Equestria Girls (Series)

After liking a bunch of cute Equestria Girls artwork on Pixiv, I became interested in checking out the series. I considered watching Friendship Is Magic first, since I was also somewhat interested in that, but I figured that would've been a huge time commitment, and that I probably didn't need to watch it to understand Equestria Girls. I also figured, I like cartoons about girls about high school girls not doing anything in particular, like Lucky Star and Kill Me Baby.

Now having watched Equestria Girls, I thought it was very cute. It's not as laid back as Lucky Star and Kill Me Baby though, since it does actually try to tell stories with significant conflict and character growth. That's not necessarily a bad thing, I just really like laid back shows. This series was also way more of a time sink than I had initially planned, especially once I decided to also read a bunch of the books. I began watching back in early-mid July. Also also, watching Friendship Is Magic first probably would've helped me appreciate Princess Twilight more.
 
Before I get into things, I wanna explain the order things are in, and what does and doesn't get linked too. Everything's in the order I watched/read it, or at least to the best of my memory. I tried to go in release order, but I didn't totally succeed. As for the links, I tried to only link official YouTube sources for the movies and shorts and stuff, but not everything is available through official uploads, so some things aren't linked too. Some things are also only officially available on YouTube through random compilation videos, but I just didn't bother scouring through those (unless you count the movie pairs, but those are just pairs). If anyone wants me to though, I'll gladly drop everything I'm doing to put together a proper watch+read list.

đźš© Spoilers For The Entire Series Ahead đźš©


My Little Pony: Equestria Girls

Yes this is actually what the first movie is called. I originally posted my thoughts on it in this Twitter thread.
YouTube Timestamp

Out of all Equestria Girls media, I think this movie was the most reliant on assuming viewers were already Friendship ls Magic fans. That makes a lot of sense though when considering this probably wasnt meant to be its own expansive subseries. Or judging by the Behind The Scenes, the plans that did exist for a subseries didn't involve just sticking to the human world.
 

I wouldnt say this movie is bad because its so tied to Friendship Is Magic, but I will say that I enjoyed it less than I probably could have because I haven't watched Friendship Is Magic. In particular, I found myself not particularly engaged with Twilight Sparkle as a main character. I still enjoyed her as a general character though. Regardless, I found her general clumsiness to be moreso painful to watch than endearing or funny.
 
I would jokingly say "this is me typing on this blog", but I'm typing this on a phone.

The other main characters were a somewhat intriguing to me, but this movie alone doesn't explore any of them very much. While I think it is a little jarring, I think Sunset's change of heart at the end of the movie was surprisingly effective, perhaps due to the voice acting, perhaps due to her giant sad cartoon eyes, or perhaps due to both.
 

When it comes to the supporting cast, I've heard a lot of people aren't a fan of Flash Sentry, but didn't really mind him. Sure didnt really like him from a visual design standpoint, but he was a pretty chill guy.
 

My least favorite characters were probably Snips and Snails, although to say even disliked them would be a stretch. Pathetic goon characters are great and all, but didn't find them funny.
 
I won't mention them again so just say now that over the course of the series, Snips and Snails did grow me a little bit.

I thought for the most part, the character designs were really nice. They're part of the reason why I became interested in watching this series after all. While think the original Friendship ls Magic character designs look nice as well I'm just more receptive to the characters being humans rather than ponies. The fact that the human versions of characters are always wearing clothes also just adds a lot of complexity to everyone's designs. My favorites are Pinkie Pie and Applejack.
 

These younger renditions of some of the main cast look extremely off to me. I think it might be the less exaggerated hairstyles that really throw their looks off. They're only used in this one photo though, so it's not really a big problem. It's just something I felt like pointing out.
 

Another design really just didn't vibe with was Sunset's 'she-demon' design. I think I might just not be a fan of the imp style face.
 

Something that kinda funnily took me by surprise due to not watching Friendship Is Magic is how friendship is straight up magic.
 

l'd say I enjoyed all the songs in this, but the only ones that stood out to me as catchy were This Strange World and Cafeteria Song. Cafeteria Song was my favorite. I really love this one particular 'stomp" move 5 of the girls do while singing.
 

Something that only stood out to me after watching later Equestria Girls media was how stretchy characters would get sometimes. I like the stretchiness, but didn't really miss it. It looked a little weird at times also.
 

From what I understand, this is a revelation that a lot of My Little Pony fans have but, it was pleasantly surprising how competently well animated and written this movie is for a Flash animated cartoon for little girls. Sure, it's moreso impressive just because the bar is so low, but regardless, it's still lively enough for me to enjoy it even as an adult.
 

Rainbow Rocks + Shorts


I don't really have much to say about most of the shorts in this series, but I wanna at least mention them in some capacity. (Also note: I'm grouping music videos in with the shorts) My favorites in this first set were Player Piano and Pinkie On The One. Guitar Centered had a pretty good punchline also. Twilight's presence in Perfect Day For Fun is a little strange timeline wise, but I won't dwell on it too much (I have other random things later in this series to dwell over (But also how does she have a phone? Is she just borrowing some else's spare phone?)).
 

