Sonic X discussion

[TearForFear]

I'm not that fond of that opening, actually. If I were to be honest, my dear compatriot, I liked the Aosth Italian opening way more.

 

Well, I'm not refering to the lirycs, I was more attracted by the music witch is... kind of of catching.

 

A dire il vero un pochino mi piace pure il testo, anche se, al pezzo

"quanti robot sconfiggerààà" non posso far a meno di aggiungere "indagando ancora! Conan superdetective con gli occhiali" eccetera eccetera

[Adrian Shephard]

Honestly, this show turned from mediocre to awful when they tried to adapt both Sonic Adventure games into this waste of time. Not only this is cheap as hell, but I can tell you that the SA episodes were worse than the previous ones.

[Emmett L. Brown]

Honestly, this show turned from mediocre to awful when they tried to adapt both Sonic Adventure games into this waste of time. Not only this is cheap as hell, but I can tell you that the SA episodes were worse than the previous ones.

Oddly enough the Sonic Adventure 1 adaption was my favourite part of the series, though that was probably solely because it was the ONLY part of the series where Sonic the Hedgehog was the main character, and that bratty human kid barely got any screentime.

[Adrian Shephard]

Oddly enough the Sonic Adventure 1 adaption was my favourite part of the series, though that was probably solely because it was the ONLY part of the series where Sonic the Hedgehog was the main character, and that bratty human kid barely got any screentime.

But it was still a lazy move. Can't say that I didn't know they will stop putting effort in this anime halfway though.

[Vicki476]

I watched it in Japanese and thought it was pretty fun. Wasn't really expecting much but some episodes are re-watchable. I really liked episode 17 - the Knuckles episode, and episode 24. It's been a while since I watched it all the way through...

[Agie]

Watched it a few years back, and...I'm not a fan of this show.

[Irish David]

I enjoyed this series but definitely not as good as AoSTH or SatAM

[Gabz Girl]

You know, I wouldn't mind rewatching the entire anime again just to see how it holds up today.

It's funny really. I remember enjoying Sonic X when it first aired, especially the much darker third season. Then i started to dislike it because I noticed all the flaws it had like the mediocre animation and the annoying cliffhanger ending of episode 78. Then I compared it to other much better anime based on video games like Kirby Right Back at Ya! But no, I want to give Sonic X another watch and give it a second chance. It's gonna be tough though because most of the first 26 episodes is boring filler, ugh.

[Amomynous]

I actually haven't thought about it this way before, but one day I was thinking how it seemed bizarre that Tanaka was the token asian guy in an Anime. Then it hit me; one of Sonic X 's problems is that it tries to hard to be Western.

I'm not quite sure why they wrote it that way, perhaps the whole idea was to translate it, since Sonic has a much bigger fanbase in America and Europe. Being focused on a Western audience is one thing but I'm starting to think  a large part of Sonic X's direction was 'Americans like that, lets do that.'

[Zavok the SpinningSilver]

Greetings, SSMB.

 

 

It's storytime, and I wish to share a bit of my history on a certain topic. Something I very much loved in my youth, but now...well...you'll see.

 

 

...no, not Sonic Adventure. I still love that game. But the posterboard behind that blue guy is the focus here.

 

That's right. It's Sonic X, the fourth official cartoon for the franchise (fifth if you count the OVA). It's one of the very first introductions I had to the franchise in general, next to Sonic Advance and STH #152. And to think, I never would have known about this show if it weren't for TMNT 2K3.

 

It's responsible for many other things in my life too, such as inadvertently introducing me to anime and my love for drawing. I remember spending hours attempting to draw Sonic and company on TV when I was little. I wouldn't actually have improved until Naruto was first dubbed and put on Cartoon Network, but that's another story. Perhaps for another time.

 

From when Fox Box started calling itself 4Kids TV (I never understood why when I was a lot younger) to the fusion dance of it and Kids WB, Sonic X was one of my absolute favorite shows I watched. I was confused at first because I started when the Adventure 2 arc was on its last episode, and distinctly remember seeing a preview of Sonic getting pummeled by the Eggsterminator the next time I saw it. (I was more of a Ninja Turtles fan back then, so I didn't see many episodes of Sonic X.) But as I saw more and more episodes, I grew to love this world that this show had created. My stumbling onto Sonic Central, Sonic Heroes and those Real Mobius Character Bios only solidified my interest.

 

Sonic, when he did show up, was the coolest thing ever on screen! He had attitude and kicked some serious butt! He and the others always provided me with something to laugh at, or admire. I couldn't get enough of this show. All of the characters were very endearing to me, and the fact people sounded a tad bit different in Sonic Advance and Sonic Advance 3 than the show never bothered me. It did confuse the crud out of me though, until I learned of the wonderful people called "voice actors." But one of the best things I felt at the time that came from this show, was this guy.

 

 

Growing up, I thought it was the coolest idea ever to have Sonic in the real world. I still do, to a degree (a reason I really love Sonic Unleashed), but back then it was the best thing since sliced bread. The guy that sold it best to me was Chris Thorndyke. A little kid, just like me! And he got to hang out with some of the coolest people ever! He was literally living my dream back at that point. People didn't like him for some reason, but I had felt that he gave the experience a more relatable feeling. I thought that this was a genius move, letting kids have the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of this brave little kid.

 

I especially liked it back then when I had first seen Episode 51.Seeing Chris and Sonic going on an adventure really tugged at my heartstrings. And I can remember it was the last Sonic X episode I saw until much later due to Loonatics Unleashed coming into my life.

 

But now, at least a good ten years have past since I first saw the show. I've gotten older, wiser, and a little bit more jaded  With all that I know about the franchise, and this show now, it's lost quite a bit of its luster for me.

 

Let's start with a breakdown by Series.

 

#1: Brave New World (or the New World & Chaos Emerald Arc's). I will say now that I still appreciate this arc, considering what it did for the show as a whole. I can remember really enjoying Sonic and friends interacting with various Earthly customs, like going to the beach or going on a cruise ship.The characters were all pretty quirky, and I only found one episode to truly be boring: the savannah episode. (was it episode 17 or 18? I don't remember.) Nowadays, I see Series 1 to be the most boring, compared to the other 2, but I still get a kick out of it. My favorite is probably Episode 26, finally being able to see the 7 emeralds come together at last. The animation for this episode out-shined the others in this Series, and it was certainly a showstopper for me at the time. If nothing else, it set up Station Square quite nicely for the next series, which definitely made it more enjoyable for me. It fleshed everything out in a way that I really grew to love.

 

#2: Game's Recap and Final Goodbyes (or the Adventure, Adventure 2, Battle and Final Earth arc's). By far, this Series is the one I have the most memories with, specifically the Adventure 2 arc. The majority of episodes I saw when I first learned of this show came from this series.It was great to see Adventure 1 and 2 for the first time, and being able to see the little changes between these episodes and their game counterparts brings a smile to my face. Some of them I don't mind, like having Chris to be the one to talk Shadow into saving humanity. (Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it coming from Amy too, but the connection of Chris reminding him of Maria really makes sense to me. Seeing Shadow interact with a friendly child again is something else I found enjoyable.) Others, like taking much of the character development right out of the Battle arc and making it the most generic and stupid fighting tournament, just plain suck. (I expected more from this arc in particular, just seemed really lazy to me,and forced at the end. Maybe I'm just crazy for thinking otherwise?) But by far the weakest of them all is the Final Earth arc. Aside from seeing Eggman school the little shit, Chris brought it all downhill with the last few episodes. I may have liked seeing Chris have to move on with his life and deal with a Sonic - less world,  but my word. At that point, he had loving friends that appreciated him, parents that loved him, a quirky grandfather, and a loving maid and butler who can't get enough of this kid. And he still wanted to keep Sonic and co. on Earth when he learned their worlds would be doomed if they did? What a selfish little dick.

 

Aside from that though, I really loved this Series. My highlight was "Maria's Request, Everyone's Request," again due to the animation and just how awesome the episode was.

 

#3: Sonic X GT. Now originally, I never saw this Series, on account of the fact that I was enjoying myself with Loonatics Unleashed. I just...forgot about Sonic X. But when I first saw it, I was hooked. I'm sure I've said this already, but let me say this now: I love stories that are centered in space and / or alien worlds. It was why I was so hyped when I first learned about Sonic Colours, and why I never get sick of Death Egg like levels.

 

This was the arc I got the biggest kick out of. The Metarex have the tinniest bit of genericness surrounding them, but their backstory made them to be pretty interesting villains in my book. It was the biggest arc I'd ever seen, and shit went down. From the fate of the Galaxy being on their shoulders, the revival of Shadow, the new girl Cosmo and the search for the emeralds, I had a lot of fun watching this. Even Chris was able to kick some ass, despite him being an 18 year old in a 12 year old's body. I think it would have been cool to see an adult Chris being able to try to counter Eggman, seeing as they're both humans. I may have my problems, such as Shadow being OP'd as fuck without much explanation. (seriously, how does he manage to plow through both Sonic and Knuckles, a shitload of defenses, and still walk along like it ain't no thing?!) But overall, it was a journey I thoroughly enjoyed.

 

Despite how much I can enjoy these arcs though, they really can suffer due to the character actions, voicing, and overall presentation.

 

At least until a little into the Second Series, this show could have better been titled "Chris X." Sonic barely showed up, and it's a shame too. I really thought he was awesome when he showed up on screen. I can understand wanting your new character to have a presence on the show, but it shouldn't feel like he's a leech! It felt lie a lot of the characters are flanderized in this too, such as Knuckles' gullabliity being taken to ridiculously stupid levels, and Amy becoming extremely close to being a psycho with her crush on Sonic. It's kind of disturbing in the case of the latter, especially knowing how she was in Adventure compared to this, Battle and Heroes.

 

Secondly, while the 4kids cast is still my favorite voice cast in the series, their first impression certainly were weak. I didn't really mind how they sounded at first, but it's especially painful to hear them here after their Sonic and the Black Knight performance...barring Mike Pollock as Dr. Eggman. He's always been good at this. I don't really hate their performance in X, but they really can ruin the mood that could be established with the original Japanese cast. This applies to the rewritten script as well. Again, I could feel the mood was screwed with.

 

Speaking of which, how 'bout dat 4kids soundtrack guys? Now I'm not really that fond of the original Sonic X OST to begin with, as I feel it got to be too techno for my tastes. But compared to the borefest that is the 4kids OST, I would take this in a heartbeat. There were even a few game songs that were sprinkled in from the Japanese version! It still baffles me why the English version had to be bowdlerised so heavily, from the script, to the music, and even whole scenes being edited just to avoid showing certain things. (Rouge and Molly, I'm looking at you.)

 

Finally, the animation is all over the place. this is just ridiculous! I know this show didn't really have the biggest budget, but for pete's sake.

 

I mean just look at how weird Sonic looks here!

 

 

Overall, I can say this show as a whole was okay. I appreciate what it's done for me in terms of my experiences with Sonic, and my life in general. It's given me some fantastic moments, and it can be genuinely entertaining. However, it's not really as good as I remember it to be in my youth. Sometimes the stories can be a bit boring, some of the characters are too flanderized for their own good, and Chris can really suck the life out of this series when it should be focusing on the blue hedgehog. However, despite my problems with the show, I can still say that I enjoy this show. Maybe it's because my nostalgia filter hasn't completely worn off on this show yet, but I'm sure that doesn't really matter in the long run.

 

And that's all folks.

 

 - Zavok

[Phos]

One weird good that a lot of people seem to miss was that in episode 1, when Sonic wakes up in traffic, the view pulls out and we see the intersection Sonic is in has a total of four lanes of traffic all headed to the center of the intersection. This intersection seems to have been designed to cause as large an accident as possible.

It always seemed odd to me that they adapted the Adventure games when it really seemed like the show was meant to have taken place after them before they started the adaptations.

One thing did go as far as actually anger me, that was when Tails realized his plane would need more power, he talks about adding an external device for harnessing the emerald's power, and I'm giddy that they're going to stick the rocket booster first seen in Sonic 2 onto the bottom of it, and then X Tornado. They went and reused that shitty design from some piece ah crap anime they made years ago and called it good.

[Burning Finger]

It really does seem like Sonic X just won't go away.

 

The series has once again wrapped up with episode 78 earlier this morning on Vortexx, and will be starting another run yet again next Saturday. At this point I won't be surprised at all if the show is still airing while Sonic Boom is running on CN.

[VO.SUPER]

What I find weird is why they adapted the adventure games, when Sonic X was originally supposed to be a promotion for Sonic Heroes. They never even got Metal in the series.

[BluexBlur]

Here's something that really bugs me about the 4kids version. I knew there was cuts made to it, but not as much as I thought I would find while editing the videos.

 

I'm guessing that if the translated script didn't match the dialogue in the video, instead of rewriting it, they just cut it to make it look like it fits. In other words, there's a bunch of 1-3 second cuts everywhere!!

[VO.SUPER]

Here's something that really bugs me about the 4kids version. I knew there was cuts made to it, but not as much as I thought I would find while editing the videos.

 

I'm guessing that if the translated script didn't match the dialogue in the video, instead of rewriting it, they just cut it to make it look like it fits. In other words, there's a bunch of 1-3 second cuts everywhere!!

