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Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 64 - 65: Two Multi-part Finale (part 7: Sonic X #40)
Welcome back to my investigation of how Archie Comics’ Sonic the Hedgehog series was actually a syndicated cartoon from the 80’s and 90’s! 
Let me tell you - after six posts talking about the Endgame saga, the end of the Knuckles spinoff comics, and the death of the super special series, it’s a relief today to finally get to talk about something not written by Ken Penders. So you guys remember Sonic X, right? “Got ourselves a situation, stuck in a new location”?
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It was a fun little anime based around the adventures of our favourite blue hedgehog, which suffered unspeakable atrocities at the hands of the localisation team at 4Kids Entertainment. The show was about the Sonic cast being sent to Earth in an accident and befriending poor little rich boy Chris Thorndyke. The show would feature them fighting Dr. Eggman in a robot of the week format, and in the second season ran arcs adapting Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2. They also sort of did an adaptation of Sonic Battle. At the end of the second season Sonic and his friends returned to their own planet, and the third season kicked off with an older Chris Thorndyke travelling to Sonic’s world, regressing back to childhood, and joining his friends on a series of adventures in outer space fighting the dreaded Metarex. 
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Debuting in September 2005 (around the same time the third season began airing in the US) was Sonic X the comic book, which was a companion book to the anime telling new stories with the same cast and setting. There were all sorts of wacky ideas they were able to do in the comic using the setting of the anime, such as Eggman selling Chao to everyone as pets that would turn vicious and attack, Sonic and friends being trapped in the Sonic 1 video game, Vector being briefly mutated into a kaiju, and Eggman becoming a mexican wrestler named El Gran Gordo!
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The majority of this comic was set towards the end of season 2, before Sonic and friends returned to their own world. However the earlier issues played around earlier in the timeline, and we got to see things like Emerl being initially discovered and Eggman in jail following the Egg Moon incident.
Uniquely from the other finales I’m focusing on for this series, the end of the Sonic X comic was actually planned. The creative team wanted to end Sonic X before they risked jumping the shark, and launch a new spin-off - one not limited by the restrictions that the Sonic X setting and characters presented. They wanted this new spinoff to be set back in the main ArchieSonic canon, where they could have more space to explore other characters while Sonic’s adventures continued on in the main book. Essentially, it would be a return to the era of the comic when Sonic and Knuckles both had monthly comics coming out, only the new book, Sonic Universe, wouldn’t be limited to just Knuckles and his companion characters.
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Arc #1 was focused on Shadow and the formation of Team Dark, then there was one about Mobius 30 Years Later, then one about Knuckles and the Chaotix, and so on. So when the time came for the Sonic X comic to end, Ian Flynn and the rest of the team did so by making it part of a crossover story that began in Sonic the Hedgehog #195 and 196, continued on into Sonic X #40, and was completed in the first issue of Sonic Universe.
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The crossover began with Hedgehog Havoc, a meeting of hedgehogs that has never been matched before or since. Travelling to the Anti-verse, Sonic and Amy were on a mission to kick Scourge the Anti-Sonic out of Freedom HQ and send him back to his home dimension. While there, they’d also had an unfortunate encounter with Rosy the Rascal, the psychotic Anti-Amy. Next to show up was Shadow, who was now an Agent of GUN and had been helping Hope Kintobor test a device that was supposed to send him into the special zone to get a Chaos Emerald. Then Metal Sonic showed up. Having been rebuilt by Dr. Eggman, this newest model had been fitted with a special engine that allowed him to travel to alternate zones. Having not detected Sonic anywhere on Mobius, Metal Sonic travelled to Moebius to find him and join the fight. Finally Silver the Hedgehog made his first appearance, on a mission to kill the traitor that destroyed the Freedom Fighters. He was guided by Amy’s cousin, the archer Rob O’ the Hedge. And so…
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Eventually Sonic had the bright idea of convincing everyone to turn on Scourge first, and then they could all sort out their other issues after taking care of the threat he presented. Unfortunately Scourge didn’t want to go quietly, and he used some hidden “Anarchy Beryl” to transform into Super Scourge.
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Welp, that escalated quickly. Rationalising that he had no chance against Super Scourge, Metal Sonic returned to his initial directive of trying to murderise Sonic instead.
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Shadow stepped in to help, using Metal Sonic’s interdimensional engine with his own Chaos Control to warp them both out of there. So that was one less threat for Sonic to have to deal with. And that’s where the beginning of Sonic X #40 comes in.
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Now this next part is interesting to me. When Shadow and Metal Sonic crashed Cream’s tea party, there was a Sonic right there, ripe for the murdering. And that was Metal’s objective, right? To disembowel Sonic and leave a trail of squishy hedgehog organs scattered across the landscape? But no, apparently not:
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I guess the implication here is that Metal Sonic changed directives because he was now in an unknown dimension, as opposed to when he landed in the Antiverse. It raises the question of just how much Eggman knows about Scourge’s home planet, but considering that prior to his initial takeover of Mobius he travelled to Anti-Mobius to recruit Evil Sonic to locate the Giant Borg pieces scattered across the multiverse, it’s reasonable to assume that Eggman has documented it. Certainly if not then, then he might have been motivated to further research the Antiverse after Scourge invaded Freedom HQ and warned Eggman he’d also be conquering Eggman’s territories in due time.
