Greetings Ladies and Gents! It is I, The Shaman of Animation back once again, and welcome to Sonic Week! People, this week is a very special week for one Sonic The Hedgehog. Come June 23th of this year, it'll be 25 years since Sonic the Hedgehog debuted in the gaming world; and it's been a 25 year long roller coaster ride. The Blue Blur has had his ups and downs (More downs than ups some would argue). But that's not what we're here to discuss. This week, we will be taking a look at some of Sonic's best and worst in animation. And what better way to kick Sonic week off than to dust off Blast From The Past and talk about one of the earliest, if not, the very first Sonic cartoon: Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog
The first episode is titled "Super Special Sonic Search & Smash Squad” (You know you're in for SOMETHING special with a super long title like that...) and it starts off with Sonic doing what he does best: running around at the speed of sound with his buddy & sidekick Tails right behind him. Their high trailing eventually takes them to "civilization" as our blue protagonist describes it.
This sequence is the first 30 seconds of the episode, and it gives you an opportunity to get a good glimpse at the show visually. The first thing that caught my eye being the backgrounds. This show uses a lot of bright colors and from the picture you see above, a lot of funky shapes. It's probably like this to match the over the top zany nature of the show. But it can be a bit of an eyesore if one stares at it for too long
Speaking of staring, the two friends marvel at the city they've come across when they are suddenly trapped by Dr. Robotnik's two robot assistants/henchmen Scratch (a robotic rooster) and Grounder (This...weird drill thing...). As the two are celebrating their victory over the duo, Sonic tries to convince them to let him and Tails go, and begins to regale them of their first meeting.
We then get a Flashback of Sonic and Tails in a deserted village (It looks more like a town to me than a village, but hey, I'm just splitting hairs). The reason for the village being so vacant is a bounty hunter convention held by none other than Sonic's arch enemy, Dr. Robotnik. The meeting is made up of Robotnik's vilest, and most dangerous robots (When you see them in the episode, you could see exactly WHY Robotnik keeps losing to Sonic). He begins to go on a large hate tirade about his hatred for Sonic and how the hedgehog keeps getting in the way of his plans of complete domination over Mobius, this accompanied with silly little visual gags like the word "hate" being imprinted on his teeth or a flag popping out of his head and it ends with him putting a billion dollar bounty on the Blue Blur's head.
As this is all taking place, Sonic is sitting there right in a front row, around Robotnik's line of sight, and yet, no one notices him until Sonic speaks up. Keep in mind he was in there for a good little bit of time until he spoke up, catching everyone's attention. Not to mention, there's a giant poster of his face right behind Robotnik. Anyways, after getting the attention of everyone, a chase ensues with Sonic managing to "outsmart" all the robots and get away. I put outsmart in quotations because the robots are so dumb something as simple as "Hey, I'm over here" and pointing in the opposite direction is enough to get them confused.
After another failure to capture the hedgehog, Robotnik realizes he has to go back to the drawing board and create the perfect robots to capture that hedgehog. To do so, he'll need robots that are harder, better, faster, and stronger than anything he's ever built before. Unfortunately, in his robot making process which involves dumping stuffed animals, books, masks, and rotten eggs containing nuts, bolts, chicken bones, and over strange things, he ends up making these guys.
Unfortunately, after their creation they spend more time arguing with one another than they do plotting to capture Sonic. That's until Robotnik kicks them both in gear to get the job done. As they leave, his bathroom door opens, revealing a bright red monkey named coconuts, who's so upset over those two doing the job that he feels is his he decides to take matters into his own hands.
The next scene sees Sonic and Tails arriving at a Chili Dog shop (It's the 90's) and ordering up. What neither realize is that this is a shop coconuts make and it soon turns into a giant robot with the intent of capturing Sonic. The blue blur is on the run from this machine shooting at him with its cannons until, and get this, he pulls out a saw and hammer and ties it around and into the machine so that when Coconuts fires again, it's him and the machine that are taken out.
With Coconuts out of commission, Scratch and Grounder try their hands at capturing Sonic. Their plans involve trying to get him to run into a fake wall, catch him in trap hole, and using a captured Tails as bait, Two out of the three scenarios involve either scratch or Grounder somehow creating inflatable objects by blowing on their fingers (If it sounds weird, just watch the episdoe) But they all end with the hedgehog getting the upper hand; and in the last case, Robotnik flies over to see if Sonic was actually kidnapped, only for the speedy animal to trick him and crash into his robots. causing mass destruction.
And so, the flashback comes to an end, and shortly after, Sonic and Tails escape from their trap and hightail it out of their predicament. ending the episode. Of course after the episode, there's 'Sonic Says' a little PSA from everyone's favorite Speed Demon to follow the rules, in this instance, don't waste a phone call to the police on something insignificant, they're out there fighting REAL crimes. Ironically, Sonic says this as he and Tails are about to be assaulted by three people.
Boy oh boy, if I had to think of a phrase to describe Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog, it would be "Looney Tunes on acid". It throws jokes, puns and gags at you as fast as its title character, and while I know comedy is very subjective, the humor does not stick well for me. I feel as though the humor focuses too much on being wacky, random, and over the top, that the jokes don't have much logic to them. And while the style of humor the show is going for isn't necessarily a bad thing, but too much of it can get tiresome very quickly. There needs to be some kind of balance to it, whether it's more subtle jokes to balance the crazier, over the top mess, or a "normal" character in the show that sees all of it and is just reacting to it all. But hell, what do I know? I'm just a cynical nerd on the internet...
Now with all of that said, there is some stuff that I did like about this first episode, I generally liked the voice acting in the episode (sans maybe Scratch, you can only here that voice for so long). Jaleel White as Sonic is pretty good for what the show's going for, Christopher Welch wasn't so bad as Tails, and Long John Baldry was perfectly serviceable as a less competent, comedic foil Robotnik. And in spite of it all, there was something about this show, maybe it's sort of a "It can't get any worse than this" sort of feeling I had, but it made me want to keep watching and see what else will happen. And for that alone, I'd say give Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog a try if you're even morbidly curious about it.
Sonic week is just getting started folks, be on the look out as next time we'll be taking a look at the first episode of Sonic Underground.
Til then, I'm The Shaman of Animation.
Take Care...
No comments:
Post a Comment