Sonic X

There is a great deal of hype surrounding Sonic X, and to be fair I can see why. The use of the same art style featuring in the Sonic game series and using all of the regular cast from the Sonic series is a major plus point, and something that hasn't happened yet as far as all of Sonic's animated iterations have gone.

But sadly, this doesn't cover the fact that the series is severely lacking. While the series does feature the same animation style and characters directly from the games, it also loses the atmosphere of the series by urbanising the entire thing, contradicting the character personalities evident in the series - we're supposed to believe Sonic is fighting against urbanisation and loves natural beauty, living every day with freedom and adventure in mind, he's now also living in a rich mansion on the suburbs of a city with a young pre-adolescent named Chris.

While human characters have been evident in the series since Sonic Adventure in 1999, they've never been as overbearing as they are here. Over 50% of the regular cast is made up of humans (excluding the traditional Dr. Eggman), and the pace takes a serious drop because of it. There's barely anything traditionally Sonic here - Chris goes to school, where he talks with his friends, and the human characters have "adventures" with the Sonic gang. The pace takes a serious drop after the first episode because of it.

The first episode is perfect - blending amazingly fast animation with great character usage and wonderful set pieces - an action scene that continues for around 7 minutes is a wonderful way to kick off the series, and the humour and characters are all around for a purpose. It feels like a direct translation from the video game series. But then Chris is introduced, after the cliche of the characters being "sent to a new dimension", and the series grinds to a halt to develop Chris, and only Chris.

This is the series major fault. The emphasis is clearly on Chris and the humans, and never seems to be about the Sonic cast. None of them ever get a chance to develop. Chris's role is essentially that of Tails' - a young boy who aspires to grow up to be like Sonic, but the fact that he steals much of the other characters' charms leaves them as empty shells who are only background scenery to Chris's homelife. It's a terrible waste, and not only do the regular cast of Tails, Knuckles, Amy and Cream suffer, but also Sonic himself, who spends the series saving Chris with one-shot kill battles in the vain of the weak MegaZord battles of Power Rangers fame. This is a direct contradiction of the game series, where the focus is firmly on speed, and light-hearted adventuring. There is no room for Sonic to adventure, because he has been trapped in a household for a series, and in an unbelievably un-Sonic turn he spends entire episodes asleep on rooftops.

The series also serves as more of a nuisance than anything to Sonic fans, as it destroys the continuity and storyline of the games and instead creates an alternate version where events happen out of sequence. This will only serve to confuse new fans to the series, who will probably be fans for the wrong reasons supplied by this anime. As a series working on it's own merits, it's still poor for it's lack of anything actually happening - the characters talk for five minutes at a time with useless sub-characters, and without a spark of humour or charm the series just feels weak and dull.

It may feature all of the regular cast, but this isn't the Sonic we've known for the last 13 years. The series is dull, inconsistent, and at times features very poor and jerky animation, filled with aesthetic mistakes which suggest the series has been rushed out in order to simply make quick money, without offering anything new - the fact that the series adapts in-game storylines means there's literally nothing we haven't seen before as far as Sonic the Hedgehog goes, unless fans can genuinely bring themselves to care about Chris - a hard task, due to his consistent ways of stealing the limelight from every character.

Fans would be better sticking with the 1993 DiC cartoon Sonic the Hedgehog (or SatAM). While it may not be very accurate as far as storyline and characters are concerned, it translates the feel of the games almost perfectly - combining fast action in dark settings with light-hearted atmosphere and genuine character development. It may only be 26 episodes long, but it's a far superior animation on it's own merits alone, and a very fulfilling alternative to Sonic X.