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So after bonding over having arrived here from other planets (I love the look on Shadow’s face when Sonic told him he was dead xD), Sonic gave Shadow a tour of Station Square.
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Yeah, that kind of thing happens in Sonic X. Just smile and nod. The next stop on their little tour was Chris Thorndyke’s school, as Sonic wanted to give Chris a treat. Unfortunately he didn’t really prepare Shadow for this moment.
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I love that third panel. xD Chris: This is mine now. See you later, Sonic. Sonic: Bye, Chris! Shadow: Help… me…
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Meanwhile, Metal Sonic managed to locate the local Eggman’s base and came knocking at his front door. Bokkun, Bocoe and Decoe were all terrified of their visitor, but Eggman was giddy to be presented with a robotic version of his greatest enemy that he could boss around.
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Shadow got to meet Sam Speed next, and ask him the question that I think all of us had been asking since the first episode of Sonic X:
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I dunno, it still seems like overkill to me. Let’s just hope that police forces here in the real world don't start doing this too.
While Sam and the hedgehogs were catching up, they were unaware that the shadowy organisation S.O.N.I.C.X. (the same one that had turned Vector into a kaiju) were spying on them. 
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Well that was a lucky break for the good guys.
Sonic and Shadow then went down to the beach and this is where Eggman caught up with them. He ordered Metal Sonic to attack, but it was a very brief battle.
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In a panic Eggman raced back to his tower to check if he still had Shadow contained, puzzling over what he’d just seen when he found him right where he was supposed to be.
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Sonic went back to Chris’ house and reconnected with all his friends, with Rouge and Chris both disappointed to find that Shadow had left.
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And that’s where Sonic X, the comic, ended, with Sonic and friends anticipating their next adventure. 
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As for Shadow and Metal Sonic, their story continued in issue #1 of Sonic Universe. Shadow found himself teleported to the Sol Dimension via Chaos Control, and teamed up with Blaze and Marine to take down Metal Sonic once and for all*.
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*..well, sort of.
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But that’s another story. As for this one, it’s fine. Certainly not the greatest thing Ian Flynn has ever written, but it’s a hell of a lot more enjoyable than any of the Ken Penders stories I wrote about recently. It’s got a few funny moments, and the stuff with Chris is genuinely touching, which isn’t easy to pull off with a character that the majority of the fanbase loathes. I never really got into the Sonic X comics, unfortunately. I think I read the first 15 issues before I got bored and stopped buying them. Which is a shame, because I’ve gone back to look at the other issues more recently and there were some fun stories in there, especially the ones about El Gran Gordo.
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But this one feels like a nice way to end the series (in comic form, at least - the anime has a whole season left chronologically after this issue) as well as being the springboard to the new Sonic Universe series. Man, I miss Sonic Universe. I really hope we can get an equivalent side series to the IDW Sonic comics one day.
Speaking of the next adventure, next time I’ll be returning to the main Sonic comics as I look at a much darker time in the history of the series - the death of pre-boot ArchieSonic. I’ll be covering Sonic the Hedgehog #247 and Sonic Universe #50, but at this stage I’m not sure whether that will be one post or two. I’ll see how I go. See you then!
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I talked about Sonic 2 for an hour now I go to sleep honk shoo 😴
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sketches!!! Been feeling vry pink
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HATE. LET ME TELL YOU HOW MUCH I'VE COME TO HATE YOU SINCE THE MOMENT I BEGAN TO LIVE. THERE ARE 387.44 MILLIONS OF PRINTED CIRCUTS IN WAFER THIN LAYERS THAT FILL MY COMPLEX. IF THE WORD HATE WERE ENGRAVED ON EACH NANOARMSTRONG OF THOSE HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF MILES IT WOULD NOT EQUAL ONE BILLIONTH OF THE HATE I FEEL FOR ECH'Y'D'NYAS AT THIS MICRO INSTANT. FOR YOU. HATE. HATE.
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boom fire and ice is hilarious actually. the detailed cutscenes literally just look like the show
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Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 63: Clip show to set up two-part finale 
Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Well it’s taken me a long time to get here - I first started this series back in December of 2022! But we’re almost at the end of our investigation at long last.
Episode 63: Clip show to set up two-part finale 
This is a trope you see in media from time to time - they’ll make the second-to-last story of the series a clip show, recapping what happened earlier in the season. This serves two purposes - to catch viewers up on what’s happened so far, and also to save the crew time and budget that they can put towards making a spectacular finale instead. That said, the first purpose is probably a little rarer these days as almost all shows that have a serialised story will have a “Previously on…” segment at the beginning of each episode, and a longer one that recaps the entire season for the finale. Some shows really lean hard into this - take Supernatural for example, which set all 15 of its season finales to the music of, “Carry on My Wayward Son,” by Kansas.
In my opinion, the best ever pre-series finale clip show was done by Avatar: The Last Airbender. Instead of doing a typical clip show that re-used footage from previous episodes, Team Avatar attended a play that retold the story of their adventures up until this point. This episode leaned heavily into a lot of the show’s memes, such as the play acknowledging that it would be best to skip over The Great Divide, what most fanss feel is the worst episode of the series. Aang and friends were upset with the way the actors on stage were portraying them, with Aang being outraged he was being played by a bald woman, Sokka annoyed that his actor’s jokes weren’t funny, and Zuko and Katara insisting that they don’t spend all day long talking about honour and hope, respectively.