As for the movie, I thought this was one of the best pieces of Equestria Girls media. To start off, I really like Sunset Shimmer in this movie, even if personality wise she's completely unrecognizable from the immediately previous movie. Her struggle to fit and be accepted after ruining her reputation for years was portrayed pretty well I think.
 

The Dazzlings are probably my favorite antagonists in the series, since they're delightfully evil, but also just a little bit incompetent in a way I think is funny. I also liked how their powers fed off people antagonizing and making enemies with each other. They contrasted with the protagonists' powers of friendship quite nicely.
 
They also look kinda fabulous

This movie also had the overall best songs I think. Both because they just sound particularly nice, and even though this movie has an upper hand over the others on account of straight up being about music, the songs were well implemented into the story which help add weight to them. My favorites were Better Than Ever, Under Our Spell, Welcome To The Show, and Tricks Up My Sleeve.

Speaking of the music, I figure now's a good time to mention a weird quirk with a ton of the songs, it doesn't actually sound like a lot of the characters are the one's singing. The song Shake your tail makes this especially noticable because Pinkie Pie and Applejack have solo singing portions that actually do sound like them. Checking the credits, turns out some characters do straight up have separate speaking and singing voice actors.
 

My one complaint with this movie is that I feel like if the main characters are such great friends, they should've recognized the tension growing among each other sooner. I get why they don't from a writing standpoint, and I don't think it's totally unreasonable that they didn't notice the rising tension sooner, but it did feel really obvious to me from the start, so maybe it would've been best to just alter how the tension was portrayed a bit.


Friendship Games + Shorts

 
My favorite of all the shorts this time around was A Banner Day. I also wanna bring up Photo Finished, just to say that I don't like this Photo Finish fellah.
 

Starting off the movie, I wanna point out this shot in the opening credits, just because I thought it looked cool. It's a little weird though that Sunset's portrayed as imposing. She isn't really portrayed like this for the rest of the movie.
 

Now for the actual movie, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it follows up on this one line from the first Equestria Girls movie.
 

I figured that was just gonna be a random, weird throwaway line but nope. There's another Twilight Sparkle introduced in this movie. To distinguish the 2, I've heard people use the names "Princess Twilight" and "Sci-Twi" to refer to the Twilight from the pony world, and the Twilight from the human world respectively. I assume "Sci-Twi" is short for "Science Twilight", since she likes science, but I've never heard anyone confirm Sci-Twi is short for anything. I'll be using those nicknames, but only when I feel like I need to. Sci-Twi from here on out pretty much replaces Princess Twilight, so in most cases I'm just gonna call Swi-Twi "Twilight Sparkle".

Anyways, I like Sci-Twi considerably more than Proncess Twilight. Due to not being strung to another show's universe, Sci-Twi feels like she's actually allowed to develop and grow alongside the other characters. I also feel like I have a fuller picture of who Sci-Twi is from only watching Equestria Girls.
 
I think Spike on the other hand is worse now after the replacement. (I haven't heard of nicknames for the 2 Spikes so I'm just calling them old and new) New Spike is a dog that just arbitrarily gains the ability to talk due to some magic shenanigans, and I find him considerably less enjoyable than the old Spike, since I'm not a big fan of dogs and how they normally act. Spike's not a very prominent character though, so this downgrading him isn't really a big deal in my eyes. (Side note: Is old Spike straight up older than new Spike? I remember hearing he's like 12,  which is young for a dragon I think, but as a dog that would make him notably mature, yet I thought new Spike was supposed to be pretty young, and they both look identical in age. Does old Spike just age down when transforming into a dog?)

As for the returning characters, I thought they all just felt unimportant, because all they have to lose this time around is a little bit of school pride I guess. I thought it was a little weird how competitive Canterlot students were, considering competitive spirit is what drove most of them apart in the previous movie. Sunset at one point actually points out how relatively unimportant winning the Friendship Games is, but then she (and the movie as a whole) just moves on after Fluttershy gives this extremely half baked reason to care:
 

Judging by the deleted scenes, Sunset was originally going to have her own inner-conflict in this movie, revolving around whether she should follow her passion in magic and move back to Equestria, or stay at Canterlot High with her friends, and I thought this would've been a pretty interesting progression of her character. What More Is Out There was even going to be a duet which I thought would've been cool.
 

Speaking of music, none of them particularly struck me this time around. The aforementioned What More Is Out There, and the opening credits theme are both a little catchy I guess, but that's about it.

Back to Twilight, there's some weird consequences of Sci-Twi replacing Princess Twilight. Mainly, a whole school of people seem to think that they know her and her dog which is incredibly weird. Principal Cinch guesses that everyone at Canterlot High is just pretending to know her as some sort of attempt at psychological warfare which I thought was a pretty funny guess. This pretty awkward predicament Twilight was in was actually fairly interesting, and worked pretty well plotwise as a way to keep her from just immediately befriending the other main characters.

Once the main characters do start befriending Twilight though, it comes off as especially sweet, since she very clearly needs some friendship. The archery scene in particular really tugged at my heart, especially since I can personally relate to the distress of failing overly competitive teammates.
 
