It was in the comics' first story-arc, the Return of Chrysalis arc. Like the Twilight/Tirek fight, the Twilight/Chrysalis fight was almost the same situation: A villain holds Twilight's friends hostage for her magic, while Twilight herself has her own magic enhanced by an external source (e.g. a comet, rather than the three princesses' alicorn magic) to fight off the main-villain. The difference is that the comics had the fight in reverse; where the S4 finale started with a big fight and ended with her friends held hostage, the final battle with Queen Chrysalis was almost the other way around. The reason I'd bring this up is because too many people are comparing Twilight's fight with Tirek with Dragon Ball Z, even though it's not a good comparison, IMO (no offense to those who enjoy making that comparison, though). DBZ is just too macho and masculine to be compared with MLP, which is more comparable with Sailor Moon, Cardcaptor Sakura, or Puella Magi Madoka Magica, due to them being more geared toward young females like MLP. Meanwhile, Dragon Ball Z is more comparable to two more Hasbro franchises like MLP, including G.I. Joe and Transformers, because the both of them are as geared toward young boys as Dragon Ball Z. Plus, people don't seem to remember the Twilight/Chrysalis fight in the comics, most likely because they never really read them and just go for the cartoon itself. Spoiler: Hell, if anything, I might as well compare the Twilight/Tirek fight with the finale to Lightning Returns, especially since Lightning is a girl like Twilight... Like Twilight when fighting Tirek, Lightning also had to start off fighting Bhunivelze without any help from her friends. And, it turns out that Lightning soloing Bhunivelze is not effective against him, the same way Twilight could not fight Tirek alone. So, after their respective solo fights, Twilight and Lightning all receive help from their friends to deal the final blow against Tirek and Bhunivelze, respectively. Plus, just as Twilight's library was destroyed just to make way for a new Rainbow Castle, so too was Nova Chrysalia destroyed to make way for the New World itself, for Lightning and her friends to live on.
First, IDW comics are not canon. The most recent story arc is absolute proof of that. Hell, sometimes I wonder if the comic writers even watch the show. Second, MLP was never targeted exclusively to young girls. Lauren Faust herself has confirmed that. Third, relatively few people are comparing the finale to DBZ, because most MLP fans realize that DBZ is utter dreck.
I saw BronyCurious and Dr. Wolf 001 essentially compare Twilight's fight with Tirek to Dragon Ball Z. Same with that thread I saw on Equestria Forums. Also, IMO, canon doesn't really matter when I compared the Twilight/Tirek fight with the Twilight/Chrysalis fight in the comics. Even if one of those fights isn't canon, it's still the same situation, just with the two halves of the same scene in reverse, with a different villain for Twilight to magic-fight with, and a different power source to increase Twilight's power levels. Though the target audience, I do have to agree with. Both fights in the comic and cartoon, respectively, helped MLP elevate itself beyond its own genre, much like the violence and quality writing in The Power Puff Girls.
It's really not surprising that there are similarities. It's a very common trope. http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HostageForMacGuffin
I've never read any of the IDW comics and also I like and have been a fan of Dragon Ball Z since 2002 although I do like the Sailor Moon comparison especially since I also like Sailor Moon as well.
And you know what the amazing part about both fights is? Originally, I was upset over the Twilight/Tirek fight because Twilight was so powerful that her friends could not help her and only get in the way, like they did when Tirek sucked out their magic and held them hostage. However, I wasn't as much upset when the same thing happened in the Return of Chrysalis arc's final battle. Why? I don't know. But on the bright side, at least all of Twilight's friends were not rendered as useless as I keep thinking that they were. Twilight would not have reached Queen Chrysalis' palace if it weren't for her friends escorting her there. Likewise, in Season Four, her friends still had relevancy to its story-arc by means of their key episodes, where they resolve conflicts based after their Elements of Harmony, and as a result receive keys from somepony else they taught about their Elements. Then, once they receive Twilight's own key from Discord, the girls open the box to obtain friendship-powered Rainbow Magic, which they applied to imprisoning Tirek and restoring everypony's magic. And, the Mane Five received thrones of their very own in the Rainbow Castle alongside Twilight and Spike, to reinforce the notion that Twilight would not have gotten anywhere as the Princess of Friendship without her friends. It's just too bad that people hated three of the five key episodes, the Rainbow Power, and Rainbow Castle, because those gave the Mane Five relevancy.