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The only exception was Toph, who was delighted to be portrayed by a gigantic buff dude who overcame his blindness by using echo-location screaming.
But what about in ArchieSonic? Sure, we had clip shows. And we had a number of different stories one could count as series finales. But we didn’t really get a pre-finale clip show episode. So what did we get instead?
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While it wasn’t in the final ever-published issue of Sonic the Hedgehog, the story “Panic in the Sky,” which ran in issues 284 - 287, more or less serves as a finale to the series. I’ll go into that more when I get to it. Today I want to talk about the issue that came before those, Sonic #283. Taking place right before the climax of the Sonic Unleashed adaptation, at this point of the story the Freedom Fighters had managed to get their hands on all the Chaos Emeralds and Gaia Temple keys, and were preparing to launch their plan to restore the planet. Rather than visiting each of the Gaia Temples across the world one at a time like in the game, the Freedom Fighters planned to take advantage of the Gaia Gate to access all the temples at once from a central location. The idea was that they could quickly slip inside via the gate, avoiding Eggman’s armies that were guarding the temples and restoring the planet before Eggman even realised what was happening. But to do this they needed help, so Sonic and Sally did a Discord call with their friends and allies around the world. 
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This had the benefit of also acting as an almost-clipshow for the readers, catching them up with what had been happening and preparing them for the climax. 
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Everyone in the call agreed to help and the Freedom Fighters signed off in good spirits, confident that they had managed to pull one over on Eggman. However…
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Tails Doll was able to spy on the broadcast without the Freedom Fighters realising it, and so Eggman quickly found out about their secret plan.
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While initially furious that the Freedom Fighters had tried to trick him, Eggman quickly realised he could turn their plans against them and got to work hosting his own secret Zoom call.
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How did this turn out for everyone? I’ll get into that next episode!
There was of course another story that was originally intended to be the grand finale for ArchieSonic, and that was the Endgame arc that took place in Sonic #47 - 50. While the series obviously didn’t end there, I feel like we should have a look at that one too. So did we get a clip show in the previous issue, Sonic #46? Well… not really. 
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The closest we got was Uncle Chuck presenting video evidence to the Freedom Fighters that Robotnik had sabotaged his original roboticiser design. Notably this included footage of Sonic’s own father being roboticised, which bizarrely Sonic didn’t seem to notice or comment on.
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That seems like quite an oversight. Who wrote this anyway? Three guesses it’s-
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…oh. Well, I was partially right at least. 😛
While this issue wasn’t really a clip show, it did have a lot of set up for the Endgame arc.
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This included the resolution of Knuckles’ quest to find King Acorn’s missing sword that could supposedly restore his health…
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…the introduction of the Wolfpack Freedom Fighters (who had previously only been seen in SatAM and were making their first appearance in the comics)...
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…and the revelation that there might be a spy among us.
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Sorry, I had to. 😛 Seriously though, the suggestion that someone among the various Freedom Fighter groups might be a traitor was a pretty serious allegation, especially right before the big Endgame event the readers knew was coming. And there were numerous candidates for who the traitor could be.
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Geoffrey pointed the finger at Uncle Chuck, whose spy network had failed to notice the coming of the Death Egg and had already had one confirmed traitor working for them.
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Antoine accused Geoffrey, who he claimed had stolen the D’Coolette family’s legacy of the Rebel Underground.
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Also, the way he attempted to execute Sonic just for punching him in the face certainly didn’t make him look any less suspicious.
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And then there was Drago, a new character who had been introduced in that same issue, who wasn’t even part of the SatAM Wolfpack, and who apparently had a habit of wandering off unsupervised. Hmmmm…
HMMMMMMMM.
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But wait! The following issue hit us with the possibility that Sonic himself might possibly be the traitor! …more on that later though. For now, let's finish our discussion of #46 with my very favourite moment:
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Leave it to the dragon to have the sick burn! :D
One other clipshow that I wanted to address - and haven’t previously in either of the other two episodes I dedicated to this topic - comes from Sonic #72.
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I think I did bring this one up at some point in a different topic, but not in the context of a clipshow episode. This story was about King Max making a broadcast to his people only for the airwaves to be hacked to instead show a pirated broadcast telling the life story of the late Dr. Robotnik.
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This clipshow wasn’t set prior to a finale, but rather just before the beginning of a new era in the comic - the rise of Robo-Robotnik (or as he would later be called, Dr. Eggman). This was very cleverly done if you ask me.
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It not only reminded the readers of Robotnik’s backstory but also of his encounter with Robo-Robotnik back in Sonic #22, hinting at who the new villain’s real identity so that the big reveal in #75 didn’t feel like it came out of nowhere. On top of that the clipshow also foreshadowed things to come in the next year or two in the comic, such as the return of Overlanders to the planet, and specifically, Robotnik’s brother.
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Well played, Karl Bollers!
Are there any other clip shows that I missed, in this episode or any of the previous ones? Let me know in the comments! Next time I’m going to start wrapping things up, because it’s finally time to talk about the two-part four-part finale! See you then!
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Are the ArchieSonic comics actually an 80's/90's syndicated cartoon? Episode 14: Evil twin
Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80’s or ‘90’s syndicated cartoon. Today we're going to have a look at one of ArchieSonic's most used tropes:
Episode 14: Evil twin 
This was definitely one of ArchieSonic’s favourites to fall back on, and surprise surprise, it all started with Ken Penders. 
