A Review of Sonic Mania Adventures Episode 1

A Foreword:

This is a review of the animated series Sonic Mania Adventures which is available for viewing for FREE on the official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter and on the official Sonic the Hedgehog YouTube channel. Most of this review is an adaptation of a review I had originally posted on Amino on March 30th with additional details that I couldn't get into by typing on a tiny smart phone keyboard. Overall, the review I did on Amino is rather inferior to this one just due to me writing it so quickly and not being able to put much research into it. Regardless: this review is just my opinion and analysis of Sonic Mania Adventures so as long as you can accept that, please enjoy the review!

So here we go~.

Episode one of Sonic Mania Adventures premiered on the Sonic the Hedgehog YouTube and Twitter account on March 30th 2018. It's a 3 minute animated short with bright, beautiful and extremely smooth animation and no voice acting - keeping the (more recent) tradition of Classic Sonic mute. The short (titled "Sonic Returns") moves very fast and is episode one of a planned five episodes, surely capitalizing on the popularity and success of Sonic Mania and the upcoming Sonic Mania Plus - a planned reboot/updated re-release of Sonic Mania with the addition of two more classic characters in the Sonic canon that every long-time fan seems to love: Mighty the Armadillo and Ray the Flying Squirrel.

This first episode just focuses on Sonic and according to the video's description on the StH YouTube channel: this little animated show is supposed to take place at the end of both Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces.

Screenshot of the video description as it is on 4/5/2018

Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces being connected is another bag of worms I'd like to talk about another time (as it is an interesting bag of worms, but the content of which would be too long for this post). But needless to say: this is yet another piece of Sonic media trying to connect tie itself into other Sonic media either to cash in on nostalgia and the success of the games (in the case of Sonic Mania) or ride off of the notoriety or nudge the audience to check out the less popular/well-loved games (in the case of Sonic Forces).

Rant aside: back to reviewing Sonic Mania Adventures

Overall, I must say that as someone who grew up watching older animations like Betty Boop, Popeye and Tom and Jerry, I actually really love the short and I appreciate the fact they kept Classic Sonic mute. Giving him a voice would've ruined the tone it's trying to go for (and both longtime fans, new fans and memelords all know the horrors of giving Classic Sonic a voice). While the short is only 3 minutes long - even shorter than an episode of Hetalia (5-6 minutes long on average) I can tell a lot of effort was put into this little piece of animation from how fluid the animation is, the beautiful colors that are used in each frame and even the backgrounds (while simple) are very nice to look at.

But of course that's just my simple opinion. Let's introduce a little bit of structure to this review:

The Good and Praise Worthy

Clearly, Sonic is the best Disney Princess...
But more importantly how are 3 flicky birds strong
enough to lift him up?

The good and praiseworthy parts of Sonic Mania Adventures are in it's animation and it's simplicity. A bonus point of praise would be the fact that it's a completely silent short that only relies on sound effects from the games which is certainly a nice touch not just for Sonic fans but also those who appreciate the old days of animation where there was little to no voice acting and the animation flowed based on music and sound effects.

I haven't played Sonic Mania myself (and I'm debating on whether or not to hold out for Sonic Mania Plus) but I assume the music used in the short is from that game and the sound effects would be from various Sonic games of the past and present? The music during the end credit sequence is definitely the song used for the opening animation of Sonic Mania, I know that much. Honestly the episode was a bit too short to really appreciate the music and use of sound effects on the first viewing so you may have to go back and watch it two or three more times to notice it.

The fact that they also kept Classic Sonic mute in these shorts is also nice. It fits the cartoony and simple tone these shorts are going for and while the Sonic Twitter does acknowledge and poke fun at memes it, this show doesn't feel like it purposely wants to provide meme material or make constant jokes unlike the cringey Sonic animations of the 90s or the Sonic Boom cartoon we have today (I'll have to talk more about Boom another time). That's another point of praise for this show: it's not trying to deliberately make jokes and memes to try to get our attention unlike a lot of other high energy, fast-talking shows we have on today's cartoons channels today (the main culprits of which are Teen Titans Go! and Spongebob).

To put it simply: cartoony vibe, speeds by while keeping it simple with Classic Sonic (and friends?) along for the ride.

I'm still a relatively new Sonic fan, but from what I've seen I think this is a side of Sonic that a lot of older fans want to see again. So just based on that I know this miniseries is going to do very well and it's got a lot of quality control keeping it focused and grounded unlike the Sonic animations of the past (and video game based cartoons from that era in general - boy are those cringey!)

The Bad/Concerning

When I say "bad", I don't mean the things in this section are strictly awful - hence while I'm calling this section "The Bad/Concerning". This is just episode 1, we don't know what direction the show is going to go in but we do know it's going to be very short. That for example is concerning and has potential to be bad. As I'm going to review this series as it's airing/being released, I can't say anything is inherently "bad" in the normal sense of the word until we have all of the episodes. So for the most part, this section is points of concern to raise flags as to where the show could go wrong/go bad in the normal sense of the word as the series progresses.

