Top 25 Episodes of MLP: FiM Season 1 – #15 – Episode 10: Swarm of the Century
Summary
Fluttershy is out gathering flowers with her woodland friends for Princess Celestia, who’s coming for a visit, when she finds a very adorable looking insect of some sort. She tries feeding it an apple from a nearby bucket, but it ignores the one she crushes for it and goes after the rest of them, completely devouring the bushel in 2 seconds flat. Fluttershy isn’t fazed by this (I sure as hell would be) and she adopts the little thing to show it to all her friends.
Meanwhile, Twilight and Spike are cleaning the library up, Twilight being rather nervous at the moment about Celestia’s visit even though it’s just a casual visit. Spike says something about how the two are getting in each others way and Twilight leaves him to finish up while she goes out around town to see how all the other preparation are coming along. After talking with a few of the towns ponies, and witnessing the probable inception of Molestia, Twilight swings by Sugar Cube Corner to see how the banquet is coming along. Pinkie’s been busy playing “Royal Taste Tester” and has eaten most of the Cake’s work, much to Twilight’s horror. Fluttershy joins them just as Twilight is about to berate Pinkie, and shows off her new pet… and it’s two friends. Fluttershy is confused about where the other two came from, but happily offers them to Twilight and Pinkie Pie. Twilight agrees, but Pinkie refuses and identifies the creature as a Parasprite, but doesn’t say more than that before leaping out the door in search for a trombone.
Twilight next visits the Carousel Boutique, where Rarity is fitting Rainbow Dash for a hilariously silly outfit. After Twilight asks how things are going, the Parasprite she got jumps out of her mane… along with its two friends. Twilight is just as confused as Fluttershy was, but again, none of them really question why there’s suddenly two more, but Rarity and Dash take the new Parasprites for themselves and begin fawning over them, ignoring Pinkie when she comes in looking for an accordion. Twilight goes home that night with her Parasprite and once again incites the wrath of Murphy while worrying about the princess’s visit by saying, “What’s there to worry about”
Fate responds to Twilight’s foolish words by filling her house up with tens of Parasprites, who proceed to wreck the library. Twilight and Spike start attempting to round them up with some difficulty, but elsewhere Rainbow Dash is waking up to the same problem. Her Parasprite multiplied as well and there all more than a little… clingy? Is “clingy” a good word to use for their behavior? While Rainbow freaks out over the perverted little swarm giving chase to her, Rarity is having a little more luck than Dash and Twilight, and is using her army of Parasprites to help with her dresses. Then one of them reveals how the little bugger reproduce, by barfing up the food they’ve eaten, which turns into another Parasprite. Rarity won’t stand for this vile behavior and shoves them all into her bags to take them away from her boutique. On the way out, Pinkie pops by with news that she’s found a harmonica, then she tries to enlist Rarity in her search for all these instruments, but Rarity is too busy to help with Pinkie’s “Scavenger Hunt” so she writes her off and continues on her way.
Rarity, Twilight, and Rainbow Dash all meet up with bags and faces full of Parasprites and they hit upon the idea that Fluttershy might know how to take care of these creatures. When they get to Fluttershy’s cottage however they find that she’s even worse off then they are. Twilight’s sanity starts to crack at this point and she imagines the horrors this swarm will unleash when the Princess finally arrives. Applejack, still unaware of what’s going on, swings around with a cart full of apples that Fluttershy requested, and it immediately gets ravaged by the Parasprites. Twilight remembers that Applejack is good at herding animals and all five of them help to try and herd them back into the Everfree Forest. It seems to work as they get all the little buggers into a ball and roll it down the path to the forest (go ahead and make your Katamary Damaci joke, not like everyone has at this point), but Pinkie appears out of no where to try and get them to stop and come help her find Maracas. They tell her she’s not making any sense, and she runs off again, leaving them to successfully run the Parasprites out of town. However when they return to Fluttershy’s cottage, they find that she’d kept one and it multiplied while they were all busy with the rest.
The next thing they try is having Rainbow create a tornado to suck up all the Parasprites and then… yeah where was this plan going again? Were you going to maintain the tornado all the way back to Everfree? It doesn’t really matter as Pinkie Pie shows up again with a pair of cymbals, which also get sucked into the tornado and cause Rainbow dash to loose control when she attempts to avoid them. The tornado breaks up and the swarm is unleashed to descend upon the entire town. Everyone is of course a little pissed at Pinkie Pie, but she just keeps spouting nonsense about how she’s the one doing all the work to save Ponyville, but still doesn’t explain why the hell she needs all these instruments. The other five once again leave Pinkie to her own devises and run off towards the middle of town, just in time to see the Parasprites begin their raid on the towns food supply.
