Sonic★the★Hedgehog

Living in the wreckage of a rusty old airplane on the shimmering shores of South Island, Sonic the Hedgehog and his buddy Miles "Tails" Prower have not a care in the world. The president of Planet Freedom urgently summons the duo, but trouble is afoot when Sonic and Tails instead find the good-for-nothing Dr. Eggman lounging about his office as if it were his own.

While Sonic would prefer to scramble Eggman and move on with his day, the doctor claims not to have new plans for world domination. He instead pleads for help: the generator powering Eggman's home city of Eggmanland has been hijacked and overloaded by a mysterious menace. If left unattended, it will explode, taking both Eggman and Sonic's homes with it.

Reluctantly agreeing on the off chance Eggman is telling the truth, Sonic and Tails set out into the abyss—where an unknown yet uncannily familiar enemy lies in wait.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Sonic the Hedgehog Main

Kikuchi, Masami Japanese

The Echidna, Knuckles Main

Matsumoto, Yasunori Japanese

Robotnik, Ivo Main

Takiguchi, Junpei Japanese

Metal Sonic Main

Kikuchi, Masami Japanese

Prower, Miles Supporting

Shiina, Hekiru Japanese

Sara Supporting

Kanai, Mika Japanese

Fujiyama, Fusanobu Sound Director

Campbell, Charles ADR Director, Recording Engineer

Naka, Yuuji Production Assistant

Muroi, Fumie Assistant Animation Director, Key Animation

Reviews

Dec 4, 2008

Retro8bit

Recommended

I think most people out there are acquainted with the little blue hedgehog known as Sonic, he has been a popular character in both America and Japan for years. He has also stared in 2 OVA titles combined to make one movie, and while its not perfectly made, it shouldn't let down the Sonic or anime fans out there.


Story: 6/10
Works well enough, basically its up to Sonic to stop an evil robot called "Metal Robotnik," though Metal Sonic is actually the primary villain here. It keeps things all around balanced as Sonic first starts out relaxing at the beach, then later is battle his way ... through Robo-troplic, where the enemy lies in wait. It keeps up the action all the while moving the story along quite nicely, and the major Sonic characters (for the time) are all present and accounted for, and are complimented with a sparse, yet decent supporting cast! The only bad part to the story was the action scenes, now don't get me wrong they were quite well planned out and entertaining, but if I were to estimate how often they occurred, I would say the whole movie was probably about 70% action and 30% story. While again the story does get moved along well enough, it just seems like they were more concerned about putting in a lot of action scenes as apposed to the actual storyline, and it would have also been cool to see more of the Sonic environments from the video game. (other than Robo-tropolic) Still for what they do have, the action is at least spaced out well enough with the story scenes to where its not all that noticeable. The overall movie is actually much closer to an actual comedy (even with all the fighting in it) than anything else, and will make you laugh on some parts.

Artwork: 8/10
Definitely shows its age when compared to today, but is actually still quite good. The background and environments are all very nicely detailed, and the color scheme never comes off as over done. The characters are nicely drawn too, and move pretty fluidly through the anime. Though they tend to be a bit more on the bland and un-detailed side when compared to the backgrounds. (or even the American cartoon known as "Adventures of Sonic the hedgehog.") But it was very pleasing to the eyes back in its time. Plus all the high speed action scenes are very exciting and differ from each situation that Sonic may be in.

Soundtrack: 7/10
While we never get any of the actual Sonic tunes from the video game, the "movie made "soundtrack it does have is quite catchy and easy to listen to, even if some may feel it to be a bit on the sparse side, which yeah....it is. But you also get these neat little lite rock style beat that play in the background every so often, and do seem to fit the Sonic style of music and approach. There is even this cool vocal theme that plays at the end called "Look-alike," which you will most likely have stuck in your head after you finish it. Some fans may be disappointed that there are no actual familiar tunes, but I feel they more than made up for it with their unique take on the soundtrack. The voices all matched nicely to each character, though I personally found Tail's voices to be a bit on the annoying side, he kinda sounded like he had a sore throat the whole time. Still, it over all worked and the minuses out way the negatives.

