I’m withholding judgement for now…

I get the premise behind Equestria Girls, Hasbro has grown envious of Mattel’s rampant success with Monster High fashion dolls longtime success of Barbie, so they want a cut of the cake. Hasbro is a toy company first and foremost, they provide entertaining cartoons to different demographics only as long as the money flows. But it does seem to me they simply grabbed one of their most visible Girl’s Toy brands and quickly worked in an angle for human dolls that came right out of left field. Yes: I find the whole project very odd, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad.

Having seen the trailer earlier this evening, I remain cautiously optimistic about the quality of the film. The animation looked okay, the movements seemed fluid, and the horse-to-human jokes were creative. At the end of the day, regardless of corporate rationale underscoring the inception behind a piece of media, an entertaining story with charming characters are what I want. Yeah, the whole plot to win “the Princess crown” from a condescending bully-character rival is a little smaltzy, but we’ll just have to see. Maybe the movie won’t be very good, maybe it will be. I’ll reserve final call for when it comes out.

I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with high-school themed stories about prom planning, self confidence, and paling-it-up with your BFFs; just so long as its told well. The Monster High webisodes and specials are basically 100% typical highschool stories, but presented through the quirky lens of well developed, freaky fab monster teens, with equally creative ghoulish set-pieces. It’s not so much the “what” of your stories but the “how”, “why”, and “who” that ultimately make the difference between something paltry versus something entertaining. The trappings of a “girly” show ought never to be considered automatically condemning. The Barbie films are likewise fairy tales and other related fantasy world retold through the eyes of Barbie and friends with extra a little extra sugar and spice for flavoring.

So, to answer your question more concisely… I personally think the whole project is a little strange and, yes, a transparent money-grab, but I hold out hope that the resulting movie will be fun to watch.

However, I’ll admit the candy-colored skin on humans is very weird for me. True, I suppose Hasbro wants to stay “on brand”, but it just looks strange and disrupts the immersion. Plus, I can’t help but see it as a way to conveniently dodge the who race issue of the ponies, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Sure!

Overall, I really enjoyed the season 3 finale, certainly infinitely more than the S3 opener. The songs were excellent, the animation beautiful, energetic, and haunting in some places. While very compact, it managed to set up a pretty extreme conflict and pay it off reasonably well. All characters were present with their fundamental attributes on full display, while keeping the focus where it needed to be: on Twilight Sparkle.

“Magical Mystery Cure” still falls slightly below “Royal Wedding”, but that’s to be expected given that it’s apparently more of a prelude to the S4 opening 2-parter rather than a stand alone piece.

[apple sauce]

Now, as for our new purple Princess…

Like at least a handful of other people, I had been casually predicting Twilight’s accession to Alicorn-hood waaaaay back since S1 in “The Cutie Mark Chronicles”. Seriously, young Twilight turns others in cacti, grows a dragon to adult size, and gains the Ava-pony State? Celestia singles the kid out for personalized training? Yeah… she was a cut above from the get go. To me, there was always the implication that Celestia had bigger plans for Twilight, or that Twilight was meant for more than levitating oranges and sorting books. Did I assume her becoming a princess was an absolute certainty? No. But I did think it would probably happen in some way, shape, or form at some point in the show’s course. It just seemed reasonable.

However, I always expected this whole transformation to be the grand finale of the show overall, something to end Friendship is Magic off on… And it seems in fact that this is going to be a permanent change throughout the next two confirmed seasons of the show. Well, I also didn’t expect FiM to go on for that long. So there you go.

The big concern is, at least for me: will the friendly dynamic of the cast still work now that Twilight has a much higher literal and symbolic power level over her buddies? And there’s really no way of predicting this, we’ll simply have to watch S4 to find out. Maybe there will be some hiccups along the way, maybe the show just won’t be as good; if that’s the case, we as critical viewers will just have to accept that and deal with it as it comes.

However, I for one welcome our new Librarian Overlord! Partly because Transformers, and other merchandise driven franchises have made me used to and even made me anticipate changes like this… but for another reason too.

See, Twilight really needed to change. She needed a new angle or dimension to her character badly this season. In S1, Twilight was introduced as the audience surrogate. She was a young and naive new comer to Ponyville, eager to learn everything about her new surroundings and social contacts. We, as the viewer, learned about the world and the characters along side with her. We became well acquainted with the personalities of the Mane Five and the lore of Equestria. We saw Twilight learn about her friends, social situations, and how to cope.

But by S2, Twilight hit a bit of a rut in terms of development. She was no longer a fresh-faced everypony. She’d formed strong bonds with her friends and learned a great deal about her town. Furthermore, the audience no longer needed her to explain concepts about the world or characters to them; hence why S2 introduced the notion of everyone being able to send Princess Celestia a letter. But this also meant Twilight lost her importance as the main character, had less to do, and little room for development. She was already a whiz at friendship and maintaining said friendships… so now what’s her role?

In S2, you couldn’t have plots like “Winter Wrap Up” and “Boast Busters” wherein Twilight’s desire for acceptance while being out of her depth provided conflict/growth; because now she knows better. It seems like they tried to play up her obsessive and easily stressed traits like in “Lesson Zero” and “It’s About Time”, but with mixed results. One of the reasons I like “Royal Wedding” so much is how it added new dimension to Twilight by focusing on her relationships with Shining Armour and Cadence while also introducing those new characters.