Applejack runs off to go and try to defend Sweet Apple Acres from the locust like creatures, then Twilight thinks to try casting a spell to make the Parasprites stop eating all the food. The spell works, in the sense that the swarm stopped eating the food, but instead they set upon eating the town itself. Rarity than flips out when she realizes when the Parasprites get into her store they’ll devour her outfits, but she’s too late to do anything by the time she gets there and just starts having a panic attack until Pinkie arrives, declaring she’ll save Rarity. Then Pinkie rushes over to a counter, grabs a flute, and then leaves Rarity to continue freaking the hell out.
Across town, the Parasprites have arrived at Sweet Apple Acres, and the Apples stand ready to defend their crop. Of course the Parasprites don’t care for apples anymore and instead they eat the Apple’s home. Hey, at least they can get that new roof now. Twilight arrives at her library to discover that the Parasprites have a taste for ink, as they’ve started eating the words write out of her books. Ignoring Spikes pleas for help, she grabs one of the pests by the wings and rushes off to Zecora’s hut in the Everfree Forest. When she arrives, Zecora informs her that this has happened before, but there is no way to stop these creatures. Twilight rushes back to Ponyville and sees in the distance that Celestia has left Canterlot and is on her way. Seeing all the destruction being reeked on Ponyville and the frustrations of everything else that has happened that day finally makes Twilight snap and she starts ordering the citizens to build a fake Ponyville next to the one currently being destroyed in one minuet before Celestia gets there.
As buildings begin to collapse around her, Twilight just gives up and accepts that there’s nothing they can do. At that moment, Pinkie Pie arrives with all of her instruments and starts to play polka music. Twilight starts to go off on her again, but then notices that the Parasprites have stopped eating Ponyville. The entire swarm begins to follow Pinkie Pie out of Ponyville in a single file line, the other 5 members of the mane 6 bringing up the rear. As they approach the Everfree Forest, Celestia lands and all of them, save Pinkie, rush forward to great her. Celestia thanks them and the ponies of Ponyville for the parade, but she says that her visit has to be put on hold do to the town of Phillydelphia being over run with a swarm of creatures. Before she gets back on her chariot to leave, she asks Twilight if she’s learned anything about friendship recently, and Twilight gives her the episode’s friendship report.
Celestia takes her leave and the ponies approach Pinkie as the last of the Parasprites vanish into the forest. They apologize to her for not listening to her before and congratulate her on saving Ponyville, before returning and seeing all the destruction brought on by the swarm and ending the episode with a sad trombone.
Artistic Design and Animation
The monster of the week suitably adorable, but that’s not why the Parasprites, to me, are a visual marvel for this show. Look at some of the scenes in this episode with large numbers of individual Parasprites. I remind you all that this show is done in flash, and to see so many of these things on screen at once, a lot of times just doing there own thing, is a feet of animation worthy of admiration. As CR of “Familiar Faces” said, there really is an art to clutter.
Humor
Like most episodes that heavily feature her, Pinkie is usually the source of most of the humor in this episode, both with visual humor, like the backwards run, and her seemingly random ramblings; I get a huge grin every time I hear the phrase, “And a banjo is the only answer!” But I also have to give credit to the Parasprite ball, because as overused as the Katamari joke is I can’t help but think that that was exactly what the creators were referring to, even though that’s more than likely not the case.
Continuity and World Building
Not a whole lot from previous episodes made it in here, but it’s an early episode so I have to give it a pass. I am glad that they at least remembered to include Zecora, even if it was only for three lines.
The Parasprites are an … interesting… addition to the Equestrian bestiary. I don’t particularly care for them as monsters in the series because now that they’ve become common knowledge, what sort of threat do they pose? Individual one’s won’t do much damage, and no pony with a brain would let them hang around if one came back, so they won’t get a chance to multiply, and even if they did, Pinkie will probably have more than enough help to gather her instruments now that the whole town knows what will save them. My point is, Parasprites seem about as dangerous as a swarm of locusts that die when you play music; so if you have a radio, you’re safe.
