Being a long term Sonic fan when I first heard of Sonic X I was thrilled. A new Sonic cartoon that hopefully stays true to the games. Well it's been out for a while now and after the discussions on TGN and the EN forums I thought I'd give my two cents on the cartoon.
I am a SegaSonic purist, which means I only care about the games. The other universes while fun, failed to portray the games properly. SatAM had numerous characters and locations they added themselves. The Anime was well weird. AoSTH? two words Scratch and Grounder. Underground was nothing special in fact I don't even remember it.
This list of things in Sonic X seems alright doesn't it: Station Square, adaptation of the two adventure games, the persuit for the Chaos Emeralds being the main theme, Characters from the latest games (including Knuckles who was sorely left out beforehand), Super Sonic.
Yet there's so much I hate about it.
First I'm not a fan of this two worlds thing. The term Mobius was made up by Sega of America, it was never the name of the world Sonic lived on. The games only ever mentioned the name of the planet once, that was EARTH!
Obviously it cannot be set in today's Earth. Giant animals aren't common place. I've always thought of it as a world far in the future. People have evolved and Technology has progressed (look at ARK and realise that was made 50 years before Adventure 2 at least). The locations do look a lot like todays world though which may suggest a parallel world. It could even just be another planet called Earth it doesn't have to be ours.
Looking back levels like Starlight seem to suggest city rooftops, and then there's the whole question about the Robotnik family tree. Did Eggman come from another Earth and somehow coincidentally happen to find himself back in the world he came from? Ludicrous.
They dug their own grave by starting with the Tornado 2 then later doing the Adventure adaptation. In Sonic Adventure the Tornado 1 becomes the Tornado 2, it's a turning point in Tails' story.
They obviously liked SatAM because they re-used the power rings. WTF? The rings are simply small doses of Chaos Energy that are used to shield a person/Heal a machine. The fact that Sonic goes into overdrive after touching just one seems too much and not like the games at all.
There are also too many humans characters and childish robots. Chris and his family, Danny, Boucome, etc are all not necessary and end up just being annoying.
They rushed through the best parts, the Adventure adaptations. They are so many minor mistakes I'm not even going to list them here.
Then there's the voices. It's so annoying to hear Tails speak in any format. He was such a cool character yet no matter what they do they cannot pick a voice that isn't annoying. The English Anime voice is a lot worse than Sonic X's but it's still bad. They need to bring in Nancy Cartwright quick (she did Bart and a lot of the Kids in The Simpsons, so she knows how to make an 8 year old boy sound good). However the cartoons aren't the only ones at fault here. Sonic Team's choice for Tails was wrong.
Then there's Rouge's voice. SegaSonic = a soft voice that hides her manipulative nature well, Sonic X = A 30 year old whore. I cringed the first time I heard it.
The Action started off slow but did pick up. I'm actually still looking forward to later episodes as I saw a Super Sonic vs Super Shadow fight on www.sonic-gif.com. Every Sonic fan in the world is wanting that.
Well anyway it's a mixed bag. I would say it's not as good as the fairly dark SatAM, but matches the great portrayal of characters seen in the Anime. In fact I rate Sonic X better than the anime due to the Anime's poor English Voices. Then you have the rest of the crap with SegaSonic beating everything.
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Fic update:
Halfway through Chapter 3 of Chaos Demons.
