Fillies, gentlecolts, and foals of all ages, welcome once again to another edition of the My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic recap/review. After an epic 2-part opener that not only gave us a lot of history building, but set in motion a branching story arc for the majority of the season, the anticipation for what’s to come next in this series is definitely high. How did this week’s episode fare? Let’s find out with a review of “Castle-Maneia”.
Celestia and Luna's old castle
The episode opens at Twilight Sparkle’s library as she’s starting get frustrated over finding no information in any of her books about the mysterious chest from the previous episode, or the location of the keys needed to open it. She gets a letter from Princess Celestia telling her that the information she may seek might be found in the library of the old castle where Luna and Celestia lived. A castle that feels haunted and spooky.
Applejack and Rainbow Dash are once again in competition with each other over who is the most daring darer. And when both of them are tied, Applejack suggests that the tiebreaker be held in the castle. When they get there, Applejack tells Rainbow that Granny Smith once told her that the castle is haunted by the pony of shadows. It’s believed that when Nightmare Moon was defeated, not all of her dark power was destroyed, and it may be alive and haunting the place. Meanwhile, Fluttershy and Rarity are also going to the castle as Rarity wants to take some of the old tapestry and restore it.
The spooky castle begins to get to everypony
What follows for the majority of the episode is a lot of your standard haunted house fare. Spinning walls, trap doors, ponies watching from behind paintings. Fluttershy becomes panicked when Angel Bunny goes missing, but since the bunny ends up being spoiled rotten by the castle, it’s definitely not that big of a worry. By the end of the episode, the castle gets all four ponies so paranoid, that when they bump into each other, they get even more freaked out, which finally gets the attention of Twilight who calms them all down.
They discover that there may be a pony of shadows controlling the pipe organ in the castle. But it turns out that it was Pinkie Pie all along. After everypony calms down, Twilight tells her friends that the only reason she wasn’t frightened by the castle was because of reading the journal of the two sisters. This gives her an idea about having the six of them write a journal about their adventures and the lessons they learned. The six of them feel safer knowing that there isn’t really a pony of shadows, but the episode ends with a shadowy figure lurking in the dark. Ominous future character or classic haunted house twist? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
So after a spooky trip into the old castle, how does this episode fare? Let’s break down the pros and cons.
PRO
I like that the show is wasting little time getting this arc into motion. The writers of MLP know that they’ve dangled one heck of an enticing prize in front of the audience, and hopefully this was a sign that we’ll get more about the chest early on, and maybe we’ll also see the first keys pop up early as well.
Josh Haber is the newest writer on the show, and this episode shows that he gets this show a lot better than some other writers. This episode played off a lot of character dialogue to one another, as well as playing off each pony. AJ and Rainbow Dash especially play off one another, and this is probably their best interaction with each other since “Fall Weather Friends” back in season 1. Same with Rarity and Fluttershy, who haven’t had this good a level of interaction since “Green isn’t Your Color”.
The ending intrigues me for certain, as it could either mean a villain down the line, or it could just be a way to end the episode on a scary note. I’m hoping more for the former, since the pony of shadows is a creature born from the dark magic of Nightmare Moon, it could make for an interesting villain. Only time will tell, but here’s hoping for the best.
The episode is starting to blend in CGI almost flawlessly now with the flash animation, which now means the show will have better animation and action sequences. We’ve come a long way from the far flatter feel of the first two seasons. The noticeable lighting effects are also great little touches
CON
Pinkie Pie being revealed as the one behind it all isn’t bad enough to be a con since it was predictable. But her mannerisms and comments felt more like trying to make her too silly, and with far less substance as classic Pinkie. The fears that the character was suffering from Flanderization from season 3 are still very much here. Hopefully that feeling changes soon, especially when we get to her episodes later this season.
For once the pacing didn’t really feel rushed, but at times, a bit too slow. It can probably be attributed to how the characters bounce back and forth from one another in a way that hasn’t really been done before in any other episode, but it definitely felt like it made the episode drag in certain areas.
The episode teases some interesting ideas like the journal of the two sisters, as well as the pony of shadows, but never really gets the opportunity to make anything interesting from them, and that’s the real shame of this episode. Maybe I’m just a sucker for history building in this show, but I’d rather have that than spend time with another haunted house trope after another haunted house trope.
In the end, this episode was still a fun episode. It was predictable, and followed almost every haunted house gimmick in the book, but I like that it seems to give some more promise to the arc we’re building towards this season.
RATING: 7.5 out of 10
Next week, it’s the long awaited return of everypony’s favorite adventurer. When the newest Daring Do book is delayed, Rainbow Dash and her friends meet author A.K Yearling to help her with the new story. Will we get some new Daring Do, or “Daring Don’t”? Find out in seven.
Until next week everypony.