Greetings everyone! My apologies for the delay in getting out the review, this comic sort of snuck up on us without too much fanfare and I've been embroiled with a lot of other things that demanded my attention.
But like a doggo demanding his dinner, this comic will not be denied for long. So let's get to it! Here's your warning: spoilers ahead.
We begin with Pipp watching a "junk journal" video by a pony named Chrysanthemum, which actually sounds like that would be up Izzy's alley with her uni-cycling. Pipp is in the middle of organizing a New Year's Party as well as a new creative app and doing her best to ignore the pesky details being brought up by Zipp: that the fireworks have all been set off, food ruined, photo booths destroyed, etc. The scale and completeness of the destruction makes Zipp think sabotage. Pipp dismisses this since her resolution is to be more chill...which sounds good in theory but in practice makes her come off as a touch oblivious.
We know Zipp, we know.
Zipp on the other hoof smells foul play which Pipp dismisses in favor of badgering Zipp about what her new year's resolution will be. I'm of the school that doesn't put much stock in those and think the emphasis given them can do more harm than good. Zipp, being a bit straight-forward, will not be deterred from investigating.
As she makes her way around
the disaster areas, she spots various items left behind that seem
familiar. She ruminates over the photos with Cloudpuff before she
eventually recognizes them as being from Chrysanthemum's junk journalism.
Every good investigator needs a faithful hound.
Concluding the worst, she races to the party just as the timer counts down and she tackles into Chrysanthemum and Pipp to ring in the new year--though Pipp is more interested in wringing Zipp's neck afterward.
Zipp used tackle!
When she arrives, she finds Chrysanthemum acting very oddly, with signs of a telltale mess in her house much like the one in Zephyr Heights.
Chrysanthemum: Play dumb, play dumb! "...what's a house?" Not THAT dumb!
While her instincts are screaming out for her to probe deeper, Zipp is sticking to her anti-detective resolution and tries to overlook it.
Zipp: Horseapples detector off the charts! Approaching maximum limit!
She apologizes and Chrysanthemum accepts it, the two walking around the woods--things only continuing to stand out all the more by the jumpy junk journalist asking a series of far-too specific questions about Cloudpuff and critter-care.
I admit it, this is funny but nothing will quite top the shoulder-Raritys that Pinkie Pie interacted with in "The Saddle Row Review." Totally digging should Zipp's outfit. Think she reads Shadow Spade too?
Zipp naturally notices but does her best to restrain herself from calling Chrysanthemum out on it. Instead the subject turns to her junk journaling, and Chrys admits to her frustration at having been doing it for so long but her subscriber count remains static, leading her to question if what she does even matters. When Zipp asks if she's junk journaling for others, Chrys wonders who else she could be doing it for. When Zipp mentions she's giving up on detective work, Chrys is horrified and appeals for her not to quit.
The discussion is interrupted when Pipp calls up to inform Zipp that Cloudpuff is missing, which causes the dam to finally break.
Someone is clearly channeling the "This is fine" meme.
Chrysanthemum confesses in an instant: she took Cloudpuff. In fact, she admits that while she didn't mean to sabotage the event, she did come with the express intent of dognapping Cloudpuff. Her plan, such as it was, was to wait for the royal ponies to begin a search for him, then she would 'find' Cloudpuff and bring him back in order to generate attention for herself and her channel.
Behold the face of a criminal mastermind.
I might not be the right person to review this comic. Last week, I moved out of my home and in the process had to say goodbye to my dogs. I've had dogs since I was in elementary school some thirty years ago. I've had ten dogs in my life and I've loved them all and was heartbroken each time we had to give one up or put them to sleep. Saying goodbye to all of them has left me a bit emotionally fragile in general, and on this particular topic--whoo boy.
You know, folks give Fluttershy the business for stealing Philomena way back in season one--and I'm not gonna pretend that it isn't deserved. But at least she took Philomena out of concern for her health and didn't go to the tea party planning to do that--she wasn't motivated by a stinking subscriber count! I won't mince words: this is really awful, unlikable behavior and the fact that we're supposed to forgive Chrysanthemum and move on is just a bridge too far for me.
I'll save my full thoughts to the end, but yeah. Not a fan of this development.
Anyway, Chrysanthemum admits that she messed up by the numbers and lost Cloudpuff herself after he trashed her home (to which I say, good for him!). She's desperately appealing to Zipp for help, saying she needs a detective to find out where he went.
Zipp doesn't dwell on Chrysanthemum's admission of blatantly criminal conduct and instead muses that it won't technically break her resolution if she just helps point Chrys in the right direction. She concludes from the mess at the house that Cloudpuff was trying to get outside to chase something. Seeing his shed feathers, they have a trail to follow.
Shake a leg now, Cloudpuff!
