Mirror Magic Review · 8:51pm May 28th, 2017
When the Polish subs came out, I decided to wait for the English. The VAs add so much personality and life to the cast that, while I'm sure the Polish VAs are fine, it wouldn't be the same. Sure, it's not until August I'll see them, but eh.
But this is the one where Sunset and Starlight meet.
...I'm only human, people.
So, let's skip to the main event as the first few minutes are just setting up Juniper's magic mirror so she can be the villain. Sunset returns to Equestria to get a new journal from Twilight. The portal travel is redone from the first film and doesn't look right, Sunset's body is stretched out differently from Twilight's and the color effect is completely different. But this does lead to an amusing bit where the magic jumps out of the book and literally travels through the machine before hitting the mirror and spitting out Sunset. Why is it these portals literally shoot the traveler out of them? We saw this in Rainbow Rocks too. Though Twilight walked out of it in the end of Friendship Games so maybe we can blame Rule of Funny.
So, Sunset is a pony, and thus by default is Best Pony. Except... they got it wrong. I know they desaturated Sunset's hair color after Rainbow Rocks because apparently bright colors = evil. And I prefer the original colors but I got used to the new ones. Here though, they kept her coat color and now she looks worse than ever. The mane recolor throws off the color balance without her clothes to balance it all out, Sunset's coat is a vibrant yellow-orange while her hair is a desaturated and dull red and yellow. It just looks wrong, every scene I saw Sunset as a pony she looks miscolored in either mane or coat. Speaking of miscolored - her magic aura is red. You wanna talk evil colors, this is one of them, sorry but red magic is kinda evil-looking. And Sunset's magic aura has been seen in the first movie, both as a human and a pony it was teal, I know red is her color scheme in general, but her magic is teal. I can only figure they changed it to differentiate it from Starlight's magic color. Okay, I'll let it slide, but then go with yellow or gold, maybe imply her magic has evolved since her Daydream Shimmer transformation.
Also, naturally no Shimmercorn. Like she needs wings to prove her awesomeness.
Anyway, Sunset meets Starlight. And it is completely underwhelming. Apparently they already know of each other through Twilight. Which makes sense, I suppose, but the showrunners have to be aware of how much this meeting of the two would be anticipated. Having them be aware of the other already ruins the meeting. Starlight also hands over the new journal - which bears a combination of Twilight's and Sunset's cutie marks, shipping intensifies - and says Twilight isn't here, but she left this for Starlight to give to Sunset. So what should be Sunset's dramatic return to Equestria at last and her face-to-face meeting with Starlight Glimmer, is handled with all the grandiose of a friend down the street telling you to swing by their place and pick up your stuff from their roommate.
*sigh*. Really, this whole sequence is just lame. There's no drama or tension, it's treated like nothing special or significant is happening. Save for a moment's hesitation before entering the portal you'd think Sunset pops over to Twilight's place to visit and hang out with Starlight all the time. She doesn't even have any sort of real reaction to actually being back in Equestria. Well, she awkwardly doesn't remember her magic and tries to walk on her hind hooves a bit, which should be funny. But I'm distracted by her off-coloring and the lack of character involvement in events. In "Sunset Shimmer is Perfect" I rushed through her hesitation to return to Equestria as a joke with Twilight shoving her through with a one-liner. Here, the writing rushes through her hesitation. And it's obvious why, they want to get Starlight to the human world for the main story. But come on, the special is only 21 minutes, you can't add a couple minutes onto that runtime to let Sunset get some pathos about coming home and seeing Equestria again?
Anyway, Starlight obviously wants to come through and Sunset quickly picks up on it.
"Would Twilight agree to this?"
"I wouldn't say she wouldn't agree to this."
"That isn't a very convincing argument." *faic*
The two talk Sunset into bringing Starlight with her. And as Discord made fun of in Council of Friendship, why not, provided you keep an eye on them there's no reason Twilight and Sunset couldn't bring all their friends through the portal either way. Anyway, if I haven't said it before, Starlight's design as a human is fine, doesn't look bad at all but doesn't amaze me. I find it funny how ever since the first movie the characters all get a variety of outfits while the Mane Five are all basically palette swaps of the same T-shirt and skirt combo. They milk the "Starlight being a human and is weird" stuff for about 30 seconds and then let it go.
Anyway Juniper banishes the Mane Five into her new magic mirror. Sunset and Starlight come to the theater and Sunset is smart; she notices Juniper wearing Fluttershy's pin and after confronting her, grabs her hand and uses her empathy magic to read her mind and find out what happened. Then Sunset is dumb and tries to talk Juniper down. For her efforts the population of Mirror Dimension increases by 1. Starlight sees it and Juniper hears her gasp and goes looking.
We recycle the "Fluttershy tries to speak up while the group talks over her" joke that got old three season ago while the cast makes us aware they too know of Starlight, I guess it's common knowledge. Then the group's magical crystals get their power absorbed into the mirror where Juniper absorbs it to transform into a movie star-like supertall figure that looks way too much like Gaea Everfree. Why? I don't know. Also, they never explain where that mirror came from, a magic shot randomly hits it and transforms it. Maybe something in another of the specials showed that magic flying out and now it hits? I know that "it's magic and no one knows how to explain it" has been a recurring theme in the EqG series, but really, this makes no sense.
Juniper goes around the mall blowing kisses to people and posingjavascript:void(0); for pictures, which scares them. Ya know, maybe for the civilians this is scary, but I see a lot of CHS students here. You guys have dealt with like, four different magical demon attacks, this shouldn't even phase you people. Juniper isn't even scary, she's way overly tall, sure, but she doesn't look like a demon, she looks like a really tall person. I question even civilians being afraid of her, they'd be more like to stare and whisper. Starlight grabs the mirror and it gets thrown to the ground and cracks, causing the mirror dimension to begin cracking apart as well.
And now Starlight is basically playing keepaway with Juniper, including running around a glasses stand like an old cartoon chase. Starlight tries talking and asks if Juniper is really upset about losing her chance at fame, or if she just wants a friend. "I understand you, Juniper." Five minutes ago you didn't even know she existed! You haven't even carried on a conversation, or found out her backstory! You don't understand crap about her! Oh, they go for the "revenge" angle. Fine, that works for Starlight connecting with her, but man that was a dumb line before. Starlight hands Juniper the mirror and asks her to set them free so they can forgive her. Juniper takes the mirror back, banishes Starlight just as the mirror dimension crumbles, and the eight heroines all die.
No, not really, but it'd make more sense with how this story has gone. Juniper apologizes and is immediately forgiven as Sci-Twi, Starlight, and Sunset rattle off their own sins. Yeah, when you list them off like that its almost like Juniper was a really disappointing and pathetic villain. Pinkie lampshades they are a very forgiving group. They gather back at the portal as Starlight goes to head home, when Twilight writes she doesn't mind if Starlight stays for a few days. And everyone laughs.
Man this was lame. You know how I said A Royal Problem would either be really good or really bad because a premise like that allows for no in-between? This was like that, only the coin landed the other way.
This is not a "Starlight and Sunset team up" special. They meet, chat a bit, Starlight goes to the human world and Sunset buys her ice cream, then Sunset is sucked into the human world. Starlight saves the day, but Juniper is such a boring and unthreatening villain that I don't care. And she never even meets the Humane Six until the very end, and even jokes she didn't get to spend much time with them. There's also jokes plenty in this special but most of them fall flat save for the very occasional chuckle. This special is the same length as a standard episode, but feels maybe half that long for how much nothing happens. They had such a promising concept and do pretty much nothing of substance with it.
This special botches Sunset's return to Equestria, botches her appearance, her meeting Starlight, Starlight visiting the human world, the two teaming up to fight a villain, the villain herself, and the villain's defeat. Let me take a moment to reflect - did anything in this special go right?
... we'll probably be getting more Sunset x Starlight clopfics now that the shipping for them will take off. Beyond that, I got nothing. This was just one big disappointment.
It wasn't perfect or anything mind blowing but honestly for a first meeting between the two it wasn't bad; in fact I thought it was pretty funny how Sunset forgot how to pony and Starlight had trouble trying to human at first. Plus they changed the color of Sunset's pony aura color from teal to crimson.
As I have continued to say time and time again they are using these specials for beta testing so they can see if this would make a good series and honestly with some more money put into the writing this could be something great.
Again the special wasn't perfect and totally mind blowing like we expected it to be but it was a good start and introduction
4550086 We've been asking for a series in increasingly louder volume since Rainbow Rocks. If they were gonna do it they would have by now.
Yeah, the special had plenty of flaws, but I am glad that Sunset returned to Equestria for a moment and met Starlight. I wouldn't exactly call it bad, but it's not something I'd consider good as well. Oh well, at least I can eagerly await the Sunset/Starlight stories that are sure to appear.
4550090 Seems to be with these specials they are well on their way to that if you ask me. Example, the magic light that infects the mirror. At the end of Legend of Everfree we see how many of them? 7 right(correct me if i am wrong please). in this last short we only saw the one light, so that begs the question what happened to the rest? Where did they go and what(or who) did they infect?
Plus at the end Twilight said Starlight could stay there for a few days so I strongly believe they did it this way to test fan reception and honestly so far the reception has been either good or meh but I haven't seen anyone say they 'Hate' the shorts, criticize them sure but overall the general thought is that they're good decent or meh.
So if they are making it into a series it would make sense for them to test things out this way instead of just doing a whole other movie especially since it seems they are running out of movie ideas and wanna do more short things like this in order to focus on the different girls in different situations; least thats my opinion, they could TOTALLY be doing something else and I could just be thinking way to much into it
4550098 Give it a few hours to a day at most...they will soon flood this entire website(May or may not do one myself)
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Also...this face...Fluttershy has competition
If you watched a previous special you might understand why the villain was this way but naturally you have to just trash it because Starlight has to share screen time with Sunset Overrated.
Edit: I made a blog that's both explaining this comment and it's an apology directly to you. I'm sorry Drakey.
4550109 You know, I was just thinking the other day that I'm sick of you bitching every time I dislike something that happens to have Starlight in it, but blocking you seemed a bit harsh. Thanks for helping me make up my mind.
4550104 Yeah, got that adorable.
4550104
That face is both cute and a touch creepy...
I'm not sure what to think of this one. I think our expectations going in were set so high that we overlooked what we got. Fanfiction has built up our image of what should happen that when it does happen, it's a little disappointing.
Let's see where they go with this, I guess.
4550220 I can see where your coming from and your right, fimfic and fanfics and heacanon have set the bar VERY high and not all the expectations were met which I kinda expected but honestly I'm just happy they met officially and this pretty much confirms that they don't have to be scared to do crossovers
I think the biggest problem is that this is still technically a kids show, and besides Spongebob not too many kids shows are written well. The adult fandom seems to be fading out imo (Only a few years ago, most of my friends confessed to enjoying it if even a little, but today none of them really care about the series) and I wouldn't doubt if any care the writers of the show have towards writing good stories for mlp would begin to fade away once their main cash cow returns to little kids who wouldn't care about a bad story.
I wish Sunset hadn't read Juniper's mind- at least then it could justify her being caught by surprise by the mirror. Instead, nope, she just saw her friends get trapped like that and she doesn't even duck. Then its time for Starlight to save the day, as if season 6/7 didn't already have enough of her. I really wish they hadn't had to force an emergency but rather just had a more minor friendship problem. Or at least let the combined Humane Seven blast their way out of the mirror. And I still miss Sunset's old colors- it works with her new outfit, but as you said, looks weird as a pony.
And why do they have to keep teasing us with Sunset and Princess Twilight almost meet up but don't? That deleted scene from Friendship Games, no mention of Celestia even, this fell far short of most other fanfics. And of course no Shimmercorn. Aside from that combined Sunset/Twilight logo on the new journal, even with Sunset's short return to Equestria, this special wasn't worth it (the other two were better).