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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Adventures in the Crystal Empire

Score: 95%
Rating: TV-Y
Publisher: Shout! Factory
Region: 1
Media: DVD/1
Running Time: 2 Hrs.
Genre: Animated/Family/TV Series
Audio: Dolby 2.0 Stero
Subtitles: Closed Captioned for the Hearing
           Impaired



Features:

  • Coloring Sheet
  • Sing-Along

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: Adventures in the Crystal Empire continues the trend of DVDs that just contain a small sampling of episodes from all over the series, in no particular order. In this DVD set, you get the first two episodes of Season 3 of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and then a sampling of episodes. It doesn't matter too much, since the first two episodes are the only ones that need to be watched together for continuity's sake, but still, don't expect a collection of all the episodes from Season 3.

Those first two episodes are the Crystal Empire story arc. Basically, an evil unicorn mage (with bad sideburns) named King Sombra has come back to the world after thousands of years of absence. Princess Celestia senses this, and of course, (for whatever reason) enlists Twilight Sparkle and her friends to take care of the threat by traveling to the Crystal Empire. Really, I hope the next season reveals why the powerful Celestia keeps sending her young apprentice off to take care of all manner of powerful magical enemies, dragons, and monsters. She’s starting to seem a little lazy at this point. That, or she’s a manipulative genius that’s trying to train up Twilight, gain control over the dragon Spike, and bring her sister Luna under her control for just the right moment when she will take over and make her power play. I have my theories. Er, yes, either way, Twilight and her friends band together again, fighting the evil magic in a rather unorthodox way. Basically, it involves running a faire to entertain the Crystal ponies, which keeps Sombra’s magic at bay. Meanwhile, Twilight searches for an ancient crystal heart which will help them defeat his magic once and for all. Ok, if all that sounds confusing, trust me, it’s a fun couple of episodes. There’s some completely new character design with the Crystal ponies, lots of screen time by Princess Cadence and Shining Armor, and lots of Twilight Sparkle fan service.

In addition to the two Season 3 episodes, there’s a bunch of really good episodes from the show (again, from all over Seasons 1, 2, and 3, in no particular order) bunched together on this DVD. Ok, I may be a bit biased since they all feature my favorite characters, but the "Sonic Rainboom," "It’s About Time," and "Luna Eclipsed" episodes are three really great episodes. "Sonic Rainboom" shows us the inner workings of the city of Cloudsdale, where the pegasus ponies live. There are some great scenes where we get to see how they make the weather, including the actual factory production of snowflakes and rainbows, which is a little amusing. But we also get to see a lot of Rainbow Dash and her character development, and of course, her famous Sonic Rainboom move. "Luna Eclipsed" is a rare episode that focuses on Princess Luna and her adjustment to normal life after being imprisoned in the moon for a thousand years. She finds that she’s basically the villian in Ponyville’s version of Halloween. Although she just wants to make friends now that she’s turned away from her evil past, she has a little difficulty not living up to her villainous reputation. Ok, I won’t lie here, "Luna Eclipsed" is probably my favorite episode ever, and I love just about any Luna screen time I can get, but I still think this is a really fun, really charming episode. Then, "It’s About Time" is a very entertaining episode featuring Twilight Sparkle and her struggle to understand the message that a time traveling version of herself came back from the future to tell her. In typical Twilight fashion, she freaks out a bit, and tries to over analyze and prepare for what she thinks is impending doom. And yeah, many believe that her appearance when she travels back in time is very much an ode to Metal Gear’s Solid Snake. And that, I need not tell you, is awesome.

The bonuses are ok. Again, you get a Coloring Sheet and a Sing Along. The Sing Along just features a song from one of the Crystal Empire episodes which has subtitles placed over it for convenience. The Coloring Sheet is a single page pdf that you can print out and color. Geez, one page? But anyway, that’s what you get. It’s a matter of opinion, but I do think these are some of the best, most entertaining episodes in the series so far. Hopefully the trend continues, and hopefully we get to see more story arcs (it would be nice to have more than just two episodes that connect in a season). For now, I’d say this is the best DVD to buy if you want to introduce someone, young or old, to this show. On a side note, be sure to check out the mobile game for Android and iOS. You can find a link below. It's actually pretty decent for a free game, and definitely impressive looking for a mobile game.



-Fights with Fire, GameVortex Communications
AKA Christin Deville

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