 

It was just easier sometimes. The scriptwriter/translator is the one who is supposed to test if the lip flaps match the dialogue in these scenes, and if it doesn't, then it is just easier to edit the flaps to match. Japanese animation has that advantage in that there is usually no natural lip movement, so you don't have to worry about the words not matching the lips very often. 

 

Still, some effort must be made to make the dialogue seem natural, so in the case of good directors, like say the ones from modern Funimation; they will usually aim for sentences that, while changing some meaning, retains the basic meaning or emphasis but sounds right.

 

Lazy directors from the old days of dubbing would often just ask the actors to pull off these unnatural pronunciations to just match the lips while not needing to improve the translation. This would result in emphasis on certain words that seem weird; or extraneous dialogue.

 

 

 

Piccolo: Everyone; get down! take cover! Get moving!

Me: We get it after the first time Piccolo.

 

In 4kids case, they took the easy way out by just digitally editing over the dialogue to avoid this. And because they didn't use the original music, it would seem natural unless you watched the Japanese version.

[Burning Finger]

What I find weird is why they adapted the adventure games, when Sonic X was originally supposed to be a promotion for Sonic Heroes. They never even got Metal in the series.

You know it never made sense to me how they missed the opportunity to use a cool character like Metal Sonic in this series. But yet they some how managed to shoehorn Emerl in here.

[Gabz Girl]

Don't you mean ML? Heh, that's what they called it in the 4Kids dub. =P

One of the many things that irritated me about the dub btw. They could have at least done their damn research!

[Uraraka]

Don't you mean ML? Heh, that's what they called it in the 4Kids dub. =P

One of the many things that irritated me about the dub btw. They could have at least done their damn research!

  Yeah, I never got he ML thing, plus they changed his oil tears to water..... weird! I mean, oil is so graphic and violent! lol!

[Burning Finger]

Don't you mean ML? Heh, that's what they called it in the 4Kids dub. =P

One of the many things that irritated me about the dub btw. They could have at least done their damn research!

Oh yes. I'll never understand how they could get a pronunciation of "ML" out of Emerl. Its funny because if you watch the Emerl episodes with the Closed Caption on, it spells out his name as Emerl not "ML".

 

You think SEGA would've made them go back and fix that. After all they did make them change back Tikal's dialogue at the end of Episode 17, to "The servers are the 7 Chaos." When the dub originally aired she said "7 Chaos Emeralds... The mystery will be revealed."

[Gabz Girl]

And in episode 1, Knuckles says "It used to be Chaos Control" suggesting that the base is in fact called...Chaos Control. *head desk*

I mean it's not a terrible 4Kids dub like One Piece, but some of the dubbing mistakes just make me cringe. It proves that they had absolutely NO knowledge of Sonic or his games. I'm sure there's other goofs they made in the dub, but I can't think of any right now besides that and ML (and I forgot about the tears thing...that IS weird).

Although one thing I'm actually pleased 4Kids changed in the dub was the original S&M line by Rouge. That's just wrong and something I DON'T want in my Sonic!

[Kaze no Klonoa]

The 4kids dub makes no freaking sense. Lots of plotholes and issues pop up because of all of the cutting scenes. The show felt more understandable in Japanese than it did in english.

[Burning Finger]

And in episode 1, Knuckles says "It used to be Chaos Control" suggesting that the base is in fact called...Chaos Control. *head desk*

 

Eggman again refers to his base as Chaos Control while manipulating Knuckles in episode 5.

 

Shadow being called the ultimate creature, and not the ultimate life form is another thing that used to bother me, but that may just be a nitpick.

 

Its all in the past now, but I used to wish that SEGA had just handled the dub in-house or that FUNimation had gotten it.

[Harley Quinn]

Watched the 4Kids version as a little kid (maybe seven or eight) and I thought it was the best cartoon ever created in the history of animation. Until I was nine and discovered Sonic Underground, that is ^^;;

 

Currently watching the Japanese version, and I find the story to be much more coherent in its original incarnation rather than the 4Kids...abomination.

[VO.SUPER]

Even if they had a good translation team that cared, it really wouldn't have saved this show from being dreck. Awful art and stiff animation; terrible backgrounds; flanderization of characters; and Chris. And hell, most of the humor in the Japanese version is kind of lame too, what with the stupid 4th wall jokes plastered everywhere.

4kids just made the acting and translation reflect what the show was worth. And at least you can laugh at certain elements of the show, such as Gamma's hilarious voice.

[Harley Quinn]

It'd be a more worthwhile show if the art/animation was more fluid. I would have preferred a different coloring style, as well. And for Chris to be removed altogether. Chris was just...oi vey. Never again.