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The year 2016 is upon us, once again changing the big answer from "next year" to "this year". The seeming perpetuity of Filly Funtasia development cycle gets shorter and shorter, with more and more nods towards its end from the official sources. One of such nods is the fifth promotional video that was released October last year.
Over two minutes in length, this promo is the longest Filly Funtasia promo released so far, even longer than the very first one (1 minute and 40 seconds). Even if only the original, never before seen content of promo 5 is considered, the promo still is the longest pack of new material there is (although now slightly below two minutes long). Now, if the 18 seconds cut of the promo has managed to get its own article, then its 600%+ extended version deserves one too.
WARNING: this article is extremely large, and may take your browser a while to load. Click "Read more" at your own risk. The video begins with a dimly lit tapestry which depicts two Filly Unicorns, crowned, standing on opposite sides with magic mirrors in front of them. The lighting is very diffused, making it clear that it is natural, and its blue hue suggests that it's night time. The only patch of remotely bright light runs across the center of the tapestry, illuminating an image of a floating island with a fortress on it, shielded from the outside by a dome. Strokes and sparkles of light are emitted by the fortress, making it look like the patch of light on the tapestry itself comes from the island's image.
For the first couple of seconds of the promo, there is absolutely no movement in the shot, except for subtly glimmering jewels on the unicorns' crowns, horns and mirrors. There is barely any music, too: the tapestry is accompanied by a buildup, which blows up into the song only after the camera starts moving away from the tapestry.
Combined with the lowered heads and closed eyes of the unicorns, the atmosphere of this first scene comes off as calm and sleepy: nothing has happened so far, all things are resting and waiting for something.The camera pans to the trio of Filly Unicorns standing in the moonlight. The hallway is as dim as the tapestry, with the moon crescent visible in the regally decorated window. This is a castle!
The Filly on the left should be familiar to any person who has spent at least a couple of minutes paying attention to Filly Funtasia: it's Rose, the central figure of the show. Rose has appeared in the Filly brand before, in the Filly Unicorn toy line:
While this small snippet of information about Rose may be enough to get a general idea about who she is, there are many other sources of information about her (and everyone else): the Filly Unicorn book with extended biography and a few relatively short stories featuring Rose, different editions of the annual Filly Sammelband with additional trivia on top, and the monthly Filly Unicorn magazine with its own sets of stories and information about Crystalia, where Rose hails from. And if one delves into Filly Unicorn toy line, they have a fair chance to learn who the unicorns to the right are. The scene alone suggests these are Rose's parents, and the truth is close to the suggestion: the unicorn in front is Leaf, Rose's mother:
According to the family trees of Crystalia, Rose lacks a father, making the identification of the other unicorn tricky. However, Rose does have a cousin by the name of Romeo, who looks roughly matching the unicorn in the promo, provided the dim moonlight warps the colors:
Again, both characters (as well as Kirina and Cordelia) have a lot more information about them available elsewhere.With a parting hoof bump, Rose gallops away to a big mirror on a wall with a round, almost circus-esque pedestal in front of it. The unicorn jumps onto the pad and gives one final cheerful look at her family as the pedestal lights up.
The sudden yellow light with whimsical particles coming up in the air, contrasting with the blueish darkness around it, gives the sense of awakening: Rose kickstarts the action of the promo, brings the sleeping scenery to life as the increasing light engulfs more and more of the screen.
Notable thing about this scene is Rose's reflection: the laws of optics should not allow for such reflection to be produced, making it an oversight of the animation crew. Indeed, such reflection would only be possible if the mirror was perpendicular to the screen - if it was a literal horizontal flip of Rose. Thankfully the team have already been informed of this issue. Here's hoping the final product has the correct reflection!
Before Rose leaves the castle, it is better to talk about it. The assumption is that Rose departs from her homeland, called Crystalia, since her family is seen here, and it is presumed she is not in Funtasia yet.
Crystalia consists of six islands, five of which support one castle each, surrounding the sixth island. The majority of Crystalia's residents live in said castles, divided into families. Let us take a closer look at Rose's castle: the light pink palace in the top left corner of the image above.
The first instinct to see if this really is Amoria is to compare the windows, and unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a match.
No heart shapes detected.
While it may be assumed that the lack of match is due to these windows being either on the side of the castle or in the back, the more believable explanation is the slight rewriting of the source material - bear in mind that Filly Unicorn series is relatively old, dating back to years 2010-2011, and a lot of small details could have been rewritten for Filly Funtasia specifically. Such as making the castle interior look more grand.
While we are on the subject of toy lines, there is another detail worth mentioning, concerning the mirror:
Clearly visible only prior to Rose's arrival at the mirror, the arch above it bears a familiar design: dark blue, mixed with white stripes and stars. This is reminiscent of another castle of Crystalia: the castle on Somnia.
Self-explanatory. We might be seeing one of these four characters later in the article.
This adds another possibility of where the mirror is located, although it still seems to be within Crystalia. The Somnia castle has no matching windows either, but the overall design of some windows we do see on this picture is much closer to the design of the windows in the promo.
The mirror, which serves as the portal to Funtasia, if it's on the island of dreams, may raise an implication that the entirety of Funtasia is a dream manufactured for or by Rose. It may, however, go the other way around, and a similar implication may be raised that all dreams are actually existing worlds, where Crystalia residents seamlessly travel with the help of Somnia residents. But I digress.
The mirror turns into a portal, and Rose, taking a deep anticipating breath, jumps into it, making the screen fade to white, as Rose and the viewer are transported into this new magical world of…
Hey!
Filly Funtasia! The familiar logotype shines on the screen for a couple of seconds before fading away. The colors and the font of this logo do a good job of staying true to the original baseline Filly logotype:
The Filly Funtasia logotype takes the original Filly logotype and expands it, adding "Funtasia" into the main frame, instead of putting it in its own separate box on the bottom, like it is done in toy lines:
Note: this is less than a half of all toy lines.
In addition to that, the border of the logo is a detailed royal golden frame as opposed to a simple purple box, and the shadows suggest that the frame is protruding. The letters are not flat either. The logotype as a whole has a solid, three-dimensional, rich look to it.
It is worth mentioning that in promo 2, the logotype for Filly Funtasia was much more similar to a typical toy line logotype: namely, it had an upside down horseshoe with a character in the middle:
All other versions of the logo lack the horseshoe.
After the logo fades away, we see Rose gracefully hovering down from a huge arching rainbow and landing in front of the Magic Academy - the central location of the show. There are two main things to say about this scene.
First, Rose arrives to her destination using a rainbow, which seems to be a callback to the lore of Filly Unicorn, where rainbows are used as bridges between locations.
The rainbow bridges are mentioned in other Filly series as well, including Zimsala, which is concealed from the world and can only be found by following a glimmering rainbow in the sky. One of the newest Filly series, Filly Stars, also uses the concept of rainbow bridges - there, a bridge connects the Moonlight region with the rest of Skylia.
In both Filly Stars and Filly Unicorn, it is said that rainbow bridges cannot handle rain, and disappear once the weather decides to have more water in the air and less sunshine in the sky.
The rainbow seen in the promo looks more sturdy compared to the bridges - it resembles a long and thick tube, as if Rose was traveling inside the rainbow like in some kind of a warp tunnel.
Second, the Academy itself. It has been featured in all promotional videos (except for the 4th one).
The Academy as seen in promo 1 and promo 3
The Academy as seen in promo 2
The Academy as seen in promo 5
The main features of the Academy are still present: it is a big cluster of variously-shaped buildings surrounded with floating islands, with one big blocky skyscraper in the middle. This shot from promo 5 shows the academy without the floating islands, and in a slightly thinner shape compared to promos 1 & 3.
The big skyscraper in the middle deserves extra mention, because in all three images above, it is rotated by an eighth of a circle, so that it faces the front of the academy with its edge, whereas in the concept arts it is facing the entrance with its… face:
The concept arts also show that the skyscraper is equipped with a huge balcony, which is nowhere to be seen in the Academy shots of the promotional videos. However, the balcony still exists, as we will see later.
The golden arch in front of the academy greets Rose with the shining Filly glyph. This big capital "F" seems to be the only element of the Latin alphabet that has carried over to the texts in Funtasia, and seeing a part of the logo on an in-universe object adds a bit of the feeling that we're seeing a play, where the characters are fully aware of the logo.
Rose is galloping towards the entrance to the Academy, which at first glance seems to be a stone slab. Are the students expected to run into the flat surface of the "door" and be transported inside through a hidden magical portal? Seems not, as the concept art shows that the slab is indeed a door:
The second concept art even shows that it's a double door - and this fact is still visible in the promo if one looks hard enough. Still, the door doesn't look like it's attached to the frame with hinges, and the way it opens remains a mystery. Who knows, it may be a magical door that disappears when a student approaches it and reappears behind them.
Rose is excited
This is one of the most valuable shots in the entire video. We have already seen what lies in front of the Academy in promo 2, but here we see it from the perspective of the Academy: the spiral hills and cliffs that disappear into the distance are a new sight. We can tell this shot shows the front of the academy by comparing the scenery to that from the end of promo 2:
The benefit of building a castle in a field: the ability to build a huge garden next to it.
The wide walkway Rose is being excited on is with no doubt the same walkway seen in the image above. In addition, the two tall structures in promo 5 and promo 2 seem to be the same structures:
As seen in promo 2
As seen in promo 5
Hey!
Rose jumps into the camera, finally revealing her name (and teeth) to the public! This is the first time any of the promotional videos mention her by the name. I have already given information about Rose above, but one last note is that the official (and currently not intended for use) Filly Funtasia website contains its own description of Rose. While the toy series description focuses on Rose's activities, the Filly Funtasia description focuses on her character:
Please ignore the construction scaffolding.
Unfortunately Rose is the only character to have valid description on the Filly Funtasia website, so if one wants to know more about how the series portrays the others, they will have to wait until the staff update the files.
Next shot is a revamped look at the backyard from promo 3.
As seen in promo 5
As seen in promo 3
Animated comparison
First, let us look at the changes.
The two circular buildings in the corners of the backyard have shifted vertically a little. The entrance to each of them now has what seems to be a small bump, hopefully with a ramp, otherwise accessing the buildings from the backyard would be slightly more difficult.
The two trees next to the buildings have shrunk significantly. This pair of trees is the only one to undergo this change, and considering that they are the only part of the flora to stand alone in the middle of stone paths, their new size fits their position well. I am concerned, though, that the backyard now has less shade for the students.
The tree on one of the "butterfly's" "wings" has been rotated. Curiously, the tree opposite of this one remains seemingly untouched. Perhaps this is an accidental change, which affects nothing at all, and has been caused by a misclick on the tree. Or maybe the tree was toyed with out of boredom - the sight of a spinning tree can be hilarious.
The color patterns on the grass now look more clean and vibrant. The shape of the pattern has been ever so slightly altered, resulting in the yellow area shrinking a little. The lawn no longer looks as motley.
The shadows have been improved. The pair of students having a chat in the bottom right corner of the shot are now properly shaded (as opposed to their "popping" appearance in promo 3), and the shadows themselves are a lot more soft.
Now let us take a closer look at the image itself. Promo 3 had text obstructions on the screen that were preventing proper observations, but now we can see a pair of students in the center of the screen:
Blur is caused by the sun's heat in the air, I promise
The Filly on the right is undeniably Rose - the shape and color of her mane and body give it away. But who is the mysterious Filly on the left? He seems to be holding something long and green!
