My Little Pony: Dancing in the Clouds (Review)

Yeah... I watched this. In fact, I plan on watching all of the Generation 3 specials that are on Netflix. These are the ones there, and the green ones are the ones I've already suffered through:

Dancing in the Clouds (19 min.)
Friends Are Never Far Away (21 min.)
A Very Minty Christmas (44 min.)
The Princess Promenade (50 min.)
The Runaway Rainbow (46 min.)
Twinkle Wish Adventure (44 min.)

That's way too much time I've wasted and will waste in the future. So why did I do this? Honestly, just so I could say I've seen G3 (or at least part of it). Not my smartest move, but at least I can review them now. Starting with atrocity #1: Dancing in the Clouds.

Help me...

My Little Pony: Dancing in the Clouds (Review)

Given that this is the first thing I'm reviewing from this show, I should introduce the characters here. The problem is, it's been several months since I've seen this (and no matter how much I forget, I'm not rewatching it), and even if that wasn't the case, the characters are so bland that I probably would forget them quickly no matter what. It doesn't help that not every character is in every special, none of them have proper introductions (at least not in the specials I've seen), and they all look and sound rather similar. But I'll try anyway to cover them anyway. Minty isn't in this one. She likes green and is a klutz. Think Derpy Hooves, except even less funny and with less character. I don't care about her. Rainbow Dash may or may not have been in this one. She says darling a lot and likes rainbows. I don't care about her, either. Pinkie Pie also may or may not have been in this one. She talks slowly. I have yet to find another "personality trait" for her. I care even less about her. Then there's someone who I'll just call Timmy Turner who can wish upon stars (I think). I don't care her in the slightest. Then, there're other characters. They exist, but they might as well not. Words can't even describe how little I care about them.

In the story, things happen... I think. The ponies are preparing for a dance for something I don't remember (are you noticing a trend here?). They're having trouble, or at least I think. It's conveyed so poorly that it's hard to tell whether or not there's actually a conflict. Yeah, they keep messing up, but their only reaction to their failures is to laugh like it's no big deal, so I don't feel like it's a big deal either. Someone tries to tell Timmy Turner to wish for help and she eventually (emphasis on "eventually") does. Some pegasus named Star Wishes (whose personality only seems to be being majestic) appears and agrees to help them, but the other ponies can't know about her existence. She does (and through means that would make the other ponies suspicious if they actually had brains), and the story ends. If that sounds like it can't fill up 19 minutes, congratulations! You have at least one brain cell! There's a lot of filler, and a lot of it is visually uninteresting dancing. It could've at least looked nice, but everyone who worked on this was lazy.

On that note, let's talk about the animation. It's crap. It's slow, the character designs are too similar and have unexpressive eyes, the environments and set-pieces don't stand out, and the generic color palettes certainly don't help anything in that regard. On top of all of that, the animation just looks low-quality in general. Nothing looks terrible, but nothing looks even remotely nice, either. The voice acting is passable (with the exception of Pinkie Pie, but she might not have actually been in this one), but nothing notable. In terms of the soundtrack, nothing stands out. I guess that means it's doing its job, but once again, it's generic and unmemorable.

As for the dialogue, well, it's not TOO bad. Nothing stands out as being horrible, but nothing's memorable here, either. It's mostly just generic, uncreative, and uninteresting. Like everything else in this special (and this generation as a whole), no thought or effort was put into it. It was made to sell toys to little girls, and nothing more. Lauren Faust wasn't here to actually try to make quality, this was just intended to distract kids for a while, which is one of the worst things children's animation can be. They could do so much better if they tried, but since kids will watch anything, they did the bare minimum (and even that's debatable). It's shameful, and it bores any adults who are forced to watch these things with their children.

Overall, this special had nothing going for it. It had too much filler, a lazy story, no conflict, bad animation, boring characters, and everything else was subpar at best. It's a bore to look at, a bore to listen to, and just an overall boring experience. It's only 19 minutes, but it feels like it's so much longer, and you'll be checking the time constantly, waiting for it to end. But there'll still be 16, 15, 13, 10, 8 minutes left. And when it finally ends, you're left with a hole in your body, like you got nothing out of the experience. Avoid it all costs. It's not worth 19 minutes of your life. Even if you want to watch it just to have an opinion on it (like me), don't. Just judge it from the information in this review, and other, more detailed reviews, and then pretend you watched it. You'll get the same results with less of the boredom.