Moral
The moral of “stop and listen to your friends, they can have valuable opinions and perspectives that can help you solve your problems” is a good moral, but it gets a little muddy with it’s execution. Yeah, Twilight and the girls didn’t listen to Pinkie and just assumed she was spouting nonsense, but she didn’t exactly make anything all that clear on her end either. Had she just stopped and said, “Those are Parasprites, they reproduce faster than rabbits, and you have to lure them away with music Pied Piper style” then they could have said something like “That’s ridiculous pinkie, you are so random!” The Moral would have felt better presented if they’d done that, and it would have made sense if this was close to the beginning of their friendship and the other girls wouldn’t have known her that well.
Story Structure
Like I just said, this story is one of those “Lack of Communication” episodes, but other than that slightly large hiccup in the writing and setup, the pacing is still rather good. We don’t go straight to the chaotic infestation of Ponyville; we start with the mane 6’s reactions to the multiplying menace and their attempts to run them out of town before the other citizens begin to encounter them. It still feels like a small infestation before that, and it still feels like the characters can contain them.
Overall Feelings
Like I said during the review of “Look before you Sleep” this episode is just barely higher on my list, and even I have some difficulty explaining to myself why that is. Is it really that I don’t like the idea of slumber parties that much that I count it against a more well constructed episode? That might be the case, but I feel that there’s something more, that even though this episode has a “lack of communication” plot it still holds up more by having more humor, more interesting animation, more time spent with the entire main cast, more action, and just more at stake. In short this episode felt… exciting. It held my attention better.
I should also bring up something that I feel should have tipped fans off about Celestia long ago. For the longest time, we all assumed that Celestia was some sort of god or deity in pony form; I’ll get into that more over the course of these reviews, but Celestia not knowing about Parasprites, despite living for more than a thousand years, has given people the idea that she’s this tyrant who sets monsters on her subjects for her own amusement, but I’ve got to ask, why is it so hard to believe that she just didn’t know? You only assume she’s trolling because you also assume she’s some sort of god; to me she just seems like a more powerful than average pony with a lot of regrets, and more than likely she just hasn’t seen these creatures because they’re not native to Equestria, which would also explain why Zecora knew about them. As for Pinkie Pie, I stopped trying to understand why or how she knows or does things, a lloooooooonnngg time ago. It’s not a cop out, it’s Pinkie Pie; there is NO understanding her.
All in All, an Okay episode, Pinkie is best Pied Piper, Celestia is not the troll you people make her out to be, and… ahh to hell with it [Plays the Katamari Damaci theme]
Summary
Fluttershy is out gathering flowers with her woodland friends for Princess Celestia, who’s coming for a visit, when she finds a very adorable looking insect of some sort. She tries feeding it an apple from a nearby bucket, but it ignores the one she crushes for it and goes after the rest of them, completely devouring the bushel in 2 seconds flat. Fluttershy isn’t fazed by this (I sure as hell would be) and she adopts the little thing to show it to all her friends.
Meanwhile, Twilight and Spike are cleaning the library up, Twilight being rather nervous at the moment about Celestia’s visit even though it’s just a casual visit. Spike says something about how the two are getting in each others way and Twilight leaves him to finish up while she goes out around town to see how all the other preparation are coming along. After talking with a few of the towns ponies, and witnessing the probable inception of Molestia, Twilight swings by Sugar Cube Corner to see how the banquet is coming along. Pinkie’s been busy playing “Royal Taste Tester” and has eaten most of the Cake’s work, much to Twilight’s horror. Fluttershy joins them just as Twilight is about to berate Pinkie, and shows off her new pet… and it’s two friends. Fluttershy is confused about where the other two came from, but happily offers them to Twilight and Pinkie Pie. Twilight agrees, but Pinkie refuses and identifies the creature as a Parasprite, but doesn’t say more than that before leaping out the door in search for a trombone.
Twilight next visits the Carousel Boutique, where Rarity is fitting Rainbow Dash for a hilariously silly outfit. After Twilight asks how things are going, the Parasprite she got jumps out of her mane… along with its two friends. Twilight is just as confused as Fluttershy was, but again, none of them really question why there’s suddenly two more, but Rarity and Dash take the new Parasprites for themselves and begin fawning over them, ignoring Pinkie when she comes in looking for an accordion. Twilight goes home that night with her Parasprite and once again incites the wrath of Murphy while worrying about the princess’s visit by saying, “What’s there to worry about”
Fate responds to Twilight’s foolish words by filling her house up with tens of Parasprites, who proceed to wreck the library. Twilight and Spike start attempting to round them up with some difficulty, but elsewhere Rainbow Dash is waking up to the same problem. Her Parasprite multiplied as well and there all more than a little… clingy? Is “clingy” a good word to use for their behavior? While Rainbow freaks out over the perverted little swarm giving chase to her, Rarity is having a little more luck than Dash and Twilight, and is using her army of Parasprites to help with her dresses. Then one of them reveals how the little bugger reproduce, by barfing up the food they’ve eaten, which turns into another Parasprite. Rarity won’t stand for this vile behavior and shoves them all into her bags to take them away from her boutique. On the way out, Pinkie pops by with news that she’s found a harmonica, then she tries to enlist Rarity in her search for all these instruments, but Rarity is too busy to help with Pinkie’s “Scavenger Hunt” so she writes her off and continues on her way.
