Equestria Girls Summer Specials

I had big hopes for the Equestria Girls Summer Specials. They didn’t live up to most of them, but they weren’t terrible. They at least avoided being the disaster that was the Mahoromatic Summer Special, and somewhat rehabilitated the good name of summer specials.

The best of the three turned out to be “Dance Magic”, a little story about the Humane 7 making a music video to try and raise money for Camp Everfree. The Crystal Prep girls are also making a music video and go at it in the usual cutthroat Crystal Prep way, stealing Rarity’s idea and driving her into a panic, until Rarity overhears them talking and realizes they’re also having a crisis, and offers to join forces with them to make a joint video. This is what I wanted out of the summer specials: smaller-scale, slice of life stories that show what the Humane 7 get up to when they aren’t fighting demon hipster chicks. You know, like the main show. It was also the first time Equestria Girls Rarity has gotten any kind of part in anything. Her deathly white Tim Burton skin freaks me out even more than Rainbow Dash’s Bolian blue skin, and her personality and accent make zero sense on a human teenager, but it was still nice to see her be the focus for a bit.

The other two specials, “Movie Magic” and “Mirror Magic”, form a two part story that ends in a small-scale battle against another demon hipster chick. “Movie Magic” is way too much like an episode of Scooby-Doo for my taste, but I did like the villain, Juniper Montage, a Daring Do fangirl with delusions of grandeur.

“Mirror Magic” is the better of the two. It shows the first meeting of Sunset Shimmer and Starlight Glimmer. Starlight sweet-talks Sunset into letting her come visit the “human” world, where she is the very image of a 2010’s teenager, with her stocking cap, vest, and distressed skinny jeans. Juniper Montage, meanwhile, has acquired a magic mirror that grants her wishes, and eventually uses it to trap the Humane 7 and turn into a demon hipster chick, only stopping when Starlight extends a hand of friendship and offers to forgive her for what she’s done.

I was excited to see Starlight and Sunset meet, but unfortunately “Mirror Magic” doesn’t do a whole lot with that. Starlight helps Sunset learn to stop worrying about the future magic attacks and enjoy her life, but that didn’t seem like a lesson that needed to come from Starlight; it could just as well have come from any of the other Humane 7. Pinkie Pie, maybe. Or Sci-Twi, since she dealt with a similar problem in Legend of Everfree when she was constantly worried about turning into Midnight Sparkle again. Starlight also connects with Juniper over their mutual past evil, but that didn’t seem like it needed to come from Starlight either; it could just as well have come from Sunset, or even Sci-Twi. Basically, Starlight being in the special at all felt superfluous. Juniper was interesting enough to carry the special without introducing another character.

On the other hand, I realized on my second viewing that Juniper is more like Starlight than she is Sunset or Sci-Twi: she has the same kind of social disability and lack of perspective that Starlight does, failing to realize that she doesn’t fit the part of Daring Do at all, even if her famous director uncle was willing to risk a bunch of the studio’s money on such a risky, nepotistic casting choice. Of course, she’s just a teenager, and a lot of teenagers are like that and grow out of it. I would have liked to see this similarity between them bear more directly on the outcome, though. It’s the eternal curse of the Equestria Girls stuff: between the running time and the amount of plot they need to set up, they aren’t always able to play things out in the best possible way.

Starlight acts pretty different in this special from how she normally does, and I’m teetering a little on whether it’s “seeing new sides of Starlight” or “out of character”. We’ve never seen her be as ebullient and excited for new things as she is here. Usually, Starlight prefers orderly, controlled, and predictable, and running off to another dimension populated by weird hairless ape versions of the people you know where you can’t use magic, your chief talent and usual solution to everything, is the opposite of orderly, controlled, and predictable. She is changing, though, so I’m not willing to yell “Out of character!” unambiguously. There were some nice little touches that were very Starlight. She makes a total mess of eating that ice cream cone, and that’s probably because she doesn’t know how to use hands, but she also doesn’t seem concerned about it, and that’s probably because of her lack of social awareness.

I would’ve liked to see Starlight and Sunset clash a little, or at least contrast in a more obvious way. They are very different: Sunset is mature, easygoing, and sociable, while Starlight is nervous, tightly wound, and tactlessly blunt, and I wanted to see those aspects play off each other more than we got. Maybe if Starlight had panicked and mistakenly caused the magical problem, like she usually does in Friendship is Magic, it would’ve made an easier path to that kind of dynamic.

Much more than Friendship is Magic, I feel like Equestria Girls should come to a graceful conclusion in the near future. Friendship is Magic is broad enough in scope and has a good enough track record that, even though I fear it can’t go on past Season 8, I’d also keep faith if I heard they were going for a Season 9. Maybe even a Season 10, depending on how Seasons 8 and 9 are. Equestria Girls, on the other hand, feels like it’s getting pretty close to tapped out. I had a story idea here for a final Equestria Girls movie, but it got pretty long so I split it out into a separate blog.

The Equestria Girls Summer Specials didn’t quite meet my raised expectations, but they were still pretty good, offering the nice change of pace from world-ending demon hipster chicks that I was hoping they would. If the Equestria Girls franchise continues somehow, I hope they’ll move more towards this format.