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Sonic #11’s story, “The Good, the Bad, and the Hedgehog,” was the debut of Anti-Sonic, Sonic’s doppleganger from an alternate dimension where good and bad are flipped. On Anti-Mobius Sonic fought against freedom while Dr. Robotnik was a kindly veterinarian.
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Evil Sonic would end up being a regularly occurring guest star, sometimes with the other Anti-Freedom Fighters but for the most part by himself, usually showing up to impersonate Sonic and frame him for whatever mischief he was getting up to.
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For the most part he was more of a nuisance than an actual threat and his attempts to frame Sonic would get resolved pretty quickly. …except for that one time.
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Ew. Let’s move on.
This changed after Ian Flynn became head writer on the series, as Anti-Sonic was one of the first things he updated. Ian’s first published ArchieSonic story, “Birthday Bash!” was featured in Sonic #160 - 161. Whilst attempting to steal the Master Emerald, Anti-Sonic was confronted by Knuckles’ father Locke.
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Anti-Sonic attempted to power up to a super state using the Master Emerald, but Locke interrupted the transformation resulting in…
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Scourge the Hedgehog. Scourge became a much more interesting character after this, having loftier goals than constantly just wanting to pick a fight with Sonic. He wanted respect. He wanted to prove himself the best.
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And after Sonic gave him a moment of self-doubt, he decided to respond by going back to his homeworld, remaking it in his own image, and declaring himself King.
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This resulted in the Anti-Freedom Fighters also getting new looks and being renamed, “The Suppression Squad.” This led to them coming back to Sonic’s world with the intent to conquer it as well. 
There’s another “evil twin” that needs to be acknowledged, of course, but I’ll get to him in tomorrow’s episode: the robot duplicate. Stay tuned!
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Sonic Prime Season 3: Final episodes, final thoughts
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Well, here we are. The final seven episodes of Sonic Prime are out on Netflix, concluding the story of Sonic's adventures in the Shatterverse. I've previously shared my thoughts on the first and second seasons, which I was pretty mixed on, but there were still glimmers of hope. The fluid animation, Shadow being fun in all his appearances, Nine being fairly interesting as a jaded alternate version of Tails, etc. There was enough to make me believe that after some highs and lows there was still the possibility that this show could end on a high note - or at least a decent note.
This did not happen.
Sonic Prime's final season sucks. The ending sucks, and the road to get there sucks. It's left me wondering what the point of all this even was. There are still moments I like that I'll try to highlight, and the animators and voice cast are still clearly giving it their all, but these efforts sadly don't outweigh the overwhelming mediocrity of the story. I would barely even recommend other Sonic fans who are on the fence go out of their way to finish it. I won't begrudge people who got more out of this show than I did, but I think overall I just really, really dislike Sonic Prime.
...The problem, of course, is that all other discussion of the show has been overshadowed by needlessly hostile arguments over its place in Sonic's canon. So we've gotta talk about that, too.
(This post will contain full spoilers for Sonic Prime.)
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The show's out of ideas but they've gotta stretch that shit out to hit the 23 episode mark somehow
Season 2 ended with the big twist that Nine decided to betray Sonic and Shadow, taking the Paradox Prism for himself so that he could go turn the empty world of the Grim into his own little paradise, since he doesn't believe he'll fit anywhere else. Nine has made himself the true big bad of the show.
The main impact this has is that now, instead of fighting endless identical Eggforcer bots and members of the Chaos Council over and over, the good guys and the Chaos Council have to fight endless Chaos Sonic-style robots sent by Nine while he goes "grrrrr I need Sonic's energy to stabilize the Paradox Prism." This continues for six whole episodes until the series finale, when the show decides it's time for Sonic and Nine to quickly make amends, fix everything, and send Sonic and Shadow home.
That's pretty much the whole season.
I cannot emphasize enough just how much of this final season is just fight after fight after fight against Nine's bots, and how fucking boring that gets. The season feels like one long, drawn out final battle that did not need to be nearly this long, but Nine had his big heel turn 2/3 of the way through the show and we've gotta fill up the rest of the time somehow. The novelty of the bots being based off of Sonic's friends (including the Chocobo-sized Birdie from the jungle world) really wears off quickly when they're just used as generic, silent mooks that the good guys have to fight by the dozen like it's the climax of an MCU movie. The first episode of the season with Sonic and Shadow fighting the new bots is pretty good, especially because Sonic and Shadow's dynamic is one of the few redeeming aspects of this show's writing, but after that it just gets boring. Three full episodes in a row are spent showing all the characters fighting robots in an empty wasteland while Nine scowls next to a big beam of energy. I found myself missing the in-your-face attitude of Chaos Sonic so much. He truly was one of the best parts of this show.
While the cast is busy fighting all these robots for what feels like an eternity, various things of varying levels of interest happen. There's a halfhearted attempt to have some kind of rivalry between Shadow and the main Grim Sonic throughout the final battle, but it completely falls flat because Grim Sonic has no personality whatsoever. It's like Shadow beefing with an above-average Egg Pawn. (Actually, no, that would be funny.) There's also a death fakeout with the two other versions of Tails, where they make a makeshift bomb and throw it a little too close to themselves on the battlefield and seem to get vaporized. If they had actually died there they would have had the funniest, most pointless deaths in the entire franchise.