No time for that, meet the pointy-eared Bella! Her name and the wings on her crown obviously mean that she is a walking reference to Boeing B-17, or "Memphis Belle", a famous aircraft of the 30's, which I have personally piloted. In Battlefield 1942.
Of course the real reason why Bella (or rather Isabella, which is her full name) has a winged crown is because all Filly Elves have winged crowns. The reason why all Filly Elves have winged crowns is either open for interpretation or is explained in one of the Filly Elves stories.
Unlike Rose, Bella was fortunate enough to be mentioned in previous promos, namely the very first one, in which she allegedly doesn't lose the cupcakes and proclaims herself a hero.
As seen in promo 1
Ditto
Ditto
The focal point of the first promo was the cupcakes affair with a mix of probable monsters and lies, allegedly jumpstarted by Bella's devious actions. In this promo, Bella stays true to that, deciding to yoink a cupcake to snack on, finally answering the question: "Who in Funtasia would steal cupcakes?"
Shifting the focus from Bella to the scenery, this place looks similar to a certain shot from promo 3.
Promo 5
Promo 3
Promo 3, zoomed in
The tall building behind Bella in promo 3 and the building in the zoomed in shot look remarkably similar, and both of them have a circular fountain in the front. They even have the same smooth shrubbery by the side!
Shrubbery and… another shrubbery!
However, this doesn't seem to be the same location, because promo 3 suggests the presence of a large building in the background, whereas in promo 5 no such building exists - instead, the background is filled with trees. Either it's a different location, or an altered representation of the same location.
After acquainting us with Rose and Bella, the promo goes into a high-speed clip show, showing a lot of secondary characters.
"Let's have…"
More unicorns! These two dames are Princess Sparkle and Ashia, who also hail from Crystalia, just like Rose.
One of the goals of Filly Funtasia as a story is to shine the light on various characters from the toy series, spanning from some of the the earliest to one of the latest; although some toy lines seem to be absent from the show, according to the promotional videos. All but one of the main characters have their compatriots in the show, and quite a lot of them.
The women in this shot differ from their interpretation on the website: they now possess nominal clothing, which usually indicates a profession. In this case, these two unicorns, as well as three other characters we'll see later, are the senior teachers of the academy, and princess Sparkle is now academy mistress Sparkle.
The room this scene takes place in is very reminiscent of a certain room from promos 1 and 3:
As seen in promo 1
As seen in promo 3
The three main objects that link the three images together: the giant golden mirror on the right side of the images, the light purple decor on the wall behind the table (which is another object of interest, although not as obvious), and the thin yet long window between the aforementioned mirror and decor.
"…some fun…"
And right after that homage to Filly Unicorn, we get this scene, with two unicorns and an elf between them; none of them seem to originate from the toy series, and instead are the original characters for Filly Funtasia.
Their existence is needed to fill the academy with students, since even if only the characters from the toy lines are considered, the absolute maximum available number of potential students is roughly halved, since one half of all characters in the Filly world are parents to the other half. This number is reduced even further, because sending the entirety of the younger generation, most of whom have their own responsibilities (sometimes vital not only to the family, but to the civilization and the world itself) at home, to a faraway academy would not be beneficial overall.
The addition of the original cast in this case is more natural than its absence. The old characters are in a never seen before location with completely new and unknown surroundings, so an unknown population fits right in.
Speaking of unknown population, the back wall is covered with familiar posters!
As seen in promo 1
The popular speculation is that these posters are referring to the monster who broke into school and took cupcakes from Bella by force. So now we have more clips from the same episode, it seems, and possibly even from the same scene.
"…fun…"
Yet another elf the identity of whom I cannot find. There does exist an elf with the same gender, as well as the body, mane, eye and, as we will see later in the video, hoof colors, by the name of Sally.
However, chances are that Sally and this character are completely separate entities. The elf in the shot also lacks the yellow flowers in her tail.
"…fun…"
Speaking of characters that may or may not be reoccurring, this owl! Currently in the Filly World there is only one white owl - Hocus, pet owl of Abra. Who's Abra?
Unfortunately Filly Witchy is one of the few Filly toy lines that don't have an English website. To summarize, Abra is the supreme ruler of Zimsala, together with her sister Cadabra. Abra is powerful, kind and does her best to make the life in Zimsala as peaceful and delightful as possible.
Hocus the Owl is her pet, but the owl in the promo doesn't seem to be Hocus, since she looks quite different.
Hocus, from an issue of the Filly Witchy magazine
The mysterious owl in the promo also appears on the official Filly Funtasia website as decoration:
Charactowls
It is currently unknown what role this owl plays in the show, and these two images are the only instances of her appearing anywhere. However, the medallion on her neck might be familiar to those who have watched previous promotional videos.
Promo 5
Promo 1
While the pictures may be different, the style and the overall appearance of these two medallions are practically the same. The moon medallion is worn by the owl, and the star medallion is worn by Battiwigs.
As seen in promo 1
Battiwigs is portrayed as one of the antagonists of Filly Funtasia. Is there any deeper relation between the owl and the bat, given how strikingly different they are to each other? Time will tell.
"…fun…"
Here we see Ashia again, and, by the looks of it, in the same room as well.
Moments earlier
Current
The character next to Ashia is another senior teacher of the academy, as indicated by the same blue uniform. The glasses-wearing teacher with blonde hair is supposedly Twilight from Filly Fairy.
Two things to note are the differences in the eye color and the wing shape.
The eye color of Twilight, according to the website, is green, whereas the eye color of "Twilight" in the promo is blue, as seen in promo 1:
From promo 1
The wing shape is also different: toy Twilight's wings resemble those of a butterfly, with two clearly defined parts, whereas the show Twilight's wings are singular. These two differences are something to keep in mind, but they can be dismissed as either a redesign or an error. This character has enough similarities with Twilight to be considered Twilight, especially when one takes a look at her profile page in Filly Sammelband.
This time her eyes are on the other side of the visible spectrum from blue.
"…and dance!"
The next shot is taken directly from promo 1, showing two characters who, according to the wings on their crowns and pointy ears, are elves. The character on the right is undeniably Florian from Filly Elves:
The similarities are all there, including the bracelet on his left limb. It may be not visible in promo 5, but it is visible in one of the scenes in promo 1, which comes directly before this scene.
From promo 1
Even the red flower in his tail is visible, sealing the deal that this is Florian. However, the character right next to him, the bulky brown elf with short hair and a whistle on his chest, seems to be another original character. This makes him the only original character in the group of himself, Sparkle, Florian, Ashia and Twilight.
As the image above tells us, this is Cedric, from probably the most known toy line, Filly Princess.
This is a good time to talk about royalty in Filly. One of the most notable attributes of all (almost all) Filly toy lines is the crowns that sit on heads of all characters. These crowns vary in size, shape, and the number of crystals in them. A crown is the symbol of royalty, which would imply that every single Filly character is royalty. However, only a small fraction of all Filly characters actually are acknowledged to be royal, and most of them are in the fittingly called Filly Princess toy line, where royalty is a theme of that specific series. In all other toy lines (except for the most recent one at the time of writing), the royal title belongs to one or two characters per line - for example, Sparkle from Filly Unicorn is a princess, while all other unicorns are not, despite the crowns. Additionally, aforementioned Abra is very rarely called by her title at all.
Crowns in Filly do not have the same implications as they do in the
popular media, and, to put it roughly, most of the time have no
implications at all, being a chunk of pretty shining gold on a Filly's
head, although sometimes enchanted. Cedric, illustrated above, is the only character from the main cast who has a royal title.
But enough about lore, let's talk about this shot.
Cedric is sitting in a dim room at a table with various oddly shaped objects on it. The fan in the top right corner of the image is slowly spinning, indicating that whatever is happening in the room requires aeration. Cedric is working on a device, which compliments the clue from the promotional art about him being an inventor.
The top left corner of the image above illustrates a table cropped from another image, which seems to be the table Cedric is sitting at. Indeed, another concept image shows bedrooms of the main cast, one of which is Cedric's:
The circular rug is the same; however, there is no table. The table is present in another picture, a dark room the interior of which is exactly the same as Cedric's room interior, plus the table:
It is highly likely that the table to the left is the table Cedric is sitting at in the promo. To further solidify it, the left side of the promo image shows the window, the chair, and the corner of the bed.
The chair is a horseshoe-shaped object above the book on the table
There is one frame of animation that lets us take a better look at the room:
Now the chair is clearly visible!
Another object of interest in this shot is the window to the right - not visible in the concept images, this window helps to establish, not surprisingly, the minimum number of windows in the bedroom, as well as help narrow down which building this might be.
Giggling Rose startles Cedric, forcing him to drop the wrench and launch the apparatus. A couple of words about this apparatus.
It seems to be a container on four wheels with a vertical pillar attached in the center. The pillar, in turn, hosts a rotary object, the edge of which is connected to the center of a wheel below via a piston. As the lower wheel turns, the piston turns with it, forcing the upper wheel to turn.
If there are no hidden features, this mechanism is doomed to fail the seconds after it starts moving. The piston is applying force to the upper wheel as the lower wheel rotates, but it is secured on the upper wheel, limiting the piston's angle. Eventually the mechanism will come to this position, where the piston aligns with the tangent line to the circle of the upper wheel:
At this point, the lower wheel is forcing the piston to move outside the upper wheel's bounds, which will result in the entire mechanism stopping, since the piston cannot follow the lower wheel any more. The possibility of the apparatus falling forward from the sudden halt is also there, but is unlikely, since the device's mass is likely too large.
Bottom line: Cedric's invention in this promo is far less useful than it looks, unless it contains hidden features.
Sparkle appears in the mirror and instantly gets confused by what she sees and/or hears. It has been established in previous promos that mirrors serve an important role in the academy. Promo 3 in particular has shown instances of communication through a mirror.
As seen in promo 3
Ditto
The second image clearly shows a similar starry background. The mirror in promo 5 is different from the mirror in promo 3, leading me to believe that colorful starry background is the default background for all mirror communications. Looks nice!
The background behind Sparkle is a starry rainbow space, but with a bit in the lower left corner that looks like a piece of the room Sparkle is standing in. The mirror transmission probably transmits whatever is close to the mirror, effectively surrounding the area around the mirror in thick rainbow fog for the receiving end. This would lead to a part of the floor around the caller being visible in the miror. I am eager to see the inevitable scene where a character interrupts the call and walks into the transmission area out of the fog.
Fabian is back! And he looks just as shocked as Sparkle, if not more. Fabian is yet another original Filly Funtasia character, who has appeared in promos 3 and 4:
From promo 3
From promo 4
Fabian is supposedly the goof of the show, both in actions and in appearance. Note that his glasses seem to have flat lenses, rendering the glasses mostly useless (unless Fabian is planning to use them as eye shielding). The bow tie has undergone a slight palette change, going from red+white to red+pink, which looks much more soft and pleasing to the eye.
The two characters behind Fabian are two more original Filly Funtasia characters, one of whom has already appeared in this promo. Neither of them has any information available.
This dame, on the other hand, is pretty known in the Filly World and beyond, thanks to her striking color scheme. This is Countess Melody, from Filly Princess toy line.
Countess Melody hails from the same land as Prince Cedric (not from the same castle, though), and we have even seen them together before.
From promo 1
Now let's take a closer look at Melody's surroundings. The amber decorations behind Melody tell that this is the "common room" from one of the concept art articles.
