YMMV / Sonic X

Anime

• Accidental Innuendo: Cosmo's secret codename is White Seed.
• Adorkable: For a genius, Tails is often the most adorable when he flops.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Sonic. In Episode 42, Amy gets a new view that Sonic's willingness to save people is so big is that he saves people almost every day, with even Sam saying he doubts he remembers saving half the people he saved. Which adds a little layer of mystery to how Sonic views Amy. Does he see her as a true lover (highly doubtful, but from Episodes 52, 76 and 77 have to say, it is a possibility)? Does he see her as a friend? Or does he see her as another person he saved a long time ago? Does he see his other friends as such?
    • Likewise, his and Eggman's relationship. Are they really enemies who are at each others throats, or somewhat friends who have a light-hearted friendly rivalry? The Anime supports the former mostly while the comic supports the latter.
• Americans Hate Tingle: Chris Thorndyke is far more hated in the West than in Japan, where more fans like or at least tolerate him. Ironic, since Eggman's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to him (widely seen as a Take That, Scrappy! moment) is harsher in the Japanese version than the English one.
• Ass Pull: One of the show's worst points is it pulling plot points out of a hat, with sometimes them making zero sense and not being brought up again. Examples include:
  • Sonic being able to use two Chaos Emeralds to go into this Pseudo Super Sonic form in Episode 13. This sudden power up never gets used or even mentioned again after this episode.
  • Sonic surviving an absolute beating by E-99 and Chris gaining the sudden strength to free himself from the clasp he was in despite never happening earlier in Episode 26.
• Awesome Ego:
  • Sonic. He can back up everything he boasts about.
  • And Shadow too. He's the ultimate lifeform and does nothing to hide that fact!
• Awesome Music:
  • The Japanese version had some pretty good ones. Stand outs being the theme song Sonic Drive, the three ending themes, and Eggman's Lemotif is unforgettable.
  • Even some fans who hate the dub admit the theme song is pretty cool at least... and catchy...
    • The 4Kids dub also gives Sonic himself an original Leitmotif, which is suitable catchy and triumphantly heroic. Often used as a fanfare.
    • Knuckles and Eggman were given Leitmotifs of their own as well, and both fit their characters rather well; with Eggman's having a menacing, threatening feel to it, and Knuckles having a driving, powerful vibe.
  • The Japanese version of the final Sonic Adventure 2 arc episode used Live and Learn for Sonic and Shadow teleporting the ARK to safety and the celebration afterward. Unfortunately, the dub replaced it with its generic action music.
  • And then the Japanese original version of Season 3 gave us some really good soundtracks that, sadly, never got released properly - a few good examples are the appropriately gritty Metarex theme and the equally oppressive and slow-paced Metarex Battle theme.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Sonic. This version of the character is either liked for being in-character with the games where he's a cocky trickster who has really well done interactions with characters, or disliked for being a Flat Character who does nothing but be a Lazy Bum whenever he's not fighting his enemies. There's also the matter of his lack of prominence in most of the episodes despite being the main character. Some tolerate it or like it for allowing the other characters to get some spotlight, whereas others are upset that a show based on Sonic doesn't actually give them much Sonic himself.
  • Amy. Many dislike her portrayal in this anime for her obsession towards Sonic as well as her Yandere traits (especially in season 3), and they also hated how this ended up having an influence on her game counterpart for about a decade. Others however find these traits amusing and think they make her stand out more compared to her game counterpart.
  • Bokkun is a mixed bag. Some enjoy his antics and find him sympathetic during his Butt-Monkey moments, while others think he's annoying and runs his exploding message gag into the ground very quickly.
  • Cosmo. Either loved because of her kind personality, unique design, tragic backstory and her relationship with Tails, or hated because of the aforementioned backstory being too wangsty for some, her tendency to apologise over every single slip-up she may or may not have played a part in, her role in most episodes being either The Load or a Damsel in Distress, and her relationship with Tails.
  • Chris in Season 3. Some like his Character Development from a child to an adult, his role of being more productive for Sonic and his friends against Eggman and the Metarex by being a Gadgeteer Genius, and for his more heroic moments like sacrificing his one-way ticket back to his world to help stop the Metarex and helping Eggman escape after the Metarex held him prisoner. Others think that while he's a lot better portrayed compared to the previous seasons, he still doesn't really stand out much as a character considering that making him a Gadgeteer Genius has made him a lot more similar to Tails, combined with most of his moments of helping Sonic and his friends are things that Tails would do himself and has done in the games. Which results in Chris coming across as an unneeded character who should have just stayed in his world.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: At the end of Episode 41, Eggman is fleeing after the failure of his Egg Moon plan when Sonic and friends suddenly confront him with... a Sonic X pop quiz?! It's hard to say what's weirder — Sonic and friends choosing such a bizarre means of stopping him, or Eggman just blindly going along with it. Keep in mind the Sonic aspect of the quiz is dub only, at least until the end when Sonic breaks the fourth wall…
• Broken Base:
  • The quality of the anime itself. Some fans say the original Japanese version is a legitimately good show, which was ruined by 4Kids' Macekre dub. Other argue that many of the show's biggest flaws are present in both versions, such as Chris Thorndyke, Sonic's lack of screentime, and the overabundance of filler episodes.
  • The addition of human characters. Some like them for being decent extras to expand the world and give some more people for Sonic and co to talk to, while others think they're pointless characters to make one-off stories that could've been done by the thousands of other Sonic characters.
  • The English dub by 4Kids Entertainment. Some decry it for its Bowdlerization like the censorship of character deaths, the Dub Induced Plot Holes created by the characters' deaths being censored, and weakening the emotional moments. Others think that, in a similar vein to Kirby: Right Back at Ya!, it's one of 4Kids' better works due to its solid English voice cast, for producing the show's most memorable lines, its writing making the Broken Aesops less Anvilicious, some of the serious moments still keeping their emotional weight, and handling some of the characterization better than the Japanese version (particularly regarding Chris).
  • The adaptations of the Adventure games in Season 2. Some think they're great adaptations of the games that hit the same beats as them and in some cases do the stories better than their originals through expanding on and improving on the games foundation. Others think they're weak adaptions due to being compressed down to fit on a television runtime with the show's human characters attached to them (that's already a bit of a Broken Base), overstuffed storytelling, mostly due to only having six episodes to tell the adaptations, and lackluster animation that lost what made the Adventure games so special.