I know in this image it looks like Applejack is the one making Twilight cry, but I swear in context she's being really nice.

To end off, one more consequence of Princess Twilight getting replaced is that now Sunset gets to assume the role of main protagonist sometimes, which I personally like to see.
 


Legend Of The Everfree

YouTube Timestamp
 
This might be my least favorite of the movies. Starting off with Twilight Sparkle again, I didn't even entertain the idea that she would turn back into Midnight Sparkle because Sunset Shimmer, who I felt would've more likely turned evil again (since it took the general Canterlot High students notably loner to let go of what she did), never did. Since I didn't entertain the idea of Midnight Sparkle coming back, Twilight's worries about her just came off as kinda annoying.
 
I hate that she's so off center here.

One weird consequence of Princess Twilight getting replaced that I didn't mention before is that Flash Sentry quickly wanes in relevancy, since Sci-Twi isn't particularly interested in him. It's just more noteworthy now that she's interested in this Timber Spruce guy instead.
 

You could argue Flash Sentry lost relevance back in Rainbow Rocks though, since he hasn't really done anything to directly affect the plot since the first Equestria Girls movie.

The main conflict involving Gloriosa didn't really work well in driving the plot in my opinion, since Gloriosa doesn't really have any good means to her end. She mostly just tries and fails to make Canterlot High's camping trip as good as it can be, which doesn't really feel like it directly leads the plot anywhere. Then she gets frustrated and turns evil near the end, in a fashion that I think feels too similar to Twilight Sparkle in the immediately previous movie. For better or for worse she also just doesn't get very much screentime because the movie tries to have this not very interesting mystery element. I will give the mystery some credit though, I was totally baited into thinking Timber Spruce was gonna be an antagonist.
 
Another thing that surprised me, I figured Filthy Rich would generally just be a more antagonizing antagonist, but he only got like a minute of screen time total, and he actually plays pretty fair and square.
 

Another another thing that suprised me was how this movie decided to spice up the "pony up" thing, and just give the main girls traditional superpowers. I could see why it would take that direction though, since the "pony up" stuff was pretty vague in what it could actually do before.


I don't really like the way the main girls gained their superpowers though. These magical rocks of mysterious origin just choose the main girls to be their wielders for no given reason, which just makes them feel unearned.
 
 
Despite not liking the overarching plot, I'd still say I overall enjoyed this movie, since there's still lots of moments of characters just being their usual, enjoyable selves.
 

Something that I think this movie shows off very well is just how varied everyone's outfits are. Even when everyone's wearing specifically Camp Everfree outfits, there's little details to each one different.
 

Some standout outfits in this movie I guess are the girls' magical transformation outfits, and everyone's outfits at the Crystal Ball.
 

My favorite songs this time around are the last 2, Legend You Were Meant To Be, and Hope Shines Eternal, so mentioning at the end here was totally part of my plan from the start, and I totally didn't forget to add this bit until later.


Summertime Shorts

While I wouldn't be surprised if these were intended to coincide with the release of Legend Of The Everfree, they aren't tied to that movie's plot or setting, so I that's why I figured to give this its own section. Just because something gets its own section though, that doesn't mean I'll say a lot about it.

I'd say either here, at with Better Together Season 1 is when the shorts start to actually become consistently enjoyable for me. Not that the previous sets of shorts were bad, I just thought a lot of the shorts were pretty whatever. My favorite shorts here were Make Up Shake Up, Raise This Roof, Pet Project, and The Art Of Friendship.

I also wanna mention The Canterlot Movie Club, just so I can mention Pinkie Pie's pet Gummy, because Gummy is cool and epic.
 


Better Together Season 1

As mentioned in the immediate previous section, I thought these shorts, and nearly all of the following sets of shorts were consistently enjoyable to watch.

 
Overpowered has some weird lore implications in my opinion. How much stronger could the girls' powers get? Could Twilight Sparkle mind crush people? Maybe Sunset could...
 

The Other Side is probably in my top 3 favorite songs from this series. Rarity is just so glamorous.
 


Magical Movie Night


Surprisingly (to me at least), this series never got any traditionally lengthed (22-ish minutes per episode) show, so these 3 specials are the closest it's got.

Dance Magic:


This was a particular chill special. It's not completely devoid of stakes, but the stakes aren't very big, and they're not really treated as such. Sure, there's this one moment with Rarity crying, but it's only one quick moment.
 

Not particularly important and this is most likely here just to be funny but, most the characters came off as kinda stupid in this one moment. Sure, I think they're decision is reasonable, but they barely seem to put any thought into it.
 

The titular song "Dance Magic" was pretty catchy; it's probably one of my favorite songs in the series. It was nice seeing the Crystal Prep girls get to participate in it so largely after their change of heart. I think the Crystal Prep girls were used very well in this special in general.


Movie Magic:

The movie sets here are among the neater locations in this series I think.

