the characters Applejack, and Fluttershy, I'd imagine they'd both have major issues with this new role as Applejack has a family to look after and a farm, and Fluttershy never struck me as someone who could take responsibility for a country or deal with politics, in fact she seems to break down when things get too hard socially. Yet only Twilight, and possibly Discord actually had problems with this responsibility being given to the group. It felt a bit forced if you ask me.

Next we have the issue of King Sombra's actual return. In the comics they spent a lot of time giving him backstory so you could understand why he hated ponies, and especially the Crystal Empire. You could understand and relate to him, so his journey there was really emotional. In these two episodes he's one of the most flat villains I've ever seen. I know this series has had a real problem with badly written villains but they already had a wonderful resource to draw from, the comics, and they chose to yet again completely ignore the good writing in favor of flat writing. His goals are boring, and his defeat wasn't even predictable, it was poorly handled. He was defeated by Twilight and friends when they were told why they were good enough to defeat him, they didn't discover why they could win, but were told very directly by Discord of all characters. It took away the emotional triumph that should have been there. 

But at least they pulled a dragon ball z style death for Sombra, that was something.

Speaking of telling and not showing, there were quite a few instances in these two episodes of the characters telling us how they felt, or why they were doing something instead of showing us. To call back to Sombra's defeat here, it was a poor mirror to the first two episodes in the series where the mane six discovered they represented the elements of harmony through trials that tested them and realized it only at the end without anyone giving them the answers. Show don't tell has never been more important.

Other elements that don't exactly make sense, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna just wanting to quit without properly teaching the characters anything. Sure Twilight and friends can beat up the bad guys, but other than Twilight none of them know much about politics at all. Twilight on the other hand has consistently almost started wars, destroyed the country or gotten everyone in deep trouble with her lack of understanding some basic things. It's like giving a very flammable object to a pyromaniac and saying, "I know you won't light this on fire because I am too lazy to take care of it myself."

The animation on the other hand was pretty decent as far as My Little Pony goes. The super cute and brightly colored visuals were actually really nicely balanced against the dark colors used with regards to the bad guy, unfortunately it also made it look a lot like what Discord did to Ponyville back in season 2, only... not as cool or emotional. 

One good point I can add to this is sadly bittersweet. Discord actually seems to have grown into a real good guy, and was there as a supportive role for Twilight helping her and the others grow into their new responsibilities. Unfortunately this is bittersweet as it does go against what Discord stood for, and who he is as a person. His character was shafted to fit this role of support character when just about anyone really could have fit here.

Another issue was something that has been an ongoing problem for a long time, but with the series coming closer to an end, it is more important now than ever before to get this right. The characters have special abilities and are competent in unique ways. For example there were perfect opportunities for Rarity's ability to sense gems, aka Sombra's big deal, Rainbow Dash's sonic rainboom, Pinkie's Pinkie Sense, and Fluttershy's Stare. None of which were used when the characters were trying to use their own power to take back their home. I'm giving the writers the benefit of the doubt here only because I hope they will cover this at the end of the season, but at this point I think the writers have forgotten what made the characters so special in the beginning. 

In all honesty unlike Adventure Time's amazing but short ending, or the Diamond Days special from Steven Universe, I hold very little hope for this final season of MLP to be good. The magic that made the series good was in the early days, when the characters having unique abilities were key to the stories which all served to cause good drama and conflict. Now the stories are very liner, too obvious, and the unique character attributes are all but gone completely.

I can only hope that the series can end with a rainboom, and not a dying whimper.

Book Review: Halo: Cole Protocol

Welcome to my review section something that I am hoping can go to add a bit of extra learning and interest in the blog. For this review I'm choosing the most recent book I read; Halo: The Cole Protocol. I'll go over a few points and talk about my general experience reading it and some personal thoughts about the work.

The Halo series is probably my favorite video game universe to date. The lore, the characters and the setting just managed to hit a very special place in my heart at a very young age for me and has stuck with me ever since. So getting the chance to go through and finish off the books I missed reading of the Halo universe has been an interesting experience to be sure. I must admit my thoughts going into this particular book was one of the more unique ones in the series to be sure and that had me both worried and excited.

