#vitnage songs

[yourcoffeeguru]

GENESIS NO SON OF MINE Sheet Music Phil Collins Collectable 1991 - RARE - autradingpost - eBay

[classygentlemen]

[popculturebuffet]

Sonic Underground Review: Origins Parts 1,2 and 3 (Commissioned by Emma Fici)

Hello all you happy people! I’m Jake I review comics and animation via detailed recaps. So last week I was a bit low on money and my friend Emma upon hearing this immeditly offered, without any prompting nor hestiation, to comission some reviews for me, which I agreed to. I’d just like to prefice what i’m about to say by saying emma is one of the nicest, kindest, most generous people I know, one of my closest friends, and the reason I have a vitnage phone of Opus, who if you don’t know, is this fine chap

On my desk. She’s also single so ladies get after that. Point is I tresure her deeply.. even when she has me reviewing things like Sonic Underground. 

So for those of you who haven’t heard of it, or if you have have only heard of it in derisive laughter when compared to the other four sonic cartoons currently out, let’s get you up to speed keed: Sonic Underground was a 1999 Sonic the Hedgehog Animated series by DiC, a now defunct animation giant who produced the previous two sonic cartoons Sonic The Hedghog (Often known as Sonic SATAM for clarity’s sake) and The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, the former known for being darker, edgier and the basis for the archie comics and the latter known for being essentially like a looney toon on cocaine and having a delightfully hammy robotnik to contrast Satam’s utterly terrifying one. 

Sega wanted a series to tie in with their new console the Dreamcast and it’s killer app Sonic Adventure, to hype kids up Sonic after the fastest thing alive had spent the last few years in limbo due the cancelation of Sonic X-Treme, leaving him with no major games. This was also back when creators working with Sega on sonic things had the most precious thing of all: Creative Freedom. There were no horrible restirctoins, no iron fisted bullshit that limited creative possiblities, whatever you could dream you could do it, both good and bad. 

So NATURALLY given full creative control to make a fresh sonic series, full backing by sega and a 40 episode order to do whatever.... DiC decided “Hey you know wha’ts popular? Alvin and the Chipmunks! That’s one of our biggest hits. Let’s add  musical numbers like that to it! It’ll be huge!”

The saddest part.. is i’m not joking. In an interview for one of the DVD’s, Robby London, one of the EP’s of DiC and creator of the theme song.  flat out admitted THIS is why underground has musical numbers: because it worked for Alvin and the Chipmunks. And he STILL seemed to think this was a GOOD thing. 

I have seen multiple half assed attempt at shared universes, Brian Micheal Bendis speak for any length of time about any recent project, and this tweet from Disney

But even with all that this may be the biggest show of undearned overconfidence that completely misses the point of what your doing I have ever seen. Keep in mind by the time Underground went to air, Alvin and the Chipmunks had been off the air for a DECADE. Not only that the ENTIRE POINT of Alvin and the Chipmunks as a brand was to take famous songs old and new and give them new covers. THAT was why their music was popular. Sonic was popular because the character was fun, the games were intresting, and both your previous shows did something creative with it. It DIDN’T NEED MUSICAL NUMBERS. 

But even with this musical tumor on the show’s face.. I was still determind to give the show a fair shake. I hadn’t seen it in a decade since riffing the pilot with a friend and while the music was.. well...

We’ll get to that the show DOES have some good ideas, many of which i’ve wanted to pour into my fanfic idea that’s a frothy mixture of every sonic idea. The question was how well these ideas were excuted, if the show had merit and if the music still made my ears bleed. To find out, join me under the cut as we go into the secret origins of sonic the hedgehog.

So before we get into the series proper we have to talk about the episode order for this pilot. It’s an ungodly mess. The pilot itself, as was standard for the 90′s was buired DEEP in the episode count, 26 episodes in in airing order. Oh an din said airing it’s alternated every episode with the series OTHER three parter, which now I mention it i’m probably cursed to cover it, and i’m fine with that because it has Knuckles’ one apperance in one of the DiC cartoons. It’s somehow WORSE on the actual streaming order on Paramount+: while the episodes are moved up a bit, their also STILL interlaced with the Knuckles eps only now the second two parts of this trilogy are BEFORE the first part. 

