Sonic Underground

[E-122-Psi]

That in mind, I always pondered if the roboticization process in Underground is inherently cumbersome in some manner. If it wasn't, there's no rational reason Robotnik hasn't enslaved everyone on Mobius as he did in SatAM.

Unless of course, Robotnik has the foresight to know 100% control would be boring, and so deliberately avoids overusing the roboticizer so that there remain pockets of opposition and opportunities for political maneuvering to keep him entertained. If this is how he feels, Underground Robotnik inherently is a more interesting villain than SatAM's Robotnik, from what I can see.

Truthfully I think that's something that gave Underground Robotnik more believably. All versions of the doctor are consistent in the fact they are narcissists, and it's usually not enough they themselves know they're awesome, hense we get ego centric lairs and plans for domination covered with his handsome face. What's more, most western variants are also incredibly sadistic, they like seeing their enemies squirming and in pain. You can't do that with an expressionless droid.

 

Underground's Robotnik's strategy fits those ideals much better. He uses the robotocizer, but sparingly to maintain control and have the whole world scared shitless of him. Satam Robotnik essentially wanted to be the Omega Man, wiping out ALL sentient life on the planet until he was the remaining being with free will (he had his sniveling toady, but even he proved pretty dispensable to Robotnik in the end).

 

I will actually give credit that Underground did actually take Satam's premise and fine tune it a little in places. It was a step forward, step back method at times, but there were directions that gave it more substance (it also helped Underground was a bit more tongue in cheek however, avoiding looking quite as pretentious when it DID fall short).

 

The three siblings were a more believable dynamic for example, since they all had equal pros and cons and foiled each other rather equally, all three were needed, compared to very clear hierarchies of competence with Sally, Sonic and Antoine (Sonia was allowed to be more flawed and error prone than Sally, while Manic was competent enough you could understand why they kept him around more than Antoine, Sonic was similar to his Satam version, but benefited from the less one sided chemistry, he could win arguments against Sonia and he didn't obsessively loathe and bully Manic). The three were also on the road, fitting of Sonic's nature, rather than being tied to a base with other heroes that were established but rarely allowed to do anything.

 

 

I could tell the show wasn't even trying to be original. It had Uncle Chuck, underground resistance, all that stuff. Why God. Why did this happen and not SatAM's third season?

FUN FACT: According to Ben Hurst this was in fact used over an attempt to revive Satam. He even worked on a few episodes of the final product. He abored most of his tenure, hating the premise and working with amateur writers. More info can be found out here:

 

http://www.saturdaymorningsonic.com/features/ben_hurst/

[DaddlerTheDalek]

I'm sure I wasn't the only kid and Sonic fan who was confused that Tails didn't appear in Sonic Underground, not even as a small minor character. By the time when Knuckles made his debut in a Sonic animated series. I thought Tails would appear sometime later in that show but it didn't happen. What did you think back when and What do you think now?

[Osmium]

I'm guessing the reason for his absence probably the same sort of reason why Tails was basically just a background character in SatAM, and just pushed a step farther. Tails never really had a place in SatAM, as all the other characters had the main archetypes so Tails was pushed back into just the cute background kid. Underground had less characters than SatAM but I guess maybe there just wasn't a place for him here either, and most likely they wanted to just focus on the triplets as the main characters and no one else. I'm guessing if Tails would have been in Underground, he probably would have been a minor background character like SatAM or worse, in only like one or two episodes like Knuckles. It's pretty much an exaggerated example of how SatAM treated some of it's characters. 

It's strange though they decided to have Knuckles in a few episodes, but not Tails anywhere at all. Underground was weird. Out of all the Sonic media cannons, I think it's probably one of the most different and out there. 

This is just my crappy speculation though. XP 

[Your Vest Friend]

Eh, given Underground's quality, that might have been a benefit to Tails.

But then, Tails does directly conflict with the entire premise of the show; Tails is supposed to be Sonic's little brother figure, which is harder to pull of when he's sharing spotlight with Sonic's actual little brother and big sister (in that one continuity). It's not like SatAM where he could easily have had the same role as in the games but they reduced him to tagalong kid because they wanted to have Sally to be Sonic's foil, he'd have to have his relationship to Sonic reduced by default. 

[E-122-Psi]

The thing is Satam struggled with it's original cast as it was without the games cast such as Tails. In the end it was reduced to a three man band most of the time anyway (with Dulcy as occasional distanced comic relief). Underground may be more creditable since not only did it use a more rounded three man band without giving the assumption of importance to anyone else, but it made more satisfying use of one shot characters. Sure Knuckles was sparsely used, but compare his importance in his odd appearances to Satam examples such as Lupe.

[pocket]

I got volume 1 of this show on DVD knowing almost nothing about it, besides the fact that Sonic had a brother and sister. I remember being impressed with the animation compared to SatAM and AoSTH... for maybe the first few minutes of the show. Then I started catching onto all the errors and junk. Sonia and Sonic clearly being voiced by the same person rubbed me the wrong way, a lot of the character designs were dumb and ugly, even for a Sonic cartoon, and I actually had to fast forward through a lot of the musical numbers.

I've only seen each episode of volume 1 once, in like 2007... I can't say I outright hated it, but I also can't say I enjoyed it even a little bit.

[Forte-Metallix]

Here's something about Underground that always bothered me:

Why couldn't the Oracle of Delphius just use his phenominal cosmic powers to overthrow Robotnik himself? In the very first episode, he appeared in Robotnik's room and used his magic to immobilize him. And, instead of destroying the mad dictator who was completely in the palm of his hand, he decided to take the opportunity to gloat about the prophecy. And he and Aleena revealed two episodes later that Robotnik was completely incapable of destroying him. So how about he just saves the world himself instead of sending three kids on a wild goose chase? At the very least, he could've saved their foster parents from being roboticized!

[MetalSkulkBane]

6 hours ago, Forte-Metallix said:

Here's something about Underground that always bothered me:

Why couldn't the Oracle of Delphius just use his phenomenal cosmic powers to overthrow Robotnik himself? In the very first episode, he appeared in Robotnik's room and used his magic to immobilize him. And, instead of destroying the mad dictator who was completely in the palm of his hand, he decided to take the opportunity to gloat about the prophecy. And he and Aleena revealed two episodes later that Robotnik was completely incapable of destroying him. So how about he just saves the world himself instead of sending three kids on a wild goose chase? At the very least, he could've saved their foster parents from being roboticized!

There can be numerous reasons for that

1 Maybe Oracle is kind of guy who believes that prophecy MUST come true, even if doing it himself would make things easier

2 Maybe he's not good or evil, simply neutral guy who makes sure things go according to some cosmic plan.

3 Maybe he wants to help, but he has some kind of Da Rules book that forbids him to.

He's mysterious, who knows.

[E-122-Psi]

It was never stated in universe though, was it? I admit I hate those kind of plot holes in stories, when this uber powerful character is established for the sake of coolness and just to maintain fake tension they have them hold back the whole time (usually until the end of the climax which only makes it even more glaringly obvious). This was something that plagued all the 'competent dictator' version of Robotnik though. The Sonic Conversation episode of Satam shown Sonic could easily break into his lair and pwn his ass, he just didn't because.....er he didn't. Julian Robotnik often only seen more competent than Eggman due to story aesthetics.

[Lord Raptor]

I'm ashamed to admit i did watch this when I was younger, but seriously this show is terrible and I don't even know why Knuckles is even there, Does this Show have any fans? 

[MetalSkulkBane]

2 hours ago, Lord Raptor said:

I'm ashamed to admit i did watch this when I was younger, but seriously this show is terrible and I don't even know why Knuckles is even there, Does this Show have any fans? 

There are few things I liked about it, especially since I watched it right after Satam. For example there is episode where good person gets roboticised and episode ends on everyone being sad. When Satam send a guy to Void, it ended on cheap jokes. Sleet and Dingo were kinda fun, for three episodes until I realised they have one trick. And I know that Sonia and especially Manic have few fans. And main theme is cathy.

Overall I remeber slighty enjoying first few episodes, and getting tired of it pretty quickly, with one or two better episodes.

[Lord Raptor]

1 hour ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

There are few things I liked about it, especially since I watched it right after Satam. For example there is episode where good person gets roboticised and episode ends on everyone being sad. When Satam send a guy to Void, it ended on cheap jokes. Sleet and Dingo were kinda fun, for three episodes until I realised they have one trick. And I know that Sonia and especially Manic have few fans. And main theme is cathy.

Overall I remeber slighty enjoying first few episodes, and getting tired of it pretty quickly, with one or two better episodes.

I get what you mean, Sure there are some good things about it, but they are few and far between and when I went back to watch it I found it really cringey.