Chewties? Chew these!

This is hardly an original art form. Nyaa Neko Sugar Girls, while not fanfiction, is an obvious touchstone of 'so-bad-its-good' outsider web cartooning owing to how embarrassing it is. But Tamers takes the style and performs some kind of alchemy on it. His stylization is so grotesque, flat, and off-putting yet conceptually and technically sound. His writing eagerly aggressive, crass, and unnatural, yet an utter delight to listen to via synthetic speech voices. His characters are uniformly terrible pastiches of humanity, but their flaws twist and buckle until they are bafflingly relatable and grounded.

I have to admit I wasn't exactly looking forward to this entry simply because The Death of Twilight Sparkle felt like the natural conclusion to this 'season' of Tamers' MLP series. But no, this had even more energy to it. Every once in a while Tamers can completely lock into an intense and formidable pace as he gallops through multiple plotlines both episodic and over-arcing in double-time without feeling like anything is left on the table.

Soarin & Braeburn takes this to an even more ambitious level. Complete genre freedom is paired with this emotionally complex multi-pronged romance to keep the viewer pushing relentlessly through this tragi-comedy. Every few minutes we're slid to another character's perspective where they're forced to confront their actions which put them in the situation. Meanwhile, in alternating sequence, the aesthetic will shift from genre to genre to control the viewer's plot expectations. It's South Park, it's Dragon Ball Z, it's a telenovela, it's Always Sunny, it's a yaoi doujin, it's Ren & Stimpy. The mounting betrayals are not merely narrative but stylistic in order to heighten our response to them. Soarin is tricked into a shoujo fantasia only to be revealed as some JoJo-esque mind trap, and his fate devolves into a Parker & Stone political farce just to make it sting all the worse as Twilight gives a heartfelt speech of tolerance to distract ponies from economic inflation only for said tolerance to have no relevance to his banishment.

And while all of those elements can work on their own in their own stories with their limited-scopes, this conglomeration of influences recalls the proverb about how fragile sticks become unbreakable when bundled together. The combined irreverence of the concept, styles, and humor loop around into creating a surprisingly genuine and thematic work.

The overarching theme of the series is being a sort of love letter to the entire concept of fan works in general. Warping MLP into this world of demented crack ships and alternate interpretations is not original clearly, but it places itself at just the right distance to embrace the absurdity to identify whatever emotional core underlies said absurdity. Where a typical parody of this sort of material would simply make fun of the tropes and clichés at surface level, Tamers pushes the material into hysterics, not so much to parody them, but to understand the wish which draws someone to create it. The entire series becomes a diptych, not of wish fulfillment of arbitrary ships, but one contrasting the experiences of coming out as lesbian versus coming out as gay.

The main theme the movie is concerned with though is examining the way in which we are complicit in our own misery and how that affects others. That isn't to suggest that Tamers is saying there aren't outside forces which are against us; that's abundantly clear. However, the film is suggesting instead, 'How do you expect to confront these forces when you're a complete hot mess yourself?' The roiling shifts in POV are there to make all our characters bare witness to the self-negations of the other characters and how they are complicit in perpetuating the other's struggles instead of helping to resolve them. Braeburn, Big Mac, Soarin, and Twilight are tasked with resolving an inability to detach oneself from the past and accept new experiences, a sense of familial loyalty so deep it has led to self-negation and abuse, an anxiety of sexual and emotional relationships owing to regrets and esteem issues, and confronting the downsides of being in a master-pet relationship with God, respectively.

I could dig way more into all the themes, but this is already way longer than I wanted. Writing a damn dissertation on an MSPaint fan cartoon of vulgar, huge-assed, gay ponies feels like a good way to squander whatever meager reputation I have. But it's difficult not feel inspired to do precisely that by Tamers12345. I can't think of anyone who has put so much time and effort into making something no one wanted only to become some twisted master of a form.