Characters: 8/10
Quite entertaining, they all brought over their personalities from the game. Down from Sonic's attitude, to Knuckles more tough guy approach. In fact I think most of the characters were much more on the discrete and likable side this time around. Because while in other titles Sonic might go overboard with his whole attitude thing, I feel that here they balanced each one out nicely, so none of them ever came off as too much of an extreme personality. Though I feel I still should mention that while the characters are all likable, they do give off a more comical approach to each one of them. Which can be seen as a positive or negative depending on your taste.

Bottom Line: 8/10
Overall Sonic the movie was a well done project, it spaces out the action and comedy scenes (both of which are fun to watch) enough to keep things fresh and un-repetitive. While it did have a few kinks with the story, it over all came together and should work in the audience's favor. It might not appeal to everyone, and some fans might not like the lack of overall Sonic environments and themes. Its still a very entertaining movie none the less, and keeps Sonic and the gang at light speed!

Reviewer’s Rating: 8

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Dec 28, 2008

wesley96

Mixed Feelings

I'm a Sonic fan, and I have been for a long time, but to be honest, I didn't really like this, and here's why-

Story: The story for the Sonic OVA/Movie is just like any other Sonic franchise, Sonic has to stop the villains no matter what cost. The story was very strong. You have Sonic and Tails at the beginning looking out for villains when they stop into Robotnik. Apparently Robotnik has "captured" the Mayor and his daughter. Suddenly, a robot named Black Eggman (or Metal Robotnik in the dub) appears in Eggmanland (or Robotropolis in the dub), and Sonic then goes to defeat the ... robot. Little does Sonic know that this is all part of Robotnik's plan to be able to collect Sonic's mind and thoughts in order to make a replicant of Sonic, called Metal Sonic. So now Sonic has to save the mayor, defeat Black Eggman, and defeat Metal Sonic. The story's as any other Sonic game. A strong one I must say.

Art: The art for the Sonic OVA was bland, and not colorful. This is probably because the show was produced in 1996, but Serial Experiments Lain also came out at that time, and that had amazing art. Anyway, the characters themselves do look like they were intended to. I wish they took more time on Knuckles and Robotnik, because they didn't look that great. The background design also needed improvement. There was a part where apparently Sonic and the gang were near a volcano, and lava started to pour out. All you get instead of good background details, it looks more like water with bad photoshopping. Anyway, the art was good, but there needed to be improvements.

Sound: The sound for the OVA wasn't that good either. I do think you could hear them, but not always. The voice acting for the characters were good. The Japanese voice actors were good, but the dub actors needed improvement. Dub Sonic sounded whiny, dub Tails sounded like a 4 year-old with a cold, dub Knuckles sounded too calm and needed some anger management, and the only voice actor that was good in the dub was Robotnik's.

Characters: What can I say that hasn't been said about the characters? Sonic's cool as always, Tails is a great supporter, Knuckles was a good character, and Robotnik and Metal Sonic were great villains.

Even though there was a great plot and characters, I didn't really enjoy it. Honestly, I was bored and was anxiously waiting for it to end. They took too long on how Robotnik was able to make Metal Sonic, and the parts with Robotnik and the Maoyr's daughter that was intended to be funny, just bored me and made me want to take a nap.

Overall the Sonic OVA was just average to me. They could have done better jobs with this. Die-hard Sonic fans will love it. If you're not a fan of Sonic or you don't know much about Sonic, I wouldn't recommend it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Jun 25, 2016

lawlmartz

Not Recommended

And now for another installment of Lawlmartz rips your childhood.


"Shut up, Tails!" - Sonic

Oh Sonic. Sonic, why will Sega not let you die? Sonic. The Blue Blur. Coldsteel the hedgeheg. Sanic. Sonichu. The list goes on and on- abominations born of a corpse thrown in a shallow grave, dug up time and time again to be paraded around with a new video game installment that makes "a new low" an understatement, every time. I played Sonic the Hedgehog '06, and dear GOD was it bad. Underscored by bestiality, plagued with terrible controls, and a plot so damn awful that I couldn't have shit a worse ... one together if I ate Manos Hands of Fate and anything made by Adam Sandler!