I don't really see the problem here. People probably keep bringing up DBZ as a comparison because of the whole powering up thing, complete with getting increasingly ridiculous hair and the inclusion of beam wars (the only real difference is the lack of hours of filler episodes the DBZ characters constantly need for powering up). I can't really recall seeing stuff like this in Sailor Moon or Cardcaptor Sakura and I don't know what masculinity or machismo has to do with anything here. Yeah, Twilight's fight against Chrysalis in the comics was pretty similar in a way (minus the spontaneous hair growth), but that was just part of a non-canonical comic that didn't even make much sense storywise, so who cares?
IDW Comics not canon? But what about all the characters that those comics introduced? They are among the best selling comics in the industry...why wouldn't they be canon? I mean, Star Wars comics are canon, and Buffy comics are canon, and Darkwing Duck comics are canon, so why wouldn't the Pony comics be canon?
Just because something is popular doesn't mean it's canon. Sometimes, not even something being official means that it is canon (just look at the Hasbro toys with names that differ from the names used within the show itself). I can't comment on the validity of your examples since I haven't read the comics you speak of (except for some Darkwing comics which didn't look all that canonical to me), but I'm sure I could just as easily come up with examples of popular non-canon (or lesser-canon) things, like the Star Wars novels. The comics are (somewhat loosely) based on characters and situations from the show, while the show so far doesn't acknowledge the comic plots at all. Together with the at times nonsensical plots, to me at least, the comics look more like your typical "expanded universe" type of deal, with varying levels of canonicity. - - Auto Merge - - Was this picture supposed to be self-explanatory? Because I don't get it.
The latest story arc has Celestia in love with a good version of Sombra from an alternate dimension. It also has Celestia behaving in a way that completely contradicts what is canon for her character, and putting Equestria at risk for her own selfish reasons. That's not the only mistake that the comics make, but it's one of the most glaringly obvious.
I'll admit that I haven't read this story arc yet. However, cartoon Celestia is also not exactly known for making good decisions all the time. I really don't see the problem with her being in love.
Here's the thing. The reason I compare the Twilight/Tirek fight with the Twilight/Chrysalis fight is because DBZ is just a bad comparison, and not just because it shares the same target audience as G.I. Joe and Transformers, while MLP shared its own with Sailor Moon and Cardcaptor Sakura. Technically, DBZ was, at its core, a mediocre series. It abandoned all notion of Dragon Ball Classic's storytelling and character-development, for the sake of a formulaic story of "bad guys commit genocide, beats the crap out of Goku's friends, then gets beaten up by Goku/Gohan at the last minute". Sure, it had its moments, from Gohan surpassing his father and becoming heir to his legacy (at least up until it was all abandoned in the Buu Saga), to Vegeta adapting to life as a husband and father as well as one of the good guys. Plus, in the remake, Dragon Ball Z Kai, all the filler gets cut out to make it as evenly paced as the manga version. But those moments all get drowned out by its constant dependency on apocalyptic violence. Up until the S4 finale, MLP was rarely like that. It was mostly a slice-of-life series that developed its individual characters through their actions, choices, abilities, and the friendship lessons they learn at the end of their respective episodes. The S4 finale didn't abandon that notion even with the fight, and to compare something as good as that show with something as bad as DBZ is like comparing a high-quality film like The Godfather or Breakfast Club, with an awful, low-quality film like Space Jam or Michael Bay's Transformers movies. As for The Return of Chrysalis arc in the comics, I thought it was pretty good. Sure, the second and third issues felt like padding, but the fourth ended the arc on a high note.
Uhm, I thought we were comparing the battle scenes, not both series as a whole? So what if one series focuses on slice-of-life episodes while the other depends on over the top fighting scenes amidst a mass of mediocrity? This doesn't change anything about the battles themselves being somewhat similar. The only reason you don't see many people comparing The Godfather to Transformers is because the former is severely lacking in giant transforming robots (unless you are talking about a completely different Godfather movie), not because of the quality of the respective stories.
