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I know that this show has its fans. I don't generally view deviation from the Sonic norms as an automatic reason to dislike a series - I reserve dislikes for series that simply aren't of decent quality with any licence.
And 'SU' came across as one of those.
I won't start by taking chunks out of the lack of Tails or the addition of Sonia, Manic or Sonic's royal bloodline. There's so much deviation in settings between Sonic continuities that to say that one's bad because it doesn't take place in the Green Hill Zone is a waste of time in my book.
But let's just look at the concept, shall we? A trio of disinherited rock musician royalty, travelling around in a battered camper van, fighting evil with a set of medallions that can turn into musical instruments or weapons on demand.
The weapons were straight out of 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers'. The van even looked like the Mystery Machine. To me, the whole feeling was of every cheap and nasty 1970s Hanna-Barbera super-team that I wanted to forget.
The use of Jaleel White as the voice of all three hedgehogs, for all it was probably meant as a "cute" gimmick, was a mistake. For me, Sonia came across as though she was gargling with gravel, and the fact that it was so obvious that one man was having a three-way conversation with himself just came off as cheap.
But there was an overarching story under there. And it seemed to develop. Knuckles turned up, and whether or not you count Sonia's little crush on him as just adding up to a Rouge-Julie-Sonia debate as bad as any of Sonic's triangles, the story made sense within itself.
Knuckles was even handled fairly well (all profiles I've seen say that girls're one of his weak spots ;)). It was just a pity that that oddball spinning fist punch of his where he started whirling his gloves like a pair of parallel windmills was animated to look as though he was charging his enemies whilst holding a pair of dumbbells. Even today, when I read Archie, I can still here Knux's 'SU' VA (although he may've been slightly nasal) reading the lines.
All of the downsides could probably have perhaps been forgiven - and the series vaguely average and bearable, if not outstanding - if it hadn't been for the soundtrack. The absolute insistence on cramming at least one alleged "song" into each episode wasn't only a squeaky assault on the ears for me (couldn't they've hired some better songwriters and session singers?), but crowbarred them in and broke up the action at moments when just telling the darned story would've been far more use.
The use of the cheap and nasty pop video effects seemed almost calculated to show off exactly how big a CGI budget the series hadn't got.
'SU' never seemed to be able to make up its mind who its audience was. It had the style and look of SatAM, but the execution of 'Jem and the Holograms', right down to the music style. It seemed designed to make absolutely no sense to anyone from any age group who'd come across any of the Sonic continuities before.
I'm afraid that every time I think of 'SU', I picture a group of forty-something W.A.S.P. males in grey suits, sitting around a boardroom table on the twentieth floor of a skyscraper and saying: "Today's kids like rock music and being rebellious, so let's make Sonic a way past bodaciously rad rebellious rock musician! Tubular... umm... man!"
I know that there're 'SU' fans out there. They've attacked me for this stance, saying that I shouldn't attack a Sonic series like that if I'm a "true" or "real" fan of the franchise.
And I'm sorry. The fact is: I'd like to've been an 'SU' fan - but when a series is what I feel is sub-standard, I'm not going to put up and shut up just because it has Sonic's name attached. I'm going to be vocal, rather than risk watching the licence get dragged any further down because some executive or other things that they can get away with it.
score /10
Samanfur 4 January 2005
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0994569/ |
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31-3-2021 00:10:16