This episode has a lot more of Discord’s chaos and less of him just outright cheating with his overpowered abilities, so already I enjoy it significantly more than the first part. The arrival into Ponyville, the soap roads and Discord expounding upon his plans are really refreshing, it feels very properly as though the show’s normality has been turned upside-down. I particularly like that in spite of the silliness of Discord’s changes, it’s also clear how they have definite negative impacts on the ponies affected by them, and that this fact amuses Discord. However, we do have some holdovers from the last episode, like the discorded Mane Six, who for some reason turn even greyer as they enter Golden Oak? Perhaps it’s reflective of how Twilight is losing faith in them, after they’ve been forced to lose faith in her, a sort of severing of the other end of the friendship connection. Or maybe it reflects the chaotic nature of Discord’s magic in that it doens’t necessarily make sense, who’s to say! Twilight losing patience with them all I found greatly enjoyable, since she essentially has to drag the whole effort along by herself and doesn’t fare too badly all things considered. That the elements won’t work due to the lack of friendship isn’t her fault, and there’s something cathartic about Twilight being so fed up that she just assigns Spike to be Rainbow Dash in a very cynical approach that makes sense for someone overly used to how magic works who doesn’t necessarily treat it with awed mysticism. Also, funny how she’s irritated enough that she forgets the word ‘tiara’, heh. The fact that discord ‘discords’ twilight (I assume that’s what happens, since she turns grey? It’s kind of hard to tell) by setting things up to dishearten her was a lot more interesting than when he simply overrode the rest of the Mane Six at least, though that’s partly an issue of time constraints I guess. Having said that, however, I do enjoy seeing the Mane Six competing directly, particularly the Rainbow Dash chase, it’s interesting since we typically see them working together rather than against one another. I’m struggling to put it into words, but it’s just fun to see ordinarily allied characters do battle. Kinda makes me think of the last boss battle on the original Lego Star Wars for the Gamecube, where you and the other player fight eachother for the Anakin and Obi-Wan duel, as uninspiring a comparison as that may be. When Celestia sends Twilight her old letters to help her realise that her friendship is the key to defeating Discord and not to lose hope, I am guessing that this also gave Twilight the revelation that something magical had gone wrong with her friends, as it’s only after this that she tries to turn them back to normal, but it’s not very well communicated that she’s come to that realisation. Then again, when it comes time to round up Rainbow Dash, Twilight mentions that it’s a memory spell that she’s casting, so it does make a certain sense that she would get the idea to remind her friends of their friendship the same way that Celestia reminded her. Perhaps Celestia knew how to reverse discording from her previous experience fighting Discord, but couldn’t cast a memory spell in person so did the next best thing. Also, Discord’s throne is awesome, and I love it. I think it’s a real shame that we only truly began to see Discord’s chaotic shenanigans in this episode, because it’s all gold. Once the elements are assembled for the second time and the Mane Six get ready to blast Discord with the friendship beam, Discord seems very confident that his plan still has not gone awry, until it’s too late for him to stop them, which is intriguing: perhaps he was counting on Twilight being relatively new to friendship, so she didn’t realise something had gone wrong with her friends that she needed to fix? Speaking of Star Wars, we get a little medal ceremony parody at the end of this episode. Appropriate in a way, since this is the first major thing that the Six have done as the Elements of Harmony in the public eye since Nightmare Moon.