And then you have another problem: The fact that the fight scene will perhaps be the only thing audiences will ever care about, just because it reminds them of DBZ. I mean, aside from its apocalyptic violence a la DBZ, it also had a point: Alicorn magic could not defeat Tirek, because he had the magic of Equestria's entire pony population, plus Discord's magic. Tirek knew this once the fight ended in a draw, so he exploited Twilight's friends, including Discord, as hostages to gain her compliance and alicorn magic. She does, and in the process gains her final key from Discord, which unlocks the Rainbow Power box, allowing the girls to defeat Tirek, restore everypony's magic, and build them a castle with seven thrones for each of them plus Spike. But no one cares about the message the fight was trying to promote, nor did they care about the message to the Rainbow Power and Rainbow Castle. They hated the Rainbow Power because of the designs and the way it bordered on Deus Ex Machina. They also hated the Rainbow Castle because it replaced Twilight's library and didn't fit with Ponyville. But they loved the fight because it reminded them of that commercialized pile of mediocrity that posed as "anime". And if people didn't care about the message those three scenes reinforced, then that means they want the show to abandon its core friendship motif to become a violent, apocalyptic fight-fest, a la Dragon Ball Z, where Twilight becomes the ultimate solution to everything while her friends are either made useless or, worse, brutally murdered. But then again, the Twilight/Chrysalis fight from the comics. It was the same scenario as the Twilight/Tirek fight a year later, and yet I didn't mind it, most likely because it wasn't being compared to DBZ the same way the Twilight/Tirek fight did.
So, that's it? You are basing your whole point of the fights not being very similar on the fact alone that you don't like DBZ and fear that other people will like the fight scene and only the fight scene because it reminded them of DBZ? This doesn't even make sense. Simply comparing things doesn't automatically mean that you like them. I don't even like DBZ and I can still see the similarities while you just don't want to see the similarities because of your dislike for DBZ. The quality of the overall story, the conveyed messages, our personal preferences and fears... all this doesn't change if two things are similar or not. And by the way, the Twilight/Chrysalis fight was even worse, because here, Twilight wasn't so much powered by friendship as she was powered by a magic enhancing comet. No good storytelling. No great message. At the end, it was just a matter of raw power, which makes it even more like a typical DBZ battle. And yet you don't mind because other people just didn't feel like pointing it out? ... well, okay. I can't say that I understand it, but if that's your opinion, then fine with me.
True, "Dragon Ball Z" has its fair share of fight scenes and filler, but what makes it so enduring is its likable cast of characters and the humor of them playing off to each other, something a Pony fan should appreciate. And why is "Dragon Ball Z" being an action show a bad thing? Some of the best shows out there ("Avatar: The Last Airbender", "Danny Phantom", "Gargoyles", "Young Justice", "Spectacular Spider-Man") are action shows. I don't see how being an action show precludes ANY show from being good.
Except those action shows you've mentioned were backed up by well-written stories. Dragon Ball Z just abandons all notion of storytelling that made its predecessor, Dragon Ball Classic, good in the first place, in-exchange for over-the-top, apocalyptic violence. I've got nothing against the apocalypse as a plot-device, I just don't like seeing it used as a crutch at the expense of quality storytelling. Also, back when I was a kid, I went to Dragon Ball Z with the same expectations I had from Power Rangers and Justice League. I expected that, because DBZ's main-protagonist was technically Superman, what with the origin and powers, that all of those other martial artists that were his friends would be his teammates, a la the Power Rangers and Justice League. Unfortunately, time and again, I've been proven wrong. The only purpose of that supporting cast was to get beaten up and/or murdered to demonstrate each new villain's power levels, just to reinforce the notion that only Goku (or his son, Gohan at the end of the Cell Games) has the power to destroy those villains. In other words, where franchises like Justice League, Avengers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers, Sailor Moon, and One Piece all promoted teamwork and consensus-building, DBZ does away with all of it to reinforce Goku as the one and only ultimate savior, mostly at the expense of his friends. And that's why I don't want to compare MLP with DBZ. In fact, I'm always going to compare it to the Justice League, the Avengers, the Ninja Turtles, the Power Rangers, Sailor Moon's Sailor Soldiers, and One Piece's Straw Hat Pirates, because the Mane Six are all about consensus-building and teamwork. Dragon Ball Z isn't a good comparison, because it didn't emphasize teamwork like MLP and those six aforementioned team-based franchises.
