My Episode Review on “Rainbow Roadtrip” · 2:41pm Nov 5th, 2019
Greetings, my good friends.
This is your friendly film, TV show, and episode reporter here with another review.
And today, having finally seen this MLP installment over a month ago, I'll be making my 6th episode review on MLP's "Rainbow Roadtrip".
Here's the summary of it:
Rainbow Dash has been invited to be the guest of honor at a Rainbow Festival in a town called Hope Hollow. So, she and her friends, Twilight Sparkle, Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie travel by balloon to visit Hope Hollow, where its mayor, Sunny Skies, anxiously awaits their arrival.
However, when the Main Six arrive into town, they notice something oddly peculiar. Not only is there no festival (yet), but the town and its residents are completely devoid of color.
With Mayor Skies desperately seeking their help, will the Main Six figure out what's going on? Or will Hope Hollow be forever colorless?
I really must say, this was an installment of MLP (G4) that I couldn't help but immediately fall in love with. Even in a sequel-styled format to the MLP film from 2017, I thought this special delivered marvelously.
For example, the music and songs of this special were wondrously melodious and heartfelt. I mean, admittedly I didn't think some of the lyrics to the songs were the most in-beat to one another, mainly in terms of rhyme. However, the touches of Daniel Ingram and William Anderson were elements that I found to have helped the songs overcome that setback.
The story by Kim Beyer-Johnson, and the direction by Gillian Comerford, were nicely done too. Having disliked Johnson's work in Season 8's "Non-Compete Clause", and mostly plain enjoyed her work in Season 9's "Sweet and Smoky", I thought that this was the best she's done for the series. She and Comerford gave this special incredible heart and emotion, and the humor they incorporated was undeniably funny. The romance between Sunny Skies and Petunia Petals, might I add, was wonderfully executed and cute.
The animation that was used with this special was likewise gorgeously done. It was fun to see the episode be the 2nd G4 installment to use Toon Boom Harmony, which gave a noticeable combination of both a cinematic and made-for-TV feeling. The brightly-colored visualization of it all was what I found to be particularly eye-catching.
Finally, the characters, old and new, were absolutely fun in this special. I love how Johnson and Comerford were able to retain why we love the old characters so much, especially compared to Johnson's work in "Non-Compete Clause". It was Rainbow Dash in particular whom I found to have the best role out of the old characters. The new characters, along with the town of Hope Hollow, proved to be amazing additions to the world of MLP: FiM, such as Mayor Sunny Skies, and the Hoofingtons, the latter whom I'd like to add had an awesome Mr. and Mrs. Howell-vibe about them. To boot, the episode's vocal ensemble portrayed their characters beautifully, and there was perfect character development throughout.
In the end, "Rainbow Roadtrip" proved to be an amazing and worthwhile installment of MLP's fourth generation, with little to no flaws as a plus.
So, I rate "Rainbow Roadtrip" five out of five stars.
The characterizations were my favorite part of the whole thing also.
I didn't like the pacing. It also felt drawn-out and longer than it was supposed to be.
The animations and characters were pretty good, but at the end I was left with a sense of disappointment. I kept expecting the problem to be more arcane in nature.
Although, you could say that the plight of Hope Hollow is meant as an allegory for how people have stopped connecting with each other in the wake of the Internet and how this generation is apparently the loneliest generation we've ever seen...
I'll definitely have to look into this special.
This is where Rainbow Dash was at her greatest. Hell, the rest of the girls were written well and I'm glad there was no villain this time. It felt like watching a Pre-Season 6 episode.