Monday 18 September 2017

Episode review: S7E19: "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You"

I said I had something relating to HasCon I wanted to mention, so I'll do that now. I am distinctly iffy about the way VIP passholders got to enter a draw to pick an OC's colour, cutie mark etc for the DHX animators to feature in S8. No, it's not quite "We'll put your existing OC in the show" but it still feels uncomfortably like a rich kids' toy. I'd have been happier had this prize been auctioned off for the HasCon charity. (Was there one?)

Punk Rarity makes her entrance
So green is your colour now, eh?
Anyway, on to Saturday's episode. "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You" saw the return of Josh Haber to writing duties for the first time since the S6 finale, and not everyone was delighted when they saw his name on the title card. Personally, although he's not my favourite writer, I don't have all that much against him. Come with me past the break if you want a short waffle about this.

This was a slow burner of an episode, and it's one that I definitely enjoyed. Against what many people think about Haber, it largely came across as an old-fashioned domestic slice-of-life story, not a million miles removed from the sort of thing we used to get in the old days. It was a nice change of pace from "Daring Done?" last week, too, and probably what I needed after that.

There was a good deal to do for several side characters in this episode, with everything from Rose's substantial part to Granny Smith and Grand Pear sharing a (pear!) stall in the background. We even got a small speaking role for Carrot Top, for the first time in forever and a day. No lines for Derpy, though she did appear briefly in the queue at the beginning of the episode.

Pinkie messing up the Cakes' house
Insert very obvious spaghetti joke here
It was very nice to see Zecora again, since it really had been too long. I'd forgotten how much her rhyming could get on my nerves at times, but I'm willing to forgive that here. What I'm less willing to forgive is her idiotic refusal to label her potions, an omission that was the primary cause of the episode's main plotline – the Case of Rarity's Hair. Bloody well learn to keep records, Zed!

Rarity's mane was the real star of this episode, even when half of it wasn't there. It looked like the result of a particularly haywire CMC experiment at times, but did give us some of the ep's many puns, of which Vanity Mare was probably the best. Still, without that lost hair we wouldn't have had punk!Rarity, which was by a distance the greatest thing in the episode.

We got a whole boatload of callbacks in "Mane Thing", some of them going a long way back. Mr. Breezy, now with Scottish accent (from the Welsh-Canadian Richard Cox, Snails' VA!) appeared for the first time since "The Show Stoppers", but even that was trumped by Applejack's reference, quite late on, to Rarity's generous tail-snipping back in the second half of the S1 pilot.

Zecora mixing her potion
I feel Zecora would get on well with Wallace
Other than the setup, one of the few problems came right at the end: is it really okay to send a magazine photos you took of your friend without her knowledge, even when she was hoping to do a shoot for it? Still, the moral of being beautiful on the inside was predictable Pony fare, but none the worse for that. Even the Cake Twins didn't annoy me quite as much as usual, and for its refreshing change of pace this one scores well.

Best quote: Rarity: "Does this look messed up to you?"

Yays
  • Raripunk!
  • Zecora made her first significant appearance in ages
  • Lots of lines for the secondary cast
  • All those callbacks
Neighs
  • Another problem that could have been so easily avoided
  • Consent form? What consent form?
★★★★

19 comments:

  1. Another simple 'slice of life' episode get 4 stars ;) Rarity episodes are usually entertaining.
    My high point of this ep is Starlight single line when they tried to 'revive' Rarity hair but failed because Pony Mane cannot be created by magic, Rarity says she want an actual mane and Starlight casually respond : 'It has to come from somewhere'. That single line made me want to analyze how Equestria Magic works. So if you materialize a pie from thin air, the true is that you 'steal' a pie or the combined ingredients of it from somewhere else? Material conservation ? You dont actually create thing from thin air, you just take some material that already existed and put them in place. Yes magics are really not good at all, their results are usually disastrous. Starlight gave me many semi-scientific explainations about how magics works since she joined the show, fantastic.

    Or i am just overanalyzing stuffs...

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    1. You're overanalysing, but we all do that! :D And as someone pointed out, Twilight could do a moustache spell in S1, so she clearly can do hair magic!

      'It has to come from somewhere'

      I really like this, though. It reminds me of the Discworld books, since the way magic works there is (usually) similar to that.

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    2. Reminds me of what Starlight told Trixie in "All Bottled Up", that you can't make something disappear entirely, only teleport it somewhere else. The other side of the same coin, if you will.

      (My apologies if this goes through multiple times. The comment form doesn't appear to be working right in my browser.)

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    3. "So if you materialize a pie from thin air, the true is that you 'steal' a pie or the combined ingredients of it from somewhere else?"

      The central MacGuffin of The Celestia Code hinges on this being the case! Nice to have the concept confirmed. :D

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    4. You're on a bit of a roll right now when it comes to getting your concepts canonised!

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    5. I suppose Twiluna is a bit much to hope for? (But I thought that about airship pirates, so...) XD

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    6. Wow, this ep gets so many comments XD, never seen an episode get that many comments.

      'Reminds me of what Starlight told Trixie in "All Bottled Up"'
      Good one, i want more Starlight's commentary about magics.

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  2. Derby appears right at the very end too. And it looks like she's cos-playing as Tridashie.

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    1. Yeah, so many little touches in this, and Derdashie looked great. The two Derpys (she's in the queue at the start, too) just didn't fit into the review.

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  3. A solid slice of life episode, but one thing does bug me, couldn't Rarity just use poison joke to make her mane grow back?

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    1. I'm guessing poison joke's effects aren't predictable, so she might end up with hair 30 metres long or something. :P

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    2. Except for that time they used it on Fluttershy because they knew it would make her voice deep. :/ And I didn't like it then either because it shouldn't have the same effect every time. I mean, it "wants a laugh", to quote Zecora. What's funny about the same joke told twice?

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    3. Ask any number of comedians. *cough* I like "Filli Vanilli" a great deal, but I'll admit that wasn't its greatest moment.

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  4. Wait, Grand Pear is in the background? O.o They keep sneaking things past me!

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    1. We Are Borg also noticed that in one semi-distant shot, Bon Bon is wearing Lyra's saddlebags. :) Not the first time, admittedly -- she did it in "Putting Your Hoof Down".

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  5. I really liked this episode. It was like having a relaxing walk around a place that you love. Not exciting or dramatic, but enjoyable, nevertheless.

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    1. That's a nice analogy. It felt very... Ponyville, I suppose.

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  6. I enjoyed this episode a lot, and I say that as a Josh Haber hater. He did a good job with this one. I was annoyed about the potion bottles being identical, but eh. No plot is perfect. As someone who didn't much care for Daring Done, this felt like the show being back on track for me.

    Plus, I had a mohawk for about fifteen years. I support Raripunk.

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    1. I have mixed feelings about Haber, and my favourite episode with his name on ("Stranger Than Fan Fiction") is a co-write with Michael Vogel anyway. This is up there in the upper reaches of my ranking of his stuff, though.

      Who wouldn't support Raripunk? She's awesome.

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