Yet, somehow these Sonic fans still exist, and are still out there, demanding more soulless, schlocky consumer products with the name Sonic printed on them. One of the firstborn of these was Sonic the Hedgehog 1996- which came out in 1999 in the US, with a HOT ADV dub. The amount of sarcasm dripping from this could be collected and sold as a cancer curative in China. Sonic 1996 was animated by Pierrot, and LO AND BEHOLD, this is their absolute best animation yet! Who knew that they peaked 20 years ago, because everything they make now sucks unwashed ass! Seriously though, for 1996, this was perfectly fine looking, and even has some nice backdrops. No real complaints about the animation... but the real bitching is yet to begin.

The movie starts off with an owl that sounds like Ernest Borgnine after huffing paint and shoving a telephone pole up his rear flying a jet. This should have been a sign to stop here.

I did not heed it.

It crashes into a mountain with a Saturn V rocket, the Star Trek Enterprise, and Malaysia flight 370 all sitting on the beach, and somehow the owl survives, warning Sonic and Tails that Robotnik has a newly minted, doomed to fail plan to destroy the world. Don't even get me started on the borderline blasphemous physics they abuse to explain how he plans on bringing this about... it would make my brain run out of my ears to even try to put it into words. It ends up that the entire movie is a setup for a "last man on Earth" joke about how this teenage monkey girl who looks like Goku's inbred sister wouldn't marry Dr Robotnik if he "was the last man on Earth". Ha. Ha. HA. HAHA. HAHAHAHahahaHAHAHahahAHhaHAhAhAHAHhaha you got me. That was a real kneeslapper right there, hot dayum. The movie ends with Sonic killing the president of the world and then Robotnik drives away with his daughter after Sonic, because he still has a CD full of dirty pictures he plans on blackmailing Sonic with!!! That'll show him!

"Stupid thing looks like Sonic, but it's BAD!" Sara, the monkey girl says somewhere in the middle of the movie. Little did she know that this would be the mantra at Sega for the next 20 years for the products they would put out.

The next glaring hole is the dub. The only reason I know this wasn't a fandub is because it has ADV printed on it VERY plainly at the beginning of the film, and oh man is it ever... jolting. Just getting the good out of the way: Robotnik actually sounds just like a hammy evil genius should- and his VA nailed the part.
The same can not be said for Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and whoever the heck else was in this turd. You see, in 1999, ADV was hot off the success of Evangelion, and apparently gave up caring between that and their next smash hit, Ghost Stories in 2000. Sonic alternates sounding like a 15 year old brat being held upside down with his nose pinched, and then a mid 1800s southern accent, for no discernible reason. Tails... well, lets just say that someone got a few too many kicks to the crotch, then tried to record while shoving live cockroaches up their nose. Knuckles is inexplicably a westaboo cowboy (go look that one up) and is a pissy teenager with hormones oozing out everywhere. He's so edgy that he makes Shadow and Coldsteel look like Billy "Emoboy" Corgan circa "the skirt" era. I love the Pumpkins Billy, but ya lost ya mind out there. Emo before emo was cool, lemme tell ya.
I think Brittney Karbowski, who was like 13 years old at the time this was made, got really really high and was told to be as screechy as possible to dub Sara.
This just in, apparently someone named Sacha Biesi dubbed Sara. She never did anything again, probably because they could get Brittney Karbowski to work for free, giving her pot and feeding her these lines so cheesy you literally couldn't have paid her to say, even as a child. *disclaimer I have no idea if Brittney smokes pot. Probably does coke, given how hyperactive characters she voices are.

But to say that the dub is jolting, jilting, wilting, flitting, flipping terrible, farting... oh i almost forgot- the fight with metal Robotnik, where it fires literal shit missiles at Sonic, and then Sonic rides one of the missiles back (inexplicably phallic shaped, with large spikes everywhere) right up into the giant robot's ass and it explodes. The shit glues Tails to the fence and Knucles peels it off and it's everywhere Where did this review go anyway
I think I lost it

There were definitely not enough Pingas in this movie

art: best of Pierrot, put it on the demo reel
story and characters: Sonic found Malaysia flight 370 and has been living in the fuselage ever since, the little rat
sound: "the fuq dis shit, ass?"
enjoyment: when I activate my pingas machine
overall: 4 pingases out of 10

Reviewer’s Rating: 4

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