Let's wag another tail.
Sniffin' out adventure with Zipp on the trail!
What follows are five pages devoid of any text balloons, showing Cloudpuff tearing his way across Equestria in pursuit of a squirrel while Zipp and Chrys follow his trail--Zipp using her observational skills while Chrys is more distracted by gathering items for her junk journaling. She does meet Izzy though, so that's a plus.
Zipp used tackle! This time it's super-effective!
They find and secure Cloudpuff in Maretime Bay. That's quite the distance for such a little pup, but then I remembered what another animated series taught me:
The squirrel got away, but they have Cloudpuff back and no doubt Queen Haven will spoil him rotten on his return. Chrysanthemum admitted that during the chase she wasn't worried about her subscriber count or producing content, but instead wanted to find Cloudpuff while also finding stuff she wanted to create with--not for her subscribers, but for herself. Good for her...now please take her to jail.
But no. Zipp doesn't say a word about her confession of dognapping and when they return Cloudpuff to Zephyr Heights, she lies and tells Pipp that he just ran off. An unduly grateful Pipp thanks Chrys and offers to include her in her new app, but Chrys wants to take some time to focus on herself for right now.
The story ends with Zipp and Pipp chatting at night. Zipp walks back her anti-detective resolution while still trying to not assume there's always a greater mystery or malefactor behind all occurrences while Pipp admits that being yourself is important, implicitly dropping her faux-chill attitude. The two set off some fireworks and our story concludes.
Thoughts
So, yeah. As I might've ... hinted at ... throughout the main body of the review, I'm not okay with Chrysanthemum skating by without even a slap on the hoof. Sorry, but her admission of going to the party with the express goal of stealing Cloudpuff in order to drive up her subscriber count is pretty darn unlikable, unsympathetic behavior--and no, the tacked on bit where she said Cloudpuff basically followed her out after the party doesn't mitigate that. I know Equestria is a place that's not about punishment, especially if the party in question has already recognized their fault and wants to do better--but this just crossed a line.
It felt like a poor decision from a writing standpoint. It would've been better if she established that Cloudpuff simply followed her home (it's implied he was looking for the squirrel even as far back as then) and she didn't notice him until she arrived home and meant to bring him back the next day, maybe motivated in-part by boosting her subscriber count, before he got loose and ran off. It would've made her seem a lot more likable in my book at least.
But I'll stop harping on that. What else does this story have to offer? I commented back during the Set Your Sail reviews that one of the strongest things in G5, something that seemed to really resonate with fans, was the sibling dynamic of Zipp and Pipp. I'd say someone upstairs has a similar assessment, given how often the two and their relationship factors into things in the comics.
I've made no secret that I've found Zipp to be an interesting and nicely nuanced character, my standout favorite for this generation. This comic highlights both her strengths and flaws, with her zeal for uncovering the truth sometimes coming at the expense of others' feelings or trying to dig deeper when it isn't necessary. But something I'm particularly grateful for with G5 and Zipp is that even when Zipp is being too zealous, that doesn't make her automatically wrong. As we saw with Misty in Make Your Mark, just because Zipp was suspicious of her and sometimes pressed her too hard, that didn't mean she was automatically wrong. Likewise here with Chrysanthemum. To quote Ron Stoppable from Kim Possible: "Normally I'd say we learned suspicion and paranoia is bad...except that's what saved us."
This was something that I found fell a bit flat in Friendship is Magic. There, being suspicious or even just skeptical of a friend--or even a pseudo-friend--was treated as somehow being mean or wrong to do...even when it was absolutely justified and turned out to be correct. This happened several times with Rainbow Dash. While she was wrong when she accused Twilight of being a spy in the show's premiere, a lot of her other suspicions and voiced doubts about the odd behavior of other characters often was proved to be correct.
But she usually was either chastised or painted as being in the wrong when she really wasn't. So I was glad that Zipp was allowed to be validated here even if she started off with a wrong conclusion earlier.
Cloudpuff is an adorable little guy and he tends to get a lot of attention in G5. Maybe because he's the only real pet in the series and dogs are adorable. This logic tracks with me.
The art is fairly solid. It's nicely detailed, bright and colorful, and the expressions come through quite clearly. With five pages in a row of single-page panels, the art is given a lot of room to breathe and proved quite up to the task of telling a story with few words.
That actually looks pretty awesome, not gonna lie.
All in all, this is a decent one-shot for what it does with Zipp and Pipp, though Chrysanthemum failed to register much of a positive impression with me. Still, I suspect others can relate to her frustration with creative works that go unappreciated if not the act of pet stealing. It's a simple story, but that's all a one-shot comic needs to be. Sometimes it's good to take a break from multi-part series and capture something of a slice of life story.
That's about all that I've got, thanks for reading!