I.. don’t know how you bungle this or why tv shows back then thought shoving episodes in any order and letting god sort it out was a good idea, but my god. I mean normally for this show it isn’t an issue, it’s episodic and whlie there is a recurring character or two, outside of these two multi-parters there dosen’t seem to be a super strong continuity. I could be wrong, I’ve only watched a handful of episodes including these, but I wouldn't doubt it. 

So with that out of the way I can’t put this off any longer, let’s dig into oriigins

Part 1: Beginnings: A Rope of Sand. 

So we begin with a theme song by the same boring old white guy who was PROUD this was a knockoff of a show that had been dead for 9 years at this point and no one had gone to the funeral. 

Suprisingly, despite EVERYTHING against it with that sentence... this theme song is awesome and he’s rightfully proud of it. It outlines the premise of the show, rocks like all hell, and easily stacks up with the iconic intros for the other two DiC sonic cartoons and Sonic X.. Boom.. well it tried. It has MANY other good features, good humor, it’s insane version of knuckles, Sticks, but a good theme song just isn’t one of them. 

I mean god damn, the guitar, the songs, it just fits and fits the show well. It’s just so damn good it makes me wonder why the hell the rest of their music in the show sounds like 

I also give the guy credit that he DIDN’T cheat in said contest: As was apparnetly the process for theme songs back then they simply had a bunch of people write them, tossed them in a pile and had a bunch of the executives go over them. So Robbie simply threw his in there, and abstained from voting as he normally would be on the selection panel. 

But yes this theme song, which gets the premise in, sounds epic and gets you pumped is just great... and sadly ends up reduntant for this episode. I mean normally it works fine, it means anyone who popped on an underground ep can jump right in. It’s just here the first few minutes are a longer version of this without the groovy tunes. 

So the longer version that’s not in musical form is this: About 15 years ago Queen Aleena was ruler of Mobius. But everything changed when the evil Dr. Robotnik staged a coup. The Queen was forced into exile but was given hope by the mysterious Oracle of Delphius... who .. who looks like this. 

Yeah get used to any character who isn’t sonic having at best an okay design and at worst looking weird as all hell. For some reason DiC decided instead of just going with most characters being funny animals, as they had with SATAM... they’d have a bunch of weird looking creatures and make even the funny animals look weird as hell. And look I have nothing against weird aliens, I love me a good alien, and the idea of having sonic’s world be diffrently populated isn’t terrible in THEORY. In practice the character deisgn for this series is so horribly out of sync with the sonic art style for the classic series, ironic given this was made for adventure the first game that would toss out said style and start over, it clashes horribly and thus makes it all the more noticable that half the cast are weird space creatures and the other half weird attempts at making furries. 

So the Oracle reveals there’s a good future: Aleena and her Children will form the council of 4, defeat Robotnik, and reclaim mobius. But there’s a catch. In order for this future to happen she has to scatter her chlidren: Leave them each at a diffrent doorstep and not contact them till the time is right for their reunion. It’s not a terrible premise honestly.

First the part everybody loves: Sonic having Siblings.. is brilliant. It brings in a dynamic that wasn’t there before: while him having a group of buds he fights evil with was the premise of SATAM.. and Archie.. and Fleetway and... let’s just save time and say every sonic property and game except the games that forget “oh yeah there’s other characters. But here it’s given a diffrent spin: By having them be his long lost brother and sister, both raised in vastly diffrent circumstances that we’ll get to, it gets interesting: their now his family he never knew, strangers bound to him by blood and destiny he has to get to know and accept. Granted I don’t get why Tails was written out when he woudl’ve fit in fine in this scenario, and created more interesting tension by adding a surrogate sibling into this mix of long lost blood siblings, but hey missed opportunitites like this just give us the fans more fanfic fuel, so it ballances out. 

The Royalty part was something I USED to be against.. but i’m now fine with. It dosen’t really impact who Sonic is as he gets raised about the same as you’d assume, and given Sonic STILL dosen’t have a backstory in the games, it was open season to do whatever. That itself could create character drama: a normal freedom fighting hedgehog, if one with super speed, suddenly findign out he’s the heir to the throne AND the chosen one to end Robotnik’s reign> Tha’ts a lot of pressure and a lot of good stories could come out of sonic and his sibligns dealing with their sudden legacy. So the IDEAS behind underground, are original and pretty good.. it’s just the execution where things start to hit you in the face. 

