Megathread MT | Sonic Prime (Netflix, TV Series) - General Discussion

[Blue Blood]

I know we have to see it to form more concrete opinions. And there's the fact that it's aimed at 6 - 11 year old kids rather than a slightly older demographic (I'd have preferred 10 - 14, something like that). And that the animation could yet be shit. But I'm cautiously optimistic so far. I genuinely haven't seen any big red flags yet. Pontac and Graff aren't a part of this on any level like they were for Boom, although I'm going to be salty about Smith being given the boot for a long time yet. Still... sounds interesting? And if the logo and premise say anything at all, this is going to be action rather than comedy. 

[GentlemanX]

Well, the premise is certainly more intriguing than I was expecting.

Let's get the first thought out of the way.

In all seriousness, the choice in name and premise is really eyebrow raising from an Archie fan perspective. I realize Sega is probably completely unaware this was a thing in the Archie books, but at some point you'd figure someone would mention it to them. Dan Slott, the writer of the first Zone Cop story and therefore the one to use the name Sonic Prime, probably isn't going to pull a Penders here, but he is a big name in the comics industry and in fact is the one who wrote the original Spider-Man Spider-Verse comics that inspired the film which this series is clearly also inspired from. It's just more than a little on the nose and makes me half wonder if he's involved with this at all. Highly unlikely, but again, this is all way too uncanny.

So with that out of the way, let's go over the actual premise. I had more or less expected a kids toyetic series in the same vein as Fully Charged, so this at least is a lot more of an ambitious story. That being said, it's also not really what I'd call a great series premise. Could multiverse stuff work as a subplot, or even multiple subplots to a larger series? Absolutely. Could multiverse stuff even work as a premise for a season of a larger series? Sure, I think it could. Can multiverse stuff work as the premise to an entire series? I'm not confident of that. Having the entire series focused on Sonic jumping through dimensions and meeting alternate continuities feels off when the main setting of the games has not been seen through the lens of a show before, with the closest version being Sonic X. Starting with something familiar and then branching out to alternate continuities would be a lot more welcoming to an outsider than folks who are already going to need to get used to a new CG interpretation of Sonic from a studio that's never done anything with him before outside of releasing DVDs of other companies that worked with Sega.

It also makes me even less certain of having this series be CG. CG series for television usually don't have the budget for using lots of new models and environments, instead opting for set locations and characters they can repurpose for different episodes. It's why stuff like TMNT 2k12 gets complaints that New York is empty or why Sonic Boom had so many stock background characters. If you're going to be just repurposing the Sonic model with different clothes or something for these alternate Sonic I guess that would work, but I feel like the format they chose really doesn't lend itself to the premise and more hinders it than anything. Especially when Man of Action has worked on plenty of 2-D shows before. Makes me wonder if Wild Brain is the weak link here and if so why Sega chose them to work with on the series.

Lastly, I'll go ahead and do some pie in the sky analysis of how the previous continuities could be incorporated into the show. I honestly am not going into this expecting all the old shows and comics being acknowledged here, quite the opposite, but let's just some fun speculation if they wanted, and Sega allowed them, to go in that direction.

Games: Classic Sonic/Blaze/Humans - We're going to assume for now that the protagonist is Modern Sonic and not a completely new Sonic. Classic Sonic seems like the most sure thing, given his use by the brand right now. I know Tyson said Classic isn't likely to be a driving force for the brand, but I'd still expect him to be here. Blaze and the humans are more iffy, simply because they don't have alternate Sonics which I would assume is the idea behind this show. I'd like to see them acknowledged, especially so Blaze could finally be animated, but who's to say.

Shows and Movies: AOSTH, SatAM, OVA, Underground, X, Boom, Paramount Sonic - The big limiting factor here to me is Sega. Sega's policy regarding previous versions of characters would indicate we won't see any of these, but the premise is almost demanding it so I'm going to speculate regardless. AOSTH, SatAM, and Underground would all have Sonic voiced by Jaleel and Modern would tag along on whatever they're doing. AOSTH probably being a standard setup, SatAM set before Doomsday Project, and Underground probably generic too. I don't expect we'd be getting closure for either SatAM or Underground, not unless they're going to spend more than one episode there. I doubt they'd get Martin Burke to reprise OVA Sonic, but it'd be neat if they did. Imagine if they were to remix the OVA's soundtrack. X would probably be set during either season 1 or 2 with Griffith doing Sonic. I would guess Chris would be left out beyond maybe as a joke at some point. Boom would be the same as the show, probably breaking the fourth wall and with Roger as Sonic. Paramount would be interesting though I don't know how much ownership Sega has over that version. Obviously Ben would be Sonic and would likely tie into the first movie rather than the second, unless the show was going to be aware of how that film's developing. Which it could I suppose.