However, all doorways in this picture show some stairs and rooms, whereas Melody's shot shows a long hallway, with a white line between the decor and the corridor. This most probably means that Melody is standing by a wall that is not shown in the concept art, and the corridor doorway is positioned on the opposite side from the window. The white line is, in fact, the door, placed perpendicular to the camera.
Another shot of Ashia and Twilight. The brown texture on the left and the pink background behind Ashia give it away as another scene taking place in Sparkle's office.
From promo 1
You can even see the curved edge of the mirror in the top left corner of the promo 5 image.
Promo 5, zoomed in, with and without markings
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the most notable character in Filly Funtasia: Prince Zack.
Zack has been one of the most puzzling characters ever since his first appearance in promo 3. As already mentioned earlier, original characters in Filly Funtasia are nothing out of the ordinary: there are plenty of characters who never appeared in the toy series. However, all of them belonged to the existing toy lines, almost always from the same toy lines as the main characters. Zack, on the other hand, was a unique instance - none of the toy lines in the early 2014 (air date of promo 3 where Zack first appeared) sported winged unicorns. King Magic from Filly Fairy came close, but his wings had no feathers, and he was the unique Fairy, an exception.
Another guess would be the so-called Angel Filly characters, namely Rafael. But Rafael's appearance is still greatly different.
Only in the late 2014, when promo 4 finally revealed Zack's name, all theories were shelved away. For some time, Zack was perceived as his own Filly Funtasia character. Until the early 2015, when Filly Stars premiered, and Zack was discovered to be from this new toy line.
Suddenly Zack became a part of a rather unexpected turn of events: a character taken from a toy line appeared almost a whole year before the toy line itself came out, around the initial air date of Filly Funtasia. Filly Stars has now ceased to be the most recent Filly toy line, and Filly Funtasia itself has not yet been released, but this odd temporal shenanigan has been documented forever.
The blackboard behind Zack shows a landscape with what seems to be a rough representation of the Academy, with a giant blue arc in the sky. This is undeniably the extension of one of the scenes in promo 3.
As seen in promo 3. Glitched Fabian included.
In promo 5, Zack is looking at the students, most probably addressing a question from the audience regarding whatever he was talking about beforehand. The topic seems to be the Blue Rainbow and the Blue Rainbow Crystal.
From the placeholder of Filly Funtasia official website
The next shot is quite similar to one of the previous shots with Melody:
Hallway on the right
Hallway on the left
Again, this seems to be the same location: the "common room". We can now see the door in the doorway, as well as the door at the far end of the corridor. Melody's and the elf's positions seem to be as follows:
If you thought the previous shot was similar, wait until you compare it with this one! This shot is essentially the same as the Melody shot, only with a new Unicorn by her side. I cannot find any unicorn from the toy lines that would match her appearance, which leads me to believe this is yet another original Filly Funtasia character.
I feel like these three shots were taken from one full scene, where the trio are talking to another character in front of them. This may be the acquainting scene, where students who have never seen each other before act friendly towards one another, letting everyone know that studying together will be great.
Further study of these shots shows that the earlier shot of a blue-haired elf also belongs to this scene.
The wall textures behind those two elves seem to be the same as in the shot with Melody and the unicorn, only flipped, which means they're standing on the other side from the door to the corridor.
A scene very similar to this arrangement can be seen in promo 1:
Promo 1, Melody and Lynn
Promo 1, everyone else
Notice how all four students run into the room and sway to the left and right in accordance with their positions in the shots from promo 5: Melody and the unicorn run to the left, whereas the elves run to the right.
The only character missing in promo 5 is Lynn, and the reason why she is not shown could be because she is standing in front of the quartet, having a chat with all of them.
With a little bit of image editing, the students from the promo 1 scene can be mostly removed, in order to reveal the structure of the corridor behind them.
Promo 1, edited
The windows on the left wall of the corridor, combined with the windows in the "common room", as well as the windows in bedrooms, suggest that all of this is inside this building from promo 3:
A better representation of this building can be found in the concept art:
Let us roughly cut the building horizontally and build the outline of the rooms we have seen so far:
The far edges of the cut do not represent the actual outline of the building!
First, the "common room":
The big window of the common room is without a doubt the big window above the entrance to the building, which will be marked on the cut with green lines. The room's floor will be represented by a red circle:
While the concept art shows only two doorways to bedrooms, the actual number of rooms connected to the "common room" is four: the "common room" is symmetric. The concept art of the building supports this, as the facade of the building is also symmetric. Using the Cedric shot from before, we can assume that the two windows in the shot are the windows which will be marked with blue rectangles. Cedric's room (or, rather, its mirrored equivalent) itself is marked with orange.
Lastly, the corridor. It connects the red room with the depths of the building, and the two main reference points are the set of windows to the left and the door at the end of the hallway.
We can see two windows that are shaped an awful lot like the windows on the side of the building.
Further analysis is based on the proposition that 3D graphics in Filly Funtasia are based on perspective projection.
Here I have drawn straight lines along various objects in the scene, including edges of walls, windows, and their projection onto the middle line. Let us name the projection lines A, B, C, D, E and F:
A - the nearby door;
B - the close edge of the first window;
C - the far edge of the first window;
D - the close edge of the second window;
E - the far edge of the second window;
F - the far door.
I have measured the length of each projection line and, based on that, have reconstructed the true distance of each line to the point of view:
The distance between E and D is slightly less than the distance between C and B, which is caused by the imprecise measurement of the windows - to put it bluntly, the image is too blurry. However, the difference is small enough to look past. It is unknown if there are windows between the lines A and B. This makes determining the relative length of the hallway difficult. One possible explanation is the discrepancy between promo 1, promo 3 and the concept art, since not only all of them were made at different times, but all of them also are WIP (as is everything in the article).
Let's move on.
A rather beautiful sequence of a piece of blue chalk leaving a properly colored trail on the blackboard. The chalk is glowing, indicating that it is being manipulated by someone. This most likely is a part of Zack's announcement, as he illustrates the trajectory of the Blue Rainbow Crystal to the class.
And here is the Blue Rainbow Crystal itself, crashing in a forest. This is another scene that was present in one of the previous promos, and as such it is subject to direct comparison.
From promo 3, before the impact
From promo 5, before the impact
The image now has slightly toned down colors with better shadows. The picture quality itself seems to be inferior because of more blur, most probably due to encoding artifacts. The most notable difference is the rock in the center of the picture: it has shifted to the left.
This rock is the rock the Crystal slams into, which means that now the rainbow trail ends slightly to the left of its previous destination.
From promo 3, after the impact
From promo 5, after the impact
The impact special effect is the same; however, the trail is now a lot more defined and split into colors, resembling a classic cartoon-style rainbow with extreme blue fade applied to it.
We finally get to see the actual Blue Rainbow in the sky, smashing into terrain to the right of the academy and sending a shockwave across the screen. I like how the air warps around the impact point.
This scene has excessive amounts of motion blur, following a high-speed skateboarder as he rides forward. Around mid-way through the scene, the rider accelerates and zooms away from the camera.
The view is slightly slanted, and the angle of the slant gradually changes as the scene progresses.
First frame
Last frame
The skateboard scene has already appeared in the reel cut of promo 5, where we looked at the three students that quickly zip by the camera
Blue character, far and close up
Two more characters, far and close up
The identities of all three characters remain uncertain, aside from the obvious fact that the pink one is a Fairy. What's less uncertain is the location of this scene. The skateboard appears to be rolling on the yellow road in the backyard.
The black arrow shows the direction of the skateboard
One last notable detail of this scene is that we see more of the academy's architecture: the skyscraper and the neighboring towers.
The towers from the back
The towers from the front
While it may seem that the towers in the skateboard image are much shorter than in the Rose image, the skateboard scene has a huge field of view. The difference in tower height is real, but not as drastic as it looks.
Welcome Will! The fourth member of the main five, Will is a Fairy with daring attitude.
So far Willow (which is his full name) has frequently appeared in promo 1 and promo 3, and he has lived up to his description - sudden, brave, prideful, and now he is riding a skateboard, jumping into the air and greeting Rose, to her surprise.
He even has the sun behind him, causing a blinding impression on Rose and smiling all the while.
Now let us try to determine the location of this shot. The blue tower behind the two students (or, rather, its mirror image) and the gate to the right can be seen in promo 1:
The tower is hidden behind a tree in the middle
The tree formations, the pattern on the ground, the pink flower arch, and the details of the buildings to the right show that this, once again, is the backyard area.
Judging by the positions of the tree to the left, the lamp posts, and the lonely lamp post below the tree, we can determine where exactly Rose is standing in this shot.
By the looks of it, she's standing roughly in the same spot in both pictures! And now it's quite likely that the filly next to her in the overhead shot is, in fact, Willow himself.
Promo 5, zoomed in
The continuity of these three scenes is questionable, since Willow keeps reappearing in various places around the same spot. At the end of the skateboarding scene he clearly passes through the pink flower arch, but in the name scene he appears before the arch. These scenes are either not supposed to be in order, or, if they are, have oversights. Or they all are WIP.
Willow loses control over his board, and it rolls on its own, bypassing Rose, who watches the show, impressed.
This is where spacial shenanigans begin, since according to the backyard overview, there is no location in there where such shot is possible. This seems to be very close to the pink flower arch, but with both the arch and the surrounding flowerbed removed and replaced with pavement.
The continuation of the spacial shenanigans; Willow crashes into one of the single trees. In the previous shot, he seems to be moving parallel to the yellow road, and relatively close to its edge, which would not allow him to crash in the tree that is distanced from the road. Unless Willow's trajectory curved into the tree. He did lose control, after all!
He is fine, though, just a few scratches on his pride.
Here's Zack again, unknowingly receiving Rose's loving gaze. Rose herself walks forward on autopilot through the blue hallway, which most likely is the first floor of the dormitory building.
We will see more of this hallway in the future, so let us talk about something else in the shot. Rose and Zack both were described above, and the students in the back don't matter here as much as the last but not least member of the main cast.
The only member of the main five who deals with the magic directly, Lynn from Filly Witchy, a wind witch. Here is some information about Lynn:
Among the witches of Zimsala, Lynn is one of the younger ones, and no matter how hard she tried, she could not do what any witch should be able to do: magic.
One may notice the difference in hair color between Lynn in Filly Funtasia and Lynn in the toy series: orange and purple respectively. Lynn is one of the few Filly characters who has undergone changes within one toy line: eventually, Lynn managed to conjure magic, and this made her so happy that her hair turned bright orange. Lynn we see in Filly Funtasia is not the clueless Witchy she once was, but an able spellcaster she is now - at least according to the hair color.
The distinct feature of all mature witches is the cape, which acts as the source of great power for the Witchy wearing it, and allows them to fly. This means that Lynn is the only Witchy we have seen throughout all five promotional videos - no other Filly in the academy possesses a Witchy cape. There is only one sighting of a cape resembling a Witchy cape at all, which happens in the same scene we're looking at.
A Fire Witchy?
In my honest opinion, the chances of that character being a Witchy are miniscule.
The next shot shows Lynn with a carefully wrapped present for Rose. We can see this is the same location as in the previous scene, however, Zack is now gone. These two scenes most probably don't happen in the order shown in this promo.
This one, however, is bound to happen after the previous scene. The carefully wrapped present explodes in a blast of confetti, as the big scary caricature of a bat emerges to startle Rose. I appreciate the tongue of the "bat" - flat and straight, it does a very good job at presenting this thing as an artificial doll.
