First FimPressions: "School Daze!"

It's good to be back! Another year, another MLP season. Following on from the (mostly average) movie and all the world building of previous seasons, Twilight and Co. progress into being teachers of friendship, and all the trappings that come with it.

The focused students of each creature (I'm guessing they avoided using the term "race", for the potential real world implications) display their archetypes as one would expect. I don't hold this against the episode as it keeps everything consistent with what we know about the creatures' homelands, and the cultures that come with it. The only time I object to archetypes is when there are no other dimensions to the characters, preventing obvious solutions that are overlooked.

With these kids (I'm not going to spell out each of their names, that'd take ages), it uses these archetypes as a focal point of chemistry, clashing with Twilight's by-the-book lesson plans. When set in the rigid class structure, they are only getting superficial concepts of how friendship can be valuable. Yet when they skip class and go to do their own thing, they find many similarities which they learn through play.

I have mixed feelings on the cause of this episode's conflict. On the one hoof, I can understand why Twilight feels pressure from an archaic (and quite frankly racist) organisation, pressuring Twilight to follow the rulebook to the letter. But on the other, this feels as a rehash of the conflict from Testing Testing 123. Considering this is what got Dash into the Wonderbolts, it should still be a relatively recent memory.

However, I will cut Twilight some slack, given her body language. The eye twitch whenever she thinks about going against the rulebook shows the amount of pressure she's under, and given her difficulty breaking routines, it's still within her character. Still, I think acknowledging the potential limitations instead of proudly celebrating the strict routines would've been better.

There are a couple of small touches in this episode that stood out to me, adding to the depth of characters. Starlight being the one to give tough love and acting as the guidance councillor was a nice use of this controversial character. She has moved past her worries about falling back on toxic habits, and is the break from routine that Twilight needs. She is arguably closest to Twilight, save for Spike, with her talent for magic making perspective relatable.

It's also good to see how naturally the kids group naturally form friendship together, which feeds into the anti-racism narrative of this story. Chancellor Neigh-Sayer makes frequent condescending remarks about other creatures being a "Threat to Equestria", and deliberately takes an extreme interpretation of anything that goes wrong. He doesn't consider how his own restrictive rules are causing things to fall apart, pushing everything into his narrow view of the world.

It's Twilight and Co. who prove him wrong. The children have no basis for hate, despite their differences in culture, as I noted before. It shows that when we have cultural constructs which limit people's potential, then it's necessary to change and build upon those constructs for the benefit of everyone!

In conclusion, it seems that the writing staff have done it again! 8 seasons in, we have no signs of seasonal rot, with a consistent quality and the same glow the first episode gave me. I give "School Daze!" a final grade of A-.