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Why Sonic Underground Sucks (In my Opinion)


Ryannumber1gamer

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Eh, I just find it more entertaining than SatAM, so I can't call it the worst for me. Underground may be unpolished and full of weird ass moments, but SatAM will always come off as stock plot and pretentious to me, especially the second season which tried to play itself as totally a mature show (psst, it wasn't). The worst thing I can say about Underground is that the forced song numbers are usually as bad as everyone says.

But then without them, potential emotes like this wouldn't exist.

N3M1XJv.gif

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Just now, VEDJ-F said:

Eh, I just find it more entertaining than SatAM, so I can't call it the worst for me. Underground may be unpolished and full of weird ass moments, but SatAM will always come off as stock plot and pretentious to me, especially the second season which tried to play itself as totally a mature show (psst, it wasn't). The worst thing I can say about Underground is that the forced song numbers are usually as bad as everyone says.

But then without them, potential emotes like this wouldn't exist.

N3M1XJv.gif

You wouldn't happen to be skipping ahead and getting your emote suggestions ready ahead of time would you...?

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As a matter of fact, no. I just so happened to run into that gif a few minutes ago and remembered how great that moment was. 

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On 1/9/2017 at 6:22 PM, VEDJ-F said:

Eh, I just find it more entertaining than SatAM, so I can't call it the worst for me. Underground may be unpolished and full of weird ass moments, but SatAM will always come off as stock plot and pretentious to me, especially the second season which tried to play itself as totally a mature show (psst, it wasn't). The worst thing I can say about Underground is that the forced song numbers are usually as bad as everyone says.

But then without them, potential emotes like this wouldn't exist.

N3M1XJv.gif

At least SatAM didnt give us Shadow the hedgehog (the game) werewolf sonic and Sonic 06 :P

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2 minutes ago, MadmanRB said:

At least SatAM didnt give us Shadow the hedgehog (the game) werewolf sonic and Sonic 06 :P

One of these things ain't like the other.

Spoiler

and that difference is, it didn't completely sucked

Also why are we comparing cartoons with video games?

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Well Shadow the hedgehog (the game) is the point where i think the series jumped the shark its not a bad game in itself but its plot is nonsense and I think it was trying too hard to be "edgy" in a wrong way.

As for unleashed... yeah I will not let sega live that stupid idea down :D

Anyhow I will agree that Underground was bad but it gave us some good characters.

I actually like the idea of Sonic having siblings, I mean why the heck not give him a family.

And Sleet and Dingo are awesome bad guys

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What I like in SoUnd : Manic, Sonic, Cyrus, Bartleby (pseudo-Antoine in my eyes) and the fact they tried something with Knuckles.

I didn't like the rest. Three years ago, I started a Sonic marathon. I've watched all of AoSth and Satam, but I couldn't get past SoUnd's episode 10 or something.

Oh, there's also one thing I hate, and is in the French dub : Knuckles's name has been changed to "Castagne", as if they didn't know how to pronounce "Knuckles"...

 

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No, I really think they didn't know how to say "Knuckles" so they took another word ("Castagne" means "brawl"), but it's cringe-worthy...

I remember the first time I saw the episode on TV, I was curious to see the echidna in a cartoon and then "Oh je suis Castagne"... I was like "whaaaaaaat ??"

But it's not the first time French dubbers got something wrong. In AoStH, Tails was sometimes called a squirrel, and in SatAM Antoine was a fox (His name became "Antoine de la Renardière") ^^ Or Sonic X, where Big suddenly became "Bleu" ("Blue") for no reason.

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  • 1 year later...

1) All of your complaints can be pretty much summed up to the rushed production, forcing stupid plots that shouldn't have existed, ect. There wasn't anything new said.

2) Who cares about Tails. Seriously. Especially in the cartoons he's been nothing more than just the kid sidekick. He was more useful and interesting in the games.

 

3) The story and plotline is pretty heavily flawed overall but I like Manic as a character.

 

 

 

On 1/12/2017 at 3:48 PM, Adamis said:

What I like in SoUnd : Manic,Bartleby (pseudo-Antoine in my eyes) and the fact they tried something with Knuckles.

 

Image result for i see your a man of taste as well

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Everytime Sonic Underground gets mentioned somewhere, I can't help but laugh because it reminds me of Tamers12345 and his weird Sonic x Bartleby videos.🤣

As a kid, I used to love trashy TV shows like Underground and my tastes never changed. It's been almost two decades or a bit less since I watched this cartoon, but I wonder if it can be a nice "So bad, it's good" series to watch with friends for laughs like a certain famous movie by Tommy Wiseau is nowadays...

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I think Underground is one of the few things that isn't divisive about Sonic, if only because most everybody can agree that its completely awful. From the uncanny animation to the terrible music, there's something for everybody to dislike in Underground. Its not hard to tell that episodes were quite literally churned out once a week from the studio. 

What's sad about the whole thing is that Underground is what DiC turned a potential third season of SatAM into. No really, Ben Hurst was about as close as he'd ever get to penning SatAM season 3, and the moment he arrived some DiC employee plopped this thing down and said "You make this instead. We get more money from music royalties in this show." Heartbreak doesn't even begin to describe it, and while I can get why some people think SatAM is bad, I think its reasonable to say that a third season of SatAM would've much more worthwhile to focus on concept-wise than the first season of Underground. While Underground had some good ideas, like elaborating on Sonic's family and showing how the guy feels about not having any parental figures around, even they needed a lot of retooling to reach their full potential.

On 1/9/2017 at 6:22 PM, VEDJ-F said:

But then without them, potential emotes like this wouldn't exist.

N3M1XJv.gif

This is the internet's greatest GIF and nobody is going to convince me otherwise. :P 

 

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On 9/13/2018 at 2:45 PM, Unknown User said:

1) All of your complaints can be pretty much summed up to the rushed production, forcing stupid plots that shouldn't have existed, ect. There wasn't anything new said.

2) Who cares about Tails. Seriously. Especially in the cartoons he's been nothing more than just the kid sidekick. He was more useful and interesting in the games.

 

3) The story and plotline is pretty heavily flawed overall but I like Manic as a character.

 

 

 

Image result for i see your a man of taste as well

Uhh... You do realize the last time this topic was posted in was over a year ago, right? I don't see any reason why people went back to it all of a sudden (Also as implied by my name I care about Tails tbh).

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Until I found this site, I honestly had NO idea that Sonic Underground was considered awful by the majority of people xDD I used to watch it every morning before going to middle school and I loved it back then, including the music.

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Eh its a bit of a guilty pleasure for me, again still like the idea of sonic having siblings as opposed to his official status of having no family

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I honestly back this show's version of big old Ivo over SatAM's since I find it more interesting. See:

1. Him actually having anthro collaborators like nobility and Sleet with Dingo. Even if the nobility point wasn't really followed consistently (see some episodes suggesting Eggman's strategy is to pay off the nobility so they help his rule and others point to him being at odds with them).

2. Him not polluting just to pollute (too much Captain Planet) but polluting to serve his goals like seizing land to build a night club.

3. It being suggested that he wishes to be seen as a legit great ruler by his subjects. Hence him going through the trouble of arranging a fake marriage with the former queen.

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5 hours ago, tailsBOOM! said:

Uhh... You do realize the last time this topic was posted in was over a year ago, right? I don't see any reason why people went back to it all of a sudden (Also as implied by my name I care about Tails tbh).

Eh, I saw a topic about the OVA get folded into an 'ancient' catch all topic for it once. Necro'ing threads just seems to be the way to discuss the old cartoons these days.

5 hours ago, Bucket said:

Until I found this site, I honestly had NO idea that Sonic Underground was considered awful by the majority of people xDD I used to watch it every morning before going to middle school and I loved it back then, including the music.

I'm with you there. It's a harmless cartoon pretty typical of DIC's average quality. The alien crowd shots and minor character designs always stuck out to me, I mean SatAM's Mobius had a deliberate aesthetic in comparison, but it was fun for what was.

I dare say it did a few things better then SatAM story wise. The beginning 3-4 episodes actually build off each other instead of being wholly episodic per the norm of western animation at the time, and then there's the Knuckles episodes. SatAM's still the better show overall but it never really learned how to get episodes to build and flow into each other. Though it could be ambitious, it could be poorly executed in places.

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As a note, topic necromancy really isn't against the rules or anything here as long as you have something contributive to add, so digging up this topic in this instance was fine.

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I agree with what many say in that Underground was VERY odd aesthetically, and a lot of episodes and plots were very cheesy or 'so bad they're good (or just bad)'. The songs also made me cringe hard. Animation was poor, but hey it's DIC.

But I appreciate it being more a mix of AoSth and SatAm's tone, being a more actionized series with some odd bits of substance and continuity, but still being aware of it's cheesiness and knowing not to take itself TOO seriously. While it didn't pride itself in being good for being loyal to the games remotely, it did introduce Knuckles into western animation for the first time (even if the show expanded his gullibility around Robotnik into outright selling out the Sonic trio to him).

Also while maybe not having the same degree of atmosphere as SatAm, it did feel like it did a better job developing the same premise. Sonic was characteristically drifting the world and the supporting cast felt more balanced and developed, with the siblings having a more evened out chemistry over the Sonic/Sally/Antoine dynamic in Satam, and a lot of the secondary cast feeling more key to the plot. Robotnik also wasn't just evil and destructive for it's own sake and was more pragmatic in laying his power while still being blatantly ruthless. Perhaps the most glaring flaw added to the premise was adding the whole prophecy cliche and much greater powers in the background like the Queen and Oracle in the background refusing to do anything to make sure it plays out.

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36 minutes ago, E-122-Psi said:

Robotnik also wasn't just evil and destructive for it's own sake and was more pragmatic in laying his power while still being blatantly ruthless.

I'll admit, Underground has always held a strange position for me when it comes to enjoyment. I find myself more able to get into it despite having seen bits and pieces of Adventures and SatAM, yet despite the popularity of those two compared to this one, and even with the extremely uneven quality of this show's episodes. This point here is, in hindsight, probably one of the reasons. I didn't know how to explain what made this Robotnik more memorable to me despite not being voiced by Jim Cummings (though being voiced by Beast Wars alumni Garry Chalk is a pretty big deal too IMO) or having the sheer memetic potential of Adventures Robotnik.

I think part of the reason why is because despite being stuck in the worst of the DiC cartoon Sonics, he's honestly probably the most balanced and has some of the more potentially interesting dynamics with his world by comparison. Adventures Robotnik was, at least for me, just overly wacky for me. That's it. I'm pretty meh on him otherwise. SatAM Robotnik is a case of being too evil for it's own sake, and also simultaneously too dumb in my opinion. At least for Adventures Robotnik, he's at least seen as being undermined due to his own failings and the failings of his minions. SatAM Robotnik is supposedly the supreme emperor of the world, yet he has so much difficulty with a tiny group of resistance, and more often than not due to him being written as being a complete moron at times that makes it REALLY hard to take his supremacy seriously. Really only Forces Eggman is about on par in that sense.

Underground Robotnik, like you said, had a more pragmatic perspective and his position as a powerful, but still flawed and tenuously positioned Warlord who in many ways still has to fear for his life and his position (ala prophecy). Plus having to maintain control through interacting with the apathetic and selfish nobility (implied if not explicitly stated) is another dynamic that adds quite a bit to this version of Robotnik; he can't just go willy nilly with his power,. He has to find a good balance between being a ruthless asshole who steamrolls over his enemies and placating the populace to make sure they don't gain any foothold and make any truly concerted uprisings against him, and on top of making sure he doesn't give the nobility a reason to stop funding his takeover of the planet.

It's this tug of war dynamic he has with not only the Freedom Fighters, but also the very people he's trying to maintain control of that makes his character, if not particularly amazing in execution, substantially more interesting to me compared to his other counterparts in the more popular DiC Sonic cartoons, and one that I honestly wish was looked into more in other Sonic media.

Though yeah, I will agree that the prophecy bit was kinda dumb.

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19 minutes ago, SenEDDtor Missile said:

I'll admit, Underground has always held a strange position for me when it comes to enjoyment. I find myself more able to get into it despite having seen bits and pieces of Adventures and SatAM, yet despite the popularity of those two compared to this one, and even with the extremely uneven quality of this show's episodes. This point here is, in hindsight, probably one of the reasons. I didn't know how to explain what made this Robotnik more memorable to me despite not being voiced by Jim Cummings (though being voiced by Beast Wars alumni Garry Chalk is a pretty big deal too IMO) or having the sheer memetic potential of Adventures Robotnik.

I think part of the reason why is because despite being stuck in the worst of the DiC cartoon Sonics, he's honestly probably the most balanced and has some of the more potentially interesting dynamics with his world by comparison. Adventures Robotnik was, at least for me, just overly wacky for me. That's it. I'm pretty meh on him otherwise. SatAM Robotnik is a case of being too evil for it's own sake, and also simultaneously too dumb in my opinion. At least for Adventures Robotnik, he's at least seen as being undermined due to his own failings and the failings of his minions. SatAM Robotnik is supposedly the supreme emperor of the world, yet he has so much difficulty with a tiny group of resistance, and more often than not due to him being written as being a complete moron at times that makes it REALLY hard to take his supremacy seriously. Really only Forces Eggman is about on par in that sense.

Underground Robotnik, like you said, had a more pragmatic perspective and his position as a powerful, but still flawed and tenuously positioned Warlord who in many ways still has to fear for his life and his position (ala prophecy). Plus having to maintain control through interacting with the apathetic and selfish nobility (implied if not explicitly stated) is another dynamic that adds quite a bit to this version of Robotnik; he can't just go willy nilly with his power,. He has to find a good balance between being a ruthless asshole who steamrolls over his enemies and placating the populace to make sure they don't gain any foothold and make any truly concerted uprisings against him, and on top of making sure he doesn't give the nobility a reason to stop funding his takeover of the planet.

It's this tug of war dynamic he has with not only the Freedom Fighters, but also the very people he's trying to maintain control of that makes his character, if not particularly amazing in execution, substantially more interesting to me compared to his other counterparts in the more popular DiC Sonic cartoons, and one that I honestly wish was looked into more in other Sonic media.

Though yeah, I will agree that the prophecy bit was kinda dumb.

Perhaps one downside is that we don't actually see as much of this Robotnik, though we do see his effects on the world, and they're more psychologically effective. He is actually managing to turn a lot of the world against Sonic WILLINGLY, actually revealing a more cynical, self preserving universe he is trying to 'save'. I know SatAm dabbled in this lightly, but the trick there was that Robotnik could never resist double crossing associates for laughs, so the decision was always made for them whether or not to take the nobler route.

The only other Eggman I think was equally good in this trade of manipulation was surprisingly Boom Eggman, it was dumbfounding how good he often was at manipulating even the main heroes to turn on each other, and not just in generic ways like tricking Knuckles into thinking Sonic was bad again (though granted the Boom universe being almost as dumb as he was certainly helped).

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2 minutes ago, E-122-Psi said:

Perhaps one downside is that we don't actually see as much of this Robotnik, though we do see his effects on the world, and they're more psychologically effective. He is actually managing to turn a lot of the world against Sonic WILLINGLY, actually revealing a more cynical, self preserving universe he is trying to 'save'. I know SatAm dabbled in this lightly, but the trick there was that Robotnik could never resist double crossing associates for laughs, so the decision was always made for them whether or not to take the nobler route.

Like I said, he had a lot of the more potentially interesting dynamics, but I'll admit he could have stood to have more moments where this was shown. Still the psychological bits were also a factor that made him more interesting. Seeing how much his influence either made people in that world more cynical, or just exposed the self-preserving and cynical side of Mobian society made it possible for the above dynamics to exist in a way that his other show counterparts couldn't, and thus made his potential a lot more interesting to me.

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3 minutes ago, SenEDDtor Missile said:

Like I said, he had a lot of the more potentially interesting dynamics, but I'll admit he could have stood to have more moments where this was shown. Still the psychological bits were also a factor that made him more interesting. Seeing how much his influence either made or exposed the self-preserving and cynical side of Mobian society made it possible for the above dynamics to exist in a way that his other show counterparts couldn't, and thus made his potential a lot more interesting to me.

It also helped with my other aforementioned plus, that the supporting cast of Underground felt more developed and pivotal, not just helpless bystanders like in AoSth or generic soldiers against a generic evil (and often Sonic and Sally's Worf Brigade) like in SatAm. There was way more legit world building, as episodic as it often was.

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