We have now reached the 8th season of the show. The 2nd to last season before things are over for good. We only have 50 episodes left after this two-parter now. Let’s hope they can make at least most of those count.

Every season opener of MLP tends to set the tone and/or set up some kind of arc throughout the season. And this season’s theme seems like it will center around this School of Friendship Twilight opens up just a day or more after the end of the Movie.

Which speaking of which, oh yeah in case there was ANY sort of doubt that the movie was going to be canon to the show or at the very least be given the Equestria Girls treatment of “Ignore it ever happened, not even a significant character name drop”. Within the FIRST TEN SECONDS they explicitly reference something that happened in the movie. About 30 seconds in, Tempest is mentioned and even told what she’s doing while also telling why she likely won’t appear much if at all this season (I suppose the real reason is they probably couldn’t afford Emily Blunt for too long but good to have something in-universe at least). Reminder that we still have not heard Sunset Shimmer get named in any episode of the main show while within the first minute of the first episode that takes place chronologically after the movie both references events and names a significant character. That’s the clear proof you need to determine a movie canon. Equestria Girls might be considered canon by the Staff and by now probably accepted as such for the most part by the fandom as well. But until something like Sunset appearing or at least mentioned in the main show, or at the very least the mirror makes a cameo appearance in the spot it does in Twilight’s castle. Then there’s going to remain that little seed of doubt of Equestria Girls may not be canon the main show. But in it’s own universe where the main show is canon to it. Even the appearance of the Sirens in the Season 7 Finale, while surely significant is hardly as confirming as what the first minute of this episode did for the MLP Movie. I’m not saying myself that EQG is non-canon, as by now I think it’s at least a little clear that it is. But they haven’t made it any easier to really say EQG has much of an impact on the main show. There’s room to doubt events of the EQG series happened, there isn’t any for the MLP movie after the first minute of this episode.

But anyway, time to get to the point of the episode. Twilight is opening a friendship school that isn’t just for ponies, but also many other races/species in Equestria in an attempt to spread the ponies way of friendship to regions outside of Equestria. It’s an interesting idea, time will tell how it all goes down. There’s some execution of it that might be a little questionable by making all of the Mane 6 the only teachers in the school. Some have already brought up that obviously some of the Mane 6 already have full-time jobs of some sort. Rainbow’s a Wonderbolt who’d likely have to be called in for shows and such sometimes, Rarity owns a business so weighing that and being a teacher sounds kinda difficult, AJ works on a farm with so many chores to do, etc. Perhaps it could of been better if they had included more teachers other then the Mane 6 to have available, mainly already fully established characters. I can’t exactly speculate which ones would work as some may have the same issues of bringing in some of the Mane 6 as teachers. Another solution would be to have new characters, but that does come with the problem of character overload. There was already a lot of new characters with the students as well as the EEA’s leader. Imagine having a full slate of new characters for the purposes of teaching as well. That’d be an absolute nightmare to try to cram that all in a 44 minute special in terms of introducing both teachers and students. At least with the Mane 6 we already know them well, even if that comes to the detriment that there would be cases where the characters would be far too busy to teach. But maybe they’ll have substitutes for when they can’t come in? That could be a potential solution. Overall though we’ll just have to see how this season plays it off and maybe even how the Final Season coming up continues on with the school as things wrap up to overall determine how well they execute this idea. It has potential for some fun stuff, but it could also turn up to be a disappointment. We’ll see how things go down.

On to the EEA though, I’ll touch on a certain subject later in this thing with them. But right from the get go when Twilight is giving her presentation you can tell something’s not quite right with the committee. And that’s before we find out about something later in the episode. Besides the admittedly hilarious closeness to one of the most despised gaming companies (Or even companies in general) EA, it’s mostly old ponies giving a skeptical glare as whomever is presenting their idea. Chancellor Neighsay (Voiced by the well-renowned voice actor Maurice LaMarche, famous for being the voice of The Brain from Pinky and the Brain. Neighsay’s voice is even strikingly similar, though not exactly like The Brain’s) being the towering figure that him alone sounds like he just has that exterior about him of a really skeptical person. He skims through Twilight’s proposal, and then presumes that Twilight’s school is about protecting the ponies way of life from dangers rather then Twilight’s plan of having Ponies get to know different creatures from outside Equestria. This obviously foreshadows the big plot point with Neighsay later, but I’ll get to that when I get to that.

But anyway time to get to the new students! I’ll leave a thoughts on each of them

Sandbar: I think I need to get to know Sandbar in more episode to really know what he’s about. But he’s fine thus far. And hey for once Vincent Tong gets to voice a character that’s NOT a love interest nearly universally hated by the fandom! (In case you’ve forgotten, he’s voiced not just Flash Sentry, but also Prince Blueblood and Feather Bangs)

Gallus: Gallus seems like a neat griffon granted he’s going to be a bit jerkish being that’s what most Griffins seem to be. But he’s obviously going to be the Dash in the group of friends in terms of sticking up for them when they need him.

Yona: A clumsy Yak that has a few endearing qualities for sure, I know not everyone’s a big fan of the Yaks, but I feel Yona may have potential to be more tolerable then most of the other yaks.

Smoulder: AKA The newest ship for Spike pretty much. Maybe some people thought Ember is just a little too old for Spike. If so, then Smoulder might be their answer. She’s obviously still older then Spike but she’s still closer to his size. So might make it a bit easier to see a ship between them.

Ocellus: Well ain’t she a pretty adorable changeling. Not too bad design for a nu-changeling either. Plenty of potential of fun situations for a recurring changeling character so we could see some good things from her later too.