That said where each child ends up is also great, giving each kid a diffrent background: Sonic ends up with a weird looking middle class leapord man freedom fighter living in the woods, a sentence that remidns me why I love getting paid to write this stuff. Sonia ends up the ward of an upper class lady. As for Manic he’s supposed to end up with.. some person we never really get to know.. but is stolen off his doorstep by theives and taken in by their leader Ferrel. If this sounds like Guardians of the Galaxy to you... good I thought it was just me. And I woudln’t rule out this being what inspired James Gunn as he’s a weird motherfucker and I could see him watching sonic underground while getting fucked up. It’s one of the many reasons I wish he was my dad. 

So two things here: The first is Sonia being brought into privlage brings me to one of the more intresting parts of Underground’s worldbuilding: See Underground takes the basic background from SATAM: A beloved royal is overthrown, Robotnik takes over and he turns a bunch of people into robots via roboticzation, a horrifying process where he turns them from flesh into souless machine with no clear way out of this. Even after this defeat in the comics his victims were still stuck like this for half the comics run until some aliens just decided “Eh we’ll fix this BUZAP” and suddenly they were all free exept’s sonic’s dad cause it would kill him. I swear to god that’s what happened. 

While he does so here.. there’s a twist to it: He leaves the rich alive, and as long as they give him his annual tribute, he lets them keep on, while picking more on the poor. No on paper this sounds stupid: In SATAM Robotnik easily conquered the world, had sent the remntants of mobian kind into hiding, and had basically won simply by turning everyone into a machine. And while that is true.. .this tactic isn’t bad when you think about it. With SATAM while he had the overwhelming advantage, the freedom fighters also had a safe haven from his rule, one constantly under threat of discovery or him destroying what kept it safe sure, but the point is they had some safe harbor. 

Here he has tons of cities, all under his tight surveillance, to the point that as we lean he has retinal scans of everyone. It dosen’t take him long to find any bases once he gets looking for someone. More importatnly though by keeping the rich under his thrall.. he has an amry of wealthy, terrified assholes willing to do whatever and sell out whoever to save his skin. Any ally our heroes turn to who happens to have some money could secretly be an enemy, leaving our heroes with little resources to actually fight back. That applies to the less rich civlilians too: all robotnik has to do for some people is wave some money, an exoneration or any sort of bribe around and our heroes are in a trap.

There’s also no risk to it: He can capture these people at any time. The worst he does is loose money he dosen’t actually need on putting one of his backers in jail. The money is simply a tool to keep them in check and remind them whose supreme dictator. So robtonik has a world where he’s in control, hwere most are scared to oppose him and if they do loose everything, and where the poor, the most likely to rise up as in real life.. are easily disposed of. He dosen’t NEED an army of roboticized minons.. he just needs good old fashione dictoral fear and some robots.

So we see each of the three as kids and it’s adorable. Little Sonic zooms around strums his guitar and has to be subtly threatned with no chilli dogs for dinner if he dosen’t take a bath in a nice sweet way that implies his dad probably WOULDN’T starve the poor kid and isn’t that degree of asshole, he jus tknows how his son’s brain works. It’s 90% chilli dog up there. Sonia annoys her mom with acrobatics and shows off her talent for piano. And finally we get Manic, whose scene I consider the best: his thief dad Ferrel tests his ablities, and not only does the kid steal his wallet, but also his gift: metal, high quality drumsticks. The two then have a laugh. it’s just geninely sweet and shows that ALL three parents are nice. Sure Ferrels a thief.. but it dosen’t make him a bad person. “ He’s just doing what he’s gotta to make buy and teaching Manic the same, but clearly loves his son and is proud of him. He also easily has the weridest character design in this entire three parter. 

He’s some sort of weird tree man voiced by Muarice LaMarche. I just.. I don’t even know where to begin here. He also has chicken legs for some reason. I’ve given up on these character designs making sense at this point. 