Rarity, Twilight, and Rainbow Dash all meet up with bags and faces full of Parasprites and they hit upon the idea that Fluttershy might know how to take care of these creatures. When they get to Fluttershy’s cottage however they find that she’s even worse off then they are. Twilight’s sanity starts to crack at this point and she imagines the horrors this swarm will unleash when the Princess finally arrives. Applejack, still unaware of what’s going on, swings around with a cart full of apples that Fluttershy requested, and it immediately gets ravaged by the Parasprites. Twilight remembers that Applejack is good at herding animals and all five of them help to try and herd them back into the Everfree Forest. It seems to work as they get all the little buggers into a ball and roll it down the path to the forest (go ahead and make your Katamary Damaci joke, not like everyone has at this point), but Pinkie appears out of no where to try and get them to stop and come help her find Maracas. They tell her she’s not making any sense, and she runs off again, leaving them to successfully run the Parasprites out of town. However when they return to Fluttershy’s cottage, they find that she’d kept one and it multiplied while they were all busy with the rest.
The next thing they try is having Rainbow create a tornado to suck up all the Parasprites and then… yeah where was this plan going again? Were you going to maintain the tornado all the way back to Everfree? It doesn’t really matter as Pinkie Pie shows up again with a pair of cymbals, which also get sucked into the tornado and cause Rainbow dash to loose control when she attempts to avoid them. The tornado breaks up and the swarm is unleashed to descend upon the entire town. Everyone is of course a little pissed at Pinkie Pie, but she just keeps spouting nonsense about how she’s the one doing all the work to save Ponyville, but still doesn’t explain why the hell she needs all these instruments. The other five once again leave Pinkie to her own devises and run off towards the middle of town, just in time to see the Parasprites begin their raid on the towns food supply.
Applejack runs off to go and try to defend Sweet Apple Acres from the locust like creatures, then Twilight thinks to try casting a spell to make the Parasprites stop eating all the food. The spell works, in the sense that the swarm stopped eating the food, but instead they set upon eating the town itself. Rarity than flips out when she realizes when the Parasprites get into her store they’ll devour her outfits, but she’s too late to do anything by the time she gets there and just starts having a panic attack until Pinkie arrives, declaring she’ll save Rarity. Then Pinkie rushes over to a counter, grabs a flute, and then leaves Rarity to continue freaking the hell out.
Across town, the Parasprites have arrived at Sweet Apple Acres, and the Apples stand ready to defend their crop. Of course the Parasprites don’t care for apples anymore and instead they eat the Apple’s home. Hey, at least they can get that new roof now. Twilight arrives at her library to discover that the Parasprites have a taste for ink, as they’ve started eating the words write out of her books. Ignoring Spikes pleas for help, she grabs one of the pests by the wings and rushes off to Zecora’s hut in the Everfree Forest. When she arrives, Zecora informs her that this has happened before, but there is no way to stop these creatures. Twilight rushes back to Ponyville and sees in the distance that Celestia has left Canterlot and is on her way. Seeing all the destruction being reeked on Ponyville and the frustrations of everything else that has happened that day finally makes Twilight snap and she starts ordering the citizens to build a fake Ponyville next to the one currently being destroyed in one minuet before Celestia gets there.
As buildings begin to collapse around her, Twilight just gives up and accepts that there’s nothing they can do. At that moment, Pinkie Pie arrives with all of her instruments and starts to play polka music. Twilight starts to go off on her again, but then notices that the Parasprites have stopped eating Ponyville. The entire swarm begins to follow Pinkie Pie out of Ponyville in a single file line, the other 5 members of the mane 6 bringing up the rear. As they approach the Everfree Forest, Celestia lands and all of them, save Pinkie, rush forward to great her. Celestia thanks them and the ponies of Ponyville for the parade, but she says that her visit has to be put on hold do to the town of Phillydelphia being over run with a swarm of creatures. Before she gets back on her chariot to leave, she asks Twilight if she’s learned anything about friendship recently, and Twilight gives her the episode’s friendship report.