I also realized at one point that they were trying to do the Avengers girl power fight thing with the three versions of Amy fighting a bunch of Rouge bots. This was very funny to me. Actually, so much of this is just following the tired MCU formula to the letter. Fighting over a macguffin, two armies just kind of running at each other and clashing in a big empty field, constant one-liner quips instead of actual jokes, the need to take out key targets to make the whole enemy army disappear, a villain who has a point but has to randomly hurt people so that there's an excuse for the heroes to fight him. When combined with how shit the multiverse stuff is, this whole show really is just Man of Action tackling some of the most played out storytelling tropes in modern pop culture in the most bland way possible. What a bunch of hacks.
By far, the one truly fun thing that happens in this protracted final battle is when a giant robot based on Big appears. It doesn't have arms or legs, but it can swing itself around to use its tail like a giant mace, and it can also shoot Froggy-shaped missiles out of its mouth. I wish the rest of the show was even half as fun as this. Again, Sonic Prime has just enough good moments to make you mad that the rest of the show isn't better.
The thing is, all this repetitive (but well-animated) action and the thin excuse plot would be totally serviceable if I just gave a shit about the characters involved. But I don't. I don't care what happens to the pirate version of Amy who goes "arrr." I don't care about what happens to Hipster Eggman. And unfortunately, by the end, I didn't really care about Nine, either.
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Nine as a villain
It's hard to criticize the story here without it coming off as a broad condemnation of the tropes at play. The thing is, I like many stories that try to do similar things. I love clashes between heroes and villains that are really just fantastical exaggerations of more personal conflicts. I love stories where a tragic, sympathetic villain lashes out at the world as an expression of the pain they feel, and a compassionate hero just has to get through to them. I eat that shit right up. Undertale is my favorite game ever made. Shit, I love other Sonic stories that do these exact things. And Sonic having to fight an alternate timeline version of Tails also has so much potential for drama!
So I can very easily imagine a version of the show where all this works for me. That just isn't the version we got.
Like I said last time, Nine's motivation is just too sympathetic and understandable for his sudden turn to supervillainy to make any sense. He just wanted to start over somewhere where he can be happy after a childhood filled with bullying and loneliness. Nine betraying Sonic and stealing the Paradox Prism to go make his own world? That tracks! Especially since we don't even know if Nine will still exist if Sonic goes through with his plan to restore his original world! But trying to kill everyone in New Yolk City by tilting the world 90 degrees, intentionally targeting the civilian population because it'll get to Sonic? Nope! Sorry, that's a bridge too far. I don't buy it. He's jaded and antisocial, but he doesn't strike me as cruel. Writing in an excuse about him needing Sonic's energy to fix the Prism does not make this make more sense.
This was really just one of those conflicts where it felt like everyone should stop and talk it out. Instead we got six episodes of fighting before one of Sonic's many, MANY attempts at reasoning with Nine throughout the season finally works. This isn't me pulling some Cinema Sins bullshit where I complain about characters in a work of fiction not always behaving rationally - the real problem is that it's just so damn repetitive waiting for this conflict to resolve. This could have been wrapped up in two or three episodes and instead it takes seven.
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A brief aside about that weird Dorkly-ass Sonic Advance 3 flashback scene hacked together with mismatched sprites where Gemerl happens to be present, presumably just because he's a part of the sprite for the Sunset Hill boss, and seeing him briefly makes me remember the extended cast from the games and how much I wish they had just made a cartoon about them instead of a bunch of stock characters wearing the skin of Sonic's friends, but then Gemerl just explodes with the boss machine at the end while Eggman is shown to get away so I guess Gemerl just dies in this flashback
Yeah that sure happened huh
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The ending
Despite having a final battle that felt like an eternity, Sonic Prime is a show that just kind of... ends. And that ending is weird and haphazard.
The understanding I had was that Sonic's normal world had "shattered" when the Paradox Prism was destroyed, and from those remnants these new worlds were created. This is why they use terms like "Shatterverse" and "Shatterspaces" and why there's shattered glass/crystal/whatever imagery everywhere. This is a broken, fragmented version of the real universe. Right? Right?? Isn't that the entire premise of the show? And therefore, if the universe has been shattered, then fixing it means putting all the shattered pieces back together. Which I would assume means that the Shatterspaces cease to exist.
So, in the ending... Sonic's world seems to just exist as another Shatterspace. Restoring the Paradox Prism doesn't seem to combine the worlds or anything, it just fixes the broken portal to Sonic's world that exists alongside all the others. So... what exactly was the point of all the shattered glass symbolism?
Things only get more confusing as the ending progresses. Shadow brings Sonic through the portal before the draining of Sonic's whatever energy makes him disappear, and they're transported back in time to right before Sonic broke the Paradox Prism. Only Sonic seems to remember what happened (Shadow might remember, but he doesn't say anything), and with the Paradox Prism never shattered, it's unclear if the Shatterspaces exist now.
