Review: Season 2, Episode 18 (Finale)

I wrote this episode backwards. Could you tell? As explained in the last review, a lot of the ideas going into this finale were nebulous and unclear until writing time came close. But that does not apply to the final 5000 words of the episode. The personal drama of the scenes surrounding Cyber Sonic’s operation was structured almost word for word as the earliest surviving narrative ever conceived of for the Cyber Sonic arc. Before Season 2 was even slotted, I wasn’t exactly sure how the Cyber Sonic idea would be brought into the story, but I was certain that this was exactly how it would end. Needless to say, I was very particular about how it needed to go. And I knew it would be long. Quite probably the longest “conclusion” that any episode in this story will ever have, save, perhaps, for the Series Finale. I decided as I was wrapping up part one that I had no choice but to write the ending first, see how long it took, and then fit the first half of the episode into whatever space was left. I predicted 3 to 4 thousand words, and it ended up at 5. In other words, it’s a good thing I did. As it is, this is another record setter in the top three of longest episodes yet, and it would’ve broken number one for sure if I’d just estimated based on my original assumption. The unfortunate result, of course, is a disjointed episode where the second half doesn’t have much to do with the first, but that was unavoidable from the episode’s inception. As important as the ending was, it doesn’t exactly have the action, or the sheer length, necessary to fill an episode on its own. It couldn’t be delayed into next season, where it would be completely irrelevant. But the scenes were absolutely necessary, and this is where they had to go.

The one thing I did before writing the ending was the opening scene, just because it was continuing on from the cliffhanger of part one, and I was in the mood to round that out. Writing for the Sergeant in this episode was actually quite interesting, and a bit refreshing. Where the Sonic cast generally fight like anime characters, putting lots of power into every move, where fights are typically decided when a single decisive blow is landed, the Sergeant was written to fight much more like an action hero, with movements that are skillful and precise, taking advantage of the shape and weight of the bodies involved to stun or land lesser blows that add up over time. Pitting one against the other, even if for only a brief bout in the timestream, made for a very enjoyable fight scene to write.

Fight scenes with Ayanna were much harder, despite being under similar circumstances. She couldn’t be too strong, because I wanted it to be clear that the Master Sergeant was still well above her skill level. Her fighting style needed to be very much like Johnny’s to draw parallels between them, yet she really needed to be stronger than him to hold her own against multiple opponents—yet she still needed to “lose” in the end. It proved a bit too much to juggle, and I think she came off as too weak in the end. Room to grow, I guess. The real problem with coming off as too weak was Zed. He was meant to be just as threatening if not more than Omega, but just wasn’t given the room to show it. It doesn’t help that Bruno made a joke out of him in the only fight scene he got. Honestly though, I was just trying to wrap up that scene as quickly as possible. I was keenly aware by that point that every word written was a word effectively cutting into the true final fight with the Cyber Overlord.

That final fight was really something else. Definitely the grandest scale fight scene I’ve ever written, between the relative power of the combatants and the sheer number of characters involved. It was hectic and it was long and yet it was over a little too quickly—but I think I like it that way. Unlike last season where the action sequences both against Discord and aboard the Death Egg were more obligatory than anything else, this one properly felt like the true emotional culmination of everything that’s happened this season. Obviously, there were lots of different intentions that went into making that fight the way it was. It was brought to my attention pretty early on in the season that all the little hints references I was making towards the Neo Metal Sonic’s power would lead to a lot of disappointment if there wasn’t a Metal Overlord fight in the end. SCOPE was introduced in this season more for the long game than for any immediate concerns, but it was similarly a setup for disappointment if they played such a big role during the season and then were left forgotten in the finale. Pitting these two against each other was a quick and fun idea. Amy’s role in the fight existed for the purpose of me wanting to properly use the full potential of the Time Stones, since the extent of their power is pretty much ignored in their only canon appearance. There was consideration given to having the Time Stones used by either Tails or Omega instead, since they’ve effectively become the main characters of the season. I decided in the end that Tails got his due in part 1 and in the epilogue of this episode, while Omega would be better served as a character by getting a more personal story here. Amy was left as the obligatory option, given that this is a Sonic CD themed season and she’s hardly gotten any focus at all for it.