I did not expect Juniper to be the antagonist, which I think that alone makes this one of the least predictable plots in this entire series, at least, from my perspective. While she wasn't one of my favorites, and I definitely think what she did was bad, I do think she was one of the most reasonable antagonists in this series.

Rainbow Dash fumbles pretty badly when chasing Juniper. Sure, the in-universe explanation that Rainbow Dash was simply struggling to navigate locations she was unfamiliar with makes sense at some points, but there were also times where she just had to run in a straight line.
 
There's motion blur here, but Rainbow Dash is not in fact "zommin" as (I presume) the kids say. She was running at an incredibly normal speed.


Mirror Magic:

Starlight Glimmer is introduced here (to those like me who haven't watched Friendship Is Magic) and I enjoyed her presence. While she is the one to save the day, I wouldn't say the whole plot revolves around her, so I didn't really mind her presence the same way as I did with Princess Twilight in the first 2 movies. It probably also helps that this special was like a 3rd of the length of one of those movies, so I didn't have to put up with her for very long. It's kinda like she was a guest character.

For whatever reason, while I minded Princess Twilight acting like a pony while in human form, I actually enjoyed the inverse where Sunset acted like a human while in pony form.
 
For whatever reason, every upload I could find of this special on YouTube had slightly off color palettes.

I thought this was a pretty funny callback:

I also thought it was funny how Juniper used the titular magic mirror as a glorified vacuum at first.


Forgotten Friendship

YouTube

This was a pretty interesting scenario to put Sunset through, since everyone's opinion on her is completely flipped.
 

The execution is a little messy though. Since the only thing that has actually changed is people's memories, I feel like it would be really easy for Sunset to prove, at least to the other main characters, that she has changed. She's played a  pretty pivotal role in saving the day a few times throughout the series, so everyone just has weird, very explainable holes in their memories. The other girls think Sunset showed them altered photographs, but shouldn't they have at least some of the same exact photos on their own phones?
 

The entire plot also hinges on everyone just constantly forgetting Wallflower Blush for seemingly no reason.
 
Come on, Sunset literally talked to her earlier that day.
 
On the bright side, this special heavily featured Trixie, and she's great. Up before watching this, I didn't really think anything of her, but not she might be my favorite character in the series. She's so enthusiastic about things, which makes her a very fun character to watch.
 

To my surprise Princess Twilight is here, she stays in Equestria though. She acts as just a side character in this special, but it's neat to see that she wasn't just completely phased out of the series.
 

I thought the one song this time around, Invisible, was pretty good. I thought the way it got cut off near the end was a little funny, although the leaked uncut version has a noticeably sadder ending which I think would've worked pretty well.


Rollercoaster Of Friendship

Something I had noticed up to now was that Applejack and Rarity seem to interact with each other the most out of every possible pair of main characters. And I thought they bounced off each other super well, so it was really nice to see a special that focuses on the of them 2 specifically.


The antagonist this time around, Vignette worked well enough. She's a snooty celebrity, which I didn't particularly care for, but I didn't particularly mind either.
 

I was a little annoyed at first by how similar her magic phone seemingly was to the magic mirror from "Magic Mirror", but then I was pleasantly surprised and humoured when it was revealed that her magic phone doesn't actually trap you inside a pocket dimension, it just teleports you to a random white room.
 
How would this even work if this room was taken apart?

The immediately following stakes, that people could get squished to death if a large enough mass of them were to be teleported into the room at once, were just bizarre enough to be kinda funny.

The song at the end, Photo Booth was somewhat catchy. The outfits the characters wore while performing it were fabulous.


Also shout out to this old fellah. "He's a real one" as the kids presumably say.



Spring Breakdown

 
YouTube

Immediately after fueling Applejack/Rarity shippers, this special introduces some guy named Ragamuffin for Rarity to fall in love with lmao. He doesn't appear much if at all after this one special though, so Applejack/Rarity shippers can rest a little easy I guess.
 

Anyways, this special mostly focuses on Rainbow Dash, and up to this point she was already my least favorite of the main girls since she seems to most frequently cause problems, and here really feels like her worst. She spends the first third of the plot just looking for problems, and she ends up in a Boy Who Cried Wolf situation because of it (okay I guess it isn't entirely her fault that the magic symbol inconveniently disappeared but still, I think it's her fault partially). She also just generally causes a lot of smaller problems. I'm pretty she point is that she's supposed to be a better person by the end of this special, but the story kinda rushes her apology scene which makes her arc feel a little unfulfilling to me.

The way Equestria is involved in this plot is a little weird. The characters just happen to find an island that happens to have a portal to a cave in Equestria, that happens to be within walking distance of Celestia's castle. It's weirdly convenient. Up to this point also, the series seemingly didn't wanted any alternate world versions of characters to interact with each other, aside from the ending of Friendship Games which was just a quick gag, but at this point I guess that's just thrown out the window which was pretty surprising to see this late into the series.
 
The resolution of the plot involves everyone walking through Equestria as a shortcut to go home which I thought was kinda weird.

For a positive note, the side-plot involving Pinkie and the (as far as I can tell) unnamed chef was pretty cute.
 


Sunset's Backstage Pass

 
YouTube

This has probably the most novel story so far; it's a time loop! And it might be my single favorite piece of Equestria Girls media. This special also gets a lot of credit from me because it heavily features 2 of my favorite characters, Sunset and Pinkie Pie, and the story I don't think ever strays off of Sunset for even a single scene.
 

I will say though, this special isn't perfect. It feels painfully obvious from very early on that Sunset should just try and cooperate better with Pinkie. The way their cooperating actually plays out though is a little refreshing though. They do just conveniently stumble upon the antagonists after having their best day ever, but Pinkie Pie, and in general the path Sunset took by going along with Pinkie Pie, does directly help in defeating Post Crush.

Befriending this security guard also helped.

Speaking of Post Crush, because the time loop is being caused by people, I feel like theoretically they would've stopped eventually even if Sunset and Pinkie hadn't intervened. Even if they never got their perfect performance, Su-Z sounded pretty ready to just give up.
 

The way Sunset just completely misses some things strikes me as a little forced. Sure, the Dazzlings were behind some trees, but their stage doesn't seem far enough off to just never incidentally wander by it. Shouldn't Sunset have at least noticed people going towards it earlier? I guess I don't know how big the festival is, but Sunset looked around enough to think she's saw everything.
 

The Dazzlings themselves were great though. They sung a song that I liked, Find The Magic, and they also had this interaction with Sunset which I found pretty funny:
 

While I had immediately guessed Post Crush were potentially the antagonists near the start, The Dazzlings, combined with the fact Post Crush barely appears for most of the special, actually did actually throw me off a little bit.

The thing that personally bothers me the most about the plot is the lack of explanation behind Sunset getting trapped into the time loop in the first place. Did the shockwave just go over everyone else's heads?
 
 
Does the time loop encompass both the human and pony worlds? If it does, then that doesn't really pose any issues for the plot, but if it doesn't then that would open up a whole can of worms.

Post Crush's song, True Original, was pretty enjoyable. At first I thought it was one of my favorite songs in the series, and then I listened to it too much and started to find it repetitive, but now I'm thinking again that it's probably one of my favorites. Despite a chunk of the song playing earlier in the special, I thought it worked particularly well as a way to cap off the story.
 

To end this section off, here's a cute (and kinda sad given the context) Sunset doll that Pinkie Pie made:

And here's a cute drawing Su-Z made of Sunset and Pinkie:


Choose Your Own Ending Season 1

These Choose Your Own Ending shorts are a lot more consistently silly than the other shorts, and I like 'em a lot because of that.
 

For this set of shorts in particular, there's actually an overarching narrative that strings most of them together which I thought was neat. It's not a particular prominent or in depth plot, but it gives a little more weight to the shorts.

Some of my favorites were Best Trends Forever (its endings [Link | Link | Link]),
Rarity Investigates: The Case Of The Missing Bedazzled Boot [Link | Link | Link] (the Trixie ending is probably my most favorite short in this entire series),
and Happily Ever Party [Link | Link | Link] (I know I just listed half the shorts).


Better Together Season 2

DIY W/ Applejack and Camping Must Haves both prominently feature Applejack and Rarity which is always nice.

Some of my other favorites are Street Magic W/Trixie, Sic Skateboard, and How To Backstage.

Do It For The Ponygram! has this one moment that I found particularly funny.
 
Another good short, Festival Filters, had some funny image filter concepts.
Bigfoot!

As for songs, I'm unsure as to whether or not I like, or am annoyed by I'm On A Yacht. If Run To Break Free is to be taken at face value, Rainbow Dash looks even more pathetic in Movie Magic's chase sequence.


Choose Your Own Ending Season 2

There's not really an overarching plot like last season. Like last season however, there's some fun, silly shorts.

My favorite shorts (when including all the endings), are The Road Less Scheduled, and Costume Conundrum. I also particularly like the Pinkie Pie ending to Wake-Up Shake-Up.
 

This set of shorts however does include my least favorite piece of Equestria Girls however, the Bulk Biceps ending of Sock It To Me. It's the one piece of Equestria Girls media I'd say I straight up dislike, since I'm just not a fan of gross-out humor. That bodes pretty well for the series as a whole, considering that my only disliked piece is a single, minute long short.


Holidays Unwrapped

YouTube


To my surprise, instead of this being another 40ish minute special, it's a collection of 7 minute shorts. Since there's only 6 of them, I might as well talk about all of them.
 
Blizzard Or Bust: I thought faking a snow day seemed out of character for the main characters to do. Sunset viewing a snowflake's memories was also pretty weird.
 

There were a handful of delightfully silly moments though (including the one immediately above).

Saving Pinkie's Pie: This is probably my favorite of these shorts. The snowball fight was overdramatic, in a great, comical way. I also liked the thought bubble segment:
 
Dance Magic also had a really cute segment like this.

The Cider Louse Fools: While 4th-dimensional mind games are fun and all, this one didn't strike me as particularly funny. Also, why do the FlimFlam brothers goto the "Apple Family Annual Harvest And Cider Making Fest"? If they're a part of the family, I don't remember that ever being mentioned.
 