  • Season 3 is often considered to be either the best season or the worst season. Some call it the best because it had its own original plot, the humans were mostly gone, the writing was tighter and darker, and Tails and Cosmo's relationship. Worst because the plot and villains had little in common with any other aspect of the Sonic franchise, being stuck on a spaceship didn't fit Sonic's free roaming nature, Tails taking the spotlight even further from Sonic, and Cosmo.
  • How good of a plot twist was Cosmo being an unwitting spy for the Metarex in Season 3? Proponents argue that it was an incredibly shocking moment which brilliantly highlighted the Metarexes (and especially Dark Oak) as masterful, cunning villains and led to some very emotional moments between the main characters. Detractors of this twist argue that it quickly falls apart and opens up plenty of plot holes once one looks back on the series as a whole, given how many times the Metarex would realistically have won if they knew all of the heroes' plans, as well as being utterly lacking in proper Foreshadowing.
• Cliché Storm: Like Sonic Heroes, this anime follows the typical Shōnen anime tropes to a degree, particularly with how Knuckles and Amy are portrayed, as well as the frequent Monster of the Week formula particularly in season 1. It even added a martial arts tournament for no other reason than to show off everybody's fighting abilities.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Cosmo's plant-like race is near-universally referred to by fans as the "Seedrians", to the point where many less-informed fans believe it's their official name. In actuality, the name of her race is never revealed.
  • It is a common misconception that the third season was commissioned by 4Kids. This belief stems from 4Kids commissioning Yu-Gi-Oh!: Capsule Monsters and extra episodes of Ultimate Muscle. However, those were made with their editing standards in place and season 3 of Sonic X was noticeably darker than the previous two seasons. It is true that season 3 was made for foreign markets but it was not paid to be made by 4kids Entertainment.
• Complete Monster: Pale Bay Leaf, one of the four Metarex commanders under Dark Oak in season 3, is a brilliant diplomat whose politeness hides cruelty and sadism. Working for Dark Oak to annihilate all non-plant life in the name of "tranquility and order", Pale Bayleaf manipulates Planet Cascade's resistance group into working for him to deliver Dr. Eggman to the Metarex. When Eggman reveals he knew all along about their plot against him, he attempts to kill him and the Cascade resistance—seeing their treaty as void—killing Molly when she tries to attack him. When working with Eggman and Black Narcissus against Sonic and his friends, Pale Bayleaf and Black Narcissus doesn't hesitate to shoot their own troops so long as they can take down the enemy, a move even Eggman found pointlessly cruel. Tasking the Cascade Resistance to find a Chaos Emerald, Pale Bayleaf locks them inside trees that slowly drain and kill them when they found a fake Chaos Emerald. Devoid of empathy even towards his fellow Metarex, Pale Bayleaf lacked their humanizing traits.
• Damsel Scrappy: Cream. Many fans were turned off by her Adaptational Wimp portrayal where she was less in on the action and spent most of the anime doing absolutely nothing besides just standing around or getting kidnapped. She's especially not well liked in the dub due to Rebecca Honig's performance.
• Die for Our Ship: People who shipped Cream and Tails together were pretty upset with the arrival of Cosmo.
• Don't Shoot the Message: During the campfire scene in Episode 51, Sonic says “friendship is freedom”. Which is in itself a great message, except that he spent the entire episode allowing Chris to kidnap him and drag him far away while delaying his return back to his world.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • A number of the other human characters are quite popular among fans such as Mr. Tanaka.
  • Topaz is a Canon Foreigner human but is so popular amongst fans that she's often included in game-based or Archie-based fan-works.
  • Molly, who only appeared in one episode yet is remembered for one of the most heart-wrenching moments in the entire series and is popular enough to be shipped with Shadow.
  • Helen, who only had A Day in the Limelight in Episode 14, but is very well liked due to fans finding her a likable character with a very touching friendship with Sonic in said episode. So much that the same fans vocally wished that she was the human protagonist of the anime instead of Chris Thorndyke due to having more established and relatable problems.
• Escapist Character: Because of his wealthy lifestyle and living in a family with successful and loving relatives, as well as being best friends with Sonic the Hedgehog and helping him foil Dr. Eggman's plans, Chris Thorndyke comes off as more of this rather than an Audience Surrogate, which may have been a contributing factor to his status as The Scrappy given how he overtook this role from Sonic and friends themselves to a degree.
• Evil Is Cool:
  • Dark Oak. He's an Evil Genius with a Badass Cape and a Baritone of Strength, who managed to outsmart both Sonic and Shadow.
  • Even Dr. Eggman manages to swap into this in Season 2, particularly in the Egg Moon and (perhaps most famously) Homebound arcs.
  • And then, there's also Dark Super Sonic.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The Chaos Control Super Sonic did at the end of Season 1 actually bringing them home and accidently taking Chris and Chuck with them
  • Eggman's backstory of originally being born on Earth and ending up on Sonic's world
  • The seedling that Sonic had recovered after Cosmo's Heroic Sacrifice is a possible indication of her returning back to life in some way.
• Fan Nickname: Cosmo's species never really had a name until someone nicknamed them "Seedrians" for their plant-like features.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Despite Rouge and Topaz having romantic feelings towards Knuckles and Mr. Tanaka respectively in the show, many fans prefer to ship them with each other instead due to their strong bond and chemistry as well as the ton of Les Yay between them.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: There's a Vocal Minority of people who would have loved it if the anime followed the original pilot's direction and took place in a World of Funny Animals much like most previous adaptations.
• Fandom Rivalry: Had a pretty big one with Pucca and The Fairly OddParents! in Latin America due to being a pretty popular show that was constanlty shuffle around different timeslot on childrent's channel Jetix before being remove entierly only three years after its premier (with some feeds of Jetix like the one from Mexico dropping the show before season 3 premier) while the two previous mentioned ones enjoyed a good decade of re-runs at good timeslots and constant marathons on weekends.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The series was cancelled in Japan after the first two seasons, even though all of the season three episodes were already completed, voiced, and scored. However, its popularity in America has allowed the third season to be dubbed and aired. The Japanese versions of the third season's episodes had managed to make their way online, however, and the season finally aired in Japan to commemorate the release of the 2020 film.
