An episode a day

[Rares]

S5E2 The Cutie Map Part 2

Continuing on the good streak of the first part, this continues to honestly be one of the better premiers of the show. I'd honestly rank this as the same par as Return of Harmony and the premier. I suppose I could be expected to complain that the Mane 6 don't save the day, but from a storytelling aspect, I can see why it was important for the other ponies to show their talents, and it still was a M6 adventure. Starlight Glimmer, although I prefer Nightmare Moon, is arguably the best villain in one of these, at least in this premier. Despite what happens later down the road which is for another day, I think from how it's portrayed here, she's not an insanely powerful unicorn, if anything appeared to really only use her magic for basic stuff, and then of course removal of cutie marks. In fact, rather the use of straight up manipulation (notably the speaker stuff) made for a more interesting use as it wasn't just another laser fight or something ridiculous that. Again, keeping this small scale was a great choice. It also set up the premise of "the magic of cutie marks" rather well for the season. (Despite if I feel it wasn't used right at all in the season, the introduction of it here was good. Honestly Josh Haber is most likely to blame, but again, that's down the road.)

All in all, although I've already seen this, part of me regrets not watching this when it first aired, after my personal hiatus after I hated the S4 finale. Seeing this live probably could have adjusted a lot of feelings.

Oh and it had some incredibly cute Rarity moments.