Alright, I am finally going to stop slacking off and right this thing, although I’ll just stick to pointing stuff out instead of a full writeup.
Thank you, Amethyst_Crystal, for moving the thread along.
Movie begins, with the theme song interspersed with scenes. I kinda like that, and wish more things would use the method. Somewhere, there’s a video of all of the My Little Pony theme songs. After we get to the series proper, I’ll have to post it.
Spring rolls in without any aid from the ponies, although they are having a concert for the woodland critters.
Oddly, despite the G4 ponies being stewards of nature, few of them can communicate with animals the way that all of the G1 ponies could. Rather than being an ability common to all, it’s a rare talent, that we’ve only seen Fluttershy possess. You’d think that such a talent would be more common among the group that actually needs it.
The movie is where we first see the ponies that will appear in the series. Spike is one of only two characters to jump from the specials to the series. Three, if you count the Rainbow.
He’s a handy being with a piano, and is in something of position of responsibility here. Spike will go back to being more of a kid in the first part of the series, but as he gets some focus, he’s start to be something of a leader and diplomat.
The witches of…. whatever that mountain is. Reekle and Draggle seem to genuinely like each other, but Hydia is just plain a bitch. Her daughters aren’t coming out as evil as she’d like, but that’s really her fault. They’ve got a great big legacy of evil, but Hydia has just been letting them slack off around the house instead of taking them terrorizing.
Seeing some of the extended witch clan would have been cool, when you get down to it.
This is also where it’s first revealed that Dream Valley was originally a terrifying hellhole. That’s actually going to come up at least once more that I can recall, and explains why so many monsters and villains live in the area.
I can’t name all of them off of the top of my head, but the baby ponies in the dance line will all appear later. I was actually kind of surprised to realize that I recognized them all from later episodes.
G1 Spike, like his later counterpart, will often attempt to be the voice of reason. Unlike G4 Spike, people will listen to him on occasion. Baby Lickety-Split is mostly ignoring him right now, but she’s at least acknowledging him.
The ponies know the witches on sight, and aren’t hostile towards them.
We have some of the adventurous ponies group up here. Shady is a chronic complainer, but is actually an above average athlete with no actually problems besides her poor attitude. Fizzy is a scattered brained unicorn with the power of bubbles. It’s actually the most versatile unicorn power in the series, and I’ll be keeping track of everything that she uses it for. Bart Simpson is the unicorn that’s being voiced by Nancy Cartwright using an early version of her Bart voice. I know what her name is, but I can’t help but think of Bart whenever she talks. Magic Star doesn’t actually go adventuring that often, but she seems to be in charge of Paradise Estate, specifically maintenance and yard work.
Reeka and Draggle are sent out to get the ingredients for the Smooze, but decide to skip the Fluum. I don’t think that we get to hear what the Fluum was supposed to do, but the Smooze is basically a pumped-up shoggoth. If it wasn’t for the art style, those eyes would be creepy as hell. It even has a mental effect, although a mild one.
A few of the ponies recognized it on sight, presumably from when it was used on Grundleland.
Wind Whistler and North Star are sent to fetch Megan. Wind Whistler is cooly logical, although not without emotion, and one of the main ponies. North Star doesn’t appear as often, and I honestly can’t remember much about her. Danny is often a jerk, but he’s always willing to help, and has some useful technical skill. Molly is basically a younger, less developed version of Megan.
The Smooze covers Dream Castle without slowing down, and beats the Rainbow of Light in short order. In a nice touch, the Rainbow actually uses the explosion move that it used to kill Tirac, even if it doesn’t work.
Hydia was able to tell that the Smooze was underpowered despite a decisive victory against the Rainbow. Has Hydia seen it fight a Rainbow before? Why do the witches not like ice cream? Are they lactose intolerant?
The song Megan sings is actually a pretty good example of why Megan is the overall leader; she’s always willing to get up and keep trying, regardless of how dark things seem, and that helps everyone around her.
The Fluum, as it happens, is a giant, aggressive plant. It’s also kind of a jerk, going out of it’s way to be mean to the two rather than just getting rid of them.
The last we saw the mushromp it didn’t look like that. It won’t look like that the next time, either, and I’m not sure if it’s because the animators lacked the model or sheet or he used magic. Probably the first. This is actually the first proper appearance of Habbit, the Moochick’s put upon assistant. He’s kind of a predecessor to Angel Bunny.
The Moochick mentions several buildings and personages from the human world. The show never goes into it, but we see human world technology and artifacts several times, so movement between worlds doesn’t seem to be unique to the ponies.
The Moochick is the one that creates and places Paradise Estate, even if Habbit drew up the plans.
The Moochick knows how to stop the Smooze, and knows the flutter ponies. The Moochick is a long time friend and ally of the little ponies, but specifically to the residents of Dream Valley more than the flutter ponies. Given his resources, it seems highly likely that the Moochick helped the ponies settle Dream Valley back in the day, so his loyalty to the Dream Valley ponies even when it goes against the wishes of other groups of little ponies might be important.
The grundles… Nice, but annoying. Not really shown in the movie, but they have the ability to tunnel quickly. I’m not sure if that guy was the king of the grundles to begin with, or he just named himself king after everyone else died.
While the Smooze was quite after beating the Rainbow, it was still alive, and still dangerous, even before Hydia gave it the Fluum. I was always under the impression that the Smooze was just under orders to rest while Hydia was getting the fluum. After all, it was able to get that boat back to the volcano, so it still had mobility.
Magic Star’s jump across a river with two passengers is probably the first overt example of the superior strength of the earth ponies, but it isn’t the last. It’s actually mentioned on more than one occasion that the different pony types don’t have even abilities, and are literally incapable of competing on an even basis.
Fizzy likes how Wind Whistler talks. I’ll admit it, I ship Fizzy/Best Pony.
Lickety-Split’s echo sequence at least has responses that could plausible pass as echoes, which is more than most echo sequences can say.
Shadow Forest has trees that throw crude spears at anyone within. Given later information about Flutter Valley, that is probably a deliberate defense mechanism.
While unicorn winking has the limitation that they can’t pass through solid objects, it still functions like Bleach flash steps, which is still pretty good.
Alright, does anyone know if spiders are ticklish? I have no idea of how you would test that, but the question remains. More importantly, do spider laughs actually dissolve spider webs?
Ah, Flutter Valley, a beautiful and peaceful place… That’s actually surrounded by monsters, maintained by a dangerous magical artifact, and ruled by a xenophobe. Up until the wayward flutter pony appeared, Rosedust was perfectly willing to throw Megan and the others out. They’ll come in response to a call for aid when called, but they aren’t in the habit of offering any help, and they don’t mingle. At all.
Also? They couldn’t be arsed to restore Grundleland. Okay, longterm encasement probably killed the original plant life, but still…
The Utter Flutter has a silly name, but it works on just about everything and everyone, assuming that there are enough flutter ponies using it. I actually would have liked to see the flutter ponies more often just to get an idea of the limits of the Utter Flutter.
