The divisive anime series that ushered in the broader approach to Sonic the Hedgehog has its share of good moments interwoven with a hefty share of questionable ones.
On a world of anthropomorphic animals, Sonic the Hedgehog along with his friends Knuckles the Echidna, pink hammer wielding Hedgehog Amy Rose, and two-tailed mechanical genius fox Miles "Tails" Prower fight against the nefarious mad scientist Dr. Eggman who uses his robots in pursuit of the Chaos Emeralds with his ultimate goal of creating his "Eggman Empire". When Eggman's machine malfunctions and uses "Chaos control" the effect results in Sonic, Eggman, and his friends being transported and scattered across a parallel world run by humans. After eluding the authorities who seek to capture him Sonic lands in a swimming pool and nearly drowns due to his inability to swim but is rescued by Chris Thorndyke the 12 year old son of software company CEO Nelson Thorndyke and famed actress Lindsay Fair. Using Chris' home as a hideaway and with the help of Chris' inventor/engineer grandfather Charles "Chuck" Throndyke, Chris, Sonic and Chuck scour the world looking for Sonic's lost friends and the Chaos Emeralds in the hope they can eventually return home as they elude both the government as well as Eggman who continues his schemes within this world.
Sonic X is a 2003 anime series based on the Sega video game character of the same name and is notable for being the first Sonic series produced following Sega's decision to leave the gaming hardware business and re-organize as a third party multi-platform developer with the anime series released in the same year leading up to the release of Sonic Heroes the first Sonic game to be made specifically for non-Sega consoles (not counting Sonic Pocket adventure for the Neo Geo Pocket Color). Produced primarily in mind for a Japanese audience hence why Sonic X's personality and story structure differ vastly from the previous DiC U. S./France co-productions of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic SatAM, and Sonic Underground, the show was initially written off as a disappointment when it was broadcast in its native Japan. However due to the popularity of Sonic outside Japan the series was acquired for localization in numerous foreign markets such as the United States, France, and Malaysia where it was one of the most popular animated series of the mid 2000s resulting in producer TMS and Sega authorizing a production of a third series of episodes that didn't air in Japan until 2020 nearly fifteen years after they were produced. The show has a complicated legacy due to its association with the infamous 4Kids company, but Sonic X along with the successful launch of Sonic Heroes is often seen as responsible for reintroducing the character to a new audience and keeping him relevant in a changing market. There's a lot that Sonic X does well, but there's also a lot it does wrong.
When watching Sonic X, there's a notable deviation in tone and approach between the three seasons with the first season being a "monster of the day" show that adheres to a "t" of all the trappings thereof, season two covers a bunch of mini-arcs that serve as more direct adaptations of the stories from some of the more recent games (notably both Sonic Adventures and Sonic Battle), and the third season is an original season long arc that takes the series in a space opera direction with a time jump between the first 52 episodes and this batch of 26 episodes as this season was only made in response to the international appeal of Sonic X hence why it aired everywhere but Japan until 2020. The general consensus among those who saw the show tend to agree the show did get better as it went along with some of the best episodes and character moments happening in the third season. For the most part the show does give moments to each member of Sonic team to shine and it remains pretty true to their personalities and portrayals in the series. I'll admit that I didn't immediately warm to the show's depiction of Sonic who seemed to be a bit more glib about the circumstances and didn't seem to have his trademarked cocky arrogance balanced against charming or humanizing scenes, but we did eventually get a more balanced portrayal of Sonic as the show went on.
This of course brings me to the biggest sticking point of this series and one that is either tolerated or viscerally hated, arguably the co-lead of the series Chris Thorndyke. Chris is a character created especially for the show and is in theory supposed to serve as an "audience proxy" and human ally for Sonic and friends in a manner similar to say April O'Neill was the friend of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Spike Witwicky from the 80s Generation 1 Transformers cartoon. The biggest issue with Chris however is he just isn't interesting, and he doesn't have enough substance as a character to be a co-lead because he isn't a character. From the moment where Chris is introduced saving Sonic from drowning in his backyard pool, 100% of Chris' moments are either based around Sonic, wanting to go on adventures with Sonic, or moping about how Sonic isn't around. Chris is basically Richie Rich with even less personality and there's nothing that really justifies the character tagging along because he has no special skills or abilities and is just "there". If Chris and his money and connections were actually important to helping Sonic and his friends maybe you could make an argument for him being important, but that justification is done away with when it's revealed the Government has a special "Sonic Budget" to cover all expenses made by Sonic and his friends removing the last possible justification you could make for this character. The best episodes tended to be the ones where Chris was sidelined, downplayed, or absent and to this day there's a strong vitriol against the character especially due to him serving as substitute to Amy Rose in a pivotal scene in the Shadow the Hedgehog arc. While supposedly Chris was better characterized in the Japanese version of the show, this is something that even a competent dubbing company like Funimation or Viz would have trouble making palatable because despite the show's insistence Sonic and Chris are friends we never actually see them interact outside of their adventures (in fact Sonic has a stronger connection to a supporting character named Helen who probably would've made a much better Proxy) and you can really boil down all the issues with Chris down to a scene early in the series: The next morning after rescuing Sonic, Chris researches hedgehogs on the internet and sees cat food and crickets as foods hedgehogs eat and proceeds to feed them to Sonic. Despite knowing Sonic could talk at this point Chris didn't simply ask Sonic what he wanted because that would require the two of them having an actual conversation and it's clear the show doesn't want to do that.
