BACK OF THE BOX: When a crown is stolen from the Crystal Empire, Twilight Sparkle takes on a whole new identity, a human teenage girl, in her quest to get it back.  Her adventure includes a trip to high school, where she meets some remarkably familiar new friends.
The film picks up right where season 3 leaves off, Twilight Sparkle has just become a princess and Queen Princess Celestia calls her to the Crystal Kingdom for… something (it’s almost like she knew what was going to happen) Anyway, that night Sunset Shimmer a disgruntled former student of Celestia steals TS’s crown/element of harmony (I’m glad they lamp-shaded that) and buggers off back through the looking glass.
TS goes in after her and the crown gets taken to the principal of . When Twilight goes in to get it back, Twilight finds herself at Canterlot High School. She learns out that a princess is to be crowned at the upcoming dance. she decides to challenge Sunset Shimmer’s undefeated streak.
What follows is a clichéd fish-out-of-water story. We get the whole “I don’t know how to use legs, and learning to eat with your hands thing. Thankfully by the time you get tired of it so does the movie. All the students are basically alte-verse versions of everyone in Equestria. The animators have fun with this by shoving in a LOT of cameos (even get a Derpy in the end credits).
Which brings me to another point,unless you’ve watched the series up to that point you are going to miss a whole lot of references and jokes. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not. On one hand it’s great for the fans of the show. On the other, as a stand alone movie a lot might be lost on the audience.
What’s weird is the way that most of the other students are willing to accept a flying daemon girl and five magic girls with “Taste the rainbow Mother#^%&” powers. In my opinion, the story as a whole seems to be a retread of the first story of the series. Also there are songs.. quite a few. With little exception, I don’t much care for the songs in the show.
I have to comment on the look of the characters. The design as others have pointed out is very Bratz-esque. For some weird reason every female character mandatorily wears knee boots… What gives?
OK, now for the sci-fi nerd in me to take over for a bit.
At one point Pinkie Pie asks Twilight if she has a “twin sister that lives in the city”. If the parallel universe trope of different versions of the same person existing in each dimension is true, then there must be a human TS. So what would happen if the main six cross over to meet their alte-verse counterparts?
At the end of the day it’s just another MLP: FiM story with not much new to offer other than the fact that they are humans.
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