  • It has an even larger following in Russia, to point where fans there consider it as a Sacred Cow.
  • It also had a pretty big following in Latin America despite the poor treatment it got on Jetix. When the series was added to Netflix in 2019 (first time the series saw a wide an accesible legal release after being removed from Jetix in 2008) it quickly rise to the top 10 of most watched shows on the region despite being a decade old.
• Growing the Beard: The halfway of the first season fares the show better as the video game characters were given episodes focused on them and showed them plenty of depth, particularly the episode where Tails tries to stop a dam from being built in the middle of a savanna that would result the wild animals to losing their habitat as it reminds him of how he was always bullied by the other animals before he met Sonic.
• He Really Can Act: Originally, Mike Pollock at the time was only known for his comedic roles in anime dubs like Ultimate Muscle and Kirby: Right Back at Ya!. But when he was cast as Dr. Eggman in this anime, his performance for the character received a lot of praise and was one of the few voice actors that replaced the main video game voice actors that didn't receive criticism for their performance, so much that he became the most popular voice actor in the entire Sonic Franchise, and was the only voice actor who wasn't replaced when the 4Kids voice cast was replaced as the voices for the characters in the video games in 2010. He was also positively received for his more serious performances in the dub, particularly his "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Chris in Episode 49.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Eggman's insistence about being the show's real protagonist in the original Japanese version of the "Eggman Corporation" two-parter only becomes more amusing due to the comic series, where he more or less does become the Villain Protagonist.
  • A common joke about the series is regarding how Chris resembles Sora from Kingdom Hearts. Cue 18 years later and now Sora and Sonic are in the same game.
  • In the first episode, Sonic arrives on Earth and is met by the police, one of them trying to act friendly towards him. This was years before a different Sonic would become friends with a different cop.
  • In the second episode, Sonic breaks into an Area 51 substitute (named Area 99) to save Cream and Cheese, who are, just like Sonic himself, not native, "alien", to Earth in this continuity. Sixteen years later... A few Sonic fans have in fact noticed the parallels and made jokes about them.
• Ho Yay: Sonic and Chris' first meeting is more romantically tinged than in it was intended to be.
• It Was His Sled: Cosmo dies.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Eggman borders on this at times. Granted that he's a villain and his actions are evil, but all his hopes and dreams revolve around wanting to rule the entire world, and this nasty blue hedgehog just won't let him do it. It really does bring his speech to Chris in Episode 49 of the dub a deeper meaning.
    Dr. Eggman: All your dreams have been shattered, haven't they? Life is like that, kiddo. Take it from somebody who knows! Whenever you reach too high... Life smacks you down!
  • Dark Oak is this too. When learning his backstory, it's hard not to feel sorry for him.
  • To some extent, Knuckles. Just consider the fact that he's ignored and mocked by others, even by his own friends when he disagrees with their thinking. And not to mention that he doesn't get a lot of gratitude or respect for risking his life to save others.
  • Jerome Wise may've been a nuisance to Sonic & co, but even before he got fired, his life still sucked for the most part. While even Knuckles and Eggman have their wins from time to time, he is guaranteed to end up on the receiving end of Disproportionate Retribution.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Those who don't like the English dub watch it mostly just for the English voice cast. Particularly Jason Griffith as Sonic and Shadow, and Mike Pollock as Dr. Eggman.
• Les Yay: All the time between Topaz and Rouge - the crown jewel of the lot being the scene where Topaz buys her a diamond ring, with Topaz acting very awkwardly and Rouge, naturally, never dropping her overly husky voice.
• LGBT Fanbase: Topaz is especially popular amongst fangirls for her tomboyish looks, Action Girl personality, and her Les Yay with Rouge.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, while already a brilliant adversary, becomes even more impressive in Season 3. Saving Sonic after the latter's fight against Dark Oak, Eggman plants a bug on him to spy on him and thus learns of his plans to go to space with his friends to collect the Chaos Emeralds and defeat the Metarex. Following them in the hopes of getting the Emeralds and take over the world, Eggman works with and manipulates all sides of the conflict as it suits his needs, seeing through Rouge the Bat's attempts at double-crossing him and getting her to work with him, repeatedly outsmarting the monstrous but fairly brilliant Pale Bayleaf, and working with the Metarex to lure Sonic and his friends to a near-successful ambush that even led to a temporarily unconscious Sonic, a move even the latter considered one of Eggman's few victories over him. Ultimately working against the Metarex, Eggman saves Sonic and his friends from a fatal ambush by disguising his ship as their ship, allowing them to escape unarmed and later on assists them with vital information that help them defeat Dark Oak in the long run.
  • Dark Oak, supreme leader of the Metarex, is a chilling combination of power and tragedy. Originally an alien lifeform named Lukas, he fell out with his lover Earthia and parts of his own species trying to save his world from destruction. His ambition and sound intentions eventually corrupted him to become Dark Oak, an Evil Overlord bent on creating a galaxy free of war and conflict by annihilating everything except plants and botanical lifeforms like himself. Introduced trouncing Super Sonic in an attempt to get all seven Chaos Emeralds, Dark Oak strays to the background and creates strategies to systematically crush his opposition that, even in failure, will give him an idea of what they are capable of. Dark Oak's cruelest but most ingenious act was forcing a sleeper agent within the ranks of Sonic and crew from the very beginning. Said person had a tracking device that relayed valuable information to the Metarex as they captured the Chaos Emeralds and the Planet Eggs for "Forestation." At the end of a hard-fought battle, Lukas dies realizing the errors of his ways and reconciles with Earthia in the afterlife.
