Sonic Prime Review

The iconic blue hedgehog returns to television in the amazing new series, “Sonic Prime”

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Poster by Netflix Media Center

Johnny Chirayil, Social Media Editor

It’s been six years since we’ve last seen Sonic make an appearance in children’s cartoons, which was “Sonic Boom” airing on Cartoon Network from 2014 to 2017. 

Despite this time gap, Sonic has made quite the epic revival throughout 2022. We received a phenomenal sequel to the live-action Sonic movie, a well-received 3D open-world game, and now a new TV series currently airing on Netflix, “Sonic Prime.” 

“Sonic Prime” has some interesting concepts throughout the plot, which involves the use of a multiverse to affect the story. We first begin with Sonic and his friends battling Dr. Eggman inside a cave until they all run into a magical object, the Paradox Prism. The prism allows Sonic to travel across multiple dimensions. 

Once Sonic begins touching the prism, he travels through a strange world, known as the Shatterverse. He remains unconscious at the moment and hears his friends supporting and complimenting him in the background. After that, he travels to a dimension where the atmosphere gets darker and more dreary.

In the new dimension, Dr. Eggman has successfully dominated Green Hill Zone and is now building a new empire, New Yoke City. As Sonic arrives, he notices how the citizens express no emotion. He even runs into his friends, and they also behave differently from their original counterparts. When he meets up with Tails –who goes by Nine since he has seven additional mechanical tails– Nine attacks Sonic due to Sonic being seen as a threat to the new dimension, but Sonic manages to help Nine realize the two of them are friends. Nine is hesitant at first, but he slowly recognizes the compassion he’s been given and teams up with Sonic.

The same applies to all of Sonic’s other friends. Knuckles and Rouge are now military rogues trying to take down Eggman, and Amy’s been robotized and becomes Eggman’s servant. Just like Tails, everyone wasn’t fond of Sonic at first, but they all eventually let him tag along and take down Eggman together. 

Of course, that didn’t really happen as Sonic approached Prism again, leading him to another dimension with a jungle-like atmosphere, along with his friends acting more primal. Like in the previous dimension, everyone started to attack Sonic, and he needed to struggle with how he would bring everyone together. 

From what I’ve learned from the series so far, it seems that every time Sonic travels to a new dimension, he has to work his way to bring all of his friends together. I think these events help Sonic realize that nothing else matters to him more than his friends.

If we take a look at what happened in the first episode, we see that Sonic hasn’t shown much care when his friends needed him the most. He was only focused on defeating Eggman, which caused him to split apart from his friends. As Sonic scourges through each dimension, he has flashbacks of what caused him to separate himself from his home in the first place. That made him realize he should’ve listened to his friends and learned that they’re still one big team trying to focus on the same goal.

Throughout the series, we’re seeing Sonic grow into a more loyal character. Because of that, all of Sonic’s friends from the other dimensions knew they saw good in him, and they were willing to let him help achieve their goals.

As we near the end of the series, Sonic goes into the Shatterverse once again, and he runs into Shadow. Shadow has made some minor appearances throughout the show. He is shown to have an arrogant persona, as he had in the games and other Sonic shows. When Shadow makes his first appearance in the show, he attacks Sonic. He doesn’t do it in a villainous way since he knows Sonic has done something wrong that affected their home dimension. Since then, Shadow hasn’t made an appearance until the season finale.

From there, Shadow mentions to Sonic once again that his reckless actions are what cause their home to be destroyed, and he then approaches him, ending with a simple black screen afterward. 

The series has now ended on a cliffhanger. Who knows what will happen next? Will Sonic continue to travel through more dimensions? Will Sonic and Shadow reach a truce after their fight? Will Sonic reach home in another season? I’m hoping all of this will be revealed soon. 

Overall, I’m quite impressed with what “Sonic Prime” managed to execute. The writing wasn’t too bad, the animations were very vibrant, and all the characters still had their typical personas. The new voice actors did an amazing job. Deven Mack definitely nailed Sonic’s overall character. Not to mention, the famous Irish YouTuber, Jacksepticeye, has made a minor character appearance in episode 7. I’d say this show did a much better job than “Sonic Boom” since it is more focused on action and character development rather than being a plain Saturday morning cartoon. 

I’ll give this show a 9.7/10.