I haven't played any of the Sonic Boom video games, but I tried twenty minutes of the demo for Rise of Lyric for the WII U and enjoyed the gameplay well enough, and might have bought it if I hadn't subsequently discovered that the plotline kind of... stunk. (A large contributing factor to not getting it was discovering that Shadow had a role that lasted all of two minutes and felt very "he's here just because he's popular.")
My opinions on Shattered Crystal (for the 3DS) are a little kinder, and I found myself legitimately invested in Shadow's role in the game when I pulled up the cutscenes on Youtube. But, I definitely wasn't spending 30 dollars on a game that sidelined Amy and treated Knuckles... in the way they did. I'll get to that bone in the minute.
Y'see, I'm not here to talk about the Sonic Boom video games. I'm here to talk about the TV series.
The TV series, actually, isn't so bad. Out of 52 episodes I watched at least 30 and enjoyed somewhere around 20 of those. I'm not a diehard Sonic fan, but, for the most part, I liked the show. It's got some pretty good humor in general, decent animation, and some genuinely interesting plotlines in a good portion of the episodes. My favorite episodes are The Meteor, Hedgehog Day, the Curse of Buddy Buddy Temple, and Cowbot.
It's also got some absolute gems of moments, like this one, and my favorite. (Unfortunately, I couldn't embed my favorite one.) There's also, uh, this:
My biggest complaint about the series (and, not just the TV series, the video games do this, too) is how Knuckles' defining trait is "dumb" and it's played into some really gross jokes on occasion. The whole "one person says something stupid while their Cynical Friend looks directly at the camera and/or makes fun of them for it" is my least favorite style of humor. They treat Sticks much in this way, too, and it gets real old real fast.
Though, actually, I'm not even sure this could be called my biggest complaint.
It's one of my least favorite things about the show, for sure, but my biggest beef with the show is probably episode 52, It Takes a Village to Defeat a Hedgehog.
So I wait two months, and finally it's November 14th, and the episode is out in English, and I watch it, and....
It sucks.
It really sucks.
I don't think I've ever watched an episode of Sonic Boom that was as painful as this one. All of the other episodes were fairly decent, but then the episode with everyone's favorite character comes out and it's, somehow, the worst one they've ever written.
Eggman introduces him as "What do you mean who's this!?! IT'S ONLY SHADOW THE HEDGEHOG, THE SECOND MOST POPULAR CHARACTER IN THE ENTIRE FRANCHISE!!"
Honestly, that got a good chuckle out of me. Because, I was just like "Haha, yeah, that's literally how every fan is going to react to him, and they're poking fun, that's funny." And that on it's own was alright. But, from there, things got... bad.
The entire plot of the episode is "Eggman aggressively fanboys over Shadow and messes up Shadow's plans, causing Shadow to call him a Literal Disgrace To All Evil." (With, by the way, the worst voice acting he's ever had.)
I hate this because Shadow's played as Actually Evil the whole time, which he's... not? He never has been? And it wasn't even, like, well-written. He felt stiff and and wrong, which maybe shouldn't be too surprising from a show that chooses two base traits for each character, and Shadow got Evil and Better-Than-You as his, but it still sucked. It really sucked.
Also his "cool" and "better than you" attitude is entirely played as a joke, and when every other Sonic, uh, anything has tried to legitimately present him as Cool, it's a little jarring. He's not the kind of Cool that makes 12-year-olds go "YEAH HE'S SO FREAKING AWESOME" he's-- He's not even cool. They don't even try to play him as cool. They spend the whole episode making a gag centered around the fact he thinks he's better than Eggman.
He says like, five things, attacks Sonic for no reason (besides, uh "your inability to assemble furniture is a disgrace to hedgehog-kind"), and then he leaves, swearing to be back, though I don't have high hopes for when he does, and, may never watch the series again because of this episode.
I was really really excited to Shadow in the Sonic Boom cartoon, but his episode was absolutely disappointing, and I don't think I've ever been as disappointed as I was when I finished this as I have been at any other point in my life.
He was also in the episode described as "cool and edgy". Those... those were real words Eggman said. I'm... I'm still cringing.
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think the episode was intentionally written as a slap to a face to fans who doubtlessly begged for Shadow to be included in the TV series? It's incredibly self aware at points (Eggman's "he's only the second most popular character" and "cool and edgy" lines, along with the fact the episode ends with Orbot and Cubot mentioning an online petition, for example), on top of being horrendously bad.
I have no proof I'm right, but the episode does really feel like a tongue-in-cheek: "We didn't want to do this, but here you go, Shadow fans. Hope you're happy." kind of thing. The episode with Metal Sonic (It wasn't me, it was the one-armed hedgehog) felt similar, and considering Shadow's role in the Rise of Lyric video game....
Anyway, I digress.
The episode was bad, really bad, and I'm really disappointed. Do yourself a favor and never watch it.
