My Little Repeats 204: "Sparkle's Seven"

Rarity may actually look more concerning than Rainbow here...

S9E04: "Sparkle's Seven"

20 April 2019

My original rating: ★★★★

IMDb score: 8.6

The one with geese

Thoughts: The 200th episode of FiM was a great success at the time. Even Ghost Mike loved it, which is pretty rare for this late in the series. Certainly it's a good deal better than a lot of eps in Seasons 8 and 9, even if it can't match the utter hilarity of the 100th episode. "Sparkle's Seven" does well by the titular group of friends, it's solidly paced and it looks great. I particularly note its good dialogue, too: this isn't always the later show's strongest suit. I still don't much like the meme faces (Dr Ian Malcolm applies) and the Sibling Supreme stuff was a tiny bit forced, even if it did a job. The floor trap was somewhat mean-spirited, but it did give us that lovely (if short) Fluttershy and Spike chat. Zephyr was funny in his appalling way. But this ep was just nice, as well as being one of Spike's best episodes. I'm probably being overly generous here, but I'm just about letting "Sparkle's Seven" keep its four.

Choice quote: Spike: "You've been practising that speech, haven't you?"

New rating: ★★★★

Next up will be "The Point of No Return". Again, I don't care what Wikipedia says on the matter, that is not episode 200, but ep 201. I wasn't particularly impressed by it back in 2019, but I'll go in with the usual open mind.

UK PonyCon guest news: Ashleigh Ball to join AJ Bridel in attendance!

We'd known for a while now that the (series) voice of Pipp Petals, AJ Bridel, would be a special guest at UK PonyCon 2024. That in itself was an announcement that was decidedly popular among UKPC's multi-gen base. Then, the day before yesterday, we started getting teasers from the con committee that another major announcement was in the works. Of course, this led to a flurry of wild guessing, but at 7pm all was revealed: Ashleigh Ball will be joining UKPC in Nottingham too!

I don't think anyone much predicted this to happen. I don't have specifics at my hooftips as to whether she's attended any cons in this fandom recently, but I believe Ashleigh Ball has not been a Pony convention regular for quite some years now, since before Covid indeed.¹ Certainly the announcement has brought a lot of excitement, and I'd hope and imagine quite a few more ticket sales as well. I warmly congratulate everyone at UKPC who helped make this possible!
¹ She was at Vanhoover Pony Expo 2023, but they have a fairly major location advantage for VAs!

As for me, I am going to get there this year if I can. I've now bought a ticket, but it remains to be seen how much of the con I can actually attend. Hotel prices have soared since Covid, and with con tickets also rising above inflation as their own costs increase conventions are becoming, if not an unaffordable luxury, certainly one many people have to think harder about than they did five years ago. I may make a post here on this general subject in the nearish future.

But that's for another day. For now, I am still bouncing around like a bouncy thing. Meeting Actual Fluttershy, aka Andrea Libman was basically unbeatable for me, but Ashleigh Ball is one hay of a coup. It means UK PonyCon will have hosted four of the Mane Six's VAs in the last few years, and had Tabitha St. Germain not been defeated by her implacable work schedule last year it could even have been five. Who'd have predicted that five years ago? Certainly not me.

With Applejack's VA joining AJ Bridel (who I'm going to have to tell autocorrect is not "AJ Bridle"!) UKPC this year is quite clearly going to be AJCon! :D

Episode review: S9E04: "Sparkle's Seven"

Don't tell me you wouldn't watch this series

NB: this episode was originally advertised as "Twilight's Seven".

Fourscore and seven years ago, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic reached episode one hundred with the wildly over-the-top "Slice of Life". Here we are in 2019 and it's time for episode two hundred. While E100 was a thank you to the fans, E200 was trailed as being a thank you to the main voice actors, and indeed the Mane Six's and Spike's VAs were given "Story by" credits for this episode. How did it fare? Past the break, I'll have a look at just that.