@Philweasel
Eh, I’ve always hated perfect characters. Hell, I’ll still never like season 4 Twilight. It’s mostly just the plain and simple lack of realism. Realistic characters appeal to me the most, even in cartoons. But I don’t lose sight of the fact that they’re still cartoon characters at the end of the day, and that I should expect a lack of realism to a certain degree. It’s why I don’t call a character like Pinkie perfect, even despite how incredibly multi-talented she is and how much she can bend physics to her will. But I feel Twilight in season 4 simply lost her relatablity, and she more or less completely shed her tendency to freak out about things and instead transformed into this wise, all-knowing mare throughout the season, who rarely ever made any mistakes or missteps herself. Thankfully, season 5 returned her to normal, and I’ve been steadily liking her more ever since.
In the case of Sunset, I would say that she’s not the worst I’ve seen, but she’s up there. And hell, I watch anime, which typically tends to have multitudes of perfect characters. But what pushes her a bit more over the edge to me is the fact that she started out as a villain, then instantly shed every last evil bone in her body to the point where I doubt she could even pretend to be evil convincingly. This alone makes her unrealistic to me.
No one can change like that, especially not someone who has been set in their ways for
years as Sunset has. No one can just exchange all of the negative traits of their character for positive ones the way she has. And good Lord, she is so incredibly and insufferably pure. Pure as the whitest snow or the most flawless diamond, and it is just so…ugh…
Hell, even Starlight tends to push the boundaries a bit. Actually, she sort of leaves me confused. Even though she hasn’t been handled similarly to Sunset, which I do commend her for, she does come across as too unrealistically good at times. Graduating after only one season, and subsequently becoming this incredibly wise mare who just about anyone has something to learn from is pretty bad by my standards. But then, she’ll make her trademark mistake once again, and I’ll be reminded that she is still a flawed character, even when her mistakes go either unpunished or lightly punished. But then, she’ll be shilled in some way again, and I find myself back in the same place. Ugh…
So yeah…that’s my take, I guess.