Rewinding back to Omega, not giving him the Time Stones meant having to get very particular about how his role in the battle would go. In order for his character arc this season to be satisfying, he would (1) need to accomplish something legitimate from joining Sonic that couldn’t have been done if he hadn’t, and (2) end it all with some kind of proper, not so one-sided rivalry. Ideally, he should also learn something about his need for a rival along the way. Turning him into the leader of the Mecha Sonic Army was the way to solve those issues. As seems to be consistently happening to his assigned rivals, the line between rival and friend has once again been blurred for him. For the first time, it seems, he truly accepted these rivals-turned-friends as legitimate contributors to his own desires. He was once distraught that he could not defeat Metal Overlord—and later, even ordinary Metal Sonic—on his own. Now, facing the Cyber Overlord head-to-head, his concern is not what he accomplishes, but what they all accomplish together. It took five some odd years from Heroes, but he finally learned the true meaning of teamwork. And as for having a proper rival in the end, he and Zed seem to have something going, though that story will have to wait. Tails, on the other hand, definitely drew the short straw in this fight. It seems kind of silly, given all that happened in this season, that Tails would even be willing to engage the Symbolon when fighting the Cyber Overlord is also an option. My explanation is that he’s just so ready to be done with it at this point, that he accepted whatever orders he was given. And of course, he wouldn’t have synergized very well with Omega and the Mechas, which is why the teams got split the way they did in the first place. So, Tails got deferred to ha ha funny Thunder Shoot reference, and that was pretty much his only involvement in the fight.

The original plan was to have this be a proper three-way fight, where each side is trying to fight both of the others at any given time, but I quickly realized that would be much too complicated for me to handle. So I settled for getting in some good robo-kaiju action before breaking them off separately.

Possibly the biggest flaw in the logic of this whole thing is that it’s hard to imagine an oversized Diablon being on the same power level as Metal Overlord. In part, this was meant to be an extension of what we had seen from the Sergeant already. Maybe the power levels weren’t equal at all, but the Sergeant was relying on skill and ability, not on pure power. Another flaw is that the fight dragged on an awfully long time just to be ended by an event that could hypothetically have happened right from the beginning. There wasn’t much time to touch on this as it was happening, but theoretically, the implication is that the Little Planet made a big sacrifice to end that battle. The Times Stones were described as the Planet’s beating heart, and only after that do we find out that the planet itself has sentience. A sentient creature’s heart exploding is probably a big deal.

And of course, with this arc done, I can’t help but dwell angrily on the fact that, canonically, as far as we know, the Little Planet should still be trapped by the Death Egg Mk. II. Maybe I should’ve done that Sonic 4 episode for the anniversary after all. Regardless, maybe I’ll find a way to touch on that topic sooner or later…

Here’s one last interesting story about this episode and the season as a whole. In large part, this was a play on a Star Trek Voyager episode by the name of “Tuvix”. Tuvix was a character-of-the-week created by a transporter accident, a complete fusion of the two main cast members Tuvok and Neelix. The episode takes an intense turn in the end when a method is found to split Tuvix back into Tuvok and Neelix, only for Tuvix to declare that he wants to live. In the end, he is forced to split against his will, and everyone looks the other way as it happens. I have a lot of gripes with that episode, and I understand that I’m not alone in that sentiment. In many ways, this season was built to correct what I saw as the biggest flaws of that episode:
1. The episode had no lead-up and no consequences. Theoretically, this is, at minimum, a life-changing event for the two characters, yet it is never mentioned again for the duration of the series. The Cyber Sonic arc was designed to have far more lasting consequences, despite coming to a similar end.
2. We, as an audience, are expected to side with Tuvix, but are not given good enough reason to do so. Numerically, we are getting back 2 lives by sacrificing 1. Emotionally, we care about the two characters we would be getting back, but are given no time at all to care about Tuvix. Tactically, the starship Voyager is in a very desperate spot, and Tuvix, while being shown to be very effective at filling the roles of either Tuvok or Neelix, is shown failing to be able to do both at once. For Cyber Sonic, I was very careful to introduce him slowly and steadily, hopefully getting the audience to root for him as an underdog and as a theoretically good person who goes through a lot of his own personal hardships. I was careful to establish the ethical debate in a less clear-cut way, so that the emotional choice and the numerical choice are in conflict. And of course, I was careful to make sure that a tactical argument was made that puts Sonic at no clear cut advantage over Cyber.
3. The first half of the Tuvix episode was played off as a comedy, which led to complete tonal whiplash, and made it much more difficult to think of Tuvix as a real person, rather than a walking joke. Cyber Sonic, on the other hand, was built to make it very clear how serious of a situation this is.
With all of these factors together, my hope is that the narrative came out far stronger. There’s a real debate, not just a hypothetical one. It would absolutely be reasonable for some, if not many audience members to hope that a way is found for Cyber Sonic to live. That was meant to be seen as a very real possibility, right up until the moment that Tails defies orders.

