Equestria Girls - Canterlot High Adventures

Magical girl adventures usually involve some degree of secret identity, but I
guess that's a moot point when no-one bats an eye if you occasionally sprout
pointy ears, wings and a tail.

Equestria Girls was always a weird gig, and it’s only got weirder. Beginning as ‘Twilight Sparkle travels to a world without magic(1) and encounters human versions of her friends,’ it dropped the bulk of the transdimensional stuff with the introduction of the ultra-rationalist human version of Twilight (dubbed ‘Sci-Twi’) in the third TV movie, The Friendship Games, and then gave the seven leads(2) magical powers in The Legend of Everfree, effectively completing a transformation into a stock magical girl property(3). With Equestria Girls: Canterlot High Adventures, said property takes steps towards becoming a parallel ongoing series to Friendship is Magic, in which our protagonists deal with every day high school problems like winning a $10,000 pop video contest and investigating Scooby-Doo shenanigans on the set of a Daring Do movie.

So... Yeah, so the weird thing about Canterlot High Adventures is that it’s very like Friendship is Magic, but in a world where that shouldn’t make a lick of sense. The first episode is moe of a TV high school story, but the second involves the Rainbooms somehow having backstage passes for the set of a Daring Do movie(4), where Rainbow Dash nitpicks while a mystery saboteur tries to halt production. ‘Dance Magic’ wraps up in traditional style, with the Rainbooms joining forces with their Crystal Prep rivals to combine their music with the Preppers sick dance moves. ‘Movie Magic’, however, is... less typical.

"Well, this doesn't seem contrived at all..."(5)

The saboteur is exposed as a young production assistant who wanted the star to quit so she could have a shot at playing Daring Do. It’s a shockingly entitled plan (she’s angling to use the fact that she is the director’s niece,) but ultimately comes from a place of loneliness and a sense that she is unappreciated in the world. Once she is revealed, she gets kicked off the set while the Rainbooms are given walk-on roles in the movie, and are so excited that not one of them even notices how gutted she is. It’s a weird moment, and the fact that it’s followed up by a humorous scene of the girls filming their parts creates a crashing sense of dissonance that someone would be rejected for committing a few times by a group who pride themselves on the power of their friendship and have fully embraced not one, but two young women who went all one-winged angel and tried to take over the world, or some such thing.

On the other hand, we’ve not seen part three yet, so maybe that will make amends. I hope so.

(1) Not ‘the World Without Magic,’ a la Once Upon a Time, nor in any meaningful sense the ‘normal world,’ but a human one at least, with high schools and buses and electric guitars.

(2) Mane Seven? Hair Seven? Rainbooms?

(3) Complete with magic necklaces (in this case, geodes from Camp Everfree.)

(4) And how did this happen? Rainbow Dash is clearly the mega fan here, as in Equestria, but in the world of Equestria Girls she’s barely known Twilight a year, and it was Twilight who introduced her pony counterpart to the Daring Do series while Rainbow Dash was laid up in hospital. How did the human Rainbow Dash get into reading? You can’t just assume these details!

(5) Also, I maintain that Power Ponies may not be the Sentinels of the Multiverse expansion that we need, but it might just be the one we deserve.