  • Shadow the Hedgehog, the Ultimate life form, lost his best friend Maria and his creator Dr. Gerald Robotnik when they were killed by G.U.N. in the Space Colony ARK. Desiring revenge, when Gerald's grandson Dr. Eggman released him, he manipulated him into gathering all seven Chaos Emeralds and putting them in the ARK's Eclipse Cannon, which in truth would lead to a Colony Drop. Shadow's plan was only foiled when Chris convinces him to help save the world. He would have died doing so if Eggman didn't save his comatose body. Amnesiac, he returns and saves Chris from death, destroys a Metarex and retrieves an Emerald for Eggman out of gratefulness. Learning that Cosmo is a sleeper agent for the Metarex, he tries to kill her. In his attempt, he outsmarts Tails thrice by hacking into the Blue Typhoon's heat source search program, then into the ship's camera system when Tails locks the heat program and by teleporting back in the ship when Tails launched him into space. Only stopped in his attempt by Cosmo's amulet teleporting him, Shadow helps the heroes in the final battle against the Metarex. After attempting to save Cosmo from Final Mova, he sacrifices himself by moving everyone to safety as Final Mova exploded. Ruthless but caring, Shadow surpassed his game counterpart in sheer audacity and brilliance.
  • Rouge the Bat is a thief obsessed with jewels, starting a stealing spree upon appearing on Earth. Once she learns the location of a Chaos Emerald, she misdirects Sonic while she collects the emerald. However, it was a trap from G.U.N. : she improvises by accepting to become a G.U.N. agent and in return, is granted immunity and keeps her loot. When E-70 Noizi almost defeated her by using her weakness to sound, she used a bomb attached to her wrist to win. Unlike her game counterpart, she succeeds in stealing the Master Emerald during the "Shadow Saga" and joined Eggman and Shadow while hiding her loyalty to G.U.N.. When she later participates in a tournament for a Chaos Emerald, she fights Tails who's stronger than expected. She wins by kissing him and then throwing him out of the ring. When facing Knuckles, she has him agree to fight inside a dark tent, making him fight blind. During the Metarex Saga, she blackmails Bokkun into suggesting to Eggman a plan to obtain an emerald for himself, while she plans to swoop in and steal it. Skilled and manipulative, Rouge was one of the anime's most competent characters.
• Memetic Molester: Due to it literally being his job to stake out Chris for the purpose of monitoring Sonic, Mr Stewart is occasionally seen as a child predator using his government job as a means to an end.
• Memetic Loser: Chris is this due the fact in the two seasons not only for being a one-man Spotlight-Stealing Squad but for being useless, Getting kidnapped due the point that sonic and his friends have to rescue him and for being a weakling who cannot defend himself, While in third season he does a few badass moments and his Character Development did redeem his character by some fans. but wasn't enough for his detractors in which become this trope since its not hard to find hate art out of him. or even certain memes that muck his character.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • "ARE YOU CRAZY?!? WHAT ARE WE GONNA DO?!?"^ExplanationKnuckles' hilarious reaction to Sonic revealing that he's scattered the Chaos Emeralds. Again.
    • "I guess we're gonna have to find 'em again!"^ExplanationSonic's response to the above line.
  • "Gotta go fast!" has become one of the biggest memes of the entire franchise, to the extent that it became an Ascended Meme in later Sonic media.
  • "I was just about to consume this delicious banana!"^ExplanationA particularly Narmful line of Eggman's, made even worse by the extremely Limited Animation of him eating said banana. The entire scene (which 4Kids didn't pick up on, funnily enough) is a staple of YouTube Poops.
  • "Maria!"^ExplanationShadow shouts Maria's name a lot.
• Mis-blamed: One of the frequent complaints that 4Kids gets for their dubs, particularly in this anime, is all of the text on signs and billboards in the show are either erased or edited to not look like words at all. And the most cited example is the scene in the English dub where Tails reads Vector's name on a handkerchief despite Vector's name being erased off of it, and yet Tails spells out Vector's name aloud anyway like in the Japanese version. When asked about it on one of their YouTube videos, 4Kids stated that it was TMS Entertainment that removed the text in the show when they sent a master copy to 4Kids for the sake of international distribution.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Black Narcissus shows that he truly crosses the line when he captures and tortures Chris and Cosmo and uses them as bait to have the Metarex prototypes Silver and Gold test Sonic's speed, strength, and skills. This moment is what triggered Sonic's Unstoppable Rage and Superpowered Evil Side transformation, and this action was just enough for Narcissus to cross the horizon itself. Good thing Eggman and his followers came to help calm things down — after all, Even Evil Has Standards.
    Dr. Eggman: (to Black Narcissus) It's one thing to take them prisoner and threaten them but when you actually hurt somebody, that's going too far.
  • Pale Bay Leaf crossed the line with what he did to Leon and several other anti-Metarex resistance pilots from Molly's home planet: embedding their bodies into the bases of trees and leaving them to weaken within there as a show of betraying them after promising them fame and fortune by inviting them to the side of the Metarex.
• Most Wonderful Sound: The whirling sound that accompanies Sonic's ring-powered Spin Dash.
• Narm:
  • During the Season 1 finale, when Chris sees Sonic falling to his apparent death because of what he did, we get a Good-Times Montage of all their happy moments together. It's an emotional scene... or it would be if there wasn't only one scene of them actually interacting with each other.
  • Decoe & Bocoe's "death" is treated as a Tear Jerker, but it's so melodramatic with them flashbacking to them bullying Chris, complete with sad mourning music and Chris screaming to the heavens that it ends up becoming unintentionally hilarious.
  • Same applies to the Season 2 finale, where Sonic takes Chris for one more ride as he returns home and we get another Good-Times Montage that's somehow does it even worse. With only three memories playing. That being Episodes 38, 26 and 1 in that order.
• Never Live It Down:
  • Fans of the show have a hard time forgiving Chris for stealing the roles that originally belonged to the video game characters in the second season's Sonic Adventure 2 arc, which is one of his main contributions to his status. The same applies to him preventing Sonic from returning home at the end of the second season.
  • Sonic X, along with Shadow the Hedgehog, influenced Shadow's character amongst fans to the point of bordering on an Audience-Coloring Adaptation. He learns to deal with his Dark and Troubled Past at the end of Shadow the Hedgehog but, according to fans, all Shadow seems to do is brood and angst about Maria.
  • Much of Amy's detractors pull from her Flanderizationed portrayal in later episodes of X. Even the games used Amy's more obsessive and clingy Sonic X personality for a while, before dialing her back around Sonic Generations and Sonic Lost World.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Some fans think that Maria having NIDS is a case of Disabled in the Adaptation that was later added into the game canon. Maria's illness comes from the manual to Sonic Adventure 2.