First concern: it's short and moves too fast

Clocking it at 3 minutes, the episode feels a bit too short. To some it may feel like a shiny and complete-looking animation test or a preview of something bigger. It's shorter than an episode of Hetalia and while shows with 3-7 minute episodes can definitely work, Sonic Mania Adventures may suffer from the same thing other cartoons that focus on moving fast, talking fast and making jokes really fast may suffer from: it may wear off too quickly or not really stick with the view that much - especially since there's no dialog to give the viewer more material to remember.

In terms of moving fast - it's friggin Sonic, of course it's bound to move fast - but there's a difference between characters moving fast and a show forcing a character to move fast. This short is only 3 minutes long so the story has to be condensed to fit within that allotted time. Other Sonic animations like Sonic X, Sonic SatAM or Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog - while they all varied in tone and the stories they were trying to tell - had much larger slots of time to fill so while there were times where characters were forced to move fast, the shows didn't feel as rushed because we had more material to bide the time and we also had slow moments to accompany the fast moments.

Needless to say animation is very expensive and time consuming to produce. It's a team effort. It's costly. Whether you're a solo indie animator or a cartoon studio, animation is going to take time and while you may want to put out a feature-length saga of animated glory and splendor sometimes you can only put out a short because that's all your budget can afford you. Asking for longer episodes of Sonic Mania Adventures may be impossible. We can hope for a longer episode, but it seems like the series is already done in terms of production - now the episodes are just being released and put online. So it may be too late to ask for something like that, but whose to say fan demand won't drive Sega to invest and plan for more animations?

It would be nice to have a Sonic X-like series again, which is another thing I think a lot of fans want that could be delivered with enough demand and should Sega stay focused and keep the work grounded.

Second concern: will this start feeling like a commercial?

Obviously the show is trying to cash in on Sonic Mania, Sonic Mania Plus and the nostalgia of everyone who grew up on Classic Sonic. With this, the fear of this beautiful little short feeling like an advertisement looms overhead. It's already showing some signs of this by connecting itself to both Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces. Overall the first episode doesn't feel like it's trying to be a commercial but we won't know if it'll have that problem until more episodes are released.

Third Concern: the show is too cartoony

The tone the show is taking is obviously going to turn some people off to the series entirely. The very Tom and Jerry vibes between Classic Sonic and Eggman (and even Boom Sonic and Eggman) have turned people off before. At one point Eggman was a legitimate threat - a mad scientist and engineer who wants to either take over the world by building an empire (whether it's like a country or a Disneyland rip off depends on the canon being used and relied upon). These days Sonic and Eggman/Robotnik are either enemies, allies or these frienemies that don't get up to much. The cast has become something similar to the Mario cast where every character can play a certain role at certain times and are treated more like actors than established characters with established personalities. With the Sonic franchise however we started out with characters with established personalities so now that Sega has begun to treat the cast as multipurpose actors, that does give them more to play around with and experiment with but it does leaves fans confused and turned off to all of these different interpretations of these characters.

Granted, there is always a place for simpler, more cartoony and light-hearted media but there are going to be the Sonic fans who crave a more serious show like Sonic SatAM, Sonic X or the game Forces could've been if they put more time and effort into it.

Fourth concern: Ray the Flying Squirrel and Mighty the Armadillo

While I know nothing about these characters since I'm still a relatively new fan, I know there are those totally hyped that they're going to be in Sonic Mania Plus and that they're well loved in the Archie Sonic Comics. The thing that was holding these characters back from being used in other Sonic media for a very long time was copyright - from my understanding the creator of Mighty left Sega and took the copyright to Might the Armadillo with him. The same may apply to Ray.

This miniseries will definitely garner a lot of love and hate whether or not they appear (because if there's one thing I've learned about the Sonic fandom it's that: you don't mess with characters that are well loved... and just about all of them are well loved...)

If they appear: fans will rejoice because not only are they being acknowledged again and have a chance at becoming more mainstream Sonic characters, but this will also be their first animated debut! That's got to be exciting for a lot of fans. On the flip side there are those that are going to accuse the show of starting to feel like an advertisement or contributing to hype about Sonic Mania Plus, of bringing characters they didn't like or ask for back into the main canon.

If they don't appear: fans will be disappointed because they didn't make an appearance and there will always be the question of which characters Sega considers apart of the Sonic canon. There are those who are going to be confused as to who these characters are. There are those who will feel robbed of new Sonic media with Ray and Mighty as actual characters and not just easter eggs in a game or characters of comics past.

It's one of those situations where it's a lose-lose for Mania Adventures no matter how you slice it.

Since the show is pretty much done production wise and it's going to continue being released, we can't beg them to animate an episode with Ray or Mighty in it but there may be hope in episodes to come for those eager to see these characters again. We just have to wait and watch.

Overall, I look forward to watching more of this miniseries and the future of Sonic getting anime and cartoons. A thing that certainly keeps me in this fandom is just how fascinating the franchise as a whole is for trying to experiment so much and tell so many different stories so I'm eager to see what Sonic Mania Adventures will do differently.

Thank you for reading this blog and stay tuned for more reviews!