Sonic’s childhood.. eventually sours though as we get a geninely tragic scene as his father encourages his son to run as fast and as far as away as he can.. and sonic only finds out why when he sees fire in the distance. He runs back only to see his parents captured by robotnik, and his home burning down, the poor bo in tears. Thankfully he’s found by his Uncle Chuck. Chuck is the only SATAM original character to carry over to this series, for some reason seriously the series could’ve used bunnie or rotor, sally sadly would’ve been redundant.  He’s sonic’s uncle, though if i’ts bilogicial here it’s never mentioned. But Chuck takes his young nephew in and gladly trains him.... he also has a weird old coot voice. It probably dosen’t help i’ve heard a LOT of Maurice LaMarche’s voice acting and since he’s doing about 5 or 6 rolls here all his rolls sound like some sort of joke he did on the critic. 

Speaking of actors, it’s time to adress an elephant in the room voice acting wise. Back then since Sonic didn’t have an offical VA in the games yet, nowadays Sega prefers to use whoever’s in that roll for everything except the movies, Sonic was voiced by my man Jaleel White aka...

Yeah, URKEL voiced Sonic. Credit where it’s due though; Jaleel was and still is a good actor, and part of the reason he played 80 dozen characters on family matters was to show off his vocal range. As such his sonic voice is not only completely divorced from Urkel, but pitch perfect. It’s easily one of sonic’s best voices, one of the most iconic and my most beloved. 

So having him come back, even years later? That was obvoius. No it was the NEXT part of the decision that leaves me asking

They decided to have Jaleel voice all three of the royal triplets. Now most of this bafflement is directed at the decision to have him play sonia: His Manic voice isn’t half bad and is actually so diffrent I forget sometimes that’s Jaleel. Seriously the guy shoudl do more voice acting besides urkel these days, he’s great at it. 

But his Sonia voice is just his Myrle Urkel voice, aka Urkel’s cousin who was Jaleel in drag and who stalked Eddie instead of Laura because sexual harassment is genetic in the family matters universe. I haven’t seen any family matters episodes with Myrtle because I don’t hate myself quite that much, but I have seeen enough of the regular episodes, because I do like me some carl and waldo, urkel himself sucks even if Jaleel himself slaps, to be used to Urkels voice and hearing it come out of a woman... it just dosen’t work. IT’s distracting as all hell and takes me out of things, especially since her brothers sound like actual characters and not a 20 something trying to do a squeaky voiced impression of a lady. 

We naturally focus on Sonic first though, as he’s working as a freedom fighter with Chuck and has been his secret weapon, taking out Robotnik’s instilations with ease thanks to his speed. Robotnik TRIES to stop our hero with a force field.. but sonic is able to get past it and spin and win. 

Annoyed at the constant attacks by a myserious blue streak, Robotnik decides to bring in some professionals. 

But since he can’t afford them Robotnik goes with goons he can afford.. to conscript. So we meet sleet and Dingo, a wolf played by Maurice LaMarche and a guy I haven’t heard of respectively. And if you were curious Robotnik here is played by Gary Chaulk, aka optimus primal. He’s not a bad va at all, and does a decent job with what he has to work with which is not much. I’m just curious why they didn’t bring back Long Jean Bauldry or Jim Cummings when both were stil active at the time and Jim STILL is. They got Jaleel back. Jim can do a LOT of voice work so they’d basically have a bunch of free background characters.  I”m so confused.

Back to the meeting Robotnik forces the two into his service and then has them go after sonic. Back at Sonic’s house/reistance headquarters, he’s taking a nap when the Oracle visits... just straight up teleports into Sonic’s house, wakes him up after he’s , ya know, been helping fight for freedom all day, and bribes him with chlli dogs because nothing’s ever gone horribly when a creepy old man’s bribed a teenager to spend time with him. 