Winter Break-In: This had some fun hypotheticals. I thought it was especially funny though how the solution at the end of the day was just to ask nicely.

Dashing Through The Mall: This one was mostly just Zephyr Breeze being not very helpful. I guess he does happen to give a good suggestion by the end though, so I guess I'm fine with him.

O' Come All Ye Squashfull: I thought these outfits were extremely cute.
 
 
It wasn't very fun watching most of the main characters embarrassingly walk through school in them though.


Sunset Shimmer's Time To Shine

Archive.org

These first 2 books I read both felt like filler arcs, because they are explicitly in between Rainbow Rocks - Friendship Games, and Friendship Games - Legend Of The Everfree respectively. I don't really mind tha
 
This book seemingly seeks to answer a question I've been wondering for a while up to this point; What even is Sunset Shimmer's main interest? That might sound a little weird if you haven't watched the series, but every other main character has some sort of specific interest that they talk about all the time, deriving from their Friendship Is Magic counterparts' "cutie marks". For example, Rarity loves fashion, she loves designing outfits, she talks about outfits constantly. Sunset doesn't really have anything super obvious like that, and her cutie mark is a shimmering sun which isn't really elaborated on at all.
 

Now does this book actually give her something super specific? Eh not really. Her most defining trait is just stated as "being helpful". That's not really surprising though considering this is a piece of side media, so it doesn't actually want to affect the series's overall story too much, and there wasn't much media with Sunset to even work off of at the time.

One thing it does totally just introduce about Sunset Shimmer is her programming skills. At first I thought this book just took inspiration from The Science Of Magic, and just tried to make Sunset really smart, but from what I could find that short released August 1st 2015, while this book released May 5th 2015, so it seems unlikely to me. Besides, the short doesn't really involve Sunset programming, it just involves her using machines which she might've built. Her programming skills in this book are kinda nonsense by the way, as is seemingly common media:
"How did you ever create such a cool app?" asked one of the teammates.

"It was easy," said Sunset Shimmer. "I just used all the data I had in my computer from Rainbow Dash's wrist monitor."
For context, the app Sunset created is for customizing outfits. I have no idea how data from a wrist monitor would help develop that.

Anyways, I thought the book was alright. The plot's pretty simple, Sunset wants to help, she screws everything up, and then she amends her mistakes.

I don't think that Sunset design on the cover is ever elaborated on. From what I can find, the title and cover were just intended to tie in to this already existing toy:
 
I like how colorful this, and the book cover are.


Twilight's Sparkly Sleepover Surprise

 
While Sunset Shimmer's Time To Shine was largely unimportant to the greater plot, this book accidentally screws things up a little, because it redeems Twilight's teammates (excluding Lemon Zest for whatever reason) from Friendship Games before Dance Magic does. I know there later was a book about Dance Magic, so I wonder if that's addressed, or if this book is just ignored. I don't wonder enough to read it though.
 
Twilight also acknowledges Flash Sentry's feelings for her, and she actually seems a little interested in him, but that doesn't really go anywhere.

Moving on from that though, this was also an enjoyable story. It explores Twilight's social ineptitude in a way that the movies and specials never really do, yet still feels very in character to me. It also further explores how bad Crystal Prep students are at cooperation and friendship.


Rainbow Dash Brings The Blitz


Out of all the Equestria Girls books I read, to me this was the most worth reading, because it actually made me appreciate Rainbow Dash. Instead of creating a problems, she stands up to this guy, Comet Chaser, who does creates one.

She also grows a little more clearly than in Spring Breakdown, since we get to see more of her thinking things over and apologizing after storming off from her friends.

One complaint I do have though, why does Rainbow Dash form a team with her friends instead of other girls that actually wanna play Blitzball? Sure, her friends are down to play just to help out, but she probably could've put together a more passionate, athletic team of girls.

Despite me seeing it coming that Principle Celestia would just create an unofficial highschool Blitzball league at the end of the story, the main conflict was still satisfying to see played out because instead of it just being about stopping an antagonist, it was also about straight up just proving them wrong.


Twilight Sparkle's Science Fair Sparks


Strangely, this story doesn't really focus on Twilight Sparkle. The other "Canterlot High Stories" pretty specifically revolve around Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, but in this one there's quite a few scenes without Twilight at all.

I don't think this story handles the moral dilemmas with mind control super well. The characters come to agree that forcing people to just be nice and friendly (especially for a whole year like I believe Rising Star had planned) would be an infringement on freedom, but forcing people to dance for a few minutes isn't also bad somehow. Sure it's only for a few minutes, and no one really got hurt so it is forgivable, but I think it's still just a bad thing to do. The way Twilight tries to justify it doesn't really help:
Principal Cinch looked horrified. “That machine!” she cried, pointing to their project. “It hypnotized us!”
“No! It just put you in the exact right mood to dance,” Twilight tried. “Brainwashing not included.
And we’ve decided to keep our design secret, so it’s never used for the wrong purposes.”
Maybe I'd believe Twilight if it wasn't guaranteed to work, but they never show it not working on anyone. Having to keep the design a secret for safety reasons also isn't a very good sign to me.

