>>/8295/
> I find you're findings to be almost completely upside down.
Maybe it's the general vibe that pull out from it but I swear that I have seen much greater reminiscences of gen 4 in this special than the movie would deliver. Except for Zipp and Izzy,I wouldn't establish such similarities so bluntly.

> Zip is almost totally today's RD
She does follow the main tropes of Rainbow Dash except that her introvert display and her rejection towards the princess title put her under a very different situation than Rainbow Dash would deal with her ego. In the special,you see her exactly as uncomfortable as RD would do towards girly stuff for example. It's about her attitude and how she displays that discomfort and tells her friends how she feels. That's where her introvert mindset makes a difference. 

> and how on earth do you equate Hitch with Flutts? He's overly concerned, and cautious, but also brash and comfortable in the limelight.

Fluttershy does come off as really shy to even draw direct comparisons with Hitch. But if you take her shyness away, Hitch does seem to take a secondary role within the dialogue among the group,as if he would drop off less lines than the other members would do, dedicating more time in his office and the animals.

> you wouldn't confuse them even on an unexpected phone call.

Yet both follow quite the same pattern of their gestures or sudden thoughts for coming up with ideas out of their minds. I will agree that Izzy is more reserved than Pinkie Pie yet she could be prone to follow such craziness to an extreme. For the most part,she keeps herself a borderline personality where she doesn't reach quite the heights of Pinkie's impulses.

> Of course, that's coming from who hates rarity and thinks Pipp's antics are cute if dumb.
Do you hate Rarity? Really? Wow, that's not a very common take to hear. 
Anyway,even if both are separated both by fashion and social media streaming, Pipp does deliver tones in her screams that reveal her emotions in the same way that Rarity would get excited. 


> And where TS was intensely curious about all things, Sunny seems to be so cocksure she relies on gut instinct exclusively and simply hasn't run into a big enough correction that she's learned to intermingle her hunches with actual data.

Fair enough. I can agree on the part that Twilight relies more on a scientific approach. In that regard,Sunny stays too overconfident in the movie. Here, she doesn't do that to that extent. She expresses more concerns and questions towards Zipp in the way that Twilight would do for making an attempt to understand her vision about the crystals and their mechanism.

> I haven't seen / heard any of it either, just going from the movie.

I just came up with it upon a second try for this special. I didn't consider this take with the movie alone and I would assume that three of them would be more independent/unique from each other but considering that this is Berrow who has written the episode,I notice that this plot follows patterns that you would get from a gen 4 book/comic. I don't have to be proven right but that mental exercise just gave it a personal twist to me in order to judge it.