Sonic X

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.

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.

I get why people while say that It has too much focus on Chris Thorndyke and other side characters. But it is a fun show none the less. I feel like the critics don't get it.

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.

Truly wonderful series. It definitely starts out slow, but once the third episode comes around, it really picks up. The human characters aren't the best additions to the Sonic universe I've ever seen, but they're tolerable. Sonic and Co., however, are very well developed. I've only seen the series in Japanese so far, but I'm not sure if I'll watch it in English. I can't imagine what it'd be like with the English voice actors for the Sonic Adventure series (if that's who'll be used). Still, if you can catch it in the original language, I highly recommend it.