One of my students brought my attention to this today:



Of course, spiral staircases leading up to high towers are nothing new in animation (basically, they look good visually), but the way the protagonist magically interacts with the environment is very reminiscent of how SKU handles this trope. I'm not sure about the story of this episode as I'm only familiar with the first few episodes of the show, but from those, especially the two pilot episodes, it's clear that that MLP team and especially Lauren Faust really looked to import what works in mahoshoujo (especially the tokusatsu strain of Sailor Moon) to rejuvenate the US girl team genre. I know Lauren Faust no longer is on the team but it's fairly probable that someone or everyone on the current team is familiar with SKU.