Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie

May 31, 1996 saw the release of the two episode Sonic the Hedgehog anime series in Japan. The first episode was titled Journey to Eggman Land and the second, Sonic VS Metal Sonic. Both episodes were released on separate VHS tapes. September 8, 1999, one day prior to the Dreamcast launch and Sonic Adventure, the now defunct ADV Films released this two episode OVA series on a single VHS and DVD as Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie. The release date of September 8 was chosen to ride the momentum of Sonic Adventure to help the film's sales.

Dr. Robotnik tricks Sonic and Tails into traveling to The Land of Darkness because Eggman Land (yes, the name of such an infamous stage was referenced as far back as this film) has been taken over by Metal Robotnik. Robotnik's metal counterpart his rigged his Egg Generator that lies at the heart of the city. If the generator goes ka-boom, the entire planet will go up in smoke. But since we already see Robotnik with Hyper Metal Sonic at the start of the film saying he needs the life data from Sonic, we know this is bull.

Team Sonic, ready for action.

This isn't what I'd call a good movie. There are all sorts of things that happen that make you question the plot and the actions of the characters. At the beginning of the film, Sonic is, for lack of a better word, a jerk. When Tails cries out to him for help, Sonic would rather continue kicking back in his lounge chair, listening to the radio. When he's finally had enough of Tails calling out to him, his response is "SHUT UP, TAILS!" While the delivery of that line is admittedly funny, it's very out of character for Sonic to ignore someone in need, even if Tails can just fly out of the way of the danger. Worse still, when Tails asks for Sonic's assistance to help Old Man, Owl who's plane is on fire, Sonic tells Tails to help since he's the only one among the two of them that can fly. It isn't until Tails and Old Man Owl are seconds away from being a couple of statistics that Sonic springs into action. Even worse, Sonic at first turns a deaf ear to a potential matter that could threaten the entire planet. Sure, the bearer of this news is Robotnik' Sonic's worst enemy but on the off chance Robotnik was telling the truth, Sonic shouldn't have just laid there playing with his nose. It isn't until Sara asks Sonic to hear Robotnik out that Sonic decides to listen. "Who is Sara," you ask? Why, she's the president's daughter who has the power to make every male do whatever she ask with Sonic and Knuckles being prime examples. Being the only female in the whole movie, of course every male has to be interested in her. Even Robotnik wants to marry her for some reason I can't possibly fathom. Sara is in the movie to get groped, have her skirt peeked under, be rescued and be annoying. Yeah, she's a pretty hollow character.

Sonic and Tails try faking their deaths to lure
away their pursuer. It doesn't work.

When Sonic and Tails make it to The Land of Darkness they get attacked by Metal Robotnik. We later find out that Metal Robotnik is just a giant mech piloted by the real Robotnik, so that's no surprise there. But why is he actually trying to kill Sonic? We already know he needs Sonic's life data to fully complete Hyper Metal Sonic. Killing Sonic throws that plan right out the window. At one point he truly thinks Sonic is dead, killed by a barrage of missiles. Just what is the doc's scheme here? Does it change at a moments notice or did the writers just forget about Hyper Metal Sonic for a bit?

Look into my demonic eyes!

The dubbing is awful as was the case with a lot of dubs from the 1990s. Tails (Lainie Frasier) sounds like he has a permanent head cold and Sonic's voice (Martin Burke) is way too high pitched. Robotnik (Edwin Neal) actually doesn't sound too shabby, letting out some pretty convincing evil laughs. Knuckles (Bill Wise) has one of the most tolerable voices and it suits the character well. Sara (Sascha Biesi) doesn't sound bad either but the good voice acting is offset by the fact that the character is just so grating on the nerves. But, as bad a dub as it is there are a few high points. Martin Burke lets out one of the best so-bad-it's-good lines during the fight against Hyper Metal Sonic. "You might know everything I'm going to do, but that's not going to help you, since I know everything you're going to do! STRANGE ISN'T IT?!" Cracks me up every time I hear it.

For such an old anime, this Sonic the Hedgehog has some nice animation. Action scenes are done nicely and Sonic moving at super sonic speed looks very convincing. He even runs with the Super Peel Out animation a few times. The art style is very similar to the anime sequences of Sonic CD, but not quite. Sonic CD's anime portions looked better but this movie doesn't look bad. The music is also really good. I read that a soundtrack release for this was in the works but it got canned. Pity.

If he knows everything he's gonging to do, he
should have seen that coming.

For all the bashing I've done, I'd probably still pick up a copy of this if I could find it on DVD for cheap. This one didn't sell well and it goes for some pretty high prices when physical copies do turn up. The movie can be seen in dub form in it's entirety on YouTube if you're interested. Not the best animated version of Sonic but there are worse ways to kill an hour.