Comics: Archie (Pre-reboot and Post), Fleetway, IDW, Manga, etc.: Due to the legal issues surrounding most of these I would expect the likelihood of acknowledging these is significantly smaller than the shows and movies. If they did, I imagine Archie would be voiced by Jaleel or the voice of Modern Sonic, Fleetway either the voice of Modern Sonic or someone else, and the Manga (in particular the old Nicky stuff since the other manga are so close to modern) would be someone else as well. IDW is probably the most likely given it's relevance right now, but I don't know if there's enough in it to make it it's own continuity. Not unless you put a lot of focus on Tangle and Whisper with Sonic and having Starline as the bad guy. I'd think Sega wouldn't want those characters associated with a definite alternate continuity yet though.

But yeah, I'm fully aware we're probably not going to see the old continuities in this show, that part is just for fun given the premise.

Final thoughts:

Quote

Sonic’s adventure is about more than a race to save the universe, it’s a journey of self-discovery and redemption.

This part is especially silly to me.

[Kuzu]

6 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

I know we have to see it to form more concrete opinions. And there's the fact that it's aimed at 6 - 11 year old kids rather than a slightly older demographic (I'd have preferred 10 - 14, something like that). And that the animation could yet be shit. But I'm cautiously optimistic so far. I genuinely haven't seen any big red flags yet. Pontac and Graff aren't a part of this on any level like they were for Boom, although I'm going to be salty about Smith being given the boot for a long time yet. Still... sounds interesting? And if the logo and premise say anything at all, this is going to be action rather than comedy. 

Wouldn't worry too much about this in all honesty; a lot Netflix's shows like Avatar and She-Ra are also in that category, and the consensus is that those shows are still pretty enjoyable by adults. 

 

Also, its gonna Sonic, Tails, and Eggman as the main focuses and you're gonna like it :V

[Piko]

Sonic Prime, huh? Does it come with next day delivery?

[Irogia10GA]

I actually thought of a fangame a couple years back and I called it Sonic Prime. When I saw the tweet today I was a dumbfounded.

[Meta77]

Ive seen some mention AOSTH more than youd think people would still be. I HIGHLY doubt that are going anywhere near that series ever again. At the most they could potentially bring in Sally? But the rest of the cast and world doubtful. If anything I would see them touching on other sega series or sticking to the gameverse which most sonic shows tend to do. All that said the main thing I want from this is just a good blasted story. Cause the last 10 years have been far from good.

[Wraith]

I'm not going to write something off before I've seen ot but I am especially tired time travel/multiverse sonic premises. Its all been the doo dad is doing big bad to reality so we gotta take it back whosits so it cant whats it so we can fuck off since 2011. Arguably before that. Even when they spare us from this it dominates half the lore discussion because there are technically like 8 different sonic worlds running that they haven't even bothered to flesh out. I've seen more slightly differently textured takes on Green Hill Zone than I've see actual games from sonic this decade.

Whatever happened to "Eggman tries to fuck up an island?" Or "penis lizard destroyed a city in the past and ooh no hes gonna do it again"? Simple shit. Some shit sonic can loop around in an afternoon and be chilling under some tree before dinner. Let me get to know the locales and dig into a world's secrets again. ANY world. Doesn't matter which. Start anywhere. Take me back to Chris's house and show me whats under the floorboards. Anything. 

 

But im sure itll be fine sonic fans stay positive

[Salamander]

Nothing about this project fills me with confidence.  The track record of the creators, the introduction of yet another new multiverse, the portentousness of the synopsis...  Just let Sonic go on a fun adventure.  Tropical island, mystic gems, mad scientist, it should be so easy.

[azoo]

In a best case scenario it’ll be where all the multiverse nonsense discussion goes to and finally the games can just.. stop with it. But that’s a bit heavy on the wishful thinking end. 

[jungle_penguins]

The term Sonic Prime has brought back so many memories of Archie Sonic. I doubt that'll be an intentional reference sadly. But overall I'm liking this premise. I enjoyed Sonic X and this seems nothing like it, which is fine to me. Hope there's Sonic Boom cameo.

9 minutes ago, GentlemanX said:

The big limiting factor here to me is Sega. Sega's policy regarding previous versions of characters would indicate we won't see any of these, but the premise is almost demanding it so I'm going to speculate regardless.

Do you know what this policy is exactly? I've heard of many kinds of mandates in the past but my memory is rusty.

I missed the part back in December where Wildbrain's Vancouver studio would be animating. While I see that opinion of Mega Man Fully Charged is extremely mixed, there is some potential here with them animating.  A good portion of the Vancouver division used to be an animation company called Nerd Corps Entertainment. They've animated a lot of kids shows, keyframe only: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerd_Corps_Entertainment

Employees come and go but from what I've seen they've maintained a certain animation style that can really work well with Sonic.

However, GentlemanX makes a good point about the limits of CGI for this supposed multiverse. While the studio has animated a multiversal show before, Battle Force 5 (a very light one, the term "multiverse" could've been subbed with "universe" honestly), they were pretty stretched with resources. They were able to make a new environment for every episode of the first season but said environments were pretty barren, fitting for a car combat show, but something like Sonic needs to be more lively. My example is a decade old but it's the only one I recall the studio animated as a "multiverse". Wildbrain was definitely chosen for cost + creative reasons, for better or worse.

Speaking of Canadian production outsourcing, there's no way the cast isn't going to be Vancouver based. Maybe they're in the process of choosing a voice actor cast there to also take over the games?

I have no real opinion on Man of Action, but I think they'll make the story barely above average at the minimum. It being on Netflix also suggests it will very serialized rather than episodic, which points to good things. Overall I'm really glad that the main demographic is 6-11. That's standard for Wildbrain Vancouver *and* Man of Action. Whether or not Sega wanted it that way or partnering with them resulted in the demographic, who knows at the moment, but it's good regardless. Personally I've had enough with shows like the Transformers Netflix serious being catered to older audiences while utterly failing to be compelling because of it.

[Kuzu]

I'll be perfectly honest and hope they just Flashpoint everything and start from scratch. But that's extremely unlikely. 

[Iko]

11 minutes ago, Salamander said:

Nothing about this project fills me with confidence.  The track record of the creators, the introduction of yet another new multiverse, the portentousness of the synopsis...  Just let Sonic go on a fun adventure.  Tropical island, mystic gems, mad scientist, it should be so easy.

I've got exactly the same opinion as yours.

Also I've never been a fan of Archie Sonic, I quite disliked it to be honest, and since this new show seems to at least reference elements of it, I don't hold any hope for this new product... but in case it turns out to be good, then I'd be happy.

So far the only thing that seems interesting is that the amount of planned episodes is small, so maybe they put more effort in them (quality over quantity) and the show will be story-driven as opposed to the self contained stories of Boom's episodes... maybe?

I'm also very concerned about those Sonic Rift rumors... I'm not up to date with the news, so I don't know if it's already confirmed fake or what, but one of the rumors was about Sonic going throuhg several different dimensions, and this show is about a multiverse, so... I just hope the next main Sonic game is not a tie in of this show.

[Jango]

There's a "Sonic Prime" in the Archie comics? *Ken Penders be calling his lawyers*

[Zaysho]

Just now, Jango said:

There's a "Sonic Prime" in the Archie comics? How long untill Ken Penders say something?

About when the show explores the generic "evil mirror world" trope that Penders thinks he pioneered to the point he's claimed ownership of "Evil Sonic."

[jungle_penguins]

2 minutes ago, Iko said:

I've got exactly the same opinion as yours.

Also I've never been a fan of Archie Sonic, I quite disliked it to be honest, and since this new show seems to at least reference elements of it, I don't hold any hope for this new product... but in case it turns out to be good, then I'd be happy.

So far the only thing that seems interesting is that the amount of planned episodes is small, so maybe they put more effort in them (quality over quantity) and the show will be story-driven as opposed to the self contained stories of Boom's episodes... maybe?

I'm also very concerned about those Sonic Rift rumors... I'm not up to date with the news, so I don't know if it's already confirmed fake or what, but one of the rumors was about Sonic going throuhg several different dimensions, and this show is about a multiverse, so... I just hope the next main Sonic game is not a tie in of this show.

24 is a strange episode count, usually it's 26 or 13. But, 24 is a large episode count for what seems to constitute as a season. So it may be quantity > quality. However it being on Netflix suggests a less episodic approach. I predict plenty of filler though with the age demographic.

What on earth is Sonic Rift? 

[Iko]

1 minute ago, jungle_penguins said:

24 is a strange episode count, usually it's 26 or 13. But, 24 is a large episode count for what seems to constitute as a season. So it may be quantity > quality. However it being on Netflix suggests a less episodic approach. I predict plenty of filler though with the age demographic.

What on earth is Sonic Rift? 

I usually consider 50+ episodes as a large amount... but I don't know I'm not an expert of this kind of stuff.

Sonic Rift is a rumored leak of the next Sonic game; it's VERY LIKELY fake, but I'm not sure. There are several different versions of this rumor, very different from each other, so some of them are fake for sure, but one of them was about an adventure through different dimensions using the rings like in the movie.

[Sonicka]

1 hour ago, Piko said:

Sonic Prime, huh? Does it come with next day delivery?

My thoughts exactly.
 

Sonic Prime, not available exclusively on Amazon prime video. Not confusing at all for the avenger consumer SEGA

[jungle_penguins]

2 minutes ago, Iko said:

I usually consider 50+ episodes as a large amount... but I don't know I'm not an expert of this kind of stuff.

Sonic Rift is a rumored leak of the next Sonic game; it's VERY LIKELY fake, but I'm not sure. There are several different versions of this rumor, very different from each other, so some of them are fake for sure, but one of them was about an adventure through different dimensions using the rings like in the movie.

Nowadays, or well maybe since the mid 1990's, a 26 episode length for a season is considered normal in kids animation. However, I noticed that in a majority of those shows with 26 episode seasons (often kids shows last around 2 seasons), there's plenty of filler that goes around. It doesn't always happen but it could for Sonic Prime.

That rumor sounds like the rumors prior/after Generations' time to be honest. But good to know now thanks!

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I feel pretty iffy about this. Multiversal stories can be absolutely fantastic when done right, and Into the Spiderverse is a key example of that, but between Man of Action being behind it, and Netflix shows typically fluctuating between either fantastic, or abysmal, it’s hard to not feel like this is going to be really ambitious for so many studios with hit or miss material.

Apart of it as well is I feel like these multiverse stories work best when the company in question actually lets the creators play around with previous continuities. Spiderverse not only included a revamped Ultimate universe, but Noir, Spider-Gwen, Peni Parker, and even fucking Spider-Ham is a big part of why it was so neat there. Not only was it well written, but it made use of a lot of different beloved Spider Man continuities and used them to further the main theme of the story.

SEGA on the other hand are so desperate to hide away anything that doesn’t conform to their stance on what the franchise should be that there’s little to no chance of this happening here. If say this was a story where Ian Flynn was at the helm, and we had the chance to see stuff like SatAM/Archie and the Freedom Fighters, X, AoStH, hell - even things like the OVA, IDW, Fleetway, etc - this could be one gigantic love letter to the franchise written by a man who really understands the characters and has a known reputation of taking old concepts and reformatting them to fit the Modern continuity.

But let’s be honest, SEGA have woven such a copyright hellhole with several alt Sonic continuities, and other ones in their backlog that are available for use are constantly hidden away, so what’re the chances that Sonic Prime would actually tackle it? At best, it’s probably as someone else mentioned - just gonna be universes where Sonic is sad, or he hates speed, or he’s the bad guy, or so on so fourth, random realities where something has changed. Which isn’t a bad idea in of itself, but then that all depends on what writer they’ve got on board to do everything, and after Fully Charged, I’m still not particularly confidant in Man of Action here.

At best, expect another appearance from Classic.

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, GentlemanX said:

Well, the premise is certainly more intriguing than I was expecting.

Let's get the first thought out of the way.

In all seriousness, the choice in name and premise is really eyebrow raising from an Archie fan perspective. I realize Sega is probably completely unaware this was a thing in the Archie books, but at some point you'd figure someone would mention it to them. Dan Slott, the writer of the first Zone Cop story and therefore the one to use the name Sonic Prime, probably isn't going to pull a Penders here, but he is a big name in the comics industry and in fact is the one who wrote the original Spider-Man Spider-Verse comics that inspired the film which this series is clearly also inspired from. It's just more than a little on the nose and makes me half wonder if he's involved with this at all. Highly unlikely, but again, this is all way too uncanny.

So with that out of the way, let's go over the actual premise. I had more or less expected a kids toyetic series in the same vein as Fully Charged, so this at least is a lot more of an ambitious story. That being said, it's also not really what I'd call a great series premise. Could multiverse stuff work as a subplot, or even multiple subplots to a larger series? Absolutely. Could multiverse stuff even work as a premise for a season of a larger series? Sure, I think it could. Can multiverse stuff work as the premise to an entire series? I'm not confident of that. Having the entire series focused on Sonic jumping through dimensions and meeting alternate continuities feels off when the main setting of the games has not been seen through the lens of a show before, with the closest version being Sonic X. Starting with something familiar and then branching out to alternate continuities would be a lot more welcoming to an outsider than folks who are already going to need to get used to a new CG interpretation of Sonic from a studio that's never done anything with him before outside of releasing DVDs of other companies that worked with Sega.

It also makes me even less certain of having this series be CG. CG series for television usually don't have the budget for using lots of new models and environments, instead opting for set locations and characters they can repurpose for different episodes. It's why stuff like TMNT 2k12 gets complaints that New York is empty or why Sonic Boom had so many stock background characters. If you're going to be just repurposing the Sonic model with different clothes or something for these alternate Sonic I guess that would work, but I feel like the format they chose really doesn't lend itself to the premise and more hinders it than anything. Especially when Man of Action has worked on plenty of 2-D shows before. Makes me wonder if Wild Brain is the weak link here and if so why Sega chose them to work with on the series.

Lastly, I'll go ahead and do some pie in the sky analysis of how the previous continuities could be incorporated into the show. I honestly am not going into this expecting all the old shows and comics being acknowledged here, quite the opposite, but let's just some fun speculation if they wanted, and Sega allowed them, to go in that direction.

Games: Classic Sonic/Blaze/Humans - We're going to assume for now that the protagonist is Modern Sonic and not a completely new Sonic. Classic Sonic seems like the most sure thing, given his use by the brand right now. I know Tyson said Classic isn't likely to be a driving force for the brand, but I'd still expect him to be here. Blaze and the humans are more iffy, simply because they don't have alternate Sonics which I would assume is the idea behind this show. I'd like to see them acknowledged, especially so Blaze could finally be animated, but who's to say.

Shows and Movies: AOSTH, SatAM, OVA, Underground, X, Boom, Paramount Sonic - The big limiting factor here to me is Sega. Sega's policy regarding previous versions of characters would indicate we won't see any of these, but the premise is almost demanding it so I'm going to speculate regardless. AOSTH, SatAM, and Underground would all have Sonic voiced by Jaleel and Modern would tag along on whatever they're doing. AOSTH probably being a standard setup, SatAM set before Doomsday Project, and Underground probably generic too. I don't expect we'd be getting closure for either SatAM or Underground, not unless they're going to spend more than one episode there. I doubt they'd get Martin Burke to reprise OVA Sonic, but it'd be neat if they did. Imagine if they were to remix the OVA's soundtrack. X would probably be set during either season 1 or 2 with Griffith doing Sonic. I would guess Chris would be left out beyond maybe as a joke at some point. Boom would be the same as the show, probably breaking the fourth wall and with Roger as Sonic. Paramount would be interesting though I don't know how much ownership Sega has over that version. Obviously Ben would be Sonic and would likely tie into the first movie rather than the second, unless the show was going to be aware of how that film's developing. Which it could I suppose.

Comics: Archie (Pre-reboot and Post), Fleetway, IDW, Manga, etc.: Due to the legal issues surrounding most of these I would expect the likelihood of acknowledging these is significantly smaller than the shows and movies. If they did, I imagine Archie would be voiced by Jaleel or the voice of Modern Sonic, Fleetway either the voice of Modern Sonic or someone else, and the Manga (in particular the old Nicky stuff since the other manga are so close to modern) would be someone else as well. IDW is probably the most likely given it's relevance right now, but I don't know if there's enough in it to make it it's own continuity. Not unless you put a lot of focus on Tangle and Whisper with Sonic and having Starline as the bad guy. I'd think Sega wouldn't want those characters associated with a definite alternate continuity yet though.

But yeah, I'm fully aware we're probably not going to see the old continuities in this show, that part is just for fun given the premise.

Final thoughts:

This part is especially silly to me.

Also:

 

* More obscure game stuff: Maginary World, Twilight Cage, Storybooks, Classic Humans, etc.

* Other SEGA franchises: for instance, Puyo Puyo

 

It’s also pretty disconcerting that Mania avoided (direct)  references to Western or other Non-Japanese material whenever possible; not even a single reference to Robotnik.

[Dr. Detective]

What a thing to wake up to. I love the cracked logo and the way the zoom on the "PRIME" looks. You'd think it'd be an Amazon show based on the name actually.

Even though I like the name, people bringing up that Zonic shit I had to read through almost sent me into a tizzy. I hope we get at least 50 tweets of Ken Penders explaining why this was his idea actually and why they owe him all their money.  

It's gonna be great.

[Razule]

Well, this is a genuine surprise! Not in a million years did I see this show would have a big series-spanning plotline, especially not as ambitious as exploring a multiverse. I thought it'd just be a basic summary that could mean anything depending on the story like Boom or IDW:

Quote

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG is back, in his latest animated installment! Sonic and his buddies must defend the world from the evil Dr. Eggman.

Not a whole focused plot, and..

Quote

 

Sonic’s adventure is about more than a race to save the universe, it’s a journey of self-discovery and redemption.

Whatever the hell this means. I'm guessing that might be about a new series-exclusive character. 

It makes sense though. Streaming works better for serialized plots than episodic ones, but again, didn't think it'd be about a series-spanning plot. That means this probably won't last beyond 24 episodes, and it'll be another short-lived Sonic cartoon. 

As cool as it would be if this explored already existing continuities, I'm expecting something more like what Archie did.  Cowboy Sonic, Noir Sonic, Evil Sonic.. etc. They don't like bringing stuff back that isn't part of the current brand. Even Boom Sonic would be a miracle.

Is that Sonic Rift thing about something similar, because if that's fake, this is a crazy coincidence. Maybe this is a tie-in to that?

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I actually missed the 3D animated part of this, and have to admit...that kills any excitement by quite a bit.

Discounting Boom, which had eh animation for a lot of it's action sequences IMO, Mega Man Fully Charged was also a 3D animated show, and the animation in that was pretty bad, especially when it came to character designs. 

[prettyinplague]

Cautiously optimistic is right. Though I live in my millenial world where I still shake my fist and go "back in my day!" and have nostalgia for a 2D animated series... yeah I kinda want a Sonic anime attempt 2. It won't happen but I can dream. 

I do agree that I wish it would try to pull into the older Sonic demographic, I remember I first got into Sonic when I was 7, but I REALLY got into Sonic when I was 12... so 10-14 isn't a reach. 

[MetalSkulkBane]

Random though: Was Sonic always about dimension hopping? Or to be more exact is SEGA trying to convince us so?

In last 10 years,
- they split Sonic into Classic and Modern, thus making Generations a crossover.
- they split planet into Earth and not-Mobius, thus making retroactively many old games crossovers.
- Sonic latest products are Prime, Movie, Forces and Mania, all involving dimensional hopping.
- Even Team Racing has tiny bit of it, with Dodon Pa power to bend space and time (sending messages to Silver and Blaze)
- And other minor recent spin-offs are Mario Olympics, Sega Heroes, Smash Bros and All Star Racing.
- Last major tittles that didn't involve dimensional hopping were Boom games, itself being different dimension.

And while classic era wasn't about dimension hopping, Special Stage is a staple since Sonic 1. And there are stuff like Little Planet, Flickies Island, etc.  Modern Sonic has Blaze, Shuffle, Sonic X and Story Books (and few things in Archie).