Silver Stream: She’s perhaps my favorite out of the multi-species six. And not just because she’s connected to the seaponies from the movie. She’s full of energy, and her excitement for mundane things like stairs is charming and meant as kind of an odd to the fish out of water tropes we saw back in The Little Mermaid when forks were called Dinglehoppers. I’m certainly excited to see more of her after this two-parter

As we progress we get the natural events of what happens when a school about making friends seem to focus more on being a boring normal school with teaching guidelines that doesn’t quite work for every one of the students. Especially the non-ponies involved. And the group we saw earlier skip out on what happens to be the most important day for Twilight to show the EEA how things are progressing. But what happens as a result when Neighsay discovers the non-pony student that is no doubt a big subject that anyone surrounding the very volatile political climate right now could see this as quite awkward.

There’s no way around it, Neighsay is pretty much a racist. As soon as he sees there are non-pony students he sees Twilight as not going by his standards that the positive teaching be meant only for Ponies. And thinks other species are not as capable of learning friendship like Ponies can. There have been episodes before that are vaguely or could be considered from a point of view a bit political. Some episodes even are hit with political controversy even if that might of not been the intention. But it feels like in this case it is very intentional, especially in this volatile political climate. This is very much the equivalent of a high-up bureaucrat shutting a school down because the school is allowing students from places that either been enemies in the past or have otherwise rejected co-operation that benefits their country more and letting them mingle with those inside the country. I wouldn’t be surprised if in many red states if their parents were watching the episode with their kids. They’d turn off the TV and tell their kids to do something else knowing very well what this episode was implying. I wouldn’t even be surprised if there are kids who are now no longer allowed to be watching the show or buying MLP toys because their parents see this episode as attacking political beliefs. It honestly makes Neighsay perhaps one of the most realistic, and because of that one of the more scarier antagonists in the show. Neighsay’s not exactly a villain, he’s not trying to take over the world but he’s nonetheless someone with beliefs that is at odds with the message of Friendship for all that the ponies often try to send. And it’s likely he’s probably not the only pony in Equestria like that if he got such a high position. Despite the ponies having dropped their racism in the past for each other’s type since Hearth’s Warming Eve. It seems to have shifted at least for some regarding non-pony species. There’s some understandable reasons why for ponies to distrust them such as Dragons terrorizing ponies, Changelings only having recently been made mostly good but the Canterlot invasion as well as kidnapping all the princesses and the rest of the Mane 6 is likely still a sore spot about them, Yaks are destructive and don’t have the best tempers, Griffons seem non-caring about a lot of things, etc. But in a society that seems to be easily forgiving, apparently there’s some ponies unwilling to give the same 2nd chance that they gave formerly evil ponies even if they did worse things then any of the non-pony species did. Looking at Starlight especially, nearly ripped the ENTIRE present timeline but is given no more then a slap on the wrist, yet we don’t see Neighsay challenge the fact she’s involved with the school. He demonstrates far more anger that they just included non-pony species into the school when those students themselves and even the older representatives that brought them there didn’t really do anything to harm Equestria. It’s this very type of hypocritical feeling that has come out in recent political firestorms.

I don’t want to get too further in this, as I’ve for the most part avoiding posting about politics on my modblog. I do not want to get into any political debates, that’s not what I use Tumblr for even though there are certainly a lot of blogs that ARE very heavy political wise on Tumblr. But that’s not why I chose to use Tumblr. I just want to have fun giving my thoughts on things I’m excited for and episodes of MLP, and making fun little sprite comics of stories I want to tell. This is a brief escape from the minefield that is today’s politics where there’s no winning no matter where you stand. I’m only mentioning this now, because it’s kind of an unavoidable subject after this episode. There’s just no sugarcoating it to the point we can deny it’s at least somewhat political.

Heading into Part 2, I did really like the scene of Twilight trying to be cheered up by her friends. It doesn’t exactly work, but it really shows how much Twilight cared about the school that not even her friends could do much to really help how down she feels that her school was closed. It’s an entertaining scene to me too. Can’t exactly pinpoint why. But it’s a good scene.

Small note, but I found it amusing Pinkie has a themed cannon for each of her friends. Even Starlight and Spike. I don’t even know why she does, but it’s funny.

A fun note to see that the throne room in Celestia’s castle (Or should we say Celestia and Luna’s) has changed to the look it has in the movie. Luna finally has her own throne again and everything. Kinda cool.

And what will undoubtedly be the meme of the episode, Silverstream’s fascination with Stairs. Although there are a few occasions that maybe Silverstream should of seen Stairs earlier. Like in the school or even earlier in the same castle they were hiding in. And I believe the Mane 6 go down a pretty huge amount of stairs to find the entrance to the sea pony kingdom. Though I think maybe the reason for that is for most of Silverstream’s life she was a sea pony. We don’t know how long the Storm King was threatening the places outside Equestria. It could very well be an entire decade. Long enough for Silverstream to mostly see things that were underwater rather then the stuff that is normal on the surface.

Speeding up a little, we know Twilight and the others find the students. And then stand up to Neighsay. (Though Maurice has already said this won’t be the last we see of him) And finally get the School put in the direction that it should be. Setting up the rest of the season with the new non-pony characters that I think at least a few will become new fan favorites. It’s a nice start to the season, some things certainly got political and that’s not going to be an easy conversation no matter what. But we got some neat new characters and the rest of the season to look forward to.

Next time is yet another Maud Pie episode. I’ll seeya then!