Wranglum, also publicly known as Wizard of the Dark Mirror, has a number of scenes in this promo also. In this one, he's leaning on a stool in a dark room, just like he did in promo 1:
The mirror hasn't changed, although the eerie purple shapes representing Wranglum's face are now much more defined and less ghostly - the trail they leave behind when moving is now smaller.
The shadow of the stool, as well as the planks under the mirror, suggest that the image from promo 5 is mirrored. There is also a big possibility that these two images come from the same scene, which means that Wranglum in promo 5 is still talking to Battiwigs by the window. This would explain his momentary shock and the following "No!"
More footage from the monster crisis. The situation is so emergent that the students don't even have time to properly attach the posters to the walls, leaving a large chunk of them lie on the floor. Everyone is looking out for the monster, watching the windows, blocking possible entries into the academy with sandbags and anything else that is close enough, like furniture. The only thing missing from this panic picnic is a mental breakdown.
Perfect.
The next shot features Battiwigs angrily glaring at something, partially concealed by the foliage. The faint hints of blue can be seen, which suggests that he is looking at the crash site of the Blue Rainbow Crystal - this notion is supplied by the Holidays promo, where we see a very similar shot.
Promo 5
Holidays promo
Is this the same scene, or does Battiwigs just love hiding in the foliage all the time?
More scenes in the great outdoors, with Willow and two more students. The small table with a parchment suggests that this trio is planning something, and considering Willow's intentions, this is probably the scene where he and his crew assemble a trap for the monster. Willow is full of himself and his upcoming success so much that he doesn't notice a log that interferes with his victorious march, trips on it, and falls down onto the ground. The scene abruptly cuts a frame before the landing - all slapstick with the Fairy seems to happen off screen in this promo.
For a split second at the end of the scene, the blue-haired student can be seen in the right side of the screen - the same character who appeared in a similar scene in promo 3.
From promo 3
All features are still here: namely, the log in front of the unicorn and the parchment in front of Willow, seen in the lower left corner of the image. The context of this scene is most likely reassurance from the fairy that their plan will work, met with faces of skepticism.
The previous scene cuts to this one, where there is suddenly a hole in the ground, with dozens of leaves flying everywhere. This may seem like the result of Willow's fall at first glance; however, the scenery is different: there is now a blue structure on the right that looks like a giant cupcake, and the hole has a rope going into it from above - these two objects are the lure and the trap, respectively.
This scene is important, because it acts as the missing link between the two disconnected scenes in promo 1, where we see the trap and the "cupcake":
Promo 1, the trap and Rose looking at it
Promo 1, the lure and Bella touching it
We now know that the blue object is a massive cupcake, and it's quite hilarious to think that Willow's plan to lure a giant cupcake thief is to build an equally giant treat, promising to satiate the hunger better than any tiny sweet in the academy. And it worked!
KAKAMMU! SELAH!
Battiwigs and Wranglum are finally seen acting together, conjuring up a spell in front of a large grimoire, surrounded by thick candles. The camera does a complete 180 degrees turn shortly after this shot, but before it does so, we get to see the text written on the pages of this book. While the image quality is not high enough to clearly see every symbol, the rough shape of the glyphs and the orthography look a lot like what we've seen previously, in promo 1.
As seen in promo 1
It should be noted that the text alignment seems to depend on the page: left alignment for the right page and right alignment for the left page. This results in all text being aligned with the book's hinge. This may bear no meaning what so ever, but studying text can be quite indulging, especially when it seems to be consistent.
The duo's spell works, and the crystals in front of them illuminate the area, blinding Battiwigs and stunning Wranglum, as the mirror loses balance and falls on the floor. This is one of the few instances when Wranglum moves perpendicular to the camera (let alone moves at all), and from this scene we can gather more information about how his face is projected from the mirror: it seems as if his face extends into the air in front of the mirror, but is only visible where there is the mirror behind it, creating an odd effect of pseudo-3D.
The room where the two troublemakers practice their spellcasting is very similar to the "Indoor scene 1" room from the concept arts:
Notice the books and scrolls on the top, behind the red curtains, and the pole of the curtains below them - they look similar in the promo and in the concept art shown above.
We're back in the classroom again, with Lynn, Rose and Isabella sitting at the front table. The adorable smiles on every face indicate that they like what they're seeing, and what they're seeing is most likely Zack, who is still standing at the blackboard.
The window on the far wall appears to be a big mirror, probably designed for teachers to monitor the class more efficiently.
Top left: from promo 3, upper part of the blackboard;
Top right: ditto, color-coded;
Bottom left: from promo 5, mirror reflection;
Bottom right: ditto, color-coded.
Rose raises her hand, to the shock of everyone around her. This scene has already appeared in promo 3, and thus it requires direct comparison.
Promo 3
Promo 5
Animated comparison
The classroom is now a lot brighter, whereas the table is now a lot darker. The lighting on the students has also slightly changed - the scenery now feels much more warm than before.In the new version of this scene, we get to see a few frames more than in promo 3: Rose lowers her hand and starts blinking (or just closing her eyes), and the elf in the back (far behind Lynn) shifts to our right for whatever reason - probably to get a better look at Rose.
A student descends from the sky towards another student in front of the dormitory building.
The yellow sparkles below the visitor are very similar to the yellow sparkles below Rose when she arrived at the academy near the beginning of this promo.
This implies that the orange student is, at this point, a newcomer, just then arriving from her homeland. Why she lands right on the doorstep of the dormitory building, while Rose lands outside the academy, is unknown.
The second person to greet the newcoming student is Wranglum, with a wide evil grin on his face. He is obviously happy to see more students arrive - more targets for his devious plans. His hiding spot is not very well concealed, however - the patch of grass right next to the window provides no cover, and arguably harms the spot by drawing even more attention.
Thankfully, the next shot shows us that Wranglum has more than one hiding spot, as indicated by the different bars in the window. Or does he?
This shot also appears in promo 1, but apart from slightly dimmer lighting overall, there are no differences between the two versions.
Yet another cupcake scene: Rose gets hit by one. This is another returning scene from promo 3, and as such, a comparison should be made. Due to how dynamic this scene is compared to the rest of returning scenes, the best way to analyze the differences is with a video:
The chocolate has been changed from powdered to liquid, and the new liquid version looks quite realistic - I especially like how the upper parts of chocolate remain there, clinging to Rose's nose bridge, like a sticky liquid it is.
Strangely enough, the lighting in this scene is now more cold rather than more warm, like it other returning scenes. The room we see in this scene seems to be the academy cafeteria.
The next shot shows Willow walking towards the camera through the crisis corridor. The camera position and angle are exactly the same as in one of the previous scenes:
There are slight differences in the scenery, however. The students on the left, looking through a window, have shifted to the right, and the right wall has an additional poster. The poster on the floor in the elf scene cannot be seen in the Willow scene; however, since this poster appears in the elf scene above the floor, it leads me to think that the poster on the wall in the Willow scene and the poster on the floor in the elf scene are the same poster, which fell from the wall onto the floor. If this is true, the Willow scene takes place before the elf scene.
Additionally, the annoyed walk of Willow in this scene is similar to how he walks in another of the previous scenes:
The myriads of posters support the connection of these two scenes, but the scenery and the student positioning do not match, meaning that there is a time gap between the scenes.
Wranglum is out in the open, in the hands of a Filly! This scene confirms that the students are aware of the antagonists' existence, at least partially. The leg in this shot belongs to Fabian, and considering Fabian's character, he probably won't tell anyone else about his encounter with the Dark Mirror, preferring to forget it like a bad dream.
There is a ghostly blue glow with rays coming from above, which suggests that this scene happens during the Blue Rainbow event. My guess is, Battiwigs and Wranglum were expecting the Crystal to arrive, but something went wrong, separating the two.
One of the few group shots of the entire main cast, as well as a plethora of other students. This scene returns from promo 1, and besides the rather usual at this point improvements to lighting, there is a peculiar change in the scenery, seen near Cedric's head:
Top: from promo 1
Bottom: from promo 5
The orange object has been replaced with horizontal wall-colored gradient. Seems that the window in the hallway has been switched to another part of the hallway, if not another hallway altogether!
Another object of interest is the door in the middle of the shot, behind the students.
Its shape and texture is very similar to the door to the academy cafeteria:
Isabella and Lynn stand in a doorway and express a mix of confusion and curiosity. Isabella's hair is slightly untidy - hey eyes are partially blocked by hair locks.
The room the two students emerge from is one of the bedrooms, and according to the concept art, this room belongs to Lynn.
Now it's Rose's turn to stand in a doorway and express a mix of confusion and curiosity. This time with a pinch of desperation, too.
The doorway itself looks very similar to "Indoor Scene 2" from the concept arts.
Among the similarities, one particular detail that deserves more attention is the blue "wings" in the upper part of the decor, because they appear in another scene, helping us to connect locations and scenes together.
As seen in promo 3
That doorway appears to be in Sparkle's office, according to this scene from promo 3: the right part of this shot shows the same shapes and colors, including one of the blue "wings". It seems that Rose entered Sparkle's office and saw/heard something shocking. What are the chances that these two scenes come one after another?
From promo 5
From promo 1
The room behind Rose, with its green railings, lamp posts, and a particular shape at the door are reminiscent of "Sparkle's Hall Office" concept art:
So now we know there is another door in the hall, behind the stairs. And that the doors to Sparkle's office proper have knobs only on the outside, which would make leaving the office a hard task, unless the doors swing both ways.
A bunch of students gallop through a corridor, joined by Zack, who is entering this section of the hallway by calmly walking. The wall texture suggests this scene takes place in the same location as the scene with Fabian from before:
Indeed, the seemingly metallic arch is present in both shots - the corridor scene has the same object in the background:
There is a small chance that this is literally the same object, since the only difference between these two shots is that Fabian has a bench to his left, whereas in the galloping scene the bench is absent.
Rose opens the golden doors and enters the dormitory building with an unusually enthusiastic grin. The unicorn behind her is apparently another original Filly Funtasia character. The lamp posts outside match the lamp posts seen in the "meeting Bella" scene, further solidifying that these scenes take place in the same place. Possibly even one after another.
The camera pans around to reveal the first floor of the dormitory, from a different angle than that in the "meeting Lynn" scene:
The crucial detail of this scene is the presence of at least one door to the left:
This is an unusual fact, considering that according to all other shots of the dormitory, as well as the aforementioned dormitory corridor analysis, there shouldn't be a door there.
From promo 3
Once again, one possible explanation is that the architecture has changed since the times of promo 3 and concept art. Another valid explanation is that there are numerous alternative versions of the dormitory standing all over the academy, including one where this door would make sense.
Zack attracts the camera to himself and gives a charming and alluring look slightly to the right of it, no doubt staring directly at Rose. The air of this scene once again draws parallels with the Lynn scene, where Rose gives the same stare back.
These two scenes most likely happen one after another. Seeing how Bella was standing in front of this building, the elf's scene happens right before Rose opens the door and exchanges looks with Zack. This seems very fitting for an intro sequence! Since Cedric's meeting scene takes place in one of the rooms of the dormitory, it's safe to assume that it happens after this affair with Rose, Zack and Lynn.
One last thing to say about this scene is a graphical glitch that happens for a split second. When the camera shows us the insides of the building, it clips through the entrance door.
Frame 1, all is well
Frame 2, door's edge disappears
Frame 3, door's edge still missing
We're back at the classroom, where Isabella is getting lost in her daydreaming, with a joyful sigh. Countess Melody, who is sitting behind her, seems happy too. The cause of such happiness is most probably Zack, who is still standing in front of the class.