Flash Sentry's also pretty questionable in this story. He ditches his science fair partner and stalks Rising Star just because of a random hunch he had, and he's just proven right for baselessly assuming Rising Star was up to something fishy.

One moreso nitpick I had, how did the main girls confuse a map of Crystal Prep for a map of Canterlot High? Do they happen to have really similar layouts? I don't remember the story ever really justifying that confusion.

On the bright side, Twilight and Rising Star didn't even win the science fair.


Pinkie Pie And The Cupcake Calamity

 
 
This story's kinda tough to swallow, because it spends so much time making you doubt Rarity's helpfulness, yet rather than Rarity really improving, in the end Pinkie just needs to have some faith in her. While I don't think I directly enjoyed the story going in that direction, I do respect it. Perhaps I'm salty because I didn't Rarity's idea of holding an exclusive event at a normally inclusive establishment. Ultimately though, Rarity's right. Limiting supply can increase demand.
 
2 things I thought were a little weird, there's a random minor character named Root Beer, and while I get the main characters like to help each other out, they literally do some free labor for the Sugarcube Corner.


Starswirl Do-Over

 
I didn't wanna bother reading books on stuff I already watched, so for the most part I didn't read any of the adaptation novels, but this one has a choose your own adventure gimmick, plus it's based on (possibly) my favorite piece of Equestria Girls media, so I was interested enough to actually read it.

While reading this, some sections sounded like they were straight up quoting the special, although the only time I bothered to check, the book was actually a little different.
 
TV Special:
 

Book:
Sunset elaborates the way only a superfan can. “Kiwi Lollipop, also known as K-Lo, is the cool one. Her favorite color holographic purple. Favorite hobby: collecting enamel pins."
Pinkie continues, "And Supenova Zap, aka Su-Z, is the zany one! Favorite color: polka dots. Favorite hobby: long walks on the dark side of the moon," Sunset nods. "Name a more iconic duo-l'll wait!"
When it comes to the You Choose The Ending format, I thought it was a little messy in execution because a lot of paths converge, which makes a lot of choices feel meaningless since a lot of them won't lead you anywhere new.

To my surprise, some of the Better Together Season 2 shorts are actually mixed into the pathways which I thought was neat to see. The pathways aren't all adapted content though, there's some original scenes thrown into the mix as well.
 
For being based on a story about Sunset and Pinkie Pie, Pinkie Pie is notably less prominent here than in the special. As implied by the cover, Twilight is upped in prominence though.
 
Honestly, I didn't know about the names of the Starswirl Music Festival or the Time Twirler until reading this book. Looking back, they were named in the special, I just never noticed. As for Sunset's "empathy flashes" however, I don't think that's been in any previous media I watched or read, and I think that might be the only direct reference to Sunset representing the element of empathy.
 
I haven't bothered using this term up to this point but, this is the first piece of official Equestria Girls media I've seen use the term "Mane Seven" to refer to the main girls.
Later, under the watchful eye of a serious security guard, the Mane Seven scan their wristbands and head into the festival.
Some of the endings are surprisingly dark. Because it's a story about a time loop, I figured most paths would just loop back to one point but no, there's a handful of paths that just end the story. The one where Sunset destroys the Time Twirler and causes the time loop to never end is particularly surprising because in the special, that's actually how Sunset ends the timeloop.
 


Canterlot High Tell-All


There's not much of a plot here, it's just a fun in-universe book given to Twilight Sparkle to introduce her to Canterlot High. It's probably one of my favorite books in the series honestly. After reading so much text-only books, reading something so bright and colorful was very refreshing.
 
It's cute how every character writes in a different font.

Kinda embarrassingly, I didn't realize until seeing this page that these 3 are freshmen:
 

Because they're so small compared to the main cast, I thought they were elementary schoolers, and that Canterlot High was actually some sort of all-grade school. But no, they're freshmen, and looking back at them, they're height actually seems pretty normal for freshmen.

For the quiz of which character you're most like, I got EEABFBFFED which makes me most like Fluttershy and Rarity. I'm not so sure about Rarity, but yeah comparing me to Fluttershy is a fair assessment, even though I hate animals. My answers were so varried though that I really can't decare I'm "like" any character.
 


Wondercolts Forever


While I liked the unique fonts for the previous book I read, for this one they just annoyed me, since everything's in kinda hard to read cursive.
 

As for the story, it was pretty unique, since it's from the perspective of 2 characters, Celestia and Luna, who don't really get much focus in the rest of the series. Since they're teenagers here also, they talk pretty differently from their adult selves.

Seeing a story revolve around the first Friendship Games was cool to see, but there are some weird wrenches in the cannon. Starting off with something pretty minor but stuck out to me anyways, how come in both Friendship Games we see, the characters successfully predict that archery is going to be one of the activities? It's just kind of a weird coincidence I guess. Actually kinda important though is that this first Friendship Games ends in a tie, even though the Friendship Games movie claims that Crystal Prep straight up won all previous Friendship Games. This book also tries to redeem Principle Cinch, although I guess it's not unreasonable for her to go from bad to only a little less bad.


