So I woke up this morning and one of the first things I saw was that Double Rainboom had been released.
I've been monitoring it for some time, and unlike the last fan animation I watched (Dusks Dawn), Double Rainboom had a lot of time to garner hype.
Now, before it was even released, I could tell that the episode was going to be a problem, this was after it claimed to be the first "Show Quality Animation" (I capitalised each word for emphasis and because I'm a massive faggot.)

So I sat down just now and watched it the whole way through
Was it as bad as I thought? No.
Was it bad? Yes.
Double Rainboom is easily the best fan made episode to date, and given that it's competition is a blind faggot kid and a group of shit OCs, that's like giving a piece of burnt toast the "Most edible food" award.

Now, without further ado, I'll go into what made Double Rainboom so bad.

Right off the bat the episode displayed one of it's major flaws: inconsistency in animation.
There are parts of the episode that are downright wonderful to behold, a few notable examples are when Twilight was running around collecting data from Rainbow Dash, and the Double Rainboom itself.
But despite these great examples of animation, I couldn't help but notice times where it was just plain lazy, or the polar opposite, it was trying too hard.

Within 30 seconds of the episode beginning I knew that the problem of trying to hard would plague the episode, facial expressions were far too frequently emphasised and made the character look like she was having a stroke.
Watching an episode of MLP, you'll see that the facial expressions are well done, well timed, and funny to behold. In Double Rainboom, Zach piled on FAR too many in a short space of time, this made it look unnatural and fake. Like Studio B had hired a group of amateurs to do the episode for that week.
"But Pony Explorer 1! He's just a student!"
No.
This arguement falls flat when the creator claims that it will be a STUDIO QUALITY ANIMATION. The moment he said that, I went into Double Rainboom with the intention to judge it as a STUDIO QUALITY ANIMATION.
Not even Dusks Dawn claimed that. (Not that it needed to. Fuck, it was horrible)

So while the animation was all over the place and either trying way too hard or looking somewhat lazy in parts, there were also some moments that made no god damn sense.
Here's the part where I go over the story and cetain events that transpire during this mess of an episode.
First of all - The potion.
Now I'm not saying that the potion wasn't a good plot device. It was.
What was bad was the way it was introduced. Twilight says "Well I don't know what it is", and then one minute later, tells us what it is. This is what's known as "Padding". When something needs to be longer than it needs to (The animation for the guy's project had to be 30 minutes in total), you pad out scenes and make the awkward, unnecessarily long, and boring.
The scene depicting Rainbow Dash trying to figure out Twilight's speech didn't need to be there. It was just padding. And the episode features a lot of it. This can be put down to terrible writing on Zach's part.

Another thing that irks me, which is little more than a nitpick, is Rainbow Dash going to the methosphere. This is the area above a planet where you can see the spherical shape of the planet itself, and are basically where satellites would be around Earth.
Rainbow Dash flew into outer-space, floated there, spoke, and then propelled herself back towards the planet. This is a cartoon, it's allowed to be stupid (the entire episode is an example of that) but there's an invisible line where even cartoon logic falls apart. This is one part.

Now, as the title would suggest, the mane (lel) attraction of the episode was the Double Rainboom. Like it's superior distant cousin, the Sonic Rainboom episode, the episode was meant to build up to this moment. This glorious visual display of colour and explosion sound effects that would close the episode and leave the audience going "wow". Because that's sure as hell what Sonic Rainboom did to me.
But instead, the Rainboom happens at 15 minutes in. And while the 'Boom' itself is absolutely spectacular to behold, and easily surpasses all other moments in the episode, you then realise that this was it. There was absolutely no reason to keep watching the episode after this event.

I mean, what could possibly top a double explosion that annihilates an entire town?

...

Oh my god why the fuck did I keep watching.

The events following BoomGate were just down right terrible. In a magnificent display of inept writing and what I can only describe as "Fanfiction Syndrome", the episode decided that the only logical way to pad out this episode even more and to bring it to a fitting conclusion, was to turn the episode into a crossover.
Any writer worth their salt knows exactly why this idea is doomed to fail. The very moment Rainbow passed all the other Cartoon Network characters I knew that the writer had given his script to his 12 year old little sister.

Crossovers are only really good in comic books. And even then they need to tread lightly, instead we get a disclaimer, "We don't own these characters", and we are thrown into the CITY OF TOWNSVILLE.
And while the voice actors for the PPG were great, (I could have sworn that was Tara voicing Bubbles) the whole segment was just... Padding. None of it offered anything to advance the plot. It was over 7 minutes of showing off the powerpuff girls, INCREDIBLY predictable 'gags' and cop-out way to get Rainbow out (I'll explain later)

I'll give Zach credit for the art style though. He did well in recreating the PPG world and it was nice to look at. It's just that the entire segment was unnecessary and ammounted to a massive inside joke.

Ahh, inside jokes. Memes. References. "Oh you won't get it unless you're a brony". How I hate this kind of writing.
The amount of references in this episode was utterly deplorable. We got Trollfaces, we got Dr Who, we got Scootaloo-is-a-chicken, we got Back to the Future, we got Derpy, we got so many fucking references that by the end of the episode I was shaking my head.
References are done when you want to do a nod towards something. A subtle way to say "We know you exist". MLP does it all the time. And it's great to pick up on each one. They're subtle, aren't even brought to attention, and usually quite niche (Dodge Junction, for example)

Instead, Zach feels that it's a good plan to stuff his episode full of references, the most cringeworthy being 20 seconds of Derpy time that while cute, completely negates the pace of the scene.
If Rainbow Dash is flying fast, she needs to flying fucking fast. When she flew past Applejack and destroyed her stand - it was predictable, yes, but it was fast.
When she flew past Spike and Rarity, that was cringeworthy, but it was fast. When she flew past Derpy, the whole episode is put on standby so we can watch 'da cute retadered pone eet a moofun'.
It slows everything right down and leaves the audience BEGGING for the episode to pick up speed again.

The musical score is fabulous. Just gonna throw that out there. The music is well done. But the way it's used is not. We don't need a fucking guitar riff to watch Rainbow Dash catch a glass bottle, Zach.
The people behind the music did a nice job otherwise. I caught the little Back to the Future jingle, the music helped set the scene, but it was the music that played in the awkward pauses. It just made me cringe.

Overall, Double Rainboom is a mess of an episode. It's got wonderful music, inconsistent but otherwise great animation (fuck those faces), the writing of a 12 year old, relentless padding, awkward moments and unfunny jokes, far too many references, a cop out endin-
Oh shit I didn't go over the cop out ending. My mistake.
"We made another potion and gave it to Pinkie Pie, we had no idea that it would make her able to make reality her bitch, but we did it anyway, Rainbow's wings were crippled in a horrible side effect, yes, but it's Pinkie Pie. Fuck Pinkie Pie. We need to cripple her as well so that we can get Krusty Kunt back."
People in his animation class won't even understand how that ending works, and will probably feel cheated. They won't see the connection between "Party Pony" and "4th wall" because they don't watch the show. Yet more evidence of the episodes relentless PANDERING.

YES, I SAID IT. PANDERING.

The episode is a 5/10. The animation and music are wonderful at best, and the Double Rainboom dwarfs the Sonic Rainboom in terms of "Awe-factor". But after that it falls flat on it's face and drags it's dick through the crossovers, shit gags, references and cop out endings until it thankfully ends.

And those are my thoughts on Double Rainboom.