After the romantic wishful thinking, we cut to Rose, who is extremely annoyed that she unexpectedly got wet. This scene is another returning scene, this time from promo 3.
As seen in promo 5
As seen in promo 3
Animated comparison
The water now is a lot more bright, and the lighting on Rose has been adjusted to look more natural. The light reflection in her eyes has been diminished greatly, flowers in her hair have become more warm and dark, and the jewelry no longer pops out of place.
Wranglum, also publicly known as Wizard of the Dark Mirror, has a number of scenes in this promo also. In this one, he's leaning on a stool in a dark room, just like he did in promo 1:
The mirror hasn't changed, although the eerie purple shapes
representing Wranglum's face are now much more defined and less ghostly -
the trail they leave behind when moving is now smaller.
The
shadow of the stool, as well as the planks under the mirror, suggest
that the image from promo 5 is not mirrored. There is also a big possibility
that these two images come from the same scene, which means that
Wranglum in promo 5 is still talking to Battiwigs by the window. This
would explain his momentary shock and the following "No!"
We're back at the "common room" again, where Bella walks onto a puddle of water spilled from an overturned flower vase. The room behind Isabella seems to be her bedroom.
The main clues are the color scheme and a bouquet of daisies in the lower left corner of the concept art, seen in the first few frames of the promo scene:
The next scene chronologically follows directly after the previous scene, showing Bella sliding uncontrollably on the water. Her body must be very light and smooth for such friction-free movement to be possible, especially when she is forced onto a nearby rug and keeps going!
The poor elf spins as she continues being carried by the water. The rug doesn't seem to care - it doesn't even soak the water up, letting it splash around with quite impressive graphic effects.
Bella crashes into Lynn's room with an allegedly loud bang that shakes the camera. Another scene bridge can be built by linking this series of four shots with Bella to one of the previous scenes with both Bella and Lynn standing in this same location.
Considering that Isabella's hair is messed up in this scene, it's fair to guess that it was caused by the water slide, putting this shot chronologically after the water scene.
However, the important part of the water slide scene is the yellow & white pattern to the left of Bella as she walks out of her room:
This pattern has emerged in numerous trailer shots, such as:
From promo 1
From promo 3
From promo 3
From promo 5
In this case, the pattern abruptly ends, revealing Bella's room behind it. The detailed and flat look to it implies that it's a wall section, but by examining the shots more carefully, we can conclude that the yellow & white pattern belongs to bedroom doors. The images of Lynn's room's doorway show a white vertical line on one of the frame's inner sides:
Left side, no line
Right side, line
The line is most probably the door, in its open state. This shows that the bedrooms are equipped with sliding doors - quite unique compared to swinging doors everywhere else in the academy. Whether these sliding doors can be pushed in both sides is unknown, but Bella's and Lynn's doors are both shown being opened in the same direction relative to the person standing in the "common room".
A very brief context-less scene with one of the academy's magic mirrors. The color scheme and the texture of this mirror are very different to the mirrors we have already seen in previous promos:
Isabella's mirror, promo 3
Rose's mirror (right) and possibly Lynn's mirror (left), promo 3
From what little we know about these mirrors, each individual mirror is personally assigned to one Filly. The mirror in this scene does not match any of the mirrors we have seen previously, leaving the identity of its bearer unknown.
Battiwigs zips through the window and abandons Wranglum after knocking him off with the crystal flash. As the camera follows the bat inside the room, more of it becomes visible, further proving that it is the "Indoor scene 1".
The checkerboard floor can now be seen, as well as the drawer and the chair. The pillar in the middle of the shot is most likely a pipe, since support is not needed in such a small room. While Battiwigs is darting to the left, the window is actually placed on the wall opposite of the bookshelves, as seen in this shot:
The overall structure of this room, with its bookshelves, the small window and the big pipes, is very similar to the room in promo 3.
From promo 3
If this shot shows the same location, then Wranglum's hideout has at least two small round windows: one with straight bars and one with slanted bars.
The view from the window is also worthy of attention. Using frames from
the sequence, I have put together the "full" version of the view,
although with some rough edges.
There are grass blades near the window in the lower right corner, whereas the lower left corner is clear - this matches the previous window scene from promo 5:
However, the bars are different, as is the positioning of the window itself: in the view shot, we can see a gray structure behind the dark tree on the left, which looks really similar to the outer edge of the fountain in front of the dormitory.
The angle implies that the window Battiwigs flies out of is to the left of the dormitory entrance, creating an odd asymmetry of windows - the right window has slanted bars, whereas the left window has straight bars. Of course, other inconsistencies, such as the dark tree which isn't there in the promo 3 shot, leave the possibility that it's not the same location and/or angle open.
A brief image of the cloudy sky. This scene serves no purpose other than a short transition between the previous scene and the next one. There are no objects of interest in this scene, apart from the clouds that move downward at a moderate pace.
The clouds cut to the academy skyscraper, and for the first few frames of the camera rapidly moving up, we can see some more of the landscape around the academy: same spiral hills, green meadows, a river flowing into/out of a lake, and a glowing yellow arc that has appeared in many other landscape shots, together with arcs of different colors.
The camera ascends and ascends, before finally reaching the balcony near the pinnacle of the academy skyscraper. The birds in the background slowly flap towards the hope through the air, as the academy mistress Sparkle and her four senior teachers observe the Magic Academy.
You know we can't stop.
The whole gang is here: Princess Sparkle, Twilight, Florian, Ashia, and the currently nameless coach, whose name eventually will be revealed.
The balcony itself is rather large, with solid walls in the back and more ornamental railings in the front. The big golden F is shining on the bright pinnacle of the skyscraper, surrounded with large trees in equally large pots - the whole place feels big and regal. I wouldn't be surprised if this is where the graduation will take place - the location reflects the success, too, bringing the students closer to the sky, higher than they could ever imagine.
The next scene, in contrast, shows Battiwigs and Wranglum falling down outside the academy - the bat flaps and falls slightly faster than the mirror, catching up to it. The figure to the right of Battiwigs looks a lot like Willow, but the picture has too much blur to reliably conclude that it is the daring fairy.
Wranglum is saved mere centimeters before the shattering collision with the ground. Battiwigs grabs the mirror by its handle and flaps them both to safety along the dirt. These two shots are the only shots in all available promos that show at least one rocky cliff face, and it does look rather pretty.
An elf student we met in the skateboarding scene dashes into the frame from the left, panicking. The sandbags in the background indicate that this scene is taken from the monster episode, unless there are multiple episodes where the students block the academy in fear of something.
The students in the background are gesturing to each other: the top unicorn points at something off screen, and the fairy who has been looking at the unicorn hesitantly turns and observes. The elf in the foreground turns as well, most likely from panic.
One last thing to mention in this scene is the object that is being blocked by the sandbags: it appears to be a grate door, which is an odd sight, considering that all other doors in the academy we've seen are solid. Here's to sliding grate doors!
We're back to the group shot in the corridor, and this time the extended portion can be identified much more easily: there is definitely a right turn behind Melody:
The central figure of this shot, the one everyone is looking at with varying degrees of confusion, is Cedric. This is one of the few instances of Cedric being the center of the shot, but sadly since this is a music video, we don't get to hear him speak, leaving him as the only member of the main cast the voice of whom we still haven't heard.
A shot oddly similar to the previous one, with Cedric doing almost the exact same gesture, but this time with no other students around him. The location has been changed from the corridor to the common room, or rather to a common room.
A glowing golden mirror appears, surrounded with sparkles that gravitate towards it. The shape of the mirror and its color are extremely similar to those of the disappearing mirror we've seen before.
While the image does not show any Filly who could be its owner, the room this mirror is hovering in is Sparkle's office, as indicated by the red chair, the tall window to the left, and the wall decor to the right.
From promo 5
From promo 1, chair
From promo 1, everything else
What is this mirror doing in Sparkle's office? We can assume that the mirror belongs to Sparkle, or to one of the senior teachers, but it can also belong to whoever entered Sparkle's office to do some magic with the mirror.
Here we see the mirror again, this time from behind, as it blasts Lynn with wind, while Bella watches. Unless this is a special super fast hair drying technique of the wind witch, this is either an accident, or a rigged practical joke. The previous scene with the mirror could be a precursor to this scene, if not for the drastic location difference - the previous scene takes place in Sparkle's office, whereas this one is in a common room. The fact that it's Lynn who's handling the mirror now puts her on the list of potential owners of this mirror.
This mirror also appears in the beginning of promo 4, where it's wielded by Fabian.
As seen in promo 4
It should be noted that in every scene this mirror appears with a Filly, it always ends badly for the Filly.
A close-up of Lynn, most likely right after the previous shot. We can see more of the witch's bedroom interior, and one thing that's barely seen in the concept art, but is clearly seen here, is a silver bat ornament on the bed itself:
In addition, apparently students' beds have extremely thick mattresses.
And of course the obvious parallel to draw here is that this shot is very similar to one from promo 3:
Promo 3
After a brief pause, Lynn starts conjuring up some magic. The horizontal trace and its bright color looks very similar to the mirror conjuring spell used by Bella in promo 3 and by Zack in promo 4:
As seen in promo 3
As seen in promo 4
The reason to conjure the mirror is probably to tidy up the hair after the wind burst. Or maybe Lynn is fueled by the desire for revenge, and she's going to use the mirror to retaliate against who she thinks played the trick on her.
A similar shot with Rose, in front of Isabella's room. Like Lynn, Rose is in the middle of a practical joke, as the pages fly all around her on their own. The mirror behind Rose, among other things, makes this scene similar to the scene where Isabella has an encounter with spilled water.
The overturned vase is probably a part of the joke. The pages were animated by a spell that also affected the vase, and it couldn't handle its own weight, falling onto the floor. The sound of the fall probably then lured Bella out of her room.
Two scenes in a row with both Lynn and Rose beings victims of pranks, this leads me to believe that these scenes have something to do with this episode, given its premise:
From the placeholder of Filly Funtasia official website
Another scene in the cafeteria corridor. In this one, Willow is showing off his wild skills: the ability to either kick the monster, butt it, chase it off, or all of the above. The crowd isn't as large as in other scenes in this corridor, but the positions of the characters are the same, implying that this scene happens before other crowd scenes. And, most likely, after the scene from promo 1 already referenced in this paragraph:
From promo 1
After giving Bella and Rose a brief introduction to his combat potency, Willow probably went off the rails and continued describing his plan to the whole cafeteria corridor, collecting a curious crowd.
Another shot with Willow in the forest - this particular scene has appeared both in promo 1 and promo 3. Apparently the fairy is gloating over the trapped "monster", and this scene goes very well with the previous one: first we see Willow boasting about how he's basically going to save everyone, and then we see his success (at least in his eyes). This paints Willow as a person who is not only daring, but able to pull his dares off, ready for a bit of cooperation with others to do it.
Pretty much the exact copy of the terrified Isabella from promo 3; however, there is one interesting detail hidden in this scene that helps establishing the picture. This scene, for one reason or the other, was not cut properly, leaving exactly one frame from another scene before it.
This, of course, is the log from promo 1 that is about to smash the camera. It's here, in promo 5, due to an oversight, and thanks to this oversight we can conclude that Bella reacts to it, probably right after touching the lure of Willow's trap.
More scenes from promo 1! Here we have the old famous scene where Bella kicks the air to her left in front of four other students, either teaching them how to combat the monster, or raising their morale, like some sort of a war leader.
