A perfect summation of Twilight's Kingdom Parts 1 and 2

Spoiler: Click here for an Extra Credits video on Spectacle Creep.

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Technically, at least with the first five key episodes, they were all simple slice-of-life stories. They all emphasized the Mane Five learning life-lessons about their Elements of Harmony, and passing on what they learned about them to other ponies, giving them keys as a result. As a result of being smaller in scale, Meghan McCarthy and her writing team were given more creativity and leeway for developing the Mane Five as full-fledged characters.

Twilight's Kingdom, on the other hand, is as everything the Spectacle Creep episode of Extra Credits described it as: A complete and utter abandonment of everything that made My Little Pony good in the first place, just to emphasize how bad-ass a Super Saiyan alicorn Twilight Sparkle is, even if it rendered the first five key episodes meaningless until the end. And, even though bronies had too much of a problem with many of Goku's non-saiyan friends getting sidelined or disposed for the sake of over-empowering saiyans like Goku, Vegeta, and their sons, they seem to have no problem when the same happened to Twilight and her friends. They want that power-imbalance. They had no problem with the way Twilight's friends were disposed of for the benefit of turning Twilight into Super Saiyan Goku. And when they did see Twilight's friends receive storyline significance again with the Rainbow Power and Rainbow Castle, they pour outcry and hate both those things relentlessly, plus two of the key episodes featuring Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy.

When you go for bigger and better, like a giant, magic-sucking centaur and an alicorn powered up by three other alicorns at the expense of her friends, you're limited as to how you can end it all. That's the same problem with Dragon Ball Z itself; Toriyama never bothered developing any of the good-guy characters or their own story-arcs, not even Vegeta, instead emphasizing the villains and their apocalyptic power-levels to the point that they become limiting crutches. He disposes of every non-saiyan, drags the fights for too long, and blows up entire planets, to the point that he lost all the creativity and ingenuity he used to have with Dragon Ball Classic. And that's the same downfall as Twilight's Kingdom as compared to the first five key episodes.

 

You know, if you want a good example of how to do friendship and teamwork right, try One Piece.

Even though the Straw Hats are all relegated to fighting the main-villains' respective henchmen, it's still a lot better than having magic sucked out so that they could be used as disposable hostages, because it's still showing off their strengths and skills. The only time they could not help Luffy was during the Summit War Saga, where they were separated from him by Bartholomew Kuma, and so he goes on a solo mission to save his brother, Ace. And even then, the arc was written mostly because Eiichiro Oda noticed that Luffy's crew unintentionally became more interesting characters than Luffy himself, and took up most of the spotlight as a result.

Granted, much like the Twilight/Tirek fight, One Piece also took cues from Dragon Ball Z. The difference, though, is that One Piece borrowed from Dragon Ball Classic's template over DBZ's, emphasizing adventure over action so that the stakes could be evened out, and the Straw Hats receive the same amount of focus as their captain. The Twilight/Tirek fight, on the other hand, took cues from DBZ instead of DB Classic, not only using superficial aspects like lasers and explosions, but also many of the same mistakes as Dragon Ball Z, such as disposing of the Mane Five and whatever usefulness they could of had, just to turn Twilight into Super Saiyan Goku.