And watching the second half of this with that in mind is useful because ""what exactly is happening"" is a red herring essentially. The plot is progressing itself almost purely on metaphorical logic. History is manifested, interrogated, and manipulated. Ego and reality are comingled as conceptual equivalents and detangled as an emotional acceptance. Every interpretation is aesthetically treated just as 'real' as every other interpretation and therefore gets treated by characters as 'real' or 'false' according to their emotional relationships to one another.

The core theme here is centered around unpacking Trixie's hang-ups which are outstanding owing to her abandonment as a child. Now, how that manifests is all over the map. As I said, every metaphorical take is being treated as narratively valid simultaneously. Mary is a real, physical character out there stealing hearts to perform a resurrection of her mother. Mary is a manifestation of Trixie's inability to overcome an intrinsic and unwarrented sense of guilt she has concerning her mother's death following her birth. Mary is Trixie's own pastself, a troubled, lonely individual with nothing whose life became an hate-fueled ideological crusade which is recollected and echoed by her daughter. All these elements collapse in on each other as, gradually, Trixie's reliance on deluding herself as an emotional crutch to handle her status as an orphan outcast becomes a literal elimination of that world and she retreats into a meta-reality. This is where Twilight's autism serves as a psychological counter-point to Trixie's flightiness, as she's able to approach her in this emotionally and psychically twisted place and coax her back to 'reality.' Twilight really shows up as a ride or die chick in this. While she'll obviously never be the ""stallion"" of the relationship sexually as Shining Armor desires, she certainly demonstrates an emotional hardiness and intellectual strength which is suggestive of that.

This whole set-up recalls Evangelion and Madoka, and while I haven't seen Madoka enough to comment on that comparison, DoTL pulls this off better than the last two episodes of Eva. Eva pulls a bold move, but the reality that the production was deeply budget constrained seeps through a bit in how the pivot isn't terribly well-established narratively. However, what this more feels in dialogue with is Everything Everywhere All at Once. What I mean by that is the second half of this retells EEAAO in its entirety in about 20 minutes. If anything it feels like its criticizing The Daniels' film for being too bloodily literal-minded and emotionally cagey with its pivots to comedic absurdism. Like, I doubt that's what Tamers was going for, but if you've seen EEAAO rewatch this with that in mind. Still, he manages to pull off this multiverse concept so well that he doesn't even have to mention it.

I do want to touch on what I was addressing in my first review attempt. Now, I didn't cover the first half of this mostly because it's largely just humor, but there is something important about it. Trixie's issue with guilt is self-imposed and her need is not forgiveness but moreso acceptance. Tamers uses thematic irony to build this up. The first half we cycle through our side characters dealing with guilt and forgiveness, but in a number of completely idiotic, empty-headed, or emotionally absurd ways. It's practically making a mockery of the idea, so that when we see Trixie confront the same issue, we actually get the emotional catharsis that we were denied from the others which elevates the morality and impact of it above the others. Another device I like here are the various lists of qualities or events which seem to be grouping together the things which are metaphors for each other. I think that done at least three times as a sort of plot synopsis to keep things straight.

The thematic core here seems to be that of reconciling the virtues of denial with its consequences. Soarin's development has been a delicate balance of trying to accept a new identity which has finally granted him with a love and satisfaction with the fact that his advanced age leaves him feeling inadequate and feeling vulnerable in society because of homophobia. Symbolically (also literally?) he has buried these concerns in order to nurture his relationship. He wants to move past the traumas of the past. He wants to forgive those who hurt him. He wants his age to not be a problem in his relationship. Denying these things has afforded him a life he finally feels happy in, but those feelings all had to go somewhere. Surprise, surprise, enter a Jungian shadow manifest as a costume of the man Soarin cannot help being jealous of. Enter a scrambled superego entertainer who is literally losing his marbles like Soarin. Enter an id duo who are so unrepentantly who they are at the expense of others that they've become serial killers. Soarin has to reconcile how all of these characters have become a tangled mess of his own hang-ups and unresolved acceptance. Now, I'm not giving out bonus points for suddenly transforming the narrative into a Jungian perspective here, but it's a surprising and entertaining jumping off point for the story.

