Sonic Prime Impressions

Oh boy. Here we go. Sonic Prime came out yesterday. Before I go into more detail about Prime, I just want to say that I didn't have the highest of expectations for this show specifically. Sure, the animation looked nice and the voice acting was surprisingly amazing but I still wasn't sold on the show. When the trailers started to drop, I was actually getting excited for this.

That honestly did not change with the premiere that was streamed on Sonic Speed Simulator on Roblox. The episode was surprisingly good despite it having a lot of pacing issues. Overall, I was actually starting to get excited for this show. And to it's credit, the first 3 episodes were really good. The presence of New Yoke City gave me major SATAM vibes with how it was designed and the council of Eggman's were actually funnier than I expected. I honestly can't wait to see that group again. 

Rusty Rose and Nine are also amazing characters. Nine is probably my favourite variation of Tails for a couple of reasons. He's probably the 2nd most altered character in the New Yoke City dimension, first one being Amy which we will get into later. Nine being a version of Tails that never had Sonic inspire him to become the hero he was destined to be is a very cool concept. I love what they did with that idea here. Sonic trying to speak out to him was also a great character scene. (Minus the so frickin' #retro scene that looks.. alright, not bad) Plus his extra 7 tails are great. I love how he uses them. And what we have seen from him in the later episodes, I'm interested in what Nine will do in the future.

Rusty Rose is probably my favourite character in the show right now. Taking this character who is all about being compassionate towards others and turning her into a robotic killing machine is such a funny concept that I laugh everytime I see her on screen. And I don't mean that in a negative way either! It's a fun concept made better with the character associated with it. And like Nine, she seems to be an ongoing villain in the show which is also great since I love this version of Amy!

Oh and also Shadow was written surprisingly well here. For the little time we see him at the very least. After being held back by mandates for IDW for so long, it's actually refreshing to see a version of Shadow that doesn't suck. IDW Shadow still kinda sucks tho. I hope the guys over there manage to get rid of this mandate cuz people actually like a Shadow that's written like you know... himself.

And one final thing; the animation is really good! I know some people say it looks like "sfm animation" but aside from the SO FRICKIN #RETRO scenes, it looks really great and expressive too. Being used to the games using a lot of static models and then jumping to this felt like a breath of fresh air. It's really bouncy and fun! I hope they use other Sonic locals aside from "Green Hill" later on but I like the current environments too. Definitely one of the best parts of the show.

With that out of the way... it's time for some negative talk. And with who to start with then Sonic the Hedgehog. Okay, this will be a long one. Long story short, this version of Sonic is pretty fun IF you don't count this show as canon (which you can't as I will explain that in a later section) The way he is characterized here is... weird. Not bad but horribly inconsistent. This Sonic is a lot less experienced and well... "more dumb" It works with this narrative of Sonic learning to appreciate his friends and listen to them. And for that, I think it does a great job. It's neat to see a more emotionally vulnerable version of Sonic since... Archie or SATAM? Either way, that part would be really cool.... if the whole show wasn't canon to the games. That destroys a lot of my enjoyment from the show. It's fun but it basically drags itself down for trying to make itself canon to the games. I remember months ago when people argued about IDW's portrayal of Sonic being mad inconsistent and "wordy" and those same people are defending this version of Sonic even tho it's the same character? Like please tell me the problem with this panel.

Prime Sonic literally gets confused when a giant bird starts flying with the remark "It can fly?" I'm honestly astonished by this. IDW is not perfect but I would say his portrayal there is a lot more like his game self than whatever Prime's is suppose to be. You can argue that this is a younger Sonic after... let's say Heroes in the timeline but the existence of Orbot and Cubot lets us know that this takes place at least after Colors... which means this is "apparently" the same Sonic that went through the events of Unleashed... which is just wrong and makes no sense. I will end this topic here since I could talk so much about how the fandom reacted to these interpertations so I will just leave you all with this tweet.

But yeah aside from that, all other characters were written very well. Knuckles' voice did need to get a bit of used to tho. Another big problem I had was just the amount of flashbacks that the show wants. I'm aware that there was a very annoying "written by Ian Flynn" flashback jokes but god dammit dude, this is SO MUCH worse. Like, picture this. It takes us 10 minutes just to get to the point we left off of from Sonic's perspective. That's almost the half of the runtime. Ep 4-5 are also guilty of that but I will get to them in the next part.

("""""Very hilarious"""" flashback written by Ian Flynn joke)

SPOILER TERRITORY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

New Yoke City dimension is the best dimension of the show. And I'm so glad that it's the dimension that will have the most focus going forward. It's also the one that introduced Nine and Rusty Rose which are great like I said.

The Jungle Dimension was such a drag. It was honestly painfully boring. Episode 4-5 are such pace breakers because of this issue. Amy being the main big bad isn't really that interesting to me either since... that was also the case for New Yoke City. But hey, at least cat Tails was funny.

The Pirate Dimension was such a huge improvement compared to the Jungle Dimension. The Captain Knuckles character was very great, I hope to see him again in the future episodes. We also have a subplot of the Council now travelling to other dimensions to conquer them which I'm looking forward to.

And the 8th episode ends with a Sonic vs Shadow fight scene that was %100 not meant to be the "season" finale. But they did this with the Cuphead Show too so I can't complain honestly. I'm used to that business strategy by this point.

Also this stupid frickin #retro scene literally made me laugh which probably wasn't the intention they were going for. So please, fix THIS animation first. The 3D animation is really good, just... please.

Overall Prime is... strange. I really like the show for what it does well. Yet the questionable canon implications, the bizarre characterization of Sonic and the surprisingly little amount of actual fan service really doesn't do it for me. They had the chance to reuse a lot of concepts from the past with the whole dimension idea, like what if Sonic went to the SATAM or AOSTH dimensions instead? Those could have been cool but I won't hold that against the show too much since it wasn't what it was going for. Overall... 5/10. I know that I said I would give it a 7 if I was generous but man. The rewatch both made it better and worse. This batch really didn't do it for me. Hoping the next 8 episodes will be better.