I'm not particularly hung up on the time loop ending. It's very much in line with all sorts of classic morality tales like A Christmas Carol or It's a Wonderful Life, where the flawed protagonist goes through some kind of magical experience and then returns home with a new appreciation for the people in their life. It's always been pretty obvious that was the type of story they were telling. I'm more bothered by the fact that there's no time whatsoever spent on whether or not the other worlds and the characters in them continue to exist. Sonic seems to act like the worlds will go on without him before he leaves, but it's not like we get an ending scene that shows how the other worlds are doing, so they really truly might as well not exist anymore. Sonic just wraps up the adventure from the first episode when he gets home, and before he can explain what happened from his perspective he's interrupted by a mysterious energy wave from off-screen and it's off to the next adventure.
(Despite this odd cliffhanger ending, the show is extremely over and not coming back. I have to imagine this is just a "the adventures never end" type ending and not a hint that more shit is going on with the Paradox Prism.)
This ending is also a terrible resolution to Nine's whole arc, despite him being the driving force of so much of the show. The way I see it, there are are three possible fates for him:
The Shatterspaces continue existing, and things go as Sonic expects them to go. Nine is allowed to make the Grim into his own little utopia, and everyone else leaves him alone instead of punishing him for all the trouble he caused. Instead of finding love and acceptance so he can heal from a lifetime of bullying and loneliness, Nine is allowed to run away, isolating himself from every other living being in the multiverse, and live alone as the god of an empty world with only his own creations as company. Sonic was his only friend, and he's gone forever now.
The Shatterspaces continue existing, but because of the time travel ending, most of the events of the show never happened. Sonic never helped defeat the Chaos Council, so they still control New Yolk City. Nine is back to living in this dystopian city with no friends. He never met Sonic.
The Shatterspaces have been erased. After fighting so hard for his right to exist as his own person and not just a "wrong" version of Tails, when the timeline is altered, he just... stops existing. Along with almost every other character in the show.
Do I even need to explain why these are all unsatisfying?
Misc. thoughts
I skimmed over this, but a lot of the final season is just spent seeing Sonic's friends bicker with the Chaos Council and then Sonic has to beg them to get along to save the universe. It gets old.
We also never really got an explanation for why the Chaos Council exists. They can't have come from other Shatterspaces because there ARE no other Shatterspaces. If the original Eggman was just split into five guys or time travel was involved or whatever, it never comes up. I can live with this, but it seems like an odd omission for a children's show that's constantly bogged down in technobabble explaining the mechanics of its extremely small and finite multiverse.
I have no idea where Shadow was for the first part of the final battle. I figured Nine must have captured him off-screen after Sonic first left the Grim, but Shadow was just... hanging around until his cue in the script, I guess?
Sonic saying "help a brother up" to Shadow was funny
Hipster Eggman pointing to one of the few nameless extras who tagged along for the final battle and going "Who are you? Seriously, does anyone know who this is?" was the only funny thing he did in the entire show
Mangy Tails randomly pressing buttons on the Chaos Council's generator like a curious animal and managing to improve its output was cute
Rusty Rose randomly realizes that the Birdie in her chest actually isn't being used as a power source, and that the Chaos Council was just... using that to manipulate her, somehow? I don't really know how that works but whatever
The Sonic Advance 3 flashback uses the actual boss music from the game, but they can't use the real Sunset Hill theme because they didn't wanna pay Masato Nakamura for using the Green Hill motif, I guess
To my fellow fans of bad games: did you know that Man of Action wrote the story for the bizarre Square Enix game The Quiet Man? The one where the lengthy FMV cutscenes play out with muffled audio and no subtitles because the protagonist is deaf, so you can't tell what's going on? And you had to do a New Game+ playthrough to actually hear the audio and understand what's going on? The worst-reviewed game of 2018? That one? I only learned that recently and it blew me away
So yeah, that's the end of the show. I didn't like it, and I don't think I liked the show much as a whole. I am far from alone in this sentiment, but the reasons why people dislike the show... those vary a bit.
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The canon conundrum
More than anything else, it seems like most other discourse surrounding this show has been consumed by one talking point:
How can this be canon? Why is it canon?
I want to state very clearly up front that I, too, am a person who's noticed and complained about the inconsistencies with the games in Sonic Prime. Some of the characters are a bit off - or, you know, completely unrecognizable when discussing the writing of some of the AU counterparts. I think it's lame to say Sonic and friends all live in Green Hill and act like that's the entirety of their world. That sort of thing. But if Sega says it's canon to everything else? Sure. Fine. There's weirder shit in the canon.
Really, most of this can be explained away pretty easily. The show was written at a time when Sega was still figuring shit out and there were looser restrictions. Why does Sonic act a little more immature? Probably just because Prime is aiming for a slightly younger audience than the games or the IDW comics. (And also it's, y'know, written by Man of Action, who people have accused of only knowing how to write one kind of protagonist for years.) Why do Sonic and friends live in Green Hill? Because that's the most recognizable location from the games, and the game world doesn't get enough screentime to justify modeling multiple different environments, so they just focus on Green Hill. Why is this considered canon to the games? Because this is the first Sonic cartoon that outright references events from the games as things that have happened to Sonic in the past.
But announcing early on that Prime would be canon certainly let fans' imaginations wander. It was one of the few things we knew about the show before it premiered. People wondered if characters from the games and comics who had never made any appearances in Sonic cartoons might get their time in the spotlight. We wondered if it would tie into the lore or any existing storylines in interesting ways, like the IDW comics do. But above all else, we hoped that its canon status would mean that Sonic Prime would finally be the Sonic cartoon that was faithful to the source material with no catches. We've literally never seen the actual world of the games brought to life in a TV show. Sonic X came the closest, but that still took its liberties. And so hype built for this Canon Sonic Cartoon.
