Find the other parts of my S4 retrospective here.
It’s crunch time, and I’m gonna try to get out as many episode reviews as I can before Season 5 premieres. I ended up having more to write about than I expected for Rarity Takes Manehattan, so it’s going to be its own post just like Flight to the Finish. Enough chitchat, it’s pone time!
Find the other parts of my S4 retrospective here.
Well, I’m waaaaaay behind schedule on these MLP S4 rewatch write-ups, but I’ll do my best to put out as many in the next couple days before Season 5’s premiere as I can. After Flight to the Finish, Season 4 settles into a groove, and the subsequent several episodes strike a good balance between the earnest and well-made stuff that made MLP popular in the first place and the engaging ambitious ideas that have propelled it forward since Season 2. These two episodes aren’t the best examples of that description, considering they’re reflective of some of the significant shortcomings of MLP trying to be more ambitious, but they still have a bit of what made MLP so great in the first place and a bit of what still makes it so great. Now let’s get down to some more pone!
![4x05 Flight to the Finish.mp4_snapshot_06.53_[2015.03.23_21.09.16]](https://intoomanywords.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/4x05-flight-to-the-finish-mp4_snapshot_06-53_2015-03-23_21-09-16.jpg?w=656&h=369)
Find the other parts of my S4 retrospective here.
Flight to the Finish is one of those episodes that reminds you why MLP: FiM is a special show to a lot of people. It’s a wonderful package of genuine charm, humour and great character moments, with all its parts coming together into an incredibly empowering message for children that doesn’t talk down to them. In essence Flight to the Finish is about childhood and self-identity, but it’s the thoughtful construction of those ideas that makes this episode so fantastic.
Find Part I of my S4 Retrospective here.
MLP Season 5 now has an official date, and as of typing Pony Countdown says we’re roughly 16 days, 3 hours, 55 minutes and 10 seconds away from it. I guess I better get to my Season 4 rewatch. This time I rewatched episodes 3 and 4, and for better or for worse it’s pretty fair to say these two episodes are different to anything that came before them in MLP. First off we’ve got the establishment of the series’ first ever concrete season long arc, but besides that we’re treated to some pretty unique ideas that the show hasn’t touched on, some neat and some… well, not so neat. Enough chatter, let’s talk about some pony!
![[Coalgirls]_Hunter_X_Hunter_138_(1280x720_H.264_AAC)_[E207675E].mkv_snapshot_23.18_[2015.02.18_23.39.00]](https://intoomanywords.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/coalgirls_hunter_x_hunter_138_1280x720_h-264_aac_e207675e-mkv_snapshot_23-18_2015-02-18_23-39-00.jpg)
“It takes only one person, one person in the entire world who will trust you, to save you”
Hunter x Hunter is a story about many things, but fundamentally Hunter x Hunter is a story about detours. It’s a story about detours and a story about the human connections that change your world along those detours of life. It’s the detours of Hunter x Hunter that charge the unpredictable narratives, and the human connections that gracefully tie a thread through each of those narratives. Hunter x Hunter is a beautiful, insane, intricate, charming, enthralling and moving work of art and a phenomenal triumph that does more as an action shonen than I ever believed was possible.
Continue reading “Hunter x Hunter (2011) Review (2011-14) (SPOILERS)”
![My.Little.Pony.Friendship.Is.Magic.S01E14.Suited.for.Success.720p.WEB-DL.DD5.1.h.264-ETP.mkv_snapshot_08.50_[2013.09.26_23.03.47]](https://intoomanywords.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/my-little-pony-friendship-is-magic-s01e14-suited-for-success-720p-web-dl-dd5-1-h-264-etp-mkv_snapshot_08-50_2013-09-26_23-03-47.jpg)
Criticism is one of the best means by which someone can intellectually engage with the media they consume. Whether it be towards literature, paintings, music, video games, TV or film, critique can strengthen your relationship with media by allowing you to understand how it communicates with you from its ideas to its themes to its presentation to its emotional resonance among other aspects. At this point in my life it’s one of my greatest passions, and yet one of the most toxic damaging things within the My Little Pony fandom. There seems to be a broad collective issue within the Brony fandom regarding how people critically engage with it. After a recent video by Tommy Oliver wherein he discussed how criticism has, in its own way, made the fandom overwhelmingly jaded and divided and a recent post on EQD about Digibro’s channel being taken down filled with malicious comments towards him for looking deeper into the series (e.g. use of the dreaded term “pretentious”), among other smaller incidents and personal experiences, I decided this was a topic I wanted to touch on.
MLP is starting to feel like a real distant hobby. Not because I hold any ill will towards the series or the fandom like I did in the break between Season 2 and 3, but just because it’s hard to maintain your passion through such a long break between seasons, even with a surprisingly strong movie in between. I figured that I should go back and give Season 4 another watch in preparation for Season 5, especially considering it’s the only season that I can’t boast having seen every episode at least three times. It’s not long now until Season 5 graces our screens and I get another opportunity to sit behind my computer screen late at night (god dammit timezones) with a bunch of cheap sugary crap to watch whatever crummy live-stream my dreadful internet will support, as has become the tradition for me with these two-parters. It always gets me giddy to watch these and to see the series be really ambitious, even if it falls just short almost every time because of a lack of breathing room in its conflicts.
![[caffeine] Koufuku Graffiti - 01 [720p][22F021F1].mkv_snapshot_00.11_[2015.01.16_13.37.49]](https://intoomanywords.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/caffeine-koufuku-graffiti-01-720p22f021f1-mkv_snapshot_00-11_2015-01-16_13-37-49.jpg)
So, I figured I should be more active and talk about them Japanese cartoons more on here. Brief episode reviews is a good place to start, though I’m really awful at keeping up with these shows and tend to just cluster up my backlog with each new season. Koufuku Graffiti is the first show I watched this season, though it would’ve been Rolling Girls had I been in the mood after powering through 58 episodes of Hunter x Hunter over the course of about a week (which I may talk about soon). To be perfectly honest I wasn’t quite as in love with Koufuku Graffiti as I thought I would be.
Continue reading “Bristles Babbles #25: Koufuku Graffiti Episode 1 Brief Review”
To say that The Simpsons needs no introduction is an overwhelming understatement. The Simpsons are such a massive cultural icon, even with the not so great state of its current product, that you take it for granted. It only occurred to me a couple months ago that I had watched so many Simpsons reruns since the age of 4 or 5 that I probably recognise every last episode from the first dozen seasons. Since recently rewatching the brilliant ‘Homer’s Enemy’ from Season 8 (you know, the Frank Grimes episode) and since seeing Foldable Human’s fantastic video on the progression of Homer Simpson as a character, I’ve started to put the value of The Simpsons’ fantastic earlier seasons into perspective, and what better way to start than by going back to the very beginning.
Continue reading “Bristles Babbles #22: The Simpsons Season 1 Review (1989-1990) (SPOILERS)”
Too Many Words 