  • The criticism labeled against the show that Sonic himself is Out of Focus already took place in the source material. It's not Chris Thorndyke's fault Sonic is barely developed as a character, it is more the case that in the Adventure games (and Sonic Team's usual treatment on him) he is a reactive hero with a flat character arc and without much background that helps others develop while he himself remains the same. If anything, the criticism of Chris overtaking Sonic's spotlight is a consequence of adapting the games as faithfully as they could.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Dark Super Sonic. He's on-screen for under a minute, yet he's arguably the most popular thing added in the show.
  • Despite appearing for a few seconds in the pilot episode, the character dubbed as Nazo has gotten a lot of attention due to the mysterious nature (true to his name) as to what purpose he could have had. According to Word of God, the character is just a scrapped design of Super Sonic.
• One True Pairing: Tails/Cosmo became this for the fandom.
• One True Threesome: Many fans had paired up Cream and Tails together by the time Tails was given a canonical love interest in the third season. Cream/Tails/Cosmo isn't uncommon as a result.
• Recurring Fanon Character: Nazo, a mysterious white-furred hedgehog who bears a passing resemblance to Super Sonic from an unused screenshot◊. Although Word of God has since confirmed he was merely an alternate design for Super Sonic, fans treat him as his own character to the point where he was the main antagonist of Nazo Unleashed.
• Relationship Writing Fumble: While Chris and Sonic are supposed to be best friends, their actual dynamic has generally been interpreted in two different ways:
  • Non-Friendship: While the show claims their friendship to be a deep and solid bond, audiences think otherwise. This is due to them barely interacting, mostly thanks to Sonic's character in this show constantly and deliberately abandoning his friends until they're in danger for most of the episodes, and Chris being seen more often with Tails, Amy and Cream, resulting in people saying that they're mere acquaintances at best and complete strangers other at worst.
  • Romantically: Through some of Chris' actions, it's possible for him to be view as him loving Sonic in the non-friendship way. If him burning himself grabbing Chaos Emerald and leaping through a window for Sonic all while declaring he's never gonna give him up nor let him down, and with the fact he acts very hostile to Sonic leaving him, it's not too far of a leap to assume he looooves him.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Chris is generally agreed to have somewhat improved as a character in the third season. Partly by giving him less screen time, and making the time he DID have on-screen actually productive, having become more mature and a Gadgeteer Genius. It helps that he was mentally an adult by that point.
• Ron the Death Eater: Chris Thorndyke is often viewed by fans as a selfish, spoiled brat whose life isn't all that bad as he claims it is. Chris was just a lonely kid who had abandonment issues, which kept him from handling the situation of Sonic returning to his world more positively. His loneliness is due to being neglected by his parents since he was little, as he had to spend most of his time alone inside his huge and empty mansion without friends or siblings.
• The Scrappy: Chris Thorndyke was hated by Sonic fans for being a one-man Spotlight-Stealing Squad in the first two seasons, as he intrudes on the roles of certain characters during arcs based on Sonic games that were moments that allowed the characters to show their Hidden Depths, and for constantly taking up most of the screen time in the episodes at the expense of Sonic and his friends despite him not being the titular character or being an interesting character in general to make up for it, not to mention the fact that he basically replaces Tails as Sonic's best friend. Fans also found Chris to be an unrelatable character given his wealthy life style and successful family members that pretty much contradict his Audience Surrogate status, as well as his forced Lonely Rich Kid status that makes him look more like an Informed Loner. He also had criticism relating to his dependency on Sonic, which was unfortunately so bad to the point where he kept Sonic from returning home to stop their worlds from being frozen in time. Adding to the fact that he's simply a Canon Foreigner, he serves as the prime example for why fans of animated shows based on game series don't like (young) characters added to the main cast. Although, as aforementioned above, the season 3 managed to improve his character.
• Signature Scene:
  • The Sonic vs. Knuckles fight in Episode 5, thanks largely to it being a Call-Back to similar fights that occurred in both Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Adventure. It's such an iconic moment for the entire series that, out of all the episodes, that was the one chosen for a major reanimation collaboration.
  • The Dark Sonic scene in Episode 67.
• Signature Song: The second end credits song Hikaru Michi (or The Shining Road). Which plays for a big majority of the series (it plays for 26 out of 52 episodes in Series 1 and plays for all 26 episodes in Series 2. Meaning it played for 52 out of 78 episodes. Or 2/3!!)
• So Bad, It's Good: Several of the English 4Kids cast choices are... questionable to say the least that it can be difficult to not laugh at how several of those choices.
• So Okay, It's Average: The general consensus by many people, that the show is at least entertaining even with its flaws.
• Spoiled by the Format: At the end of Episode 50, Chuck gets a portal back to Sonic's world up and running, and one by one, his friends starts passing through it. But there are still two episodes to go, so it shouldn't be too much of a surprise when Chris shuts down the portal to stop Sonic from leaving.
• Squick: According to the eye-catches in the Japanese version, Chris' grandfather Chuck is 55-years-old and Chris' father Nelson is 43-years-old, meaning that Nelson was born when Chuck was 12-years-old.
• Strawman Has a Point:
  • Knuckles largely exists as a Commander Contrarian to the team that desires to take more desperate measures to get back home. While he has a bad attitude (especially where Sonic is concerned) and some of his ethics like trusting Eggman over and over are genuinely short-sighted, the team tend to demean him over any point he makes (a few of which are rather valid and likely would have led to less disastrous results if followed, though of course this is never called out). It doesn't help that most of the time he argues with them he is tricked or bullied into following through rather than reasoned with in any way, despite the team endlessly pointing out how wrong it is when Eggman manipulates him in a similar manner.
  • In another episode Vector claims that Cream, a six year old, should be sent home to her mother (hoping to gain brownie points with Vanilla). Then he throws her into a sack and carries her and Cheese (and Cosmo) off. It's true that Vanilla didn't exactly say she wanted Cream home, but should a six-year-old be running around the galaxy fighting a powerful and murderous alien force?