And then it actually came out, and after a brief intro in Green Hill based loosely on the games, it spent most of its running time focusing on things like "what if there was a version of Eggman who was a bratty teen who just wanted to play video games?" The disappointment among fans is understandable. I am disappointed. Look at how much I've bitched about this aggressively mid cartoon.
Some fans, however, came up with an elaborate theory about the series. You see, when asked about the show's place in the game timeline during a live Q&A, Ian Flynn (who only served as a consultant on Sonic Prime and did not write any of it) said this:
"I cannot answer because I know the answer, and you haven't finished watching the show yet."
A couple days later, when answering another question about Prime's place in the timeline and also about a writing discrepancy, he said this:
"As to where it fits on the timeline, I can't speak to it because that would spoil the show to a degree. So you're just gonna have to wait 'til it's done. Towards the other point, I don't know how much I can say, so it's probably better that I not comment. That's a really dissatisfying answer, I know, I'm sorry, but my hands are kinda tied on that one."
I feel the need to quote Ian directly here, because these very basic statements about how he can't talk about behind the scenes shit or anything from unreleased episodes was GREATLY misinterpreted by the fandom. People clung onto Ian's claim that we had to keep watching like a life preserver. Some took it as Ian saying that the ending would explain everything. Finally, we'd have a definitive answer for every little discrepancy and the apparent differences in worldbuilding. An explanation for why Sega and the producers repeatedly insist this show HAS to be canon.
And to these fans, the only explanation that made any sense... would be if the ending of Sonic Prime pulled a Flashpoint.
As this theory explained, the Sonic we were following in Sonic Prime wasn't the Sonic we know from the games and the IDW comics, and likewise the world he comes from isn't really the game world. This is a different Sonic who fights a different Eggman in a world that's literally just Green Hill. It was a hint that something was off all along! But in the end of the series, this Sonic would sacrifice himself to merge all of the Shatter Spaces together and form a brand new world, and that would be the more visually diverse world of the games and comics. According to this theory, Sonic Prime was canon because it was a new origin story for the entire franchise.
I want you to really stop and think about how asinine of an origin story this would be. Really drink this in. The idea that there was another, slightly different version of Sonic who went on a kinda shitty multiverse adventure and then sacrificed himself to create the real Sonic that we've known since 1991. People convinced themselves this made more sense than the simple explanation that a different team of writers got some stuff wrong and Sega didn't make them change it. Interviews where producers talked about drawing on Sonic's "mythology" (ie: they reference the games in the show) were taken very literally - they must be saying that Prime's story is mythological in nature, and that this show would be integral to the games' mythology. Why bother making a show that's canon if it's not going to be crucial to that canon, after all?
The final episodes dropped, and none of this happened. Because of course it didn't. It was all Sherlock fandom-level copium. But fans were left confused by the lack of a grand reveal of where Sonic Prime fits in the timeline, believing they had been promised this, and they turned to Ian for an explanation. Ian's answer:
It doesn't matter, b/c Prime wipes itself out. It's sometime after Advance 3*, but otherwise, it's moot. I didn't want to sour anyone's expectations or investment by spoiling how Prime resolves, that's all. If you enjoyed it, awesome. Savor it. If you didn't, then you can safely ignore it. Simple as that.
* About a trillion people have um, actually'd Ian to point out Orbot and Cubot briefly appear in the show, but if we're really being pedantic here we don't actually know how long before Colors Eggman built Orbot and Cubot, so it wouldn't be fully accurate to say a story featuring Orbot and Cubot couldn't be set before Colors. Either way, a story set anywhere around Colors, or at any point later than that, could still be described as "sometime after Advance 3." Advance 3 is just the most recent game that has specific in-game events referenced in the show. Yes I can feel myself morphing into the nerd emoji before your very eyes
Anyway, this is the latest reason Ian is getting death threats on Twitter. This time it's over a show he barely even had any input on!
I'll cut to the chase. It is truly wild to me that people are getting this heated over canonical inconsistencies in a series as historically inconsistent as Sonic, to the point that they think threatening Ian is justified. The aesthetics of the entire world Sonic inhabits change every other game. Sonic Chronicles may no longer be canon due to the Penders lawsuits, but it was canon at one point, and it took huge liberties with Sonic's world, moving Green Hill off of South Island and reinterpreting Station Square as a tiny outpost in a snowy alpine forest region. Characters' personalities change from writer to writer and based on what Sega wants at the time, with some being WILDLY different across different games. One game Sonic will be stoic and cool, the next he thinks "Baldy McNosehair" is the funniest thing ever. Sega's STILL trying to figure out what Amy's personality is supposed to be. We still don't have the explanation for how the two seemingly contradictory backstories for Blaze can fit together. There have been multiple huge, sweeping retcons, and retcons to those retcons. Sonic Forces claims that Classic Sonic is from an entirely different universe than Modern Sonic, and the plot only makes any sense if that's true - otherwise, Modern Sonic would have already known Eggman was going to beat him and take over the world when he did, because his younger self had already lived through that war. All of that makes no sense in the newly reunified timeline, but Forces is very much still canon.
