Trivia / Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie

• Acting for Two:
  • In the original Japanese version, Sonic and Metal Sonic are both played by Masami Kikuchi.
  • As for the English dub, Dr. Robotnik and the President are voiced by Edwin Neal.
• Directed by Cast Member: In the English dub, Gary Dehan is the ADR director as well as Metal Sonic's voice actor.
• Exiled from Continuity: All unique characters and elements exclusive to the OVA are not allowed to appear in other Sonic media. According to a Q&A by Ian Flynn, the head writer of the Archie and IDW Sonic comics, this is due to Sega not being keen on giving attention to any past incarnations of the franchise that aren't their own and wanting to keep the focus on Modern Sonic product, and have thus forbidden the use of them.
  • They seem to have softened on this a little in recent years, as Knuckles' cowboy hat has since made it into a few games and an advertisement for his upcoming TV show.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • Ever wanted to get it after 2004? New copies haven't been released since then, and it is pretty rare to find it (at least on DVD, the VHS is considerably cheaper). There is a digital re-release available on the Google Play Store, but only in Japan. According to Discotek Media, this is because Sega apparently ended up losing key paperwork regarding music and voice actor royalties, meaning they don't know who and what to pay and thus, making any legal rerelease post-2004 impossible outside of Japan.
  • An official release of the OVA's soundtrack was planned, but it was scrapped due to poor sales. Fortunately, the full version of the credits theme "Look-a-Like" was released by Illuminor in August 2020, followed by the original production demos for the music in September of the same year, both provided by an anonymous contact who worked on the film.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": The Japanese trailers for the OVA debuted in Sonic Jam for the Sega Saturn in 1997, a full 2 years before they were released in the US. This was the first introduction to many western fans of the OVA.
• Pop-Culture Urban Legends: It's often believed that ADV released a censored version back in 1999, which edited out/censored several bits of the movie. However, when fans looked into it in more recent years, they found that there no such version actually exists, with many speculating that it was largely a rumor that happened to have spread like wildfire back in the day. The 1999 VHS/DVD release that was released is mostly unchanged from the Japanese version aside from Dr. Eggman getting changed to Dr. Robotnik and Black Eggman to Metal Robotnik (since that was still his standard name at the time in the West) and some of the swearing being edited out. The only real visual edits were the OVA being slightly Re-Cut to turn the two episodes into one near-seamless film, and a Japanese sign saying "Goodbye Sara" being Photoshopped from Japanese to English (a standard practice for ADV Films at the time, even for more mature releases like Neon Genesis Evangelion).
  • It is also believed that the staff behind this movie also worked on Sonic CD, due to a number of scenes in the OVA bear a resemblance to the opening and ending sequences. As such, this OVA is often misattributed to being a work of Toei Animation, however a quick look at the credits show that such is not the case as it lists Studio Pierrot as "Animation Production," with narry any mention of Toei.
• Self-Adaptation: Sonic Team's Yuji Naka and Naoto Oshima supervised the OVA's production.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The OVA is actually an unsold pilot for an anime series.
  • The soundtrack for the OVA was advertised for a retail release, but it never dropped, most likely due to the OVA's poor sales in Japan, Europe, and the US. "Look-a-like" was eventually included on True Colors: The Best of Sonic the Hedgehog Part 2 in 2009.
  • There were originally plans to include the OVA in Sonic Mega Collection, as a prototype featured entries for the two parts in the extras section. However, this was scrapped for unknown reasons.

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