Promo 5
Promo 1
Animated comparison
Not much has been changed, apart from lighting: the elf now basks in more than one light source, and her jewelry is much brighter - especially the necklace.
Here we see the aforementioned four students, mimicking Isabella's technique. These two scenes come hand in hand, even though one half is taken from promo 1, and this one is from promo 3. I appreciate the fact that these two scenes are synchronized in this promo: the four students kick the air almost simultaneously with Bella, acting as a visual continuation of her move.
The camera cuts to new footage, showing Battiwigs in the middle of nowhere, with a twig in his hands. The bat does his best to snap the twig, applying the force of his foot.
It is unknown why the bat would want to snap a twig, but the body language of Battiwigs seems to indicate that the bat is in a dire hurry. This may be a part of a convoluted plan, which by some bizarre cartoon logic requires a snapped twig.
A plan that could result in someone ending up trapped, forcing them to use their mirrors as an SOS beacon! Here we see Rose's and Zack's magic mirrors against a dark background. Zack's mirror is already lit, and the unicorn's mirror is preparing to join, to create a big purple distress pillar of light. It slowly ascends before starting to rapidly spin, as the pink ray is emitted.
One last returning scene from promo 3. Rose and Zack are trapped in a ditch, Zack's wing is damaged and bandaged, and Rose uses her mirror to shoot a magical light upwards. Her face is filled with hope and belief that everything will be fine.
This scene, unlike all other returning scenes in this promo, is overloaded with differences that all fuse together into one giant improvement over the previous version of this shot. See for yourself.
Promo 5
Promo 3
Animated comparison
The only thing in this scene I will draw attention to is Zack's mirror: it appears to have undergone a complete palette overhaul since promo 3.
Promo 3, promo 5
While the golden parts of the mirror have stayed golden (and have become brighter), all white spots have been painted blue, and the two small parts that were already blue have been brightened.
Zack's mirror also appears in promo 4, where its visual appearance seems to be in the intermediate state between the two.
Promo 3, promo 4, promo 5
The two Fillys unite and raise their heads and arms to the skies, as the magic mirrors combine their beams of light into a single big beacon. This scene joins the two previous ones, and most possibly precedes the entirety of promo 4, where the SOS beacon attracts help in the form of Fabian.
Promo 5
Promo 4
It is still unknown how exactly Rose and Zack fall into the pocket, nor is it known how much time passes since the ignition of the mirror and until the arrival of Fabian.
The scene of Rose galloping through the forest, following a path. This is one of the longest uncut scenes in the promo, and a perfect opportunity to analyze Rose's gallop, which seems to be transverse gallop.
From "Coupled Nonlinear Oscillators and the Symmetries of Animal Gaits" by J. J. Collins and I. N. Stewart
Last 38 frames of Rose's gallop in the scene, for comparison
The next scene shots Rose's gallop again, this time from behind. The unicorn's concerned gaze was most likely aimed at Zack, who appears to be waiting for Rose uphill, either scolding her for being slow, telling her to hurry up, or both. As soon as Rose catches up to Zack, they start galloping together.
The camera starts moving to show us their goal, but the scene ends before we can see anything. This scene of Rose and Zack hurrying somewhere in the wilderness on a path is similar to the scene of Rose and Zack hurrying somewhere in the wilderness on a path from the Holidays promo.
As seen in the Holidays promo
In that promo, the two stopped in front of the Blue Rainbow Crystal, so it's likely that the galloping scene in this promo leads up to it!
We get one last long look at the Magic Academy as the camera slowly moves forward - so slow, in fact, that the frame rate in this scene slows down as well, indicating that the slowdown was edited in. The academy buildings have a white fade effect attached to them, making them more pale the further away they stand. This effect is unique to this shot and does not appear in any other academy shot.
The last scene of promo 5: the dormitory doors swing open as the main cast of five Fillys rush outside and freeze in front of the camera, looking and smiling at it. This scene establishes that the dormitory doors swing both ways, but of course the main point of this shot is to end the video on a happy note, by showing the main characters cheerfully burst into the shot in a welcoming manner. After the unicorn, the elf, the fairy, the prince and the witch all freeze, the scenery changes to something more suitable for a wallpaper.
And only now do the logotypes of companies responsible for Filly Funtasia appear on the screen, making one realize that this is the first Filly Funtasia promo without any logotypes throughout the video footage.
And thus Filly Funtasia promo 5, officially known as Filly Funtasia - Magical World, ends. This is without a doubt the most content-heavy promo released yet, showcasing a lot of new elements, as well as some old elements with a bit (and sometimes a lot) of polishing. The pool of episodes that were used in this promo seems to consist of the "monster" episode, the Blue Rainbow episode and the Lynn/Rose episode: the first three episodes, according to the Filly Funtasia official website.
The promo also comes with a new song, Magical World, which is twice as long as the song used in promo 3, unofficially called From Now Until Forever, and twice as long as the song promo 4 song. From Now Until Forever had a faint callback to the Filly theme in the beginning, but Magical World goes full Filly, basing the song on the jingle, as well as modernizing it. The verses do not follow the Filly melody, but the chorus does, making it extra exciting to hear. Whether this song is planned to be the intro theme or not is unknown, but I would not be surprised if that was the case.
And now I am waiting for the next preview video. See you then!
The video begins with a dimly lit tapestry which depicts two Filly Unicorns, crowned, standing on opposite sides with magic mirrors in front of them. The lighting is very diffused, making it clear that it is natural, and its blue hue suggests that it's night time. The only patch of remotely bright light runs across the center of the tapestry, illuminating an image of a floating island with a fortress on it, shielded from the outside by a dome. Strokes and sparkles of light are emitted by the fortress, making it look like the patch of light on the tapestry itself comes from the island's image.
The camera pans to the trio of Filly Unicorns standing in the moonlight. The hallway is as dim as the tapestry, with the moon crescent visible in the regally decorated window. This is a castle!
And if one delves into Filly Unicorn toy line, they have a fair chance to learn who the unicorns to the right are. The scene alone suggests these are Rose's parents, and the truth is close to the suggestion: the unicorn in front is Leaf, Rose's mother:
With a parting hoof bump, Rose gallops away to a big mirror on a wall with a round, almost circus-esque pedestal in front of it. The unicorn jumps onto the pad and gives one final cheerful look at her family as the pedestal lights up.
Clearly visible only prior to Rose's arrival at the mirror, the arch above it bears a familiar design: dark blue, mixed with white stripes and stars. This is reminiscent of another castle of Crystalia: the castle on Somnia.
The mirror turns into a portal, and Rose, taking a deep anticipating breath, jumps into it, making the screen fade to white, as Rose and the viewer are transported into this new magical world of…
The Filly Funtasia logotype takes the original Filly logotype and expands it, adding "Funtasia" into the main frame, instead of putting it in its own separate box on the bottom, like it is done in toy lines:
All other versions of the logo lack the horseshoe.
After the logo fades away, we see Rose gracefully hovering down from a huge arching rainbow and landing in front of the Magic Academy - the central location of the show. There are two main things to say about this scene.
The concept arts also show that the skyscraper is equipped with a huge balcony, which is nowhere to be seen in the Academy shots of the promotional videos. However, the balcony still exists, as we will see later.
The golden arch in front of the academy greets Rose with the shining Filly glyph. This big capital "F" seems to be the only element of the Latin alphabet that has carried over to the texts in Funtasia, and seeing a part of the logo on an in-universe object adds a bit of the feeling that we're seeing a play, where the characters are fully aware of the logo.
Rose is galloping towards the entrance to the Academy, which at first glance seems to be a stone slab. Are the students expected to run into the flat surface of the "door" and be transported inside through a hidden magical portal? Seems not, as the concept art shows that the slab is indeed a door:
The second concept art even shows that it's a double door - and this fact is still visible in the promo if one looks hard enough. Still, the door doesn't look like it's attached to the frame with hinges, and the way it opens remains a mystery. Who knows, it may be a magical door that disappears when a student approaches it and reappears behind them.
The two circular buildings in the corners of the backyard have shifted vertically a little. The entrance to each of them now has what seems to be a small bump, hopefully with a ramp, otherwise accessing the buildings from the backyard would be slightly more difficult. 
The angle implies that the window Battiwigs flies out of is to the left of the dormitory entrance, creating an odd asymmetry of windows - the right window has slanted bars, whereas the left window has straight bars. Of course, other inconsistencies, such as the dark tree which isn't there in the promo 3 shot, leave the possibility that it's not the same location and/or angle open.
A brief image of the cloudy sky. This scene serves no purpose other than a short transition between the previous scene and the next one. There are no objects of interest in this scene, apart from the clouds that move downward at a moderate pace.
The clouds cut to the academy skyscraper, and for the first few frames of the camera rapidly moving up, we can see some more of the landscape around the academy: same spiral hills, green meadows, a river flowing into/out of a lake, and a glowing yellow arc that has appeared in many other landscape shots, together with arcs of different colors.
The camera ascends and ascends, before finally reaching the balcony near the pinnacle of the academy skyscraper. The birds in the background slowly flap towards the hope through the air, as the academy mistress Sparkle and her four senior teachers observe the Magic Academy.
The next scene, in contrast, shows Battiwigs and Wranglum falling down outside the academy - the bat flaps and falls slightly faster than the mirror, catching up to it. The figure to the right of Battiwigs looks a lot like Willow, but the picture has too much blur to reliably conclude that it is the daring fairy.
Wranglum is saved mere centimeters before the shattering collision with the ground. Battiwigs grabs the mirror by its handle and flaps them both to safety along the dirt. These two shots are the only shots in all available promos that show at least one rocky cliff face, and it does look rather pretty.
An elf student we met in the skateboarding scene dashes into the frame from the left, panicking. The sandbags in the background indicate that this scene is taken from the monster episode, unless there are multiple episodes where the students block the academy in fear of something.
One last thing to mention in this scene is the object that is being blocked by the sandbags: it appears to be a grate door, which is an odd sight, considering that all other doors in the academy we've seen are solid. Here's to sliding grate doors!
We're back to the group shot in the corridor, and this time the extended portion can be identified much more easily: there is definitely a right turn behind Melody:
The central figure of this shot, the one everyone is looking at with varying degrees of confusion, is Cedric. This is one of the few instances of Cedric being the center of the shot, but sadly since this is a music video, we don't get to hear him speak, leaving him as the only member of the main cast the voice of whom we still haven't heard.
A shot oddly similar to the previous one, with Cedric doing almost the exact same gesture, but this time with no other students around him. The location has been changed from the corridor to the common room, or rather to a common room.
A glowing golden mirror appears, surrounded with sparkles that gravitate towards it. The shape of the mirror and its color are extremely similar to those of the disappearing mirror we've seen before.
While the image does not show any Filly who could be its owner, the room this mirror is hovering in is Sparkle's office, as indicated by the red chair, the tall window to the left, and the wall decor to the right.
Here we see the mirror again, this time from behind, as it blasts Lynn with wind, while Bella watches. Unless this is a special super fast hair drying technique of the wind witch, this is either an accident, or a rigged practical joke. The previous scene with the mirror could be a precursor to this scene, if not for the drastic location difference - the previous scene takes place in Sparkle's office, whereas this one is in a common room. The fact that it's Lynn who's handling the mirror now puts her on the list of potential owners of this mirror.
A close-up of Lynn, most likely right after the previous shot. We can see more of the witch's bedroom interior, and one thing that's barely seen in the concept art, but is clearly seen here, is a silver bat ornament on the bed itself:
In addition, apparently students' beds have extremely thick mattresses.