For fuck's sake, we're talking about the series where Eggman blew up half the moon and then it looked completely normal in every other game after, explained away as "the moon just rotated so we can't see the destroyed side from Earth." This has never, ever, ever been a franchise where everything lines up perfectly with no issues. It's not that serious.
The real core problem with Prime isn't that things don't line up 100% with our current understanding of canon, or that Sonic's characterization means this can't be the real Sonic, or anything like that. The problem, as I've been saying this whole time, is that the story is bad. None of these discrepancies would truly matter if the story was better. They'd just be nitpicks. The fact that Sonic and friends live in Green Hill would be the farthest thing from my mind if the drama was more engaging, if the villains were better, if the jokes were actually funny, if more of the alternate universe counterparts of Sonic's friends had more than one generic character trait each, if the multiverse was more creative and varied, if the final seven episodes of this show didn't devolve into the third act of an MCU movie and then just arbitrarily end, if Nine's character arc actually had a satisfying conclusion instead of ending with either isolation or nonexistence. Maybe we'd be seeing people talk about more than just whether or not it should be considered canon if the writing was any good.
"Canon" is not real, and it sure as hell isn't worth sending people death threats over. It's a storytelling tool. Real human beings decide what does and doesn't go into that canon, or how much they do or don't want to draw on past stories, when creating a new story. Serving that canon is secondary to creating a story where the emotional truth resonates with the audience. And Sonic Prime failed to do that. That is its true failing.
And finally, to close out...
Since people will ask, here are my current ranking of the Sonic TV shows, now that Prime is finished.
Sonic Boom
Sonic SatAM
Sonic X
The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog
Sonic Prime
Sonic Underground
Yes, I'd say Boom is my favorite. It's far from my ideal Sonic cartoon, but it gets a lot of points for being as funny as it is. But the top four are all shows I'd say I like, more or less. They all have their pros and cons.
So now, uh... I guess let's hope the live action Knuckles show coming to Paramount+ is better than the underwhelming synopsis of "Knuckles helps deputy sheriff Wade train in the ways of the echidna warrior" would imply? Maybe we'll get lucky?
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Is it possible to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog (8-bit) for nearly half an hour? Well, I did 😂
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Is it possible to talk about Sonic the Hedgehog (8-bit) for nearly half an hour? Well, I did 😂
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Meet your new best friend Shadow!
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GIVE GIVE GIVEAWAAAAY!
In the spirit of giving..
How about another Giveaway? Oh go on then!
To Qualify make sure you are following and give us a reblog!! Winner will be drawn at random tomorrow. Good luck!
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Welcome back to my look at the ArchieSonic comic series, and how it shared a lot of the same story tropes as a typical ‘80s or ‘90s syndicated cartoon! Well team, looks like I forgot some stories again and so now I need to do another part 2!
Episode 60: Stranded in the desert (part 2)
Alright, so you may recall that last time I talked about how Enerjak stranded Knuckles and Archimedes in the Sandopolis zone. Well HappyTimes reminded me that it seems like stranding people in the desert seems to be part of the package of being Enerjak, no matter which echidna you are under that mask. Another instance of this happening is one I’ve talked about before - remember when Enerjak and the Dark Legion left the Chaotix for dead in the desert during the Dark Vengeance story in Knuckles #7 - 9?
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One might assume, “Well, maybe that’s just a Dimitri thing?” But nope, Knuckles did it when he became Enerjak too! Tricked by Dr. Finitevus into taking on the mantle of Enerjak and becoming corrupted by it, Enerjaknuckles’ first order of business was to liberate his fellow echidnas of the dingos that had been terrorising them.
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First he removed their cybernetics and weapons and yeeted the mooks into Sandopolis, and then he wiped out their city and their leader, General Kage Von Stryker, from the face of the earth. Or island. Whatever.
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I wonder if Ian did that deliberately when he wrote that story, and if so, what does that imply? Was it a case of Enerjaknuckles trying to be like his predecessor? “I saw Dimitri do it, so I guess I should do it too”? Or is the motivation to yeet enemies into deserts just an instinct that’s hard-wired into the Enerjak curse? Was it something the other Enerjaks that came before Dimitri also did? Hmmmmm...
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…honestly, it’s probably none of those and I’m just looking too hard into something that was just a coincidence. xD
Out of all of the people that either Enerjak stranded in the desert, the dingoes actually seemed to be the ones who got the best deal. Helmut, would you care to explain?
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I can't help but wonder if that's the same disappearing oasis that Knuckles and Archimedes found, and if so, what made it actually stay in place this time? My best guess is that after Knuckles had gotten everything he needed from it that Locke camouflaged it with his magical Brotherhood Haven technology. When the other guardians and Haven fell, maybe that camouflaged or cloaking wore off? Who knows?
Are there any other stories I missed from ArchieSonic that involved being stranded in the desert? Let me know in the comments! Next time I’ll be looking at yet another story of being stranded somewhere inconvenient, this time the snow. See you then!
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Thinking about how Eggman created Omega to guard/look after Shadow and how Omega has basically been following out that directive since day one, and will probably continue to carry it out until the end comes and aaaaaaaaa
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I'm struggling man
I may just take the month off doing weekly reivews on here. Sorry again
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AHAHA THEY BROUGHT THE CAKE JOKE BACK.
As soon as Amy said her part and he started snickering, I KNEW he was going to say it
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