YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S8 E23 "Sounds of Silence"

• Accidental Aesop:
  • In the case of the Kirin who (almost) couldn't reverse their vow of silence, "Be careful that you don't go through with something you can't reverse later, you may regret it".
  • Autumn Blaze's song invokes that old saying "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater," meaning you shouldn't get rid of something good just to get rid of something bad.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: The reveal that the Nirik are the Kirins' dark sides is made thunderingly-obvious by their brief, almost-a-palindrome Sdrawkcab Name.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: A certain green-maned, dark brown Kirin, who goes unnamed in the episode, has drawn quite the fandom, perhaps because she's one of the first to show up, does a memetic head tilt, and the one that Autumn Blaze has to play charades with to figure out what she wants when Autumn returns from her exile. The fandom has since named her Cinder Glow.
• Epileptic Trees: Two of the distinct features of Kirin are a curved horns and scales covering their foreheads and nasal ridges. Wait... does this mean SOMBRA WAS A KIRIN this entire time???
• Fanfic Fuel: How the Kirin came to be. Were they already a species by themselves or was is it because of Interspecies Romance between unicorns (judging by the magical horns) and dragons? If so, how did such a scenario occur?
• Fan Nickname: Cinder Glow for the dark brown kirin Autumn Blaze has to play charades with.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Lauren Faust implemented the longma and their playable character Tianhuo in Them's Fightin' Herds at least a year or two before this episode aired. One of her regrets was that she wasn't able to implement them in the FIM canon before she left, which was why she used it in the game. Having Kirin with fire powers in here made the whole thing go full circle.
  • An encore of the Muppet Babies (2018) pilot aired on the same day as the American premiere for the episode, which also had Rachel Bloom playing a character radically different from what she's usually known for.
• I Knew It!: Fans who were expecting actual Kirin to appear in the show have finally gotten their wish.
• Les Yay: Autumn Blaze is rather lonely, thus she's really happy to see Applejack and makes friends with her very quickly, sometimes getting as touchy and in-your-face as Pinkie. The fandom wasted no time taking Autumn's rather fast friendship with Applejack and turning it into shipping material.
• Viewer Gender Confusion: Every Kirin has a rounded snout apart from Rain Shine (which is minimal help considering the Royal Sisters also have angled snouts), making them appear to be a One-Gender Race. Some of them lack eyelashes, but we also see a few males that have very feminine lashes. Word of God says the crew didn't have time to make male Kirin models, so the only difference is the presence/absence of eyelashes.
• The Woobie: Autumn Blaze. The vow of silence is a literal prison for her, and when she chooses to talk, she's banished.