My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Micro Series: Rainbow Dash was something of a damp squib, trying too hard and missing the mark, sadly spoiling all its good ideas with poor execution. There will definitely be parts of the internet up in arms about the ‘pandering’ of double rainbows and brohoofs, with a panel about ‘anonymous meanies’ almost certainly aimed at them and thus confirming their theories, and the only reference that really worked was the most subtle – the Bowie reference, which after all has quite the precedent in the show. The main problem, though, was that the story idea was poor, the idea of emotional manipulation was muddy and has been done before, the epilogue part had pacing that was all over the place and antagonists were random and a poor fit for the established universe. A swing and a miss.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic 04 actually had some similar problems with being a bit too close to Internet culture, especially with ‘Le close’, phasing that is one of the more annoying expressions stolen from 4chan and used too much by Redditors, thus disowned by the original users. The horror film references that followed were better, but also seemed to be trying too hard. Luckily, the main comic series has a much more interesting story, better pacing, far more interesting art and better overall humour to fall back on, and thus this was not the same sort of failure as the mini-series. And I have to say, Scootaloo talking about how nice it would be to have a big sister will always make my heart melt.

Plus the cover with Spike and the birthday cake is my favourite of any of ’em yet.