The Plot: The Cole Protocol is one part the story of Lieutenant Keys as he gets back into the military and his rise to becoming the Commander we all know and love, in the other part it is the story of a young Delgado and his investigation through the asteroid colony known as The Rubble. While Lieutenant Keys seems to be there to show us more of the setting and the world through his journey across space enforcing the new 'Cole Protocol' a new law that means any ship under attack by the alien Covenant forces must delete their nav databases before losing, Delgado is on a mission to find out who is trying to steal and sell the very same information to the Covenant in his home colony. One story is filled with more guns a blazing and the other more political intrigue, neither is focused on enough to really bring out the best of either unfortunately and this may be a result of the third character I hadn't talked about yet.

Thel is an alien Elite and the leader of his keep. His journey across space to find out who is selling weapons to the humans illegally and to bring them and the humans involved to ultimate justice with intense plasma fire. His journey is filled with as much intrigue and gun shooting as either of the others and seems to be a sort of middle ground between the two feelings in the book. His story I would argue is probably the most emotionally rewarding and perhaps the most interesting of the three, which was a pleasant surprise.

The Structure: How well is the story written? Well maybe it was just my digital copy of it, but I continued to find editing mistakes, typos, and incorrect words all over the place. It got so heavy in some places that it kicked my butt right out of the story. Many a Facebook post was made in protest to this. Where there isn't typos, however, I can say that the narrator and the voice of the story were on point.

The Characters: There are three 'main' characters in this story that really matter. Keys, Delgado, and Thel. The three of them all have personal ideas and views on the war, the people in it, and how things all work. Each one of them goes through a journey and start having their views and ideas disillusioned as they realize that things are not what they believed. Keys, as much as I love him as a character in the Halo series as a whole is the weakest of the trio in terms of personal story, not really being more than a tool to explain the setting for most of his story. Delgado is a much more active character but his path to investigation is far too straight forward with few red herrings if any. Thel on the other hand actually has a journey which goes to show us how the Covenant's religious views and Elite honor affect their culture, laws, and actions Thel's personal journey to learning that things are far more complicated in politics than he could have imagined, and worse yet the leaders of his civilization, The Prophets can actually make mistakes changes him into a much different person than he started out as.

Setting: The setting is arguably the most interesting part of any Halo novel in my opinion. There is just something special about this universe that I have always loved. This novel goes deeper into the politics behind warfare, and shows some interesting ways humanity has survived in the face of an impossible alien threat hellbent on their extinction. The Rubble being a colony made out of different asteroids stuck together was insanely interesting, and seeing all the political madness was also interesting. They could have spent a bit more time on showcasing each of the unique settings in my opinion though. For example I'd have liked to see more of Thel's home other than having it described as a 'castle'.

The Theme: Finally we have the themes of the book. Here is where I struggled unfortunately. With having at least half a dozen view points through the story, with only three characters truly being important, and a bit of jumpiness to the story as a whole it was hard to pinpoint any particular theme. Hard but not impossible. I believe the theme of this book would be something like, 'discovering that the world doesn't work the way you think it does.' Each character goes through a sort of 'revelation' moment where they seem to find out that what they knew was false and the truth usually sucked. I won't go into exactly what they learn as that would ruin the climax of the story, but I feel for Thel's journey it was not only the strongest, but had some real weight behind it.

Final Conclusion: I personally enjoyed this novel. As a fan of Halo I would suggest this to anyone else looking to get deeper into the Halo lore. For people who either haven't played the game or wouldn't want to, I can't strongly recommend this tittle unfortunately. I enjoyed it, but it's my love for the setting, universe, and games that really helped me with that. There were lots of nice parts of the book, but the entire whole of the novel feels somewhat flawed or shallow due to lack of time to go indepth with any of the ideas shared in here.

My rating would be 3 alien smiley faces out of 5