This has been a great Sonic cartoon comeback! But also it is a little different from the other Sonic cartoons like Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and Sonic Underground. Because this series was produced by 4-Kids Entertainment (the creators who did Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh!) and the first three Sonic cartoons were produced by DiC Entertainment. This series is based on the brand new Sonic video-games for Nintendo Gamecube. In this series, Sonic and his friends are trying to collect the powerful chaos emeralds before the evil, Dr. Eggman (aka Dr. Robotnik) gets the chaos emeralds. Sonic and his friends were accidentally transported from their world to the real world with the power of chaos control and then all the chaos emeralds were scattered in random places around the world. This time Amy Rose gets to be in this Sonic cartoon and so does Rouge the Bat and Shadow the Hedgehog! When I first watched the sneak preview at this show on Fox Box (formally known as Fox Kids), I thought at first Jaleel White was going to return to his role of Sonic the Hedgehog but instead they used a different voice actor named Jason Anthony Griffith who does a pretty good job at doing the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog. Plus I think Dan Green does an excellent job at doing the voice of the all and powerful Knuckles the Echidna! I am really glad Knuckles is in this series again just like in the last series in 1999, Sonic Underground! I like the animation to this show and the voice acting is pretty good. Maybe with the success of this show maybe it will help bring back new episodes of Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and Sonic Underground. But who knows?

User Rating: 10/10

BOTTOM LINE: A GREAT SUPER SONIC COMEBACK!

I'm watching it for the first time in a decade and also the first time with English subtitles rather than English voice acting (recommended by the way). It's not a fantastic show. It just isn't. It's an anime about anthropomorphic herdgehogs, it's not gonna be winning any Emmys. It is overdramatic and incredibly edgy, especially the episodes including Shadow. It's storylines are kinda dumb. But it's also the first Sonic cartoon I watched that actually has serious stuff going on. There's death and stuff, ya know? It's not purely a kids tv show. And even though that makes it come off as edgy and a little off, I still like it. It's definitely not for everyone, just for people who already know the characters and don't mind watching a show where you're invested in what's going on half of the time and and smiling about how ridiculous it all is the other half. If you can put up with that, then it's something that's enjoyable enough to watch.

Fans of the Sega Sonic games will love this new show. The familiar Sonic cast is here in a flashy new series but the show is in no way as good as it could be.

Sonic X is based on Sonic games rather than the Sonic universe presented in Archie Comics. This might be disappointing to fans of the old Sonic show which starred Sonic alongside Princess Sally and the Freedom Fighters. However fans of Sega's interpretations of Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy Rose will no doubt enjoy the cast on offer.

Anyone who has played Sonic games will instantly understand Sonic X. Sonic and the regular gaming cast (their latest adventure being in "Sonic Adventure 2" on Dreamcast and GameCube) must collect all 7 master emeralds before the evil Dr. Eggman can. The new twist is that in Sonic X, Sonic and friends have been transported to a world which resembles our earth.

Sounds good? Well... not altogether. The fact that the show takes place on earth means that all new characters are human. Sonic's new friend (and regular cast member) is named Chris and is rather dull and unexciting. A great portion of Sonic X revolves around the regular Sonic cast interacting with Chris and his household... pretty boring stuff considering the show is based on an all action fast paced game.

The episodes do however contain action, most of which is the same from episode to episode. Sonic and friends are presented by a new robot created by Dr. Eggman almost every episode. These robots are rather menacing but whenever Sonic gets his hands on a power ring he can defeat ANY construction that Eggman creates with no sweat. This eliminates any sense of the unexpected from the show, viewers KNOW that Sonic can and will win every battle as long as he holds a ring.

I have seen 20 of the 25 episodes from season 1. Most of these episodes are awful and very repetitive... although so is the Pokemon show and that was successful so who knows what will become of Sonic X.

If you like Sonic and don't mind repetitive mindless plots then this show is great... if you loathe Sonic you'll hate this.

And if you hate Amy Rose don't even bother... she's here in bucket loads.

Take the Japanese Sonic X. Excelent dialog, music, and character voices. Add 4kids Entertainment. The result is a horrible dubbing of an excelent series. The dialog: acceptable words and phrases from the Japanese version were changed into cheesy jokes and sentences no one uses. The music: Japan had two excelent songs, Sonic Drive and Mi-Ra-I. 4kids removed both and replaced with repetive dull theme music. In-show music originally techno-esc music has been replaced with cartoon orchestral music. Character voices: Horrible, most of them are cheesy actors that can't speak normal. I wish the Japanese voice actors knew english. But even if they did, 4kids woldn't even take them. I'll stick with the subtitled episodes from WolfPack Productions.