>>8890
>I went into this far from blind but having not watched it through in at least... what four years?
Ah, covering similar ground! I deliberately didn't read these posts until after watching just so my rewatch was completely fresh.
>One thing I will note is that we get to see all the Mane Six and a basic idea of their ‘’archetypes'’ but not there ‘’personalities'’
Something I noticed was that the opening here serves more of a purpose than it does for future episodes - by seeing that Twilight eventually befriends these six and sends letters to Celestia from Ponyville, the audience naturally infers that the foreshadowed threat of Nightmare Moon will be overcome with the help of these new friends, which I think helps to get people rooting for them to get along. It's a bit of a 'wink-wink' that somewhat gives a clue to Twilight's later revelation in part 2 about the element of magic/friendship, which I think is more satisfying if one's anticipating it.
>Speaking of that, that cliff hanger! Nightmare Moon’s introduction was pretty dramatic and had a air of her threatening and villainous nature even if it wasn’t a standout for the show’s later standards or the standards of younger kids TV before things got really dumbed down.
My memory is that Faust grew up with gen 1, right? I saw some of that when I was a very young kid with some female cousins, and I do remember the monsters being both pretty scary and captivating. I feel like that may have been a big inspiration for Faust's approach, since my recollection is that gen 2 and 3 had very little in the way of big threats or fantasy worldbuilding. The approach syncretises the goals in my view - gen 1 presents a dangerous threat so you root for the ponies, gen 2 and 3 focus on lessons, so gen 4's innovation is to make the solution to the dangerous threat into the lesson. And thus you get the core thesis statement of the show: much as Middle Earth is a world where morality has a real, tangible existence, in Equestria the values of friendship translate both literally and figuratively into magic. We also have here the beginning of redeeming the villains, which didn't always work fantastically as the show would go on but for the introduction to the show is another fantastic innovation. From what I recall of gen 1, minor villainous henchmen would sometimes be redeemed but never the main bad(s), so again this is an innovation for the franchise which drives the message home even further. As an episode I agree it's not the greatest, but in terms of being an introduction and a thesis statement for the message and values of the show, it's tremendously well put together and cleverly thought out.
I'm sure people have said all of that before, but it's what came to mind while watching it.