Now, I might be going off track here, but over the weekend I was reading about Cary Grant and his use of LSD psychotherapy. Something I've been aware of but never read into. Both his and other's contemporary depictions of the process and concept behind the process made me think: is Infection supposed to be an LSD trip? Just look at it textually. Everyone is given these amulets filled with some substance of intense magical energy from the Gods which they all absorb into their bodies so they can safely enter a theoretical space that exists between day and night created where Soarin buried the identity he didn't want to claim and they are all confronted by an apparition which confronts them with their hidden feelings and intentions. Now, I'm a square who's never done LSD, but I think the shoe fits here. And this is all before considering how stylistically heightened this all this. Even for Tamers there's a lot of unusual merging and melding of imagery and transference of ideas happening. Soarin's shadow crafts a living Braeburn doll who when defeated turns into Arinos who then gets embedded in the dagger which then shatters space-time to go back to the episode where Apple Split got the dagger which he called his 'horn.' I still don't entirely know how to parse that. It's compelling and trippy and sure as hell not arbitrary though.

I still wouldn't call this a 'drug narrative' a la Altered States or something. Those are more explicit and get bogged down in the spectacle of drug-induced consciousness. This made me realize that of all the taboos Tamers crosses relentlessly, drug humor is something almost completely absent from his stories. Only Uncle Chuck's alcoholism comes to mind. Maybe there's a 420 joke once that someone makes. That's it. The way the movie cloaks this interpretation means that this is more about the emotional work that the characters will have to make in this altered state, and not get bogged down in the connotations of psychedelia and such as.

Of course, we also have the other connotation here that this internal Jungian conflict depicted here is anime as hell. This is true though I think this is more compelling. Most anime wouldn't toss in a throwback 2000s emo music video leatherman k-pop concert into an episode. But still, stylized psychologic turmoil like this has been stock material for anime for over 30 years. Cliché is an understatement. A review for Mind Game describes the medium's obsession with 'will-to-power' evangelicalism as all pervasive. Mindless aphorisms to "live life to the fullest" being made unconvincingly by people who have no idea what that looks like. Blue Giant felt like an ouroboros of this sophomoric ideological rot with a main character who is great as jazz because he wants to be great at jazz because he practices jazz a lot and when he plays great jazz he thinks about how much he practices jazz. That's it. That's the character. Tamers reclaims the power of this type of narrative by daring to apply it to a character that actually has a psychology, and not some non-entity going "I want to do thing, but what if I can't do thing?" and then imagining his uguu non-girlfriend who he won't kiss for another three dozen episodes.

Soarin's denial is his identity resulted in it becoming a void intent on devouring his relationships for itself and consuming him. Paradoxically filled with everything and nothing like schizophrenic mania. He threatens to do same with himself. Using his immense powers for self-abnegation; writing himself out of Braeburn and Big Mac's lives for their sakes. But Soarin's quest becomes numinous as he faces himself as this ancient being, his Jungian Mana, who advises him back to the time he came from and one where he has left his shadow intact. Soarin's decision should not be surprising. It's in essence the same choice he made in Soarin & Braeburn. He doesn't wish to use his powers to hurt others for his love, but he isn't going to sacrifice everything for it either. He just wants to live his life and love who he loves, and now time is on his side. Yes, he may be a boomer who can't use his laptop and is so out of touch he thinks his shitty PowerPoint deck and TedX talk is going to change the world, but that is the result of the balance he seeks in his life. He can't rage against the world forever. This all makes Soarin seem strange if we're talking archetypes. He rides a fine line between a Hero and a Martyr and refuses both. He has learned that neither overwhelming society via force of will nor smothering his desires to avoid all confrontation achieve anything for him. His shadow-self he doesn't destroy. He doesn't need to. It's how he can so freely suggest to "Big" Soarin to take an interest in Big Mac. He can acknowledge his denials now without feeling it harms his ego. Despite his previous statement that fatherhood isn't for him, he finds himself serving as one. Reconciled with his denial, his shadow has no identity, and he suggests they craft their own in effect denying their emptiness. So the shadow becomes Friendship, because Friendship is magic obviously.