• Suspiciously Similar Song: The intro to Hikaru Michi bears a striking resemblance to Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Eggman delivers an awesome "Reason You Suck" Speech to Chris in episode 49 - best in Japanese. He deliberately gets Chris to believe he has something to do with time being frozen, just to see what Chris would do, which turns out to be banging down his door demanding that he unfreeze time, thinking he did it just to blackmail Sonic into leaving Chris' world (nevermind the laundry list of other problems time being frozen might cause the planet, none of which seem to occur to Chris). Then after Eggman admits he lied to test Chris, Chris starts complaining about being lied to, and Eggman goes off about how Chris is so willing to scapegoat someone else (in this case Eggman, which makes sense since he is a huge liar who tricks everybody for his own evil schemes) just so he can find a reason to keep Sonic from leaving. Eggman criticizes Chris for just wanting to be with Sonic, stating that if that's all Chris cares about, then he'll always be small-time.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Fans (especially Amy fans) were absolutely livid when the adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2 replaces Amy with Chris in Shadow's Heel–Face Turn scene, since it strips away one of Amy's strongest character moments from the games in favor of shoehorning Chris, as well as fueling Amy's Flanderization in the show to an obsessive, Clingy Jealous Girl.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Many fans consider Helen's friendship with Sonic sweet and more endearing than his friendship with Chris, so it's a shame she only has a single focus episode. Some fans feel she should have been the main human character and Audience Surrogate instead of Chris.
  • Season 3 has Chris Thorndyke all grown up, but curious as how to visit Sonic's world. Once he crosses the portal, he's immediately transformed back into the little kid from the first two seasons. While he still has his elder wits and experience, many lamented the opportunity to have an adult Chris tag alongside Sonic and friends in the Blue Typhoon.
  • Season 3 also sets up multiple story opportunities for Shadow with his return. Getting all his memories back, having a total change of heart, even developing his relationships with other characters like Chris or Sonic. Unfortunately, despite a good setup in the first few episodes, he has little to do in the rest of the Season. Bar the standalone episode 68, there is little character progression and he never gets an appropriate conclusion, since the final episode chooses to have him make a self sacrifice in practically the same manner as episode 38. Even before then there are no character related sequences with him beyond just having him help out Sonic's team. He feels like a wasted opportunity.
  • Dark Sonic could have been a great opportunity to put some limelight back on Sonic and the unstableness of his emotions in that form could have made for some compelling conflict. Plus the form simply looks awesome. Unfortunately, Sonic didn't get to do much in that form as Dr. Eggman immediately tells him to get a grip.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • A small example, but in-between Episode 5 and Episodes 12-3, Knuckles has a character arc where he begins to care about helping people after being apathetic to them before. It would have been nice to see Knuckles go from being an Aloof Ally that was away from the group and didn't care about anyone to being more about helping others. Despite that, it happens completely offscreen.
  • During the Sonic Adventure 2 arc, Eggman discovers that he was born on Earth, which could have led to an interesting backstory for him and how he got to Sonic's world. However, it's never expanded upon for the rest of the series.
  • The Tournament Arc in Episodes 45 and 46 called "Sonic Battle" could have been a fun two-parter that could have allows the writers to take it easy for a bit, putting pure plot aside in favor of bouncing colorful characters off of each other, giving them excuse to let good guys grapple it out or to showcase the skills of supporting characters. But sadly, the anime refuses to have fun with itself. Instead of showcasing popular "Sonic" cast members, like the Chaotix or Shadow, most of the fights are made up of random side characters some people don't give two craps about. Was anyone begging to see Sam Speed and Mr. Stewart fight it out? And even then, the "fights" are a joke. There are where so many matches end without actual fighting, or where one opponent just randomly decides to give up. And the ones that do have fights are completely one-sided, making the title feel like something made to gain fake hype and the episodes feel underwhelming
  • The Affably Evil Decoe and Bocoe desert Eggman after he leaves them for dead and join the heroes after Chris saves their lives. Unfortunately, this nice and logical development is completely undone exactly one episode later, when the pair wind up with Eggman again, despite the two going on in the same episode about how much better off without him they are. While it makes sense that they wouldn't be able to continue working for the Thorndykes given they now have to return to their universe, there's never any actual explanation for why they stay with Eggman, who they only sought out to help Chris. For some reason they never try to return to their new employers and their brief Character Development is all but forgotten, with nobody ever even calling them out for switching sides.
  • The reason why so many fans viewed Chris as unsympathetic is due to his Lonely Rich Kid status being underdeveloped and barely having any focus, which made him come off as a Informed Loner due to him being shown to have an average social life while having really good relationships with most of his friends and family members. The anime could have had a Flashback episode early in the series that expanded on Chris' life before he met Sonic, in which the episode would touch more upon his loneliness that is implied to be caused by his parents' absences and being stuck inside his huge mansion all the time are the sources to his loneliness in which makes his life boring. But unfortunately, the only thing that the anime offers to expand on his loneliness is just a minute long flashback at the beginning of Episode 51, which takes place after the two previous episodes of where the damage has already been done through Chris throwing a tantrum over saying goodbye to Sonic and him shutting down the portal to stop Sonic from returning home and nearly causing time to be destroyed in the process.
  • Sonic and Chris' friendship is also in this territory. The anime presents Sonic as Chris' closest friend who helped ease his lonely life and gave him self-confidence, so much so that Chris believes that his life is nothing without Sonic. However, due to Sonic's portrayal as an Aloof Ally in this adaptation, he and Chris barely have any kind of interactions that made their friendship feel close and genuine, and the people that Chris have interacted more with are Sonic's friends and even his own family and human friends. Which makes Sonic being described as the best friend Chris ever had feel like an Informed Attribute.
  • Sonic having a Superpowered Evil Side could have led to an interesting episode (or even a mini arc is done correctly) about Sonic trying to control this strange new transformation, bringing Sonic back into the spotlight. Unfortunately, Eggman snapped him out of it and it's never explored again.
  • After discovering that Cosmo was an unwitting Metarex spy, there could have been an arc about the struggles of keeping her on the team despite said handicap, which would also have given Shadow's actions in the previous episode some moral justification. Unfortunately, this revelation is immediately followed up by the crew learning the Metarex's backstory and then heading right into the final battle, making the ethical conflict moot.