The Oracle reveals sonic’s past, that he needs to find his siblings.. but instead of saying “Play some music you’ll find them” he has to be a cryptic dickhead about it because most of these mystical seers who pupeeteer fate types do. It’s why you really have to be careful writing them so they, say, don’t come off as omniscent jackasses who aren’t interfering because they want some golden ending they saw no matter how many people have to die for it to happen.  Seriously this is yet another thing that, were this a better shwo could be decostructed: while the oracle’s intetnions are good, he wants robotnik beaten the fact he yanked our heroes from their mother and is trying to force them along this path brings up a lot of uncomfortable questions about destiny: how much of it is their control and how much of it is something they can’t stop? Is he not interfering to LET THEM have a future or is it because he knows terrible things MUST happen to get to this ending dr. strange style. 

So Sonic is left to muse... and then .... and then AND THEN... he starts to sing. 

See these songs would be PASSABLE if it weren’t for Sonic’s singing. They woudln’t be good, just decent, but they’d still be listenable. But for some reason not only did they NOT get anyone who sounded remotely like Jaleel to do the vocals, but said vocals sound so horrible.. I can’t even describe them. Heaven knows i’ve tried but their so uniquely squeaky, weird and unlistenable you just have to hear for yourself. I apologize to all of you for this, except Emma, she asked for this. 

It’s like someone hit Samuel Vincent in the nuts and recorded the sounds. And yes that’s Samuel “Double D” Vincent doing the vocals. While I do have to say just how bad they are and they are BAD, I will say he CAN actually sing when someone isn’t putting a gun to his head to go higher or else. He played Russel on LIttlest Pet Shop and did have to sing sometimes and didn’t sound like the notes played to summon an elder god. I just feel a combination of his inexperience at the time and the poor vocal direction lead to absolute madness. 

I will not be covering the songs individually: their all about the same: decent beats backed to unlistenable vocals. The only notable one is the second where a monk starts dancin in the background. That and it’s even worse than this one. 

So in a show that’s supposed to have the music in this great gimmick it instead usually comes out of nowhere, makes your ears implode, then the episode picks up from there having wasted two minutes that could’ve been used on the plot and done anything those two minutes of ear carnage did for the plot. 

Meanwhile we get to easily the most gloriously stupid thing in these three parter. Another bit in part 3 comes CLOSE, but no.. this is the real world champion of stupid: So to find out the blue streak is, Sleet zooms in on the photo, and gets a shot of sonic’s ass. This would be weird enough.. but then he RUNS IT THROUGH ROBOTNIK’S DATABASE OF ANIMAL ASSES, NONE OF WHICH BUT SONIC ARE MOBIAN. 

I.. I can’t even make this up. I know some sonic fans probably have their own ass databases but Robotnik himself.. has an archive of animal butts. DR.ROBOTNIK’S MEAN ANIMAL ASS MACHINE. Did.. did he conquer mobius just to stare at them asses? Do I want to know the answer to that? Why are they non mobian? why are there non mobian animals here but nowhere else in the series that i’m aware of? 

I love everything about this: I love how accidently dirty it is, I love how stupidly specific it is and I love that it actually DOES come in handy so robtonik can write it off on his taxes. This is the kind of so bad it’s glorious thing that makes my job worthwhile. 

Moving from fun stupid to “I need an ibuprofen stupid”, Robotnik is shook when he they match the hedgehog ass up with sonic.... as he realizes the queen’s kids are still alive and thus the prophecy is still in play. Now you may be asking “Okay so how’d he find out, did he interogate some innocents, steal it Voldermort style, tourture the oracle” and nope... because that’d make since. No.... the Oracle of Delphius... WENT OUT OF HIS WAY TO TELL ROBOTNIK ABOUT THE PROPHECY TO BRAG TO HIM HIS REIGN WOULD END EVENTUALLY. 

I just... this one scene took the oracle from mildy frustrating to WHOLLY unlikeable. In addition to not helping these kids till now because “fate sez so”, he went OUT OF HIS WAY TO TELL ROBOTNIK WHAT WILL DESTROY HIM.  Why.. why would you do that? I Get it might be part of what NEEDS to happen to stop him but without saying that on screen or implying that, it instead just comes off as the oracle shooting his own prophecy in the foot by TELLING THE PERSON IT STOPS JUST HOW TO STOP IT. I’m suprised he didn’t tell him where each of their adopted parents lived so he could choke some babies!

