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Our opening scene is funny enough and gives us the iconic Fluttershy ‘yay’ meme, but in terms of information, all it actually tells us is that Rainbow Dash is going to involved in some sort of event at which Fluttershy will also be present. As a small moment between Dash and Fluttershy, it’s nice to see.

Speaking of small moments between characters, I enjoy the fact that Applejack, Rarity and Pinkie Pie were all helping Twilight tidy up. I wonder what Twilight was studying over the weekend? Then we have the introduction of the titular sonic rainboom, courtesy of Pinkie Pie.  As Rainbow brags that she can do a rainboom no problem, and we as an audience can see that she’s actually nervous, I really like that Rarity chimes in, demonstrating her knowledge and awareness of people. Between this and her focus episode, Rarity is getting some truly great characterisation in this season. It’s also her intervention that goes on to let the rest of the episode happen, as Twilight was more than happy to just go back to tidying up. Pinkie Pie fetching the right book and even knowing what page the right spell is on is fantastic, I even like the explanation she gives to Applejack – even if I do prefer to think of that explanation as an off-the-cuff excuse to hide her powers. Then Rarity even volunteers to be a test subject for the spell! The casting of the spell is also interesting, as Twilight describes it as very complicated and appears drained after casting it. 

As Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash arrive in Cloudsdale, Fluttershy makes a good effort of being assertive. I feel like this is the first we get to see of Rainbow and Fluttershy’s specific relationship being fleshed out more, which carries forward into the rest of the show as I recall. We don’t particularly get this pair-up with the others, but that makes sense since out of all of them, only Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash sort of grew up together, or at least in the same surroundings. After they confront the bullies, Rarity shows up and we get to see her wings properly, which are reminiscent of the Flutterponies from G1, which makes me wonder if those pony’s wings were magically formed too, perhaps by virtue of the Sunstone’s magic. But that’s beside the point. The other three disembark the Twinkling Balloon with a surprising degree of nonchalance – if I knew a spell was the only thing keeping me from falling through the ground, I’d be pretty scared. But then again, magic is a very reliable force in Equestria. Rainbow Dash’s statement of Cloudsdale being the “greatest city in the sky” makes me wonder if there’s more cloud-cities besides this and Las Pegasus. In particular, a lost cloudcity would be a very interesting concept to me. They then go to visit the weather factory – now, I would assume that Cloudsdale is the only place with a weather factory, given the way it’s presented in the show. And since Pegasi have controlled the weather since before ponies even came to Equestria, this would mean that the weather factory is incredibly old, as well as being presumably irreplaceable, since we don’t know of any other cloud cities with weather factories. But it’s fair to assume that it would be a difficult feat of engineering to reproduce, since the weather factory is able to cover all of Equestria with it’s output capacity.