Celestia takes her leave and the ponies approach Pinkie as the last of the Parasprites vanish into the forest. They apologize to her for not listening to her before and congratulate her on saving Ponyville, before returning and seeing all the destruction brought on by the swarm and ending the episode with a sad trombone.
Artistic Design and Animation
The monster of the week suitably adorable, but that’s not why the Parasprites, to me, are a visual marvel for this show. Look at some of the scenes in this episode with large numbers of individual Parasprites. I remind you all that this show is done in flash, and to see so many of these things on screen at once, a lot of times just doing there own thing, is a feet of animation worthy of admiration. As CR of “Familiar Faces” said, there really is an art to clutter.
Humor
Like most episodes that heavily feature her, Pinkie is usually the source of most of the humor in this episode, both with visual humor, like the backwards run, and her seemingly random ramblings; I get a huge grin every time I hear the phrase, “And a banjo is the only answer!” But I also have to give credit to the Parasprite ball, because as overused as the Katamari joke is I can’t help but think that that was exactly what the creators were referring to, even though that’s more than likely not the case.
Continuity and World Building
Not a whole lot from previous episodes made it in here, but it’s an early episode so I have to give it a pass. I am glad that they at least remembered to include Zecora, even if it was only for three lines.
The Parasprites are an … interesting… addition to the Equestrian bestiary. I don’t particularly care for them as monsters in the series because now that they’ve become common knowledge, what sort of threat do they pose? Individual one’s won’t do much damage, and no pony with a brain would let them hang around if one came back, so they won’t get a chance to multiply, and even if they did, Pinkie will probably have more than enough help to gather her instruments now that the whole town knows what will save them. My point is, Parasprites seem about as dangerous as a swarm of locusts that die when you play music; so if you have a radio, you’re safe.
Moral
The moral of “stop and listen to your friends, they can have valuable opinions and perspectives that can help you solve your problems” is a good moral, but it gets a little muddy with it’s execution. Yeah, Twilight and the girls didn’t listen to Pinkie and just assumed she was spouting nonsense, but she didn’t exactly make anything all that clear on her end either. Had she just stopped and said, “Those are Parasprites, they reproduce faster than rabbits, and you have to lure them away with music Pied Piper style” then they could have said something like “That’s ridiculous pinkie, you are so random!” The Moral would have felt better presented if they’d done that, and it would have made sense if this was close to the beginning of their friendship and the other girls wouldn’t have known her that well.
Story Structure
Like I just said, this story is one of those “Lack of Communication” episodes, but other than that slightly large hiccup in the writing and setup, the pacing is still rather good. We don’t go straight to the chaotic infestation of Ponyville; we start with the mane 6’s reactions to the multiplying menace and their attempts to run them out of town before the other citizens begin to encounter them. It still feels like a small infestation before that, and it still feels like the characters can contain them.
Overall Feelings
Like I said during the review of “Look before you Sleep” this episode is just barely higher on my list, and even I have some difficulty explaining to myself why that is. Is it really that I don’t like the idea of slumber parties that much that I count it against a more well constructed episode? That might be the case, but I feel that there’s something more, that even though this episode has a “lack of communication” plot it still holds up more by having more humor, more interesting animation, more time spent with the entire main cast, more action, and just more at stake. In short this episode felt… exciting. It held my attention better.
I should also bring up something that I feel should have tipped fans off about Celestia long ago. For the longest time, we all assumed that Celestia was some sort of god or deity in pony form; I’ll get into that more over the course of these reviews, but Celestia not knowing about Parasprites, despite living for more than a thousand years, has given people the idea that she’s this tyrant who sets monsters on her subjects for her own amusement, but I’ve got to ask, why is it so hard to believe that she just didn’t know? You only assume she’s trolling because you also assume she’s some sort of god; to me she just seems like a more powerful than average pony with a lot of regrets, and more than likely she just hasn’t seen these creatures because they’re not native to Equestria, which would also explain why Zecora knew about them. As for Pinkie Pie, I stopped trying to understand why or how she knows or does things, a lloooooooonnngg time ago. It’s not a cop out, it’s Pinkie Pie; there is NO understanding her.
All in All, an Okay episode, Pinkie is best Pied Piper, Celestia is not the troll you people make her out to be, and… ahh to hell with it [Plays the Katamari Damaci theme]
