Series Thoughts: My Little Pony: Make Your Mark (Season 2)

• Released: May 27, 2022
  
• Total amount of seasons: 2
• Seasons watched: 2
• Rating: 3/5

Synopsis

The Mane Five go on their small adventures and try to work out Twilight Sparkle's message, while Opaline and her unicorn henchpony Misty are still scheming to overthrow Equestria.

My Thoughts

Just as a reminder of my weird way of handling things regarding this series because it releases in a weird way: I review each chapter that has multiple episodes as Series Thoughts, and every chapter that includes only one larger special as Movie Thoughts. Got it? Got it.

Season 2, while I still don't consider it very good, I actually was pleasantly surprised by. I commented in season 1 on not liking it much because I didn't find it very well-written and the characters were far less memorable than they are in Friendship is Magic, however I'm not going to keep comparing it to the preceding series in this review anymore. Is Friendship is Magic better? Yes. Is this series not a very good continuation because it disregards quite a bit of the pre-established lore and continuity of said show? Yes. But do I think this is an outright bad series? Nope.

So this season definitely I feel improves a bit on what the first season lacked. It's still not amazing or anything, but I can safely call it decent by now. The characters in this season get a little more time to shine and develop, especially Pipp (who was so far the least developed out of the Mane Five, arguably even less so than Misty who isn't even one of them at that point). The animation has also improved significantly and there's far less instances of awkward movements or clipping. 

There's also thankfully not a lot of stalling happening with the plot. Sure, this series is mostly episodic, but there is still the ongoing plotline of Opaline wanting the magic and of course Twilight Sparkle's warning the Mane Five have to decipher. And I'm glad that this season found a nice way to balance the two. It's still mostly episodic but it doesn't hesitate to also show the ongoing plot in the background. And the season finale was even quite significant! Misty finally stands up to Opaline and rescues her friends, now (probably) becoming a part of the Mane Five (well, Six now). Opaline is temporarily defeated but she also makes it clear that this isn't the last we've heard of her.

I don't know, after watching one too many cartoons where the ongoing plotline gets postponed or forgotten about frequently it's just refreshing that has a series that two seasons (four chapters) in just decides that it wants to get the plot going. I don't think that as of chapter five the series will be serialized (I hope not), but I hope that it can keep up this nice balance of more simple slice-of-life stories while also having Opaline's plot going on in the background. Seasons one and two did a nice job of balancing things so far, especially season two, so I really hope they can keep this up.

Honestly my main gripe in this season was, well, Sunny. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike her or anything, but as I've brought up in my review of the previous season: She does not feel like the main character of this show. I know that we have a larger cast (the Mane Five/Six) and we also had this in Friendship is Magic, however there they always made it very clear that Twilight Sparkle was the main horse the series was about.

And Sunny feels like she should be the Twilight Sparkle of G5. Heck, it's pretty obvious she's supposed to be. She's the one who re-united the pony races in A New Generation. She was one of the first ponies to believe in magic and befriending other pony kinds. She is the one who has alicorn powers that no other pony has. She is a major point of focus for Opaline because she is jealous of Sunny's powers. 

But Sunny just...kind of does her own thing. She's a nice character, don't get me wrong, but for its supposed main character she's sidelined an awful lot. I think that in this season she had only one episode that is focused on her (together with Hitch), all other episodes had one or more other central characters than her. Heck, Sunny doesn't even really work on solving Twilight Sparkle's message, that's Zipp of all people. At many points in this series Zipp genuinely feels more like a central player in the story than Sunny does. 

So I'm not saying that Sunny is a badly written character, but I am saying she's being used badly as this series' supposed protagonist. She should either have more focus and be used more as a protagonist, or I think the series should've just chosen to focus on a different horse as its central character. I feel sorry for the girl, being a literal semi-alicorn and still being sidelined a lot somehow.

Opaline I'm still not very fond of as a villain, but I do grow to appreciate her more this time around, especially since she actually does something this time, even if just briefly. In season one she let Misty do all her things for her, now she's more proactive. Also, her abusive relationship with Misty is interesting. You feel bad for the poor unicorn, but you also see why she keeps serving Opaline because (before meeting the Mane Five) she literally didn't know kindness was a thing, having been raised by an evil alicorn. 

So, yeah, not a perfect season and I don't think I can give it a 3.5/5 yet, but if this is the direction the series is going into I might end up liking it more than I'd initially thought after season one.