A Dash of Awesome: Top Bolt

Being the best is important as is helping your friend shine but sometimes you just have to be honest and not hide behind how you think you are helping them. That is what we get with this latest entry in A Dash of Awesome. This is one of the map episodes as Rainbow Dash and Twilight are called to the Wonderbolts Academy to help two friends that are going through these issues.


One important thing to note that is pretty cool is that a character named Angel Wings appeared via Make-A-Wish

So, that's cool and I do love her line of how Twilight and Dash are her favorite ponies. 

The Plot

Honestly, the plot is pretty secondary here as we have two friends that are up to be Wonderbolts and one is overconfident and one is underconfident.  Meet Sky Stinger and Vapor Trail.   

They are friends and have been friends since they were kids and that is important to understand.  Sky has always had a big family and as a colt was overlooked as his parents gave attention to his siblings whereas Vapor was an only child and had too much attention.  And that's where the trouble comes in as Vapor is a strong flier and Sky is not.  Sky has been coasting unknowingly thanks to the aid of his best friend as she is as I said a strong flier but she lacks the confidence to believe in herself whereas Sky has too much confidence and thinks he can just coast by.  Observe

You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned Dash or Twily much and well, that's because they're supporting characters to Sky and Vapor in this episode.  They more serve as mentors to help these two friends both with realizing where their potential lies for Vapor and that they need to come back to Equestria as their ego won't get them through the Wonderbolts Academy as it takes more than hot air to be an ace flier.   They even help these two after the inevitable fractured friendship moment and in many ways, that's great as seeing these two help each other out and it shows what great teachers they'll be once the Friendship Academy is established later on in the series.  Thankfully, with the help of these two future teachers help these friends become Wonderbolts.  

Not a traditional breakdown but it wouldn't have felt right to use that for this episode.  

Characters

Sky Stinger & Vapor Trail voiced by Emmett Hall & Rhona Rees 

These two were great and I do wish more had been done with them beyond this one episode but they had a lot of great growth from where they started at the beginning of this episode to where they ended up going.   

Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash voiced by Tara Strong & Ashleigh Ball 

These two were great in the teaching/helping role. They also ran into conflict as to properly help the two friends but worked through it like functioning adults and in the process brought the two friends closer together than they already were.

My Final Thoughts

This was a great episode and one that I think I liked more after writing this review. This is probably one of the best Dash episodes, even if she isn't a focus character.  Still truly worth checking his one out. Join me next time as we look at...

Parental Glideance