I'll be honest, I used to like this show. But after a while it became apparent to me that if you took away Sonic from this show, nothing would change drastically. The darker theme in which a bunch of Freedom Figthers take on an evil dictator known as Dr. Robotnik seems like a good sell back in 1993. But by today's standard and for a series that takes use of a Sonic license, I must say it's was terribly missed. My main grip with the show is obviously Sonic, for a show called Sonic the Hedgehog he hardly seems the focus of the show. The intro of Sonic SATAM shows that Sonic is only in this cartoon to do the following actions: -Distract swatbots so everybody else(namely princess Sally) can do their job; -Do something that need do be done quickly; -Flirt with princess Sally; Sonic here is reduced to a weak and clueless character who tries to make up for those shortcomings by occasionally playing guitar music or trying to show off. Sonic rarely makes the winning move for the team unless someone tells him to do so. Despite a tendency to learn from his mistakes on some episodes, in next week's episode, he's back to normal. Another very important licence misuse is obviously the transformation of Tails, a brave and intelligent fox into an extra that gives Cream a run for her money as most usseless character in a TV show. I don't know what happened, probably way back in 1993 having an 8-year old boy genius in a show was a tough sell. Tails was a mechanic and a genius, in this show Rotor was the engineer and Sally was the brain, which turns the 8-year old fox into an extra or occasionally moonligthing as a professional hostage. Antoine can be annoying and Bunny is a little on the stereotypical side, in the end all of these characters(along with the dozens of freedom figther background extras who seem to magically appear when required or disappear when they're not needed) work as a device to move Princess Sally's plot along. By Sally, I mean her quest to defeat Robotnik(I though that was Sonic's quest since you know in the games he does hate oppression, in this cartoon he's a complete slacker who cares more about looking good and cool then helping out his fellow freedom figthers), restore the kingdom and find her father. Why wasn't Uncle Chuck and Sonic relantionship more worked upon, I'll never know, for someone who's supposed to be the hero in the show, his family ties are giving nowhere near as much attention as Sally's quest to find her father. Some of episodes are well written and have a dark tone, other episodes can be just as campy as the the old AOSTH series. Sometimes the plot of the show shows some curious plot holes,they probably aren't but: how can a princess who's been isolated for so many years be able to build her own PDA when they have barely any technology to work with? Exactly how many factories can they blow up again and again, cutting the power off sometimes seems pointless, as Robotropolis returns back to normal in the next episode? Do people live in Robotropolis(there must be, those thugs Dr. Robotnik hired to watch the Satellite had to come from somewhere)? Robotnik controls the entire planet on that one single screen at his headquarters? Is robotization the only option for Dr. Robotnik, he's a master deceiver, why not convince some rebels to work from him? His factories are always producing something and it's not just Swatbots, he's supplying them to whom? There are roboticized workers in those factories, where do they go, Robotnik probably doesn't have any use for them so he probably discards them, but then again the Freedom Figthers don't seem to care much about that. I'm probablt nitpicking but in the end, the show is great for the DIC homegrown stable of characters created for the cartoon show(and the comic), but the iconic video game characters are nowhere near as engaging as their video game counterparts.
Review of Sonic the Hedgehog