But, in S3, we’re given with the concept that Twilight is entering a new and important stage of her training. We see Celestia giving larger tasks to Twilight, and we see Twilight practicing stronger and stronger magic consistently throughout the season. It’s very effective foreshadowing while also giving her something to work for and do throughout the series besides being a Stresserella. And now, as a princess, she’s accomplished this goal and also been given another interesting new facet about herself and her role in the show to explore!

Finally, I see this whole “Twilight the Alicorn” thing as part of a larger theme of all the Mane Six unlocking their true potential as adults. Getting progressively closer to archiving their true life goals or at least coming very close to them. The big examples of this for S3 are really Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. In “Wonderbolt Academy”, Dash took a major step closer to her dream of becoming a Wonderbolt, something which had been set up since episode 1 of season 1. But, she then made the very mature decision that she held her personal values and ethics to a greater degree of importance than her childhood dream, and she could make sacrifices if necessary.

Fluttershy had a great instance of intermingling kindness, assertiveness, and bravery in “Keep Calm and Flutter On” when it is her, and only her, who is able to teach Discord the importance of friendship. She was finally able to fully express the power her kindness have, and the effect it could have on others, without allowing her shyness to handicap her efforts. In episode 1 of season 1, Fluttershy couldn’t even introduce herself properly to the newly arrived Twilight Sparkle, and now she’s BFFs with the damned Lord of Chaos! Remember, it’s Discord who goes through an arc in KCaFO; the episode just pays off Fluttershy’s arc.

Hopefully this trend will continue in further seasons, and we’ll see Rarity, Apple Jack, and Pinkie Pie do some major self-actualizing. But, only time will tell…

Anyways, this has gone on for far longer than I intended. But basically, I’m on-board for Alicorn Twilight, provided the show keeps being entertaining.

Ah, I gotcha.

Well, for starters… Yes, I really enjoy GI Joe Renegades. It is an extremely well made, well written cartoon and its lack of a second season makes me very sad. The action is excellent, featuring a good blend of shoot-outs, monster battles, martial arts, and good ol’fisty-cuffs.

The dynamic between the cast members is great, as they go from strange bedfellows, to friends, to a tight-knit family. I also like how it has a warm, underlying theme of trying to seek out preserve classic American ideals of family, comradery, and the beauty of living off the land. You don’t see that a lot in cartoons, but GI Joe Renegades really is like a 26 episode “Road Movie”…

Now, I’ve talked about Renegades before in a way that I think will answer your question here, so I’ll just copy some of the relevant text over…

GI Joe Renegades had very strong narrative arcs and excellent character interaction.  I think a lot of this comes strength comes from a great production team.  Most notably Marty Isenberg serving as co-Story Editor, a position he also filled in Transformers Animated, which also featured very good narrative pacing and cast dynamics. 

 […] I have my complaints towards GI Joe R too.  As I have mentioned before, I didn’t much care for the series’ finale.  Though this can be excused due to their unfortunate and abrupt cancellation; so very well.  I also have some grievances with the character of Scarlet, mostly in terms of how the show withheld establishing her back story and motivations for far too long.  And how the show refused to let us inside her head; uncertain if whether Scarlet or Duke was the real protagonist.  But that’s just me.  Everything I say is nothing more than my personal meandering opinion.

And there are some other points I could nit-pick, like the show’s over-reliance on Bio-Viper’s to provide conflict when the named villains were so much more interesting, and how Jinx’s character was handled… But overall it’s a really solid show and I hope more people will check it out.

Thank you! And I’m so glad to find another person who has watched and enjoyed GI Joe Renegades.

It is just such a well made, well written, smart, funny piece of work. Not to mention piles of whiz-bang action and creative villains! I just don’t understand how it slipped under the radar for so many. It’s one of the world’s great injustices, my friend….

Well, GI Joe Renegades was put on infinite hiatus by Hasbro back in early 2011 for the purpose of focusing marketing and image association on the upcoming. To quote Hasbro PR staff themselves:

“The series will go on hiatus at the end of season one while the second installment of the G.I. Joe movie franchise is being produced so Hasbro and Hasbro Studios can ensure the creative and storyline continuity that fans of the films and the series expect.”

(source)

They wanted to start marketing for GI Joe Retaliation in late 2011, and didn’t want the cartoon show, its characters, toys, and plot confused in any way. Remember, the second live-action film was originally supposed to come out in summer 2012, but it was pushed back to 2013… officially for adding 3D, but also possibly due to the disappointing returns on Battleship; but this is just speculation.

Getting back to your original question: Yes. I do this it’s very likely that Hasbro will make another GI Joe cartoon after the second film hits theaters; provided Retaliation isn’t a total box office flop. What sort of cartoon it will be, the direction it might take, and whether it will actually be good or not remain to be seen. Of course, I’ll give it a fair chance.

I highly doubt we will see a GI Joe Renegades season 2, or any sort of continuation for that matter. Particularly given that the series’ character designer, Clement Sauve, passed away in January 2011. I really liked GI Joe Renegades, it was a great show, with great characters, voice acting, and ideas. I’m sad that it basically got culled to make way for more profitable, attention grabbing projects; but that’s the way of the world.

Thank you for your ask.