I feel like I had plenty more to say about this episode, but it’s all starting to escape me now. So that means we’re moving on to the trivia!

• This episode features the same locations seen in part one.
• Sonic Heroes quotes, both in terms of script and music, were littered throughout the episode. See if you can catch them all!
• When the Sergeant uses a Time Stone, he must speak into the stone in order to activate it. Conversely, Amy does not speak the words, and her activation of the stones triggers the same mysterious voice heard when passing a time travel signpost in Sonic CD. This implies both a closer connection to the Stones/Planet and a higher power level at having all of them.
  • Whenever the Time Stones are used, a sparkling effect is produced which matches the particles that follow Sonic in CD as he is preparing to travel through time.
• The Sergeant defeats Mecha Sonic by dislodging its skull to expose the eye inside. This strange blueprint is a little-known fact about Mecha Sonic, technically seen in-game (the skull is removed to expose the eye whenever he charges on the Master Emerald), but very difficult to interpret from the few pixels available. This reddit post explains it simply enough.
• For the first time in this episode, an explanation of the Time Stones is given which explicitly differentiates them from the Temporal Sapphires. Sonic explains that the Time Stones very specifically control the nonlinear time present on the Little Planet, and not the universal time controlled by the Sapphires.
  • When the Temporal Sapphires were created, I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to call CD canon. I was so naïve…
• On being commended for his work, Zed’s first spoken word is a gleeful “Kill.” This is a reference to the same word spoken by Omega in Sonic Heroes whenever receiving a high point bonus.
  • Having recently begun replaying Heroes in the hopes of getting all A Ranks and unlocking Super Hard Mode, I joked with my brother early on that I needed to use that line at some point. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I said that, but it worked out well.
• A question I asked myself when reviewing the ending of Sonic Heroes. Does Neo Metal Sonic have lightning powers? He appears to send a bolt of lightning up into the sky for his transformation, which would imply so. The Lost Labyrinth Treasure and the power it grants Metal Sonic also seems to have an electric effect to it, another point in favor. But I just…wasn’t sure. Something about that idea seemed off. So I left it vague in this episode. It could be that Sonic caused the bolt of lightning that struck the palace, or it could be him intentionally using himself as a lightning rod for the semi-natural storm that was already brewing.
• Symbolon is a Greek word meaning “to come together,” and it is considered the opposite of Diabolon in Catholic religion.
• The decision to disrupt the Little Planet’s temporal orbit and destroy the Time Stones was made for the simple purpose of answering the question “Why does no one go after this power next year? Or the year after?” And so on. No one knows when or if the Little Planet will be back, so there’s not much purpose in planning for it.
  • What does this mean for the fate of The Sergeant and the Mecha Sonics? It’s a mystery for now…

Not a lot of trivia this time either. I guess I don’t need to get by on references and metacommentary when I have a real story to tell. Of course, there’s plenty more to talk about in terms of plot points that were set up for next season and elsewhere, but those will just have to wait. In the meantime, have an announcement! As hinted at in the footnote of the finale, a special episode is coming soon, to tie in with…a brand new Chaos Project spinoff series, guest written by the amazing Yuni Oha! Stay tuned for more information!

-And until then, remember to reach for the other side of the rainbow!

Review: Season 2, Episode 16 (Anniversary Special)

Truth be told, the anniversary snuck up on me rather unexpectedly. It’s not that I didn’t leave myself enough time to prepare, simply that I hadn’t yet concocted an idea for an episode that was truly worthy of the anniversary title, celebrating both Sonic’s history and that of The Chaos Project. At least, not one that could be reