#rant!post

Despite all the usual themes in a Sailor Moon series like past tragic lives and romance, that was the number one priority in PGSM, and I could tell. I am glad it was. I feel the friendship among the sailors in PGSM is strongest among all its iterations. Even aside from that PGSM was still strong in its themes and plot too, taking later parts of the Sailor Moon canon and brilliantly twisting such conflicts all into the Dark Kingdom Arc. Saturn as the literal embodiment of doom was written into Princess Sailor Moon. Chibiusa’s insecurities that caused her to be corrupted into Black Lady was revamped with Mercury as Dark Mercury. The distance of the Outers to the Inners in their utmost devotion to complete a mission was inherited by Venus. 

Even the villain henchmen who I had no attachment to despite the love between Zoicite and Kunzite in the first Anime were given interesting motives and backstory for their actions. Instead of being minions all killed off fairly quickly in the manga or being stock-level evil, they each had their own sense of loyalty. Jadeite stayed loyal to Beryl to the end even after all the revelations of the Shitennou’s true purpose. Nephrite struggled with inadequacy and had to adapt to the real world when Beryl essentially fired him and stripped him of his powers. Zoicite was the first to remember his past life and was the most loyal to Endymion, the most active in trying to prevent the tragedy of the Silver Millennium from harming his master again. Kunzite sought revenge after the selfish desires of Endymion and Serenity ended their past lives and acted independently of both sides most of the time.

If I ever see a reboot of a show I love, it should never be a carbon-copy of its original with updated animation and graphics. Crystal is a re-telling of the manga mostly faithfully so it is luckily not doing such. There should always be a creative re-telling of what we saw before, giving us a reason to not only want to see our nostalgic favourite characters again, but a reason we should continue seeing them. Sometimes a carbon-copy or even a sequel can be messy. Even what PGSM tries to do can be messy if it is not written well, or if the changes are unpopular with the target audience. However, if you have the courage to do just that and succeed, the end product will be far superior to any other type of reboot.

Sadly PGSM’s status as a live action itself, and its obvious low budget concerning its effects will live on in infamy. Despite the brilliance it offers some people cannot jump over the hurdle of a cat being a plushie, or all the fight scenes being glorified ballet, but if people can simply overlook such things, they would not regret it.

(I still can’t get my brother to watch it, who still continued watching Crystal after I dropped it. :( )

Yeah yeah yeah pacing issues, too much cool stuff crammed into a movie with too little time to spare for many characters including AJ and Flutts who unfortunately made no friends and thus, had they not been in the movie nothing would really have affected the plot. They were there for MORAL support okay. Also my favourite gag wouldn’t have worked without Fluttershy. I wish I could watch it again to refresh my memory, but basically they were stowaways on an airship full of pirates, and the pirates find them and threaten them, like eating them or scarring them or SCARRING THEM EMOTIONALLY, and each threat is tailored to a specific pony, and the emotional one focused on Fluttershy. That was great. I loved that gag.

Also the plot was like, simple. EXTREMELY SIMPLE. bad guys show up. Run away from bad guys. search for macguffin that can defeat the bad guys. Bad guys capture good guys anyway. FRIENDSHIP IS POWER THAT CAN DEFEAT--well no, not in the giant rainbow beam smashes into bad guy kind of defeat. The bad guy actually died, and there was a lot of fighting in the climax. Huh.

Well anyway the world building was very good which I normally would never even comment on because when it comes to MLP I usually don’t give two shits about the lore. For instance in season seven they’re introducing a whole bunch of mythical legends that while might be interesting on their own, are presented in a such a way that the episode tends to be a complete bore. What do I learn about Rarity or AJ in an episode where all they do is tell campfire stories? There is no focus on a conflict or any moral lesson (except the small ones in the stories themselves) and little interaction between the main characters. I was so bored by that episode. The Daring Do episode fared even worse and somehow they shoehorned it as Pinkie’s legend (??!!?) despite Pinkie having not read any Daring Do books and having little reason to be on this adventure. (This doesn’t even begin to describe how much Daring Do being real is one of the weakest aspects of the show itself, but I digress)

The only episode that was an interesting way to depict a legend was the Fluttershy episode because figuring out who this historical healer was, was important to curing and preventing the spread of a horrible deadly illness, so that one had great and suspenseful setup with a lot of development for Fluttershy. And frankly I think in terms of legends themselves Fluttershy’s was the least interesting, but because it was framed by a really good episode about Flutters it was the best one.

Oh right I was supposed to talk about the movie.

But yeah, one thing I REALLY like and thought was a possibility in the MLP universe were sky pirates or at least sky sailors or whatever, and HERE THEY ARE, EXISTING! And BEING PIRATES! AIRSHIPS ARE A THING! They even had one in the newest MLP episode. I knew they existed for a long while (one appeared in a small moment during Rarity’s song in Sweet and Elite back in season two) but they were never really utilized until this movie. I don’t know how i feel about tons of all anthro-looking creatures though. I always assumed the world of MLP was all these quadrupedal creatures and if they did stand on two legs it was because they were hybrids with human-like pieces such as minotaurs. Or dragons, but let’s not talk about them.

But here it’s this anthro-cat, and some anthro-fishmen, and then anthro birds, and the big bad is okay because he looks like a primate of some sort, so it makes sense, but the rest of em... ehhhh. I guess since they went OUTSIDE Equestria it makes sense there are a much larger variety of creatures/races, and maybe Equestria is the just the one with the most four-legged equines, but...

Also I think we almost had enough screentime with these new characters to like them. Almost. I was starting to like them, but it wasn’t to the point that if these characters suddenly decided to help the mane six that it’d be 100% believable. Since there wasn’t much time devoted to each of them, the fact that catman decided to side with them just because Rarity in those few precious seconds fixed the hem of his shirt was a little less realistic or believable as it could have been. I get what they were trying to do, but if more time was devoted to it, it would have had much more impact. The pirates especially I thought maybe they would blame the Mane Six for leading to the destruction of their ship, but they were actually really reasonable for pirates that when we first saw them were about to eat them. They realized straight away that the real reason their ship exploded was because their boss sucked.

I could totally believe the Princess Seapony!Hippogriff thing siding with them though. She was just lonely and wanted friends. There were no ethical issues to get in the way at all like murderous pirates or conmen. The fact that the queen did not join them made sense though, since Twilight royally fucked up.

Speaking of Twilight I see a lot of people complaining she was not very Twilight in this movie, doing things that opposed the message of friendship. It made sense to me that she fell back to her more logical, rational way of life though. As they were journeying to find the Queen of the Hippogriffs, normal singing happy friendship methods to solve problems wasn’t really working. They befriended this cat man but he actually just wanted to sell them and was using them. Then they changed the ways of the pirates, but in doing so led the enemy straight towards them. I can see how Twilight thought this wasn’t like Equestria, the land of the colourful happy pastel ponies and their usual modus operandi wasn’t gonna work here. She was desperate! But due to the amount of time they had they could not spend a lot of time emphasizing this, so it may have come off to some people that Twilight was acting a lot more malicious than she is.

Another thing is this movie is clearly not for some random person to walk into a theatre, sit down, and just start watching like they’d understand the movie if it were just a standalone thing. There isn’t much time used up at all to introduce our characters and to make a blind audience care about them. It only really works if you’re already attached to the characters and know who they are, so it really wasn’t a good movie to attract casual moviegoers or anything like that. 

I think another comment complaint is how helpless the ponies are especially when they are outside Equestria. This I thought was odd because we have Twilight who still had her magic which could basically solve anything and do anything if the plot demands in the show. Or Rainbow Dash who is supposedly faster than mach 3 or whatever, but neither of these two used their overpowered abilities effectively throughout the movie, almost like the movie forgot that Twilight could teleport or Rainbow Dash could escape.

But anyway all of that is moot. Why is all the above moot? Because we had a movie with a clear beginning, middle, and end. There were decent songs and a pretty good score. It’d otherwise just be a normal run of the mill 6-7/10.

BUT THAT IS MOOT BECAUSE PINKIE PIE WAS AMAZING IN THIS MOVIE. AND I WATCH MLP FOR PINKIE PIE. SHE IS THE NUMBER ONE REASON I AM INVESTED IN THIS FANDOM AT ALL. AND SHE HAD THE MOST FOCUS OF THE MANE SIX AFTER TWILIGHT.

The biggest issue I always had with adventure episodes which were usually the season premieres and finales of the show was that it was always heavily Twilight focused with the other five on the wayside. I did not want to watch a movie where Twilight solves the problem herself and her friends are hostages, or out of commission, nor not themselves, or otherwise not doing anything that affected the plot. They were just along for the ride. Yes unfortunately this ended up being the case for two of the Mane Six, but that’s just another side-effect of them not making this movie longer or utilizing what time they had effectively. (We could have had less new supporting characters or something, idk)

But luckily for my biased-self it was Pinkie they chose to focus on. When they don’t focus on Pinkie and she isn’t important she’s usually just the mindless comedic relief, which was always a depiction I hated of Pinkie. Equestria Girls Pinkie is exactly this, and that’s why she’s my least favourite in the EG Universe. This is fine if Pinkie’s comedy was actually good, but usually they aim for lolrandom humour when that happens. Pinkie’s comedic moments in the movie were much more often hit than miss. I didn’t really dislike any scene with Pinkie at all! At no point did she seem overly obnoxious. Maybe the time when she was trying to play I Spy, but the rest of the Mane Six were audibly exasperated with her so they were self-aware how obnoxious she can be at times, lol.

Also yes, she did ruin some moments too like a few others. And by ruin I mean, the Mane Six are trying to do something and have a perfectly good plan to do so, but one of the characters do the thing they’d always do and it’d ruin the plan. For Pinkie that was just yelling out loud in the marketplace trying to find help, this led them to being conned by the cat man and almost being captured. Then Rainbow ruined everything when she went overboard trying to turn the pirates by showing off her Sonic Rainboom, which is a very loud and flashy technique catching the bad guys’ attention and ruining their plans. Finally Twilight ruined everything when she straight up tried to steal the pearl. So at least it wasn’t ONLY Pinkie... and all of them to me seemed perfectly in-character or made sense for that specific context anyway.

A good example of an adventure episode where Pinkie isn’t very important but has great comedic moments is the season five premiere. She’s the first to notice the odd smiles and has great expressions and reaction faces to the weird town they’re in, and when the Mane Six are being brainwashed she has some great dry humour as well. Still funny when not even trying to be funny! A good example of an episode where Pinkie is not effective whatsoever at being comedic relief is the season three premiere. Pinkie’s just being really loud and screechy. Even if I did like the flugelhorn bit where she yells “FLUGELHORN” into a flugelhorn while trying to play the flugelhorn.

I think the reason why this movie gave such focus to Pinkie over the other five instead of someone else is that Pinkie is the most popular character among the target audience. All the little girls adore her. She’s definitely not the most popular among the brony community, but I’m glad the little girls have great taste! Also Twilight messes up and SHE gets captured, not all her friends at once! It is her friends who she alienated and ostracized that came to the rescue instead. I like this because even though Twilight is the Princess of Friendship now, it doesn’t mean she’s some flawless individual who is the end-all and be-all to friendship. She is the princess because she has many great friends, and they all complete her. It doesn’t make sense for a princess of friendship to not be doing things with her friends. That’s like Luna with no moon, or Cadance without a husband.

Also while Tempest whatever has a much better backstory than Starlight, I still find it a little annoying that MLP has a habit of infodumping a villain’s (that is meant to be redeemed) backstory blatantly in our face, and now we have to feel sorry for them and completely understand their motivations. I thought her villain song started out strong but fell apart when it just jumped into her backstory like that. Again, if the movie had more runtime we could have explored her backstory and motivations in either much more subtle ways, or with more depth, or not all at once. Still despite her edginess she was one of the more fleshed out new characters, so I’ll give her that. 

The movie actually reminds of two fanfics I’ve read that have sky pirates and a world outside Equestria. In one, the villain is trying to find and kidnap the protagonist for their dastardly deeds, just like in the movie trying to kidnap Twilight for power, and the cast runs across faraway lands to escape. The other just has a bunch of sky pirates. I love those sky pirates. I made a sky pirate AU for ponies once that if I weren’t so invested in my RWBY AU powered by 1000% salt I might actually attempt to write. SKY PIRATES!!1!11!!!

It’s like the movie was pandered directly to me. Good Pinkie content and sky pirates. Yay! So, with all that bias included I’d give the movie a solid 8.5/10. But that’s just me personally. If Pinkie ISN’T your favourite character or you enjoy more complicated plots with more unpredictability you might rate it a more objective 6 or 7 out of 10.

my tastes are v. predictable

my favourite stuff has FEELS and HEART, and it doesn’t matter how predictable or unoriginal or whatever it is i watched or read, as long as it successfully makes me FEEL... it is perfect. it has achieved what it needs to do

for the longest time i’d list out all the stuff i’ve seen and be like THIS! THIS IS THE SADDEST PART AND I CRIED OR ALMOST CRIED and no matter what THAT part is always my absolute favourite in the whole show but I never had this for MLP. IT’s always been that sweet saccharine show i’d watch when i need to be reminded that no matter what is happening, sometimes the fluffiest most sugarcoated crap is what i need to consume. sometimes i just need pure happy. that’s why pinkie pie is my absolute favourite pony. she’s pure happy. but CRYING? no i don’t do that to ponies, it’s too TV-Y and for kids to ever touch upon dark or sad topics and not only that but do it WELL

things like say that one RD episode about tank. some fans are saying the intention with that episode was to showcase the four stages of grief. The problem with that was that Tank DIDN’T ACTUALLY DIE and while it’s still a nice and good lesson and wonderful and sweet for the audience and especially the children, it makes Rainbow Dash seem a lot more childish than her age in the series. And yes it makes sense she is more childish, this being a kids show for kids to relate to. Even if our main characters all have jobs and seem like stable adults, there has to be times where they act like this to teach kids stuff, but imo that could have been pulled off better with the CMC or maybe actually killing off the tortoise

other kids shows have some kind of death in it! It’s usually subtle or whatever, but some kids shows can broach the topic and THE WORLD DOESN’T END

but then MLP goes and starts implying the apple parents are dead. and that’s not just some pet or some animal or something with less weight on the television for the children, it’s literally THE GUARDIANS OF OUR CHARACTERs, who died when they were young and NEEDED these parents the most. Genius then that Granny Smith exists, but still. the biggest nightmare for a child is a parent dying, their primary caretaker, the most important person in their world leaving. but then MLP goes even FURTHER BEYOND THAT

it’s all about this family drama, where two who are in love cannot be in love due to their feuding families, reminding us of romeo and juliet where the main lovers ALSO die, but where that play was meant to send the message that young love where two characters who’ve known each other for all of like two weeks and end up committing suicide are foolish and dumb teenagers, here we have this wonderful wholesome love story about two adorable ponies and even if it seems like the most perfect and happy love story ever, it isn’t! IT ISN’T 

AND NOT JUST BECAUSE THEY DIE. it’s that Pear Butter has to leave her family to be with Bright Mac, and there is a rift, and Grand Pear disowns her. She is abandoned by a family she grew up for her whole life, in this one momentous decision..and it’s DEPRESSING. IT’S DARK. I never expected MLP of all things  to cover such a topic at all, and so well too! The fact that Grand Pear made the biggest mistake of his life, and left... and never saw his daughter again. That’s not whimsical childish mistake #29, that’s a regret you can NEVER fix ever again. And all you can do is move on and change what you can with the present, which is to rekindle with the family that’s still there, that you rejected, the grandchildren. And THAT’s another thing I could never ever predict at ALL when it comes to ponies, that not only do we know the parents died, but that a parent lost his child. A parent not only lost his child, but never talked to them again after a fight, after a rift. It’s unbearable the amount of regret there is there and how utterly depressing and dark that is.

That’s not. I DON’T EXPECT THAT IN HAPPY TECHNICOLOUR PONIES. You expect that in those primetime dramas with the heavy hitting tragedies and such. THAT’S JUST NOT SOMETHING YOU SEE, AND I SAW IT. AND IT WAS PULLED OFF WELL, and it MADE sense. We never heard of Grand Pear for seven seasons because he moved away! We never knew about the parents because no one wanted to bring up such a sad and uncomfortable topic, and no one was sure when it’d be the right time to do so! Yes there are some oddities and plotholes like why no one’s seen that combined twisty tree before and other such things, but overall it fit! 

honestly, my biggest fucking pet peeve is anyone coming away from that episode and the first thing they ask is “BUT HOW DID THEY DIE!? WHY DID THEY NOT SHOW THAT!?” that is fucking missing the ENTIRE point of the episode and it just pains me deeply that some people need to know something so unnecessary after everything else that episode spoonfed us. It’s like, someone must be absolutely soulless or heartless to only focus on something like that. It’s a reasonable curiosity sure, but this episode was not the time for them to reveal something like that, and even if they did? SO!? WHAT WOULD THAT ACHIEVE!? ALL IT WOULD DO IS SATISFY YOUR CURIOSITIES. THERE IS NO NEED FOR THAT KNOWLEDGE IN AN EPISODE LIKE THIS

the episode was celebrating the perfect pear’s life. The parents’ life. It was about THEIR life not their death. And I cried like a baby during and after this episode. I was BROKEN after this episode. My head was on the table and I just sat there numb for a long time. It just reminds me of how life really is like. There will be reasonable people who can be absolute intolerable shitheads, and they may eventually learn their lesson, but sometimes they learn their lesson too late. Sometimes you can’t choose your own family. Sometimes wonderful people die before their time. But by the end of the episode, after all the regrets and sadness there is forgiveness. And it just brings me hope because no matter how shitty it is that MLP’s message in the end is to still look up, still remember, and still be good to each other. It’s not being happy and sappy and everything is a utopia kind of thing, it reminded me that even in a seemingly wondrous place like Equestria there’s still these real things happening, but they can STILL have their happy ending eventually. It’s this kind of deep positivity I truly adore, and what keeps my gears running if not most people’s. 

Like, I truly related to this episode and it instantly became my favourite of the entire series. None of my favourite characters were in it. It just told a beautiful story and pulled it off flawlessly. Maybe there was good timing too, as my father passed away this year. His death was not pleasant to watch. People complaining “HOW COME WE DON’T KNOW HOW THEY DIED” piss me off to no end. I don’t want to remember how my father died. I don’t want to relive that memory. And IT’S NOT THE PART YOU SHOULD REMEMBER ABOUT THE PERSON ANYWAY, BUT THEIR LIFE. 

I UNFORTUNATELY SPOILED PART OF THE ENDING TO MYSELF, ah god it’s Madoka syndrome all over again!

Not to that degree though. 

The story reminded me a lot of GTA IV in a way, as in it was gritty and dark and brutal, and the ending bittersweet. I’ve played other games similar with funner and lighter stories, or at least less punch your guts out dark (like San Andreas! That one was amusing, to say the least!) and mostly I don’t care too much about the story in a game. I’m so focused on the gameplay the story comes in a far second and unless it’s so bad it’s noticeable I don’t mind either way. 

Someone once said in a comment or review in the unending cesspools of the internet that this game would have benefited highly from having a less linear story, as in since the theme of duality between officer and triad is so blurred, giving the player a choice as to which they prefer would make a lot of sense, but I’ve heard doing something like that is tough to wrap a story around, usually causing it to far apart. Who knows. The separate EXP bars were nice enough, but the funniest thing is that for me I liked the face bar the most because not only did it allow me to customize the higher level I was but it gave me a huge amount of buffs to my melee fighting that wasn’t just another combo move that I suck at using. (Late-game I used the leg-break move far more than before though. I beat three of the four (I have no clue where the fourth one is) fight clubs with very little combos. I just alternated from grappling and punching.

There was one feature I was unable to take advantage of very often, where you leap over obstacles and it goes slow-mo as you shoot? (Same with driving and shooting at the same time) because as a PC Gamer I am used to shooting things with the mouse. I attempted with the controller a few times and it was frustrating to say the least, so whenever shootouts happened I moved with my xbox controller and shot with my mouse. (On the contrary I prefer driving and combat with the controller) But if you were to drive AND shoot at the same time or leap over into bullet time, you’d need far more hands than necessary to use the tools I did. So either I tried to avoid it entirely or sucked it up and used solely the controller/keyboard for the entire time. It gave me a degree of difficulty that I can’t fault the game with, just my weird gaming tendencies. P: