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Pika's Reviews, part one!
Just for kicks, I'm gonna get started reviewing stuff on here from time to time. Why not, right?
A few notes:
1. If it's a show I'm reviewing, I'm going to watch either half of it, or five episodes at the minimum before reviewing, whichever comes first. If it takes more than that to get to the good stuff, I'm afraid there is a problem. With a movie I'll watch all of it. Book, I'll read all of it. Etc. It's only fair, right?
2. I'm going to break down what I liked and didn't like about something when reviewing it. To do otherwise would make me a shitty reviewer.
3. Expect me to be a lot more long-winded about things that I hate.
For those who don't know, I'm a mad Sonic fan. I'd wake up every saturday morning to watch SatAM. I have three VHSs, containing a total of six episodes of the old Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog. I collected the comics, through the good times and the very very bad times. Remember the opening for Sonic CD? I sat in front of my computer and just watched that on loop for hours. Shit, I even enjoyed SONIC HEROES.
So I feel I can speak relatively authoritatively when I say to avoid Sonic X like the fucking plague.
When I first heard of it, my first thoughts were 'a Sonic anime? That could be good!' Sonic's definitely seen better days stateside, but maybe the guys in japan can get him right! That's not too much to hope for, right?
Wrong.
First, let's tackle the animation. On the whole, not too bad. I mean, it's a far cry from Studio Ghibli, but let's be realistic. For what it is, it looks fine. Little in the way of repeated frames and glaring errors. It passes muster, at least by my standards. Mostly. We'll get into the exceptions later.
Now, as for sound: I wasn't expecting the SatAM theme song in japanese for the opening, but it could have done with less cringe-worthy engrish and more coherent tune, in my opinion. As for the rest of the music...what music? I don't remember a bar of it. It was all extremely generic and forgettable. Same with the voices: only a few made me really want to start murdering, but none of them blew me away, either. Lackluster is the term that I believe applies here.
The plot is that after some weirdness goes down, Sonic, his buddies, and Eggman all get sucked into another world for some reason. A non-furry world, where a giant blue hedgehog is regarded as a freak. Sonic and co decide to lay low. Eggman decides-predictably-to take over the world. Sonic occasionally shows up to stop his evil schemes, because holy hell this world's military and police are completely incompetent.
The cast of this show features such old standbys as Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, which is good. But it also features two of the most useless and annoying characters to ever feature in anything Sonic Related, Cream and Chris, which are definitely NOT good. Cream is a rabbit who is, I guess in THEORY, cute and adorable, but with her grating voice she comes off more as the annoying rabbit I want to punt into atmosphere. I honestly can't think of a single reason for her to be in the show, from what I've seen. I mean, Eggman holding her hostage at the beginning is what draws them all into the big Portal of Doom, but her presence is not exactly necessary as Sonic loves foiling Eggman's schemes ANYWAY.
In short, just imagine every gratingly 'cute', but completely extraneous character you've ever seen, and multiply that by about ten.
If anything, Chris is worse. At least Cream has the excuse of being part of Sonic Canon already, if only in an extremely minor capacity. Chris is there because...I guess because the guys who made the show felt that it needed an actual kid for the viewing audience to connect with? I don't know.
To get a full impression of who Chris is, imagine Bruce Wayne's parents had not died, but had instead moved away to Hollywood to make movies for a few years, leaving young Master Bruce in Alfred's more than capable care. They basically never visit, but send him the occasional present. Also, imaging that the mansion's entire staff, other than Alfred, consisted of clones of that terrifying maid from the old Adam West batman show, and that he had an irritating grandfather who stopped by to harass him with mechanical gadgets from time to time. There, you've got Chris. All the 'I miss my parents', but now rendered into annoying whining because of how little actual tragedy is attached to it.
Oh well. They're there, and you have to deal with them, but at least the rest of the gang's there too, right? Well...yes and no. Yes the characters are there, but out of all of them, only two characters act anywhere near in character(relative to EVERY SINGLE OTHER PIECE OF SONIC CANON). And one of them's Amy Rose, which is more a curse than a blessing. The other one is Knuckles, who could have probably carried the whole damn thing if they let him have some screentime (they didn't).
Sonic is suddenly a lazy asshole. Yes, he's always been a self-centered idiot, but he's always, at least on some level, CARED. He doesn't here. He'll beat up Eggman's robot if you literally drag him to the scene. So he can get back to his nap. Fortunately for him, Eggman apparently doesn't give a shit about world-conquering either. He selects his one robot of the week by roulette. By fucking roulette. Tails doesn't really have a character. I think he's said maybe three things in the first five episodes. Note that that's far less than the aforementioned useless and annoying characters. Starting to see this show's problem?
Knuckles was a fucking disappointment. Whenever he spoke he gave me hope for the show. "Soon...soon he'll get more screentime, and the show will stop sucking!" But he was a non-entity for the first five episodes. I said to myself "I'll give this shit six episodes to give him a really good fight scene. If it doesn't deliver, I'm not watching any further. Episode five, he finally got a fight. Against sonic. Which SHOULD have been awesome. But wasn't. Maybe ten seconds of the five minute fight sequence was worth watching. The rest was composed of lame-ass and boring Dragon Ball Z-esque fight animation. I finished the episode and stopped watching.
But you know what? All this doesn't REALLY mean shit. The show's real crime is that Sonic Isn't Fast. Or rather, he doesn't look fast! Watch this, at least the part at the beginning, and then compare it with the Sonic CD opening linked above. See the difference? In the Sonic CD opening, Sonic has a sense of perpetual motion to him-he's constantly on the move, and it looks FAST. Now watch him in Sonic X. He doesn't look fast. I mean, a little above average maybe, but not the blinding-fast speed that is Sonic's trademark. The show throws all sorts of bullets and missiles and stuff at him to show off how fast he's moving, but it doesn't work; it just makes Eggman's robots look like incredibly incompetent marksmen. At the end of the first episode they pit Sonic in a sort of weird race with what appears to be the police's SPEED RACER division, again in attempt to show off how fast he is. It doesn't work, because they don't look like they're going fast. It just comes off as sort of pathetic.
Unless you hate yourself with a passion, don't watch this show.
A few notes:
1. If it's a show I'm reviewing, I'm going to watch either half of it, or five episodes at the minimum before reviewing, whichever comes first. If it takes more than that to get to the good stuff, I'm afraid there is a problem. With a movie I'll watch all of it. Book, I'll read all of it. Etc. It's only fair, right?
2. I'm going to break down what I liked and didn't like about something when reviewing it. To do otherwise would make me a shitty reviewer.
3. Expect me to be a lot more long-winded about things that I hate.
For those who don't know, I'm a mad Sonic fan. I'd wake up every saturday morning to watch SatAM. I have three VHSs, containing a total of six episodes of the old Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog. I collected the comics, through the good times and the very very bad times. Remember the opening for Sonic CD? I sat in front of my computer and just watched that on loop for hours. Shit, I even enjoyed SONIC HEROES.
So I feel I can speak relatively authoritatively when I say to avoid Sonic X like the fucking plague.
When I first heard of it, my first thoughts were 'a Sonic anime? That could be good!' Sonic's definitely seen better days stateside, but maybe the guys in japan can get him right! That's not too much to hope for, right?
Wrong.
First, let's tackle the animation. On the whole, not too bad. I mean, it's a far cry from Studio Ghibli, but let's be realistic. For what it is, it looks fine. Little in the way of repeated frames and glaring errors. It passes muster, at least by my standards. Mostly. We'll get into the exceptions later.
Now, as for sound: I wasn't expecting the SatAM theme song in japanese for the opening, but it could have done with less cringe-worthy engrish and more coherent tune, in my opinion. As for the rest of the music...what music? I don't remember a bar of it. It was all extremely generic and forgettable. Same with the voices: only a few made me really want to start murdering, but none of them blew me away, either. Lackluster is the term that I believe applies here.
The plot is that after some weirdness goes down, Sonic, his buddies, and Eggman all get sucked into another world for some reason. A non-furry world, where a giant blue hedgehog is regarded as a freak. Sonic and co decide to lay low. Eggman decides-predictably-to take over the world. Sonic occasionally shows up to stop his evil schemes, because holy hell this world's military and police are completely incompetent.
The cast of this show features such old standbys as Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles, which is good. But it also features two of the most useless and annoying characters to ever feature in anything Sonic Related, Cream and Chris, which are definitely NOT good. Cream is a rabbit who is, I guess in THEORY, cute and adorable, but with her grating voice she comes off more as the annoying rabbit I want to punt into atmosphere. I honestly can't think of a single reason for her to be in the show, from what I've seen. I mean, Eggman holding her hostage at the beginning is what draws them all into the big Portal of Doom, but her presence is not exactly necessary as Sonic loves foiling Eggman's schemes ANYWAY.
In short, just imagine every gratingly 'cute', but completely extraneous character you've ever seen, and multiply that by about ten.
If anything, Chris is worse. At least Cream has the excuse of being part of Sonic Canon already, if only in an extremely minor capacity. Chris is there because...I guess because the guys who made the show felt that it needed an actual kid for the viewing audience to connect with? I don't know.
To get a full impression of who Chris is, imagine Bruce Wayne's parents had not died, but had instead moved away to Hollywood to make movies for a few years, leaving young Master Bruce in Alfred's more than capable care. They basically never visit, but send him the occasional present. Also, imaging that the mansion's entire staff, other than Alfred, consisted of clones of that terrifying maid from the old Adam West batman show, and that he had an irritating grandfather who stopped by to harass him with mechanical gadgets from time to time. There, you've got Chris. All the 'I miss my parents', but now rendered into annoying whining because of how little actual tragedy is attached to it.
Oh well. They're there, and you have to deal with them, but at least the rest of the gang's there too, right? Well...yes and no. Yes the characters are there, but out of all of them, only two characters act anywhere near in character(relative to EVERY SINGLE OTHER PIECE OF SONIC CANON). And one of them's Amy Rose, which is more a curse than a blessing. The other one is Knuckles, who could have probably carried the whole damn thing if they let him have some screentime (they didn't).
Sonic is suddenly a lazy asshole. Yes, he's always been a self-centered idiot, but he's always, at least on some level, CARED. He doesn't here. He'll beat up Eggman's robot if you literally drag him to the scene. So he can get back to his nap. Fortunately for him, Eggman apparently doesn't give a shit about world-conquering either. He selects his one robot of the week by roulette. By fucking roulette. Tails doesn't really have a character. I think he's said maybe three things in the first five episodes. Note that that's far less than the aforementioned useless and annoying characters. Starting to see this show's problem?
Knuckles was a fucking disappointment. Whenever he spoke he gave me hope for the show. "Soon...soon he'll get more screentime, and the show will stop sucking!" But he was a non-entity for the first five episodes. I said to myself "I'll give this shit six episodes to give him a really good fight scene. If it doesn't deliver, I'm not watching any further. Episode five, he finally got a fight. Against sonic. Which SHOULD have been awesome. But wasn't. Maybe ten seconds of the five minute fight sequence was worth watching. The rest was composed of lame-ass and boring Dragon Ball Z-esque fight animation. I finished the episode and stopped watching.
But you know what? All this doesn't REALLY mean shit. The show's real crime is that Sonic Isn't Fast. Or rather, he doesn't look fast! Watch this, at least the part at the beginning, and then compare it with the Sonic CD opening linked above. See the difference? In the Sonic CD opening, Sonic has a sense of perpetual motion to him-he's constantly on the move, and it looks FAST. Now watch him in Sonic X. He doesn't look fast. I mean, a little above average maybe, but not the blinding-fast speed that is Sonic's trademark. The show throws all sorts of bullets and missiles and stuff at him to show off how fast he's moving, but it doesn't work; it just makes Eggman's robots look like incredibly incompetent marksmen. At the end of the first episode they pit Sonic in a sort of weird race with what appears to be the police's SPEED RACER division, again in attempt to show off how fast he is. It doesn't work, because they don't look like they're going fast. It just comes off as sort of pathetic.
Unless you hate yourself with a passion, don't watch this show.
no subject
I agree about the speed part - SatAM had a MUCH better feeling of speed - hey, so did AoSTH. He was FAST in those - AND he had attitude!
I mean, WHY does Chris suddenly go "Hey! A giant blue hedgehog crashed in my pool! I'm not gonna get freaked out or call the cops or anything!" SO unrealistic - you turn that animal over to the authorities so they can do their job like the oft-maligned scientists in E.T.
I, like Pikabot, as he knows, am an avid Sonic fan as well - hey, he got me reading the comics again, which I do NOT regret as they got a pretty decent writer after 10 years of meh - and Sonic X isn't that great.
no subject
"she comes off more as the annoying rabbit I want to punt into atmosphere"
*snicker* My thoughts exactly.