After a brief pause, Lynn starts conjuring up some magic. The horizontal trace and its bright color looks very similar to the mirror conjuring spell used by Bella in promo 3 and by Zack in promo 4:
The reason to conjure the mirror is probably to tidy up the hair after the wind burst. Or maybe Lynn is fueled by the desire for revenge, and she's going to use the mirror to retaliate against who she thinks played the trick on her.
A similar shot with Rose, in front of Isabella's room. Like Lynn, Rose is in the middle of a practical joke, as the pages fly all around her on their own. The mirror behind Rose, among other things, makes this scene similar to the scene where Isabella has an encounter with spilled water.
The overturned vase is probably a part of the joke. The pages were animated by a spell that also affected the vase, and it couldn't handle its own weight, falling onto the floor. The sound of the fall probably then lured Bella out of her room.
Another scene in the cafeteria corridor. In this one, Willow is showing off his wild skills: the ability to either kick the monster, butt it, chase it off, or all of the above. The crowd isn't as large as in other scenes in this corridor, but the positions of the characters are the same, implying that this scene happens before other crowd scenes. And, most likely, after the scene from promo 1 already referenced in this paragraph:
Another shot with Willow in the forest - this particular scene has appeared both in promo 1 and promo 3. Apparently the fairy is gloating over the trapped "monster", and this scene goes very well with the previous one: first we see Willow boasting about how he's basically going to save everyone, and then we see his success (at least in his eyes). This paints Willow as a person who is not only daring, but able to pull his dares off, ready for a bit of cooperation with others to do it.
Pretty much the exact copy of the terrified Isabella from promo 3; however, there is one interesting detail hidden in this scene that helps establishing the picture. This scene, for one reason or the other, was not cut properly, leaving exactly one frame from another scene before it.
This, of course, is the log from promo 1 that is about to smash the camera. It's here, in promo 5, due to an oversight, and thanks to this oversight we can conclude that Bella reacts to it, probably right after touching the lure of Willow's trap.
More scenes from promo 1! Here we have the old famous scene where Bella kicks the air to her left in front of four other students, either teaching them how to combat the monster, or raising their morale, like some sort of a war leader.
Here we see the aforementioned four students, mimicking Isabella's technique. These two scenes come hand in hand, even though one half is taken from promo 1, and this one is from promo 3. I appreciate the fact that these two scenes are synchronized in this promo: the four students kick the air almost simultaneously with Bella, acting as a visual continuation of her move.
The camera cuts to new footage, showing Battiwigs in the middle of nowhere, with a twig in his hands. The bat does his best to snap the twig, applying the force of his foot.
It is unknown why the bat would want to snap a twig, but the body language of Battiwigs seems to indicate that the bat is in a dire hurry. This may be a part of a convoluted plan, which by some bizarre cartoon logic requires a snapped twig.
A plan that could result in someone ending up trapped, forcing them to use their mirrors as an SOS beacon! Here we see Rose's and Zack's magic mirrors against a dark background. Zack's mirror is already lit, and the unicorn's mirror is preparing to join, to create a big purple distress pillar of light. It slowly ascends before starting to rapidly spin, as the pink ray is emitted.
One last returning scene from promo 3. Rose and Zack are trapped in a ditch, Zack's wing is damaged and bandaged, and Rose uses her mirror to shoot a magical light upwards. Her face is filled with hope and belief that everything will be fine.
The two Fillys unite and raise their heads and arms to the skies, as the magic mirrors combine their beams of light into a single big beacon. This scene joins the two previous ones, and most possibly precedes the entirety of promo 4, where the SOS beacon attracts help in the form of Fabian.
The scene of Rose galloping through the forest, following a path. This is one of the longest uncut scenes in the promo, and a perfect opportunity to analyze Rose's gallop, which seems to be transverse gallop.
The next scene shots Rose's gallop again, this time from behind. The unicorn's concerned gaze was most likely aimed at Zack, who appears to be waiting for Rose uphill, either scolding her for being slow, telling her to hurry up, or both. As soon as Rose catches up to Zack, they start galloping together.
The camera starts moving to show us their goal, but the scene ends before we can see anything. This scene of Rose and Zack hurrying somewhere in the wilderness on a path is similar to the scene of Rose and Zack hurrying somewhere in the wilderness on a path from the Holidays promo.
We get one last long look at the Magic Academy as the camera slowly moves forward - so slow, in fact, that the frame rate in this scene slows down as well, indicating that the slowdown was edited in. The academy buildings have a white fade effect attached to them, making them more pale the further away they stand. This effect is unique to this shot and does not appear in any other academy shot.
The last scene of promo 5: the dormitory doors swing open as the main cast of five Fillys rush outside and freeze in front of the camera, looking and smiling at it. This scene establishes that the dormitory doors swing both ways, but of course the main point of this shot is to end the video on a happy note, by showing the main characters cheerfully burst into the shot in a welcoming manner. After the unicorn, the elf, the fairy, the prince and the witch all freeze, the scenery changes to something more suitable for a wallpaper.
And only now do the logotypes of companies responsible for Filly Funtasia appear on the screen, making one realize that this is the first Filly Funtasia promo without any logotypes throughout the video footage.
The video begins with a dimly lit tapestry which depicts two Filly Unicorns, crowned, standing on opposite sides with magic mirrors in front of them. The lighting is very diffused, making it clear that it is natural, and its blue hue suggests that it's night time. The only patch of remotely bright light runs across the center of the tapestry, illuminating an image of a floating island with a fortress on it, shielded from the outside by a dome. Strokes and sparkles of light are emitted by the fortress, making it look like the patch of light on the tapestry itself comes from the island's image.
The camera pans to the trio of Filly Unicorns standing in the moonlight. The hallway is as dim as the tapestry, with the moon crescent visible in the regally decorated window. This is a castle!
And if one delves into Filly Unicorn toy line, they have a fair chance to learn who the unicorns to the right are. The scene alone suggests these are Rose's parents, and the truth is close to the suggestion: the unicorn in front is Leaf, Rose's mother:
With a parting hoof bump, Rose gallops away to a big mirror on a wall with a round, almost circus-esque pedestal in front of it. The unicorn jumps onto the pad and gives one final cheerful look at her family as the pedestal lights up.
The mirror turns into a portal, and Rose, taking a deep anticipating breath, jumps into it, making the screen fade to white, as Rose and the viewer are transported into this new magical world of…
Shifting the focus from Bella to the scenery, this place looks similar to a certain shot from promo 3.
One of the goals of Filly Funtasia as a story is to shine the light on various characters from the toy series, spanning from some of the the earliest to one of the latest; although some toy lines seem to be absent from the show, according to the promotional videos. All but one of the main characters have their compatriots in the show, and quite a lot of them.
The women in this shot differ from their interpretation on the website: they now possess nominal clothing, which usually indicates a profession. In this case, these two unicorns, as well as three other characters we'll see later, are the senior teachers of the academy, and princess Sparkle is now academy mistress Sparkle.
As the image above tells us, this is Cedric, from probably the most known toy line, Filly Princess.
Cedric is sitting in a dim room at a table with various oddly shaped objects on it. The fan in the top right corner of the image is slowly spinning, indicating that whatever is happening in the room requires aeration. Cedric is working on a device, which compliments the clue from the promotional art about him being an inventor.
If there are no hidden features, this mechanism is doomed to fail the seconds after it starts moving. The piston is applying force to the upper wheel as the lower wheel rotates, but it is secured on the upper wheel, limiting the piston's angle. Eventually the mechanism will come to this position, where the piston aligns with the tangent line to the circle of the upper wheel:
At this point, the lower wheel is forcing the piston to move outside the upper wheel's bounds, which will result in the entire mechanism stopping, since the piston cannot follow the lower wheel any more. The possibility of the apparatus falling forward from the sudden halt is also there, but is unlikely, since the device's mass is likely too large.
Sparkle appears in the mirror and instantly gets confused by what she sees and/or hears. It has been established in previous promos that mirrors serve an important role in the academy. Promo 3 in particular has shown instances of communication through a mirror.
The background behind Sparkle is a starry rainbow space, but with a bit in the lower left corner that looks like a piece of the room Sparkle is standing in. The mirror transmission probably transmits whatever is close to the mirror, effectively surrounding the area around the mirror in thick rainbow fog for the receiving end. This would lead to a part of the floor around the caller being visible in the miror. I am eager to see the inevitable scene where a character interrupts the call and walks into the transmission area out of the fog.
Fabian is back! And he looks just as shocked as Sparkle, if not more. Fabian is yet another original Filly Funtasia character, who has appeared in promos 3 and 4:
The two characters behind Fabian are two more original Filly Funtasia characters, one of whom has already appeared in this promo. Neither of them has any information available.
This dame, on the other hand, is pretty known in the Filly World and beyond, thanks to her striking color scheme. This is Countess Melody, from Filly Princess toy line.
Now let's take a closer look at Melody's surroundings. The amber decorations behind Melody tell that this is the "common room" from one of the concept art articles.
Another shot of Ashia and Twilight. The brown texture on the left and the pink background behind Ashia give it away as another scene taking place in Sparkle's office.
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the most notable character in Filly Funtasia: Prince Zack.
Only in the late 2014, when promo 4 finally revealed Zack's name, all theories were shelved away. For some time, Zack was perceived as his own Filly Funtasia character. Until the early 2015, when Filly Stars premiered, and Zack was discovered to be from this new toy line.
The blackboard behind Zack shows a landscape with what seems to be a rough representation of the Academy, with a giant blue arc in the sky. This is undeniably the extension of one of the scenes in promo 3.
The next shot is quite similar to one of the previous shots with Melody:
If you thought the previous shot was similar, wait until you compare it with this one! This shot is essentially the same as the Melody shot, only with a new Unicorn by her side. I cannot find any unicorn from the toy lines that would match her appearance, which leads me to believe this is yet another original Filly Funtasia character.
I feel like these three shots were taken from one full scene, where the trio are talking to another character in front of them. This may be the acquainting scene, where students who have never seen each other before act friendly towards one another, letting everyone know that studying together will be great.
The wall textures behind those two elves seem to be the same as in the shot with Melody and the unicorn, only flipped, which means they're standing on the other side from the door to the corridor.
A scene very similar to this arrangement can be seen in promo 1:
With a little bit of image editing, the students from the promo 1 scene can be mostly removed, in order to reveal the structure of the corridor behind them. 
A better representation of this building can be found in the concept art:
The big window of the common room is without a doubt the big window above the entrance to the building, which will be marked on the cut with green lines. The room's floor will be represented by a red circle:
While the concept art shows only two doorways to bedrooms, the actual number of rooms connected to the "common room" is four: the "common room" is symmetric. The concept art of the building supports this, as the facade of the building is also symmetric. Using the Cedric shot from before, we can assume that the two windows in the shot are the windows which will be marked with blue rectangles. Cedric's room (or, rather, its mirrored equivalent) itself is marked with orange.
Lastly, the corridor. It connects the red room with the depths of the building, and the two main reference points are the set of windows to the left and the door at the end of the hallway.
Further analysis is based on the proposition that 3D graphics in Filly Funtasia are based on perspective projection.