Happy Holidays


There's some cute moments in this story, especially at the start and end, but most of it is drama that I didn't really care for. I think what especially sours this story for me is that most of the story is just about the problems Anon-A-Miss causes, rather than actually doing anything about it.

Thankfully Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle are pretty minor side characters that I don't really care about, so I wasn't particularly bothered by how badly of a light they're painted in for this story.


Canterlot High: March Radness

 
When I first saw the covers for these IDW comics, I didn't really like the artstyle, but after having read them, I actually think they're quite nice. There's quite a few drawings here that I really liked.
 

My favorite story here is Detention Is Magic, because of how silly it is.
 
The Fall Of Sunset Shimmer was a little neat I guess, but it's just some prelude to the first movie's plot, back when Sunset was a jerk, which is a state I don't find her very interesting in. I guess she was a little more in depth here than in the first movie.
 


Annual 2013


This book tripped me up when reading it because it also has The Fall Of Sunset Shinmer in it.

The one other story, just titled "Equestria Girls" gave a little more interest backstory I think. It's about how 5 of the main girls became friends, but it's also about how they adjusted to begining highschool.
 
And Rarity's killing it.

I thought it was very sweet seeing the five of them come together as friends. They don't really look any younger than their current selves which is a little weird when thinking about it, but I'm glad that they don't look like that one photograph from the first movie.
 


Equestria Girls Minis

 
These shorts were cute, but had very little substance. They're only 15 seconds each though, so that's not particularly surprising to me. I didn't even bother watching all of them. Just to pick a favorite, I'll go with Dance Off. Fun At The Theme Park (another potential favorite) has this in-universe comments section which brings up some weird lore questions.
 

I might as well mention the toys since I feel like it. I think they're pretty cute.
 

I think they reflect the series's main artstyle a lot more than the non-mini toys.
 

This is a lackluster thing for me to end this series on, but oh well.


Characters

I thought it'd be nice to have a section here near the end just to talk about my overall thoughts on the main characters.

For Princess Twilight and Sci-Twi, I've pretty much already said everything I want to about them. To summarize Princess Twilight, I think she's a fine character, but as a protagonist she feels a little detached from this series's world. And Sci-Twi as I've said before was a step up in my eyes, although I didn't like her in Legend Of The Everfree.

I think Sunset is a very compelling character from Rainbow Rocks onwards. I wonder though, how is she financially supported? She came into this world through a portal on her own, so she doesn't just have parents to live with. Presumably there are versions if her parents in the human world, but there'd also presumably be an alternate version of Sunset, so it'd be weird for Sunset to live with them. Perhaps she just supports herself, or lives with roommates or something. Her home is shown in Monday Blues, but no one else is ever shown inside of it.
 

A lot of how this series's world works is never really explained, so perhaps the cost of living is just extremely low. Sunset has at the very least worked as shown in Good Vibes.

There's some about the flanderized version of farmers in media, and by extention Applejack, that I quite like. Her big hat and informal dialect are very charming to me.

Rarity was a character who I thought I'd dislike since I'm not normally a fan of fashionistas. Rarity's pretty sweet about her love of fashion though, so actually ended up quite liking her. Also, I ship Applejack/Rarity. It's just so nice seeing them enjoy each other's company.

Pinkie Pie was a super fun character. Her voice is a little grating at first, but I got used to it and now it just adds to her fun factor in my eyes.

Rainbow Dash was my least favorite of the main characters for a while, but Rainbow Dash Brings The Blitz really lifted my opinion of her.

I feel like I barely mentioned Fluttershy. That's not because I didn't like her though. I think it's because she just never gets to be relevant. I think she's a swell character, although I wouldn't wanna hang around her in real life because I hate most animals.

And shout out to Trixie. She's not a main character, but she's definitely one of my favorites.
 


Closing Thoughts

Despite going on and on for so long, I don't think I'd consider this one of my favorite series. I only yapped for as long as I did because there was so much for me to yap about. With that said, I still totally liked it. It's hard to say how much I'll miss it consuming my life until after I post this blog.

I'll probably watch Friendship Is Magic someday, and that'll probably consume even more of my life. Just scrolling past a list of Friendship Is Magic comics so I could find the Equestria Girls comics really intimidated me.

I wont just put all my Friendship Is Magic thoughts into one post like this though. I'll split things up into multiple different posts instead. Even putting this all into one post was a mistake I think, especially when everything got deleted halfway through due to a Blogger glitch, and I had to retype a bunch of stuff. I hope this post doesn't straight up run poorly. I was way in over my own head. I thought it made sense after my initial Twitter thread on the first movie, since that wasn't very long. Also when I planned to put everything into one post, I wasn't planning on reading a bunch of the books. The only reason I'm not splitting up this post now is because of stubbornness.

If Equestria Girls seems like a series you feel drawn to, go check it out I guess. I wouldn't particularly recommend it to anyone who isn't naturally interested in it.

 

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