Then of course we have the localization by the infamous 4Kids entertainment. While the show had the typical edits you'd expect from the company's snip happy censor scissors, there were never any full episodes or arcs pulled similar to One Piece or Pokémon. As with other 4Kids dubs the dubbing is hit and miss with some on point casting such as Dan Green as Knuckles a marked improvement from when Brian Drummond voiced him in Sonic Underground and Mike Pollock was is arguably the definitive Eggman as he along with a sizable number of the Sonic X dub cast soon began voicing the mainline Sonic games and Pollock still voices Eggman up to the latest release Sonic Frontiers as of the time of this writing. Various other parts of the dub were less successful as I always felt like Cream the Rabbit's high pitched falsetto voice was played at way too high a pitch and bordered on parody at points and there were also instances that probably could've benefitted from being toned down (such as some stuff involving the characters of Tanaka and Ella). For the most part the overzealous editing by 4Kids wasn't too disruptive as despite the Sonic Adventure 2 arc involving Shadow the Hedgehog well known for its dark storyline, most of the key points are left intact and still heavily implied despite not being as explicit (including the Maria plot point) but unfortunately despite no episodes being pulled, that didn't stop 4Kids from severely crippling them such as the case with arguably the series best episode A Revolutionary Tale that featured a great story involving Shadow and a soldier named Molly with the original poignant ending replaced with nothing but an abrupt stop.
There's a lot to like and enjoy in Sonic X, but it requires a massive amount of patience and forgiveness in order to enjoy it. Positions on the series remain no less divisive than they were upon initial release and the 4Kids dub (or at least portions of it) certainly didn't do any favors at minimizing the impact of certain wrongheaded decisions prior to production. While the show did a good job of cross promoting the game series and creating awareness as well as being popular enough that it continued to be shown on TV 10 years after new episodes stopped being produced there's a lot of baggage associated with this show and not undeservedly so.
Sonic X is a 2003 anime series based on the Sega video game character of the same name and is notable for being the first Sonic series produced following Sega's decision to leave the gaming hardware business and re-organize as a third party multi-platform developer with the anime series released in the same year leading up to the release of Sonic Heroes the first Sonic game to be made specifically for non-Sega consoles (not counting Sonic Pocket adventure for the Neo Geo Pocket Color). Produced primarily in mind for a Japanese audience hence why Sonic X's personality and story structure differ vastly from the previous DiC U. S./France co-productions of Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic SatAM, and Sonic Underground, the show was initially written off as a disappointment when it was broadcast in its native Japan. However due to the popularity of Sonic outside Japan the series was acquired for localization in numerous foreign markets such as the United States, France, and Malaysia where it was one of the most popular animated series of the mid 2000s resulting in producer TMS and Sega authorizing a production of a third series of episodes that didn't air in Japan until 2020 nearly fifteen years after they were produced. The show has a complicated legacy due to its association with the infamous 4Kids company, but Sonic X along with the successful launch of Sonic Heroes is often seen as responsible for reintroducing the character to a new audience and keeping him relevant in a changing market. There's a lot that Sonic X does well, but there's also a lot it does wrong.
