The Good: Good art and animation, decent level of detail, excellent voice acting, fully develops its overarching plot, memorable characters
The Bad: inconsistent use of humour, unnecessary swearing in the japanese version, weak first season
***********Review***********
The turn of the millennium brought a whole wave of Japanese anime flooding across the globe. Transformers, Digimon, Pokémon, and yes Sonic the Hedgehog in the form of the SONIC X. At a whopping 78 episodes across 4 seasons, SONIC X does take its time to get going, but when it does it sets up a simple yet epic saga of good vs not so good.
On the side of good is Sonic and his pals against Doctor Eggman and his robotic goons. The reason I use “good vs not so good” instead of “good vs evil” is because Eggman never really comes off as much of a threat. He is an antagonist in a very cartoonish kind of way; not as cartoonish as ADVENTURES OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG but no where near as threatening as SONIC THE HEDGEHOG. He wants control of the chaos emeralds for his own selfish gains but Sonic and pals An accident on sonic’s world transports them all to “our” world of contemporary 2000s Earth.
Season 1 focuses on the safe and familiar premise of these out of this world characters adjusting to life on earth, with Sonic befriending a local rich boy Chris. It is a very “safe” season with often repetitive episodes that do not seem to build up to anything. Sonic and Chris find another of Sonic’s friends, Eggman launches another robot attack or captures someone important, Sonic and friends save the day. Chris himself is your typical and relatively bland audience surrogate character. The creators do give him some character development surrounding his family and social life but all that does is detract from the far more interesting Sonic and pals.
Season 2 onwards is where things pick up. The conflict heads to space, a greater enemy is introduced and more of the overarching lore is fleshed out. The scale is greater, scope gets grander, all leading up to an epic final season. The series also starts to focus more on Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy as opposed to Chris. Characterizations are, unsurprisingly, cliched for a typical young viewer’s anime of its time. Sonic is the fun loving main character, Tails is the plucky kid sidekick and younger brother surrogate to the main character, Knuckles is the hot headed rival of sorts, Amy is the token annoying girl supporting character; the list goes on.
Compared to its contemporaries in kid targeted Japanese anime, the animation on SONIC X is among the better ones. There is minimal use of stock footage, artwork is consistent, colours are vivid and eye catching. The animation is not the smoothest around but it seems generally free from errors and does not fall into the type of lazy animation that it’s predecessor SONIC UNDERGROUND did.
There exists both the original Japanese version and the English dub. In the case of Sonic X, the English translation retains the general story and characterizations of the original version. Even the dialogue is generally the same. The difference lies in the target audience that the respective versions were written for. The Japanese version seemed a little bipolar in that respect. It’s dialogue contains occasional swearing especially when characters taunt one another, there is more implied sexual innuendo, and more overt violence (though not to the point of being gory beyond a PG13 rating).
The problem is that while it aims for older audience, the writing, dialogue and overall visuals of the show all point toward something more juvenile. The English version tones that all down and in my opinion is all the better for it. While I do frown on unnecessary censorship, the minor tweaks aims SONIC X squarely at the toward the younger crowd. At least it has a definite audience in mind and embraces them.
In contrast to the first and horrendous Sonic Japanese anime that was SONIC THE MOVIE, SONIC X grows it’s beard and improves as the series progresses. Yes it falls into the cliched shonen anime tropes and trappings that plague similar shows of its ilk. Yes it is juvenile at times even though the voice actors in both languages make the best of the material they got. And yes it can get repetitive. But really this is SONIC X. It does not aspire to be anything more than a simple entertaining reintroduction of the Sonic franchise to a new audience. In that respect, it succeeds.
***********Review***********
On the side of good is Sonic and his pals against Doctor Eggman and his robotic goons. The reason I use “good vs not so good” instead of “good vs evil” is because Eggman never really comes off as much of a threat. He is an antagonist in a very cartoonish kind of way; not as cartoonish as ADVENTURES OF SONIC THE HEDGEHOG but no where near as threatening as SONIC THE HEDGEHOG. He wants control of the chaos emeralds for his own selfish gains but Sonic and pals An accident on sonic’s world transports them all to “our” world of contemporary 2000s Earth.
Season 1 focuses on the safe and familiar premise of these out of this world characters adjusting to life on earth, with Sonic befriending a local rich boy Chris. It is a very “safe” season with often repetitive episodes that do not seem to build up to anything. Sonic and Chris find another of Sonic’s friends, Eggman launches another robot attack or captures someone important, Sonic and friends save the day. Chris himself is your typical and relatively bland audience surrogate character. The creators do give him some character development surrounding his family and social life but all that does is detract from the far more interesting Sonic and pals.
Season 2 onwards is where things pick up. The conflict heads to space, a greater enemy is introduced and more of the overarching lore is fleshed out. The scale is greater, scope gets grander, all leading up to an epic final season. The series also starts to focus more on Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy as opposed to Chris. Characterizations are, unsurprisingly, cliched for a typical young viewer’s anime of its time. Sonic is the fun loving main character, Tails is the plucky kid sidekick and younger brother surrogate to the main character, Knuckles is the hot headed rival of sorts, Amy is the token annoying girl supporting character; the list goes on.
Compared to its contemporaries in kid targeted Japanese anime, the animation on SONIC X is among the better ones. There is minimal use of stock footage, artwork is consistent, colours are vivid and eye catching. The animation is not the smoothest around but it seems generally free from errors and does not fall into the type of lazy animation that it’s predecessor SONIC UNDERGROUND did.
There exists both the original Japanese version and the English dub. In the case of Sonic X, the English translation retains the general story and characterizations of the original version. Even the dialogue is generally the same. The difference lies in the target audience that the respective versions were written for. The Japanese version seemed a little bipolar in that respect. It’s dialogue contains occasional swearing especially when characters taunt one another, there is more implied sexual innuendo, and more overt violence (though not to the point of being gory beyond a PG13 rating).
The problem is that while it aims for older audience, the writing, dialogue and overall visuals of the show all point toward something more juvenile. The English version tones that all down and in my opinion is all the better for it. While I do frown on unnecessary censorship, the minor tweaks aims SONIC X squarely at the toward the younger crowd. At least it has a definite audience in mind and embraces them.
In contrast to the first and horrendous Sonic Japanese anime that was SONIC THE MOVIE, SONIC X grows it’s beard and improves as the series progresses. Yes it falls into the cliched shonen anime tropes and trappings that plague similar shows of its ilk. Yes it is juvenile at times even though the voice actors in both languages make the best of the material they got. And yes it can get repetitive. But really this is SONIC X. It does not aspire to be anything more than a simple entertaining reintroduction of the Sonic franchise to a new audience. In that respect, it succeeds.
***********Review***********
Entertainment: A
Art: B-
Animation: B-
Art: B-
Animation: B-
Story: B+
Voice Acting (Japanese): B
Voice Acting (English): B-
Voice Acting (Japanese): B
Voice Acting (English): B-
Characters: B-
Music: C+
Replay value: B-
"Brains": D
"Brains": D
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