God... so Robotnik researches them, finding out Sonia is a regestered citzien. And discredit where it’s do.. Robotnik is also a dumbshit here as he never bothered to look into where the children were or search for them in the , let’s say 14 years since Alleena left them with their adopted parents, nor NOTICED that the young ward of one of his own patrons looked EXACTLY like the queen. He already rules mobius. He dosen’t have much else to do given how automated that process is. Gahhhh. 

So at the club Sonic rocks out, and slowly the sounds drawn in the rest: Manic cuts out on a job to go visit, something Ferrel is fine with because he’s a good one, and Sonia drags her fiance Bartleby down with her to visit. The three siblings end up playing together, finally reunited and rocking out.. only for the club to be raided. Sonic agrees to meet them later and they all bounce. 

ONce again I have to hit pause to talk about something abotu the series itself. Thankfully I THINK this will be the last time. But it’s the swatbot design. The swatbots are Robotnik’s troops, taken from Satam .. but only in name. See in Satam they had this awesome iconic design

Simple, cold, metallic. Fits robotnik’s distoypian cyperpunk grip on things perfectly, looks neat, taking bits from both stormtroopers and cylons while still having it’s own unique look. Cool. Now here’s what underground has

Overcomplicated, overly 90′s, with a werid color scheme. I don’t mind changing the design, new unvierse and all but if your going to change it so much just give them a diffrent name. 

So yeah they bust up the party.. and when the three hogs reunite they find all their parental figures have been rounded up, with Sonia in paticular having to watch Lady Wendimire dragged off. The three naturally plan to go save them.. only for the Oracle to arrive to tell them nope i’ts too late. Which.. I questoin. Having the three TRY to save their parents, either this time or later on when they end up back in robottropolis for a diffrnet rescue mission, would’ve been intresting and heartbreaking. But mope it’s just “their dead, here’s a map to get some training byeeeee”. God I hate this guy. So our heroes head off into the night, having lost their adopted parents.. but found each other.

Sidebar before we continue much like the swatbots roboticizatoin.. dosen’t look nearly as neat here

Just...can we not sonic underground? Can we just not horribly overcomplicate designs so they look terrible?

Beggiings.. isn’t a bad episode honestly. While I pointed out plenty of issues with the series itself, and the whole thing with the oracle TELLING ROBTONIK ABOUT THE PROHPEHCY was one of the dumbest things i’ve seen in a kids cartoon, the first ep does a good job setting up our heroes background, giving them a reason to come back together, and setting them on their journey. It also shows our vilians as a compitent and intresting threat. All in all a far better pilot than I was expecting.... for an episode> It.. gets worse form here. 

Part 2: Getting to Know You

So we’ve come to the worst part. The good news at least is parts 2 and 3 shoudl go quicker since I don’t have to stop every 5 minutes to talk about something about the show as a whole. 

So the first ten minutes are our heroes trying to make it here, with Sleet and Dingo sent after them only for Dingo’s newfound crush on sonya to trip him up. Simple stuff. What makes it the worst part.. is the hogs.. are just complete assholes to each other. And not in a fun sibling riffing way like the episode seems to THINK it is, it’s just 

For 10 minutes. The boys act like sexist ten year olds about Sonya being afraid of getting dirty which on some level I get: thing sare about to get real and they can’t have her complaning, she has to accept she no longer has a maid or any other rich people stuff.  But instead of trying to help her ease into normal life.. they just razz her constantly, especailly jarring considering she lost her mom yesterday. So instead of sympathizing with it given their adopted dads were also taken, they just decide to make jokes like a 90′s adult cartoon writer’s impression of a ten year old thinking a girl has cooties. 

Sonic in general is just an ass. When Manic TRIES to dance around the fact he was a theif, which is fair he dosen’t know how they’ll respond... Sonic just outright tells Sonia that, as the freedom fighters kept tabs on the theives guild. That wasn’t information that was his to tell, and given Sonia’s never had to struggle a day in her life, something that would be jarring for her to accept, which you know IS WHY HE WAS DANCING AROUND IT. Good good if UK Sonic didn’t exist this might be the biggest show of dickery i’ve seen from the blue blur. Instead of our heroes getting to know one another, the diffrences and simlairties, and getting to really bond... it’s just petty sniping so much it made me run my head into a wall. 