When watching Sonic X, there's a notable deviation in tone and approach between the three seasons with the first season being a "monster of the day" show that adheres to a "t" of all the trappings thereof, season two covers a bunch of mini-arcs that serve as more direct adaptations of the stories from some of the more recent games (notably both Sonic Adventures and Sonic Battle), and the third season is an original season long arc that takes the series in a space opera direction with a time jump between the first 52 episodes and this batch of 26 episodes as this season was only made in response to the international appeal of Sonic X hence why it aired everywhere but Japan until 2020. The general consensus among those who saw the show tend to agree the show did get better as it went along with some of the best episodes and character moments happening in the third season. For the most part the show does give moments to each member of Sonic team to shine and it remains pretty true to their personalities and portrayals in the series. I'll admit that I didn't immediately warm to the show's depiction of Sonic who seemed to be a bit more glib about the circumstances and didn't seem to have his trademarked cocky arrogance balanced against charming or humanizing scenes, but we did eventually get a more balanced portrayal of Sonic as the show went on.
This of course brings me to the biggest sticking point of this series and one that is either tolerated or viscerally hated, arguably the co-lead of the series Chris Thorndyke. Chris is a character created especially for the show and is in theory supposed to serve as an "audience proxy" and human ally for Sonic and friends in a manner similar to say April O'Neill was the friend of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Spike Witwicky from the 80s Generation 1 Transformers cartoon. The biggest issue with Chris however is he just isn't interesting, and he doesn't have enough substance as a character to be a co-lead because he isn't a character. From the moment where Chris is introduced saving Sonic from drowning in his backyard pool, 100% of Chris' moments are either based around Sonic, wanting to go on adventures with Sonic, or moping about how Sonic isn't around. Chris is basically Richie Rich with even less personality and there's nothing that really justifies the character tagging along because he has no special skills or abilities and is just "there". If Chris and his money and connections were actually important to helping Sonic and his friends maybe you could make an argument for him being important, but that justification is done away with when it's revealed the Government has a special "Sonic Budget" to cover all expenses made by Sonic and his friends removing the last possible justification you could make for this character. The best episodes tended to be the ones where Chris was sidelined, downplayed, or absent and to this day there's a strong vitriol against the character especially due to him serving as substitute to Amy Rose in a pivotal scene in the Shadow the Hedgehog arc. While supposedly Chris was better characterized in the Japanese version of the show, this is something that even a competent dubbing company like Funimation or Viz would have trouble making palatable because despite the show's insistence Sonic and Chris are friends we never actually see them interact outside of their adventures (in fact Sonic has a stronger connection to a supporting character named Helen who probably would've made a much better Proxy) and you can really boil down all the issues with Chris down to a scene early in the series: The next morning after rescuing Sonic, Chris researches hedgehogs on the internet and sees cat food and crickets as foods hedgehogs eat and proceeds to feed them to Sonic. Despite knowing Sonic could talk at this point Chris didn't simply ask Sonic what he wanted because that would require the two of them having an actual conversation and it's clear the show doesn't want to do that.
Then of course we have the localization by the infamous 4Kids entertainment. While the show had the typical edits you'd expect from the company's snip happy censor scissors, there were never any full episodes or arcs pulled similar to One Piece or Pokémon. As with other 4Kids dubs the dubbing is hit and miss with some on point casting such as Dan Green as Knuckles a marked improvement from when Brian Drummond voiced him in Sonic Underground and Mike Pollock was is arguably the definitive Eggman as he along with a sizable number of the Sonic X dub cast soon began voicing the mainline Sonic games and Pollock still voices Eggman up to the latest release Sonic Frontiers as of the time of this writing. Various other parts of the dub were less successful as I always felt like Cream the Rabbit's high pitched falsetto voice was played at way too high a pitch and bordered on parody at points and there were also instances that probably could've benefitted from being toned down (such as some stuff involving the characters of Tanaka and Ella). For the most part the overzealous editing by 4Kids wasn't too disruptive as despite the Sonic Adventure 2 arc involving Shadow the Hedgehog well known for its dark storyline, most of the key points are left intact and still heavily implied despite not being as explicit (including the Maria plot point) but unfortunately despite no episodes being pulled, that didn't stop 4Kids from severely crippling them such as the case with arguably the series best episode A Revolutionary Tale that featured a great story involving Shadow and a soldier named Molly with the original poignant ending replaced with nothing but an abrupt stop.
There's a lot to like and enjoy in Sonic X, but it requires a massive amount of patience and forgiveness in order to enjoy it. Positions on the series remain no less divisive than they were upon initial release and the 4Kids dub (or at least portions of it) certainly didn't do any favors at minimizing the impact of certain wrongheaded decisions prior to production. While the show did a good job of cross promoting the game series and creating awareness as well as being popular enough that it continued to be shown on TV 10 years after new episodes stopped being produced there's a lot of baggage associated with this show and not undeservedly so.
- IonicBreezeMachine
- Dec 30, 2022