Here I have drawn straight lines along various objects in the scene, including edges of walls, windows, and their projection onto the middle line. Let us name the projection lines A, B, C, D, E and F:
The distance between E and D is slightly less than the distance between C and B, which is caused by the imprecise measurement of the windows - to put it bluntly, the image is too blurry. However, the difference is small enough to look past. It is unknown if there are windows between the lines A and B. This makes determining the relative length of the hallway difficult. One possible explanation is the discrepancy between promo 1, promo 3 and the concept art, since not only all of them were made at different times, but all of them also are WIP (as is everything in the article).
Let's move on.
A rather beautiful sequence of a piece of blue chalk leaving a properly colored trail on the blackboard. The chalk is glowing, indicating that it is being manipulated by someone. This most likely is a part of Zack's announcement, as he illustrates the trajectory of the Blue Rainbow Crystal to the class.
And here is the Blue Rainbow Crystal itself, crashing in a forest. This is another scene that was present in one of the previous promos, and as such it is subject to direct comparison.
This rock is the rock the Crystal slams into, which means that now the rainbow trail ends slightly to the left of its previous destination.
We finally get to see the actual Blue Rainbow in the sky, smashing into terrain to the right of the academy and sending a shockwave across the screen. I like how the air warps around the impact point.
This scene has excessive amounts of motion blur, following a high-speed skateboarder as he rides forward. Around mid-way through the scene, the rider accelerates and zooms away from the camera.
Welcome Will! The fourth member of the main five, Will is a Fairy with daring attitude.
By the looks of it, she's standing roughly in the same spot in both pictures! And now it's quite likely that the filly next to her in the overhead shot is, in fact, Willow himself.
Willow loses control over his board, and it rolls on its own, bypassing Rose, who watches the show, impressed.
The continuation of the spacial shenanigans; Willow crashes into one of the single trees. In the previous shot, he seems to be moving parallel to the yellow road, and relatively close to its edge, which would not allow him to crash in the tree that is distanced from the road. Unless Willow's trajectory curved into the tree. He did lose control, after all!
Here's Zack again, unknowingly receiving Rose's loving gaze. Rose herself walks forward on autopilot through the blue hallway, which most likely is the first floor of the dormitory building.
We will see more of this hallway in the future, so let us talk about something else in the shot. Rose and Zack both were described above, and the students in the back don't matter here as much as the last but not least member of the main cast.
The only member of the main five who deals with the magic directly, Lynn from Filly Witchy, a wind witch. Here is some information about Lynn:
The next shot shows Lynn with a carefully wrapped present for Rose. We can see this is the same location as in the previous scene, however, Zack is now gone. These two scenes most probably don't happen in the order shown in this promo.
This one, however, is bound to happen after the previous scene. The carefully wrapped present explodes in a blast of confetti, as the big scary caricature of a bat emerges to startle Rose. I appreciate the tongue of the "bat" - flat and straight, it does a very good job at presenting this thing as an artificial doll.
Wranglum, also publicly known as Wizard of the Dark Mirror, has a number of scenes in this promo also. In this one, he's leaning on a stool in a dark room, just like he did in promo 1:
The mirror hasn't changed, although the eerie purple shapes representing Wranglum's face are now much more defined and less ghostly - the trail they leave behind when moving is now smaller.
More footage from the monster crisis. The situation is so emergent that the students don't even have time to properly attach the posters to the walls, leaving a large chunk of them lie on the floor. Everyone is looking out for the monster, watching the windows, blocking possible entries into the academy with sandbags and anything else that is close enough, like furniture. The only thing missing from this panic picnic is a mental breakdown.
Perfect.
The next shot features Battiwigs angrily glaring at something, partially concealed by the foliage. The faint hints of blue can be seen, which suggests that he is looking at the crash site of the Blue Rainbow Crystal - this notion is supplied by the Holidays promo, where we see a very similar shot.
More scenes in the great outdoors, with Willow and two more students. The small table with a parchment suggests that this trio is planning something, and considering Willow's intentions, this is probably the scene where he and his crew assemble a trap for the monster. Willow is full of himself and his upcoming success so much that he doesn't notice a log that interferes with his victorious march, trips on it, and falls down onto the ground. The scene abruptly cuts a frame before the landing - all slapstick with the Fairy seems to happen off screen in this promo.
The previous scene cuts to this one, where there is suddenly a hole in the ground, with dozens of leaves flying everywhere. This may seem like the result of Willow's fall at first glance; however, the scenery is different: there is now a blue structure on the right that looks like a giant cupcake, and the hole has a rope going into it from above - these two objects are the lure and the trap, respectively.
The duo's spell works, and the crystals in front of them illuminate the area, blinding Battiwigs and stunning Wranglum, as the mirror loses balance and falls on the floor. This is one of the few instances when Wranglum moves perpendicular to the camera (let alone moves at all), and from this scene we can gather more information about how his face is projected from the mirror: it seems as if his face extends into the air in front of the mirror, but is only visible where there is the mirror behind it, creating an odd effect of pseudo-3D.
We're back in the classroom again, with Lynn, Rose and Isabella sitting at the front table. The adorable smiles on every face indicate that they like what they're seeing, and what they're seeing is most likely Zack, who is still standing at the blackboard.
Rose raises her hand, to the shock of everyone around her. This scene has already appeared in promo 3, and thus it requires direct comparison.
In the new version of this scene, we get to see a few frames more than in promo 3: Rose lowers her hand and starts blinking (or just closing her eyes), and the elf in the back (far behind Lynn) shifts to our right for whatever reason - probably to get a better look at Rose.
A student descends from the sky towards another student in front of the dormitory building.
This implies that the orange student is, at this point, a newcomer, just then arriving from her homeland. Why she lands right on the doorstep of the dormitory building, while Rose lands outside the academy, is unknown.
The second person to greet the newcoming student is Wranglum, with a wide evil grin on his face. He is obviously happy to see more students arrive - more targets for his devious plans. His hiding spot is not very well concealed, however - the patch of grass right next to the window provides no cover, and arguably harms the spot by drawing even more attention.
Thankfully, the next shot shows us that Wranglum has more than one hiding spot, as indicated by the different bars in the window. Or does he?
Yet another cupcake scene: Rose gets hit by one. This is another returning scene from promo 3, and as such, a comparison should be made. Due to how dynamic this scene is compared to the rest of returning scenes, the best way to analyze the differences is with a video:
The next shot shows Willow walking towards the camera through the crisis corridor. The camera position and angle are exactly the same as in one of the previous scenes:
There are slight differences in the scenery, however. The students on the left, looking through a window, have shifted to the right, and the right wall has an additional poster. The poster on the floor in the elf scene cannot be seen in the Willow scene; however, since this poster appears in the elf scene above the floor, it leads me to think that the poster on the wall in the Willow scene and the poster on the floor in the elf scene are the same poster, which fell from the wall onto the floor. If this is true, the Willow scene takes place before the elf scene.
The myriads of posters support the connection of these two scenes, but the scenery and the student positioning do not match, meaning that there is a time gap between the scenes.
Wranglum is out in the open, in the hands of a Filly! This scene confirms that the students are aware of the antagonists' existence, at least partially. The leg in this shot belongs to Fabian, and considering Fabian's character, he probably won't tell anyone else about his encounter with the Dark Mirror, preferring to forget it like a bad dream.
One of the few group shots of the entire main cast, as well as a plethora of other students. This scene returns from promo 1, and besides the rather usual at this point improvements to lighting, there is a peculiar change in the scenery, seen near Cedric's head:
Its shape and texture is very similar to the door to the academy cafeteria:
Isabella and Lynn stand in a doorway and express a mix of confusion and curiosity. Isabella's hair is slightly untidy - hey eyes are partially blocked by hair locks.
Now it's Rose's turn to stand in a doorway and express a mix of confusion and curiosity. This time with a pinch of desperation, too.
Among the similarities, one particular detail that deserves more attention is the blue "wings" in the upper part of the decor, because they appear in another scene, helping us to connect locations and scenes together.
A bunch of students gallop through a corridor, joined by Zack, who is entering this section of the hallway by calmly walking. The wall texture suggests this scene takes place in the same location as the scene with Fabian from before:
Indeed, the seemingly metallic arch is present in both shots - the corridor scene has the same object in the background:
There is a small chance that this is literally the same object, since the only difference between these two shots is that Fabian has a bench to his left, whereas in the galloping scene the bench is absent.
Rose opens the golden doors and enters the dormitory building with an unusually enthusiastic grin. The unicorn behind her is apparently another original Filly Funtasia character. The lamp posts outside match the lamp posts seen in the "meeting Bella" scene, further solidifying that these scenes take place in the same place. Possibly even one after another.
The camera pans around to reveal the first floor of the dormitory, from a different angle than that in the "meeting Lynn" scene:
The crucial detail of this scene is the presence of at least one door to the left:
This is an unusual fact, considering that according to all other shots of the dormitory, as well as the aforementioned dormitory corridor analysis, there shouldn't be a door there.
Zack attracts the camera to himself and gives a charming and alluring look slightly to the right of it, no doubt staring directly at Rose. The air of this scene once again draws parallels with the Lynn scene, where Rose gives the same stare back.
These two scenes most likely happen one after another. Seeing how Bella was standing in front of this building, the elf's scene happens right before Rose opens the door and exchanges looks with Zack. This seems very fitting for an intro sequence! Since Cedric's meeting scene takes place in one of the rooms of the dormitory, it's safe to assume that it happens after this affair with Rose, Zack and Lynn.
We're back at the classroom, where Isabella is getting lost in her daydreaming, with a joyful sigh. Countess Melody, who is sitting behind her, seems happy too. The cause of such happiness is most probably Zack, who is still standing in front of the class.
After the romantic wishful thinking, we cut to Rose, who is extremely annoyed that she unexpectedly got wet. This scene is another returning scene, this time from promo 3.
Wranglum, also publicly known as Wizard of the Dark Mirror, has a number of scenes in this promo also. In this one, he's leaning on a stool in a dark room, just like he did in promo 1:
The mirror hasn't changed, although the eerie purple shapes
representing Wranglum's face are now much more defined and less ghostly -
the trail they leave behind when moving is now smaller.
We're back at the "common room" again, where Bella walks onto a puddle of water spilled from an overturned flower vase. The room behind Isabella seems to be her bedroom.
The next scene chronologically follows directly after the previous scene, showing Bella sliding uncontrollably on the water. Her body must be very light and smooth for such friction-free movement to be possible, especially when she is forced onto a nearby rug and keeps going!
The poor elf spins as she continues being carried by the water. The rug doesn't seem to care - it doesn't even soak the water up, letting it splash around with quite impressive graphic effects.
Bella crashes into Lynn's room with an allegedly loud bang that shakes the camera. Another scene bridge can be built by linking this series of four shots with Bella to one of the previous scenes with both Bella and Lynn standing in this same location.
Considering that Isabella's hair is messed up in this scene, it's fair to guess that it was caused by the water slide, putting this shot chronologically after the water scene.
This pattern has emerged in numerous trailer shots, such as:
A very brief context-less scene with one of the academy's magic mirrors. The color scheme and the texture of this mirror are very different to the mirrors we have already seen in previous promos:
Battiwigs zips through the window and abandons Wranglum after knocking him off with the crystal flash. As the camera follows the bat inside the room, more of it becomes visible, further proving that it is the "Indoor scene 1".
The overall structure of this room, with its bookshelves, the small window and the big pipes, is very similar to the room in promo 3.
In the new version of this scene, we get to see a few frames more than in promo 3: Rose lowers her hand and starts blinking (or just closing her eyes), and the elf in the back (far behind Lynn) shifts to our right for whatever reason - probably to get a better look at Rose.
