>>/11348/
Lot of formatting errors on my part! I guess that is what I get for posting while exhausted. All my larger posts always feel like air planes making near crash landing. I am not sad but I do apologize if this is a bit more of an eyesore than normal. This review, I tried doing a bit on what you did and noting things sequentially with side observations and a bit minor theorizing. My mind tends to organize things into lists and I have an easier time noting topics as an aside (sometimes perhaps too much so in some of these reviews) but I have fun with this one all the same. The episode is one that I have given a lot of thought about but it has been years... heck, maybe even an decade, that I have seriously picked it apart. A certain nostalgia with this one from reading some the controversy and discourse around it. 

 >>/11287/
I have only glaces at the manga in the past but I do agree the art style is cute and works. It deserves a full read and I think that sounds like a cozy pastime. 

>  It’s more clearly oriented towards children, understandably, but I think for what it is the manga stays remarkably close to the characters (unlike some other material that could be mentioned, like King Zebra) – they each get an introduction which is relatively faithful. Genuinely this would be a pretty good primer for the show for a kid. 
This is one of those things that people underestimate the value of.Not just for kids, but in writing anything pony, a lot of works assume too much foreknowledge of the characters and  setting in question. Whether be it a kids work or some AU fanfic, it is good to have a little bit of an introduction at least. That reminds me that Faust wanted a preschool spinoff staring the CMC (if I recall correctly) though that is tangential. 

> they each get an introduction which is relatively faithful. Genuinely this would be a pretty good primer for the show for a kid. Then, each chapter is broken up into a little story or two. Some of these are roughly adapted from an episode, albeit simplified – Suited For Success is in there, for instance
Makes me want to start reading it and comparing it, lol more crazy theories!