So after ten inusfferable minutes of this shit, our heroes find a jaguar man who gets to training them, while Robotnik sends his goons to go get em, since the yfound the map our heroes had left behind (Sonia had made a copy). 

So we get your standard hero training and a montage to go with it: Sonic learns to control his speed better, Sonia learns the martial arts and Manic learns pin point accuracy, able to throw his drumsticks like he’s Bullseye. Standard stuff but nothing bad after the ocean of arguing. Robtonik’s goons arrive, get attacked by the trees because that’s a thing and our heroes find out they all have musical powers too, but have ot use them in harmony to do so. So they use it to zap their way out of there, win the day, and go on to their next mentor.. which I feel is a mistake. The show REALLY didn’t need two mentors for them esepcailly when they both serve the same purpose and they could’ve simply gone to the hooded setting at the end to start. 

At the end they face a secret test of character, a hallucination of a monster... but react poorly: sonic goes off half cocked, sonia tries to help but only gets herself caught and Manic gets them out via lockpicking but is too late to save them. The hooded mentor guy nearly turns them away... but the three siblings puffing sonic’s ego is enough to convince him their good siblings now and the training can begin tommorow. 

As you could tell I didn’t have a lot to say about this episode: it’s mostly endless bickering and endless training. The latter is at least tolerable. Just.. not a good, memorable or worthwhile episode. 

Part 3: Harmony or Something

So we open part 3 in bad straights for Sleet and Dingo, as the two are about to be sent to be roboticized since they keep failing to stop sonic. Sleet says he might have a plan though, so Robotnik frees them but gives them one last chance. Spoiler he gives them like... 37 more chances. Still points for actually CONSDIERING getting rid of his comedy sidekicks. The other RObotniks never even bothered. 

Back with our heroes.. their in a castle.. fighting... a.. dragon...

Our heroes TRY using their new musical instrument powers, I love this job sometimes, to fight it, but they crap out after Sonic yells at Manic for trying to use his earthquake powers, that’s what his drums do despite the other two instruments, a guitar and a keyboard, shooting lasers on a flying enemy.  Because he’s not going to get any ribbing in when their skeletons are all on this dragon’s mantle later so he might as well now. 

They escape to a higher level and Sonia has figured out what the thing is. You know that bit from this episode I said was almost as insane as the ass database? Yeah this is it: Sonia figures out the dragon is an AIR ELEMENTAL. And that by touching earth to it, since the thing never lands, they can destroy it. 

I have no words. Sonic and his siblings have to fight an air elemental, and beat it using the power of rock n roll. Now THIS is more like it. While the last episode was more irritating nonsense, this is GLORIOUS nonsense, just hilariously stupid and insane stuff thrown at the audience at face value. 

This turned out to be a training excercise but the fact Sonia LEARNED ABOUT ELEMETNALS IN SCHOOL, means it was simulating a real creature. You know if this series was about sonic fighting elementals alongside his siblings i’d watch through ten musical numbers just to get some of that. Just saying DiC. 

Our heroes soon have to leave, empire strikes back style, as the hooded guy has a vision.. because he can do that: Sonic’s friend trevor has been kidnapped. 

Instead of I dunno, bringing Bunnie or Rotor back (especiaally since the head writer of SATAM was undrstandble sore this wasn’t a continuation of his work after it got cut off early), or bringing in tails for the role.. you thought “No we can do better.. a hippie mouse no one cares about. That’s the ticket. Yeah!” 

So our heroes go to go save guy we just met, despite the training not being done.. even though they pretty much know everything. So our heroes head to robottropolis. Manic shows his stuff by having them sneak into a chute that he used to as a kid, as their first jobs were small suply runs. Sonya is horrified kids were used for theft.. not getting that she had EVERYTHING because her mother bent and scrapted to a dictator. It’s why I don’t really side with Underground’s constant “manic shoudln’t be a theif” lectures. In a normal setting , sure don’t steal shit’s a good moral. But they live in a cyberpunk distpoia run by a dictator. They gotta steal to live gotta steal to eat. It’s hard to buy this moralizing when the situation the series set up dosen’t fit it and the skills Manic has as a theif are invaluable to their cause. 

Sonic later lectures him for taking some random shit, even though it could come in handy. They then spy on a meeeting between Bartlby and Robtonik. Bartlby knows nothing and admits he gladly pays his tributes, and if he DID know he’d of sold out his fiance in an instant. Robotnik, unlike lesser villians, is fine with this,k though can’t reisist using lady windermnire as a warning that if the little prick is lying or has thoughts of betraying him... the robotcizers waiting. instead of you know having Sonya dismayed her ex woudl sell her out she’s jus tdisgusted while the boys for once have a valid cricizim, asking what the hell she saw in him. 

We DO get a geninely good scene though as Sonya wants to go after Lady Whatserhername.. and the boys have to break it to her it’s too late, they can’t save her.. and their sorry. So Sonya sobs quitely while her brothers comfort her. It’s the ONLY real bit of bonding we get in these last two parts. 

Our heroes also find out Robotnik is going for the oracle though, so they quickly bust trevor out, using the vents which Manic naturally knows how to manuvre. Security is on them though so Sonia suggests the simple solution: take one of robtonik’s ship. Trevor, for what i’ts worth, does her one better once they get to the hangar: he’ll take a smaller fighter to distract robotnik while the siblings escape. And to his credit he not only easily outmanuvers the other ships but lives through it uncaptured. Okay fair enough Trevor you can stay, though i still question why Tails wasn’t in this. I miss my buddy.

Our heroes head to the arctic to go rescue the oracle.. only for Robtonik to take over the ship. Yeah turns out he’s not stupid and can override the systems from a distance, and thus sets it to self disturct. Our heroes ONLY escape because Manic happend to steal an override key. Remember kids: Stealing is fine if it’s from a dictator. The more you know. 

Our heroes arrive but fail to pull off their powers at first.... they have a half assed heart ot heart not worth mentoining, and then play an awful song.. that ISN’T what they use to fight robotnik, they just waste two minutes before goign to go fight him with the power of ROCK... which as stupid as this is... I can’t hate it. Sonic is shooting a guitar with laserbeams, his sister has a laser keyboard, and his brother can make the earth move under his feet and make the sky tumble down, tumblin down with the power of his drums. It’s dumb and probably woudl’ve been better not part of the show.. but it’s also gloriously goofy and I just can’t hate it. The songs are vile.. but them using their insturment super powers.. that’s actually pretty neat. 

So our heroes have won, getting an encouraging message form their mother as they head off. The oracle also reveals to the queen, who shows up after they leave, that he was fine the whole time and was merely faking his own peril for their sake. Hahaha please robotcize him. 

Final Thoughts: 

Origins is an ehhh start to a throughly ehhhh show. Underground HAS a lot of potetial, great ideas, a taletned voice cast, and a unique take on sonic by having him as an exiled prince. Even the power of rock gimmick isn’t terrible and could’ve been great had they actually picked va’s who could sing. 

But the execution.. is why this series is so thorughly unloved: the animation, which I haven’t had a chance to talk about, is very lackluster, very cheap and shoddy which isn’t remotely okay given how good SATAm and adventures look. Both, especially the latter wren’t immune to animation errors, but they still look good. This... just looks like it was made on five dollars and a can of whiskey. 

The designs aren’t better: the characters dont’ really match the classic sonic art style, and instead are just whatevers and whattheheckarethat’s. It just comes off cheap and half assed. It’s not helped a lot of the series backbone is clearly copied form satam.. but without any of the genuine atmosphere or cool designs. It just comes off as a shoddy, half formed version of something we’d seen better. And the sad part is a statam reboot COULD work,and could’ve worked then.. but instead of trying to work on the parts that didn’t work they just copied a few things and made a shoddier product

Undergorund is depresingly shoddy, not really great, and only worth a watch for curosity’s sake. It’s good ideas mixed with a lazy execution for an unstatifyingly half assed result. Will I return to it someday? Honestly probably. I do want to see the knuckles episodes at some point and while the episodes weren’t great, I did get some godo material. But was I dispaointed the show didn’t prove me wrong, and wwas just as bad as I remmebered? .... way past yes. Thanks for reading. 

[melodiiiee]

"The doors keep on closing Every time I wake up It's like I can't breathe And my time is up"