  • The series' ending sets up the idea of the battle between Sonic and Eggman continuing without Chris, who leaves their universe and returns to his own. Given how unpopular Chris is, the idea of the show going on without him and keeping it focused on the game characters is a promising one, but since it's the final episode we never get to see such events.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic:
  • Chris' parents, Nelson and Lindsay Thorndyke. The anime attempts to paint them in the wrong for their neglective parenting towards Chris. However, throughout their screen time, they are shown to be rather kind people who care very deeply about Chris and would drop anything they're working on whenever they realized that he's in danger. In fact, the reason why they became so busy with their careers in the first place was because they wanted to give Chris everything he ever needed and wanted, making their negligence towards Chris unintentional. They instead just come off as rather Innocently Insensitive for their actions instead of uncaring jerks.
  • Sonic can come across as this in "Cruise Blues". While his methods in trying to get off are definitely questionable at best, considering he is being forced to board a cruise ship despite clearly not wanting to do so due to his fear of water, it's not difficult to feel a little bad for him and see the others as being unsympathetic jerks, even though he is meant to be the one in the wrong for complaining and not liking the cruise.
  • Knuckles is supposed to be The Chew Toy, but the sheer mean-spiritedness of his suffering—especially with how he's belittled, made fun of, treated as an idiot and his friends using his Master Emerald behind his back in Season 3—makes him seem more like The Woobie.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The entire crew of the Blue Typhoon come off as this in Season 3, as they steal the Master Emerald on Angel Island to use as fuel for the vessel. While the galaxy holds far more importance than a single floating island that's already on death row, Knuckles still has every right to be angry that his friends flat-out stole from him. Knuckles is known to be quite affable and willing to break the rules when the need arises; if they asked before they stole it, he might have been more than likely would've complied. Instead, they stole an all-powerful source of energy that he dedicates his life to protecting and then not only didn't apologize or even tell him about it, but treat him as if he's the one at fault for being angry about it when it's the other way around. There's even a scene where Amy, Cosmo, and even Cream all even physically attacked him and Sonic just watches with a damn smile on his face! Played for Laughs or otherwise, that is really not cool!
  • For a dub-induced version of this, we have the events of episode 74. After Cosmo turns out to have been a sleeper agent all along, Knuckles, Tails and Chris argue over the possibility of removing the tracking device that allowed the Metarex to see and hear everything Cosmo, well, saw and heard - unfortunately, as it turns out, doing so would render Cosmo blind and deaf for the rest of her life. In the original, Knuckles insists that there must be another way to remove or at least disable the tracking device without harming Cosmo, but in the 4Kids dub, he completely forgoes Cosmo's safety and still insists on removal of the device... Even if it meant rendering Cosmo unable to see and hear ever again.
  • Most of Chris Thorndyke's sympathetic moments are this in the eyes of fans.
    • Pretty much no one has ever sympathized with Chris over being a Lonely Rich Kid caused by the absences of his parents. While he's meant to be painted as such, fans don't really buy it due to him always being shown to have a average social life while having good relationships with his friends and family such as his grandpa. And the anime didn't show just how lonely Chris' life was before he met Sonic aside from a brief clip fifty episodes in. All of which makes Chris look like an Informed Loner who doesn't really seem to have the kind of life that would make him such a needy and clingy person.
    • Chris regarding his relationship with his parents. While his parents haven't always been the best, they show many times that they do love and care for Chris and would drop everything just to help Chris when he is in trouble or having huge emotional problems. In fact, they had no problem admitting to their errors upon being called out and attempted to make it up to Chris by spending more time with him. Despite this, Chris still acts as though they're selfish jerks who care more about their jobs than they care about him. Even Cream calls him out on his attitude towards Lindsey one time because she saw Chris' mother crying about how she felt she was a bad mother.
    • Chris teleporting himself to Sonic's world in the third season is supposed to be seen as Chris making a selfless attempt to go help Sonic when he realized he and his friends were in huge danger using the teleporter he doesn't know that is safe. However, despite being unclear if the teleporter works or not, he was perfectly okay with risking his life to see Sonic again while leaving his friends and family in fear and worry that the teleporter may not have worked and ended up killing him, or that he made it to Sonic's world but they don't know how to bring him back and worry that he'll be trapped there forever. Not to mention the possibility of his actions potentially jeopardizing time itself again.
  • Shadow in episode 73 tries to outright murder Cosmo for being an unwitting Meterax spy, which whilst in the episode is treated as a villainous action, never leads to any kind of atonement nor proper redemption after the fact. He assists the rest of the characters in the final few episodes but no attention is paid to regretting his actions or giving him a karmic pushback. It's as if he was supposed to be seen as being in the right or at least was meant to be see as only morally grey, or the writers just forgot to give him an arc. The most we get is Sonic calling him out somewhat in Episode 74, but Shadow pays little attention to it and this never leads to any kind of realization. Shadow is meant to be seen as an Anti-Hero/Well-Intentioned Extremist yet he comes across as more of an Anti-Villain that is too violent and ruthless to be sympathised with, since he probably could have explained the situation to the group rather than gone with the murder option. Even more damning towards him is the fact that while the damage had already been done, Cosmo feeding the enemy intel loses its plot-relevance instantly due to the final battle being immediately afterwards, making his side of the argument look even worse.
• Unpopular Popular Character: In-universe, Eggman and Knuckles are both Butt Monkeys intensely jealous of Sonic's popularity. Out universe they have almost as big a fanbase as the latter (though granted this was also before the show made them 'unpopular').
• Values Dissonance:
  • In Episode 10, there's a bit where Cream takes Chuck's advice and gives a Love Confession to one of Eggman's robots, causing it to balk. In Japan, this is just a harmless bit of comedy, whereas overseas a six year old girl being romantically involved with anyone is considered a source of Squick, regardless of the circumstances. The 4Kids version cut the scene short and changed it to Cream politely asking the pitcher to go easy on her, which is one of the few changes agreed to be for the better.
  • Rouge is known for using seduction as a weapon. When she participates in a tournament for a Chaos Emerald, she fights Tails who's stronger than expected. She wins by kissing him and then throwing him out of the ring. In the 2000s, it might sound like a funny scene. In the 2020s, with the advent of the MeToo movement and society's growing aversion to pedophilia, it doesn't sound so funny anymore.
  • In an example of not thinking implications through, the Japanese eye catches reveal that Chris' grandfather Chuck is 55, while his father Nelson is 43. This means Chuck had his son when he was 12 years old! The 4Kids dub went out of its way to circumvent these implications not just by omitting these eye catches, but by rewriting Chuck as Nelson's older brother making the age gap less bizarre.
• Wangst: Chris in episode 49. Upon hearing that Sonic and his friends must return to home to avoid their worlds being frozen in time, Chris reacts by throwing a tantrum over having to say goodbye to Sonic. While a reaction like that would be understanding for any kid who's grown quite attached to a friend, he spends the majority of the episode whining that everyone is lying to him and states that his only wish is to be with Sonic forever. So much that it was quite cathartic for Eggman to call him out on it.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: The show can get pretty violent at times, including a scene where Chris gets stabbed by Black Narcissus, not to mention the third season's rather dark tone in general. Then again, it's anime.
• The Woobie:
  • Cosmo might just be one of the most woobified characters throughout the whole Sonic franchise. Not only did the poor girl see her whole family get killed in front of her, but when she learns that she was an unwilling spy for the Metarex all along , she experiences a full-on Heroic BSoD - which even continues throughout the entirety of her portion in Episode 74 and brings her to the point of contemplating going on an outright Suicide Mission.
  • Tails becomes this in the season finale: having to kill the girl he loves (the above-mentioned Cosmo) to save the universe understandably wrecks the poor little fox. Damn... Sonic has a hard time to cheer him up.
  • Shadow. During the Sonic Adventure 2 adaption, he was motivated by Maria’s death, and cried when remembering her true wish, and in the Japanese version right after Molly died, it looked like he was trying really hard not to cry.
• Woolseyism:
  • Some find the English dub's pun-riddled dialog to have a So Bad, It's Good quality, and the Mickey Mousing to have a debatable quality over the Japanese edit's more limited and occasionally out of sync soundtrack (the decision to omit occasional tracks taken from the games however was not taken well).
  • Also the dub surprisingly was slightly less Anvilicious about the show's occasional Broken Aesops (eg. the dub alters a conversation in Episode 56 about how it's essentially okay for Knuckles to be duped if it's by the heroes rather than Eggman into a sympathetic insight by Cosmo over Knuckles' forgiveness to a fault).
  • One of the English dub's most welcomed changes was downplaying Chris' self-centered and immature moments, making his Nice Guy and selfless traits stand out more compared to the Japanese version.
    • Particularly near the end of episode 51 in the dub where Chris decided to let Sonic go back to his world, in which he gives Sonic a sincere apology for stopping him from going back, which not only showed that he was remorseful for keeping Sonic from going back to his world but also remorseful for almost freezing time in the process. While in the Japanese version even though he is remorseful for keeping Sonic in his world, Chris doesn't really give Sonic an apology and more of a self-centered confession that he can't be free like Sonic given his life as a Lonely Rich Kid, and time being frozen is not brought up in that confession which gives the impression that Chris was not remorseful for almost destroying time.
  • Plenty of fans have noted that the show's attempt to Bowdlerize Maria's death in Episode 37 of the dub, i.e. cutting out Mr. Smith firing his gun at Maria in particular, actually made it feel more artistically emotional, giving off a Show, Don't Tell feeling to it while still making it very clear what happened, especially with the hard cut to the present and Mr. Smith's remorse from the incident. Even with a notice from Mr. Smith that "they took her away", some fans have interpreted it as less of a typical 4Kids styled Never Say "Die" censorship and more of the idea of it being Deadly Euphemism for taking away her body.

Comic Book

• Ass Pull: Much like the anime, the comic series similarly had to wrap things up rather hastily due to its cancellation in favor of Sonic Universe, leading to a somewhat clunky crossover with the current arc in the mainstream series.
• Crazy Is Cool: Dr. Eggman, especially after he takes up the title of EL GRAN GORDO! He even gives Sonic a good fight toe to toe.
• Growing the Beard: The comics' stories were fun at early stages, but essentially just scaled down stories in the style of the early episodes of the anime. Later on, the creative team from the Archie comics gave more input, leading to more innovative stories, impressive story art and Character Development concerning one egg shaped doctor.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Issue 20 revolves around Sam Speed receiving a car that transforms into a giant robot. Ten years later, IDW Publishing, the company that does the Transformers comics, received the comic rights for the Sonic series.
  • In Issue 25, Sonic facing his evil multi-colored clones created by Dr. Kai Narasu with the perfect one resembled his classic design. 2 different Sonics meet each other, huh? Sounds familiar?
  • Sonic and Eggman doing a "Freaky Friday" Flip was reused for an episode of Sonic Boom.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Eggman, already a mildly sympathetic Butt-Monkey in the anime, becomes a full on case due to the comic's Character Development. He's still his usual egotistical Card-Carrying Villain self, but he has a far more sincere temptation into legitimacy in the form of El Gran Gordo, coming to enjoy the popularity and being beloved for once.
  • Surprisingly, the comic turns Dr. Kai Narasu, a one-time character from the anime's second episode, into this. Arrogant and unethic biologist he may be, but after he became a laughing stock, lost his credibility and job just for assuming Sonic was a robot and is a Butt-Monkey even within his bad guy unit of fellow No Respect Guys, you can't help but feel at least a bit sorry for him.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Chris is much, much more tolerable in the comics than he was in the anime. Not only is he used far more sparingly, he acts more like a kid without being a brat, has some surprisingly decent jokes written involving him, and is far less possessive of Sonic than he is in the anime.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Late into the series, a Sonic hate group by the name of S.O.N.I.C.X. formed as an alternate antagonist to Eggman. As a bonus, they consisted entirely of underused human characters from the anime who all were left with a bone to pick with Sonic, giving them a shot at A Day in the Limelight. Due to the comic being Cut Short, they only got a role in a handful of stories.
  • Despite the attempts to make Chris more manageable and likeable (see above), some fans thought that the comics made him too Out of Focus to really capitalise on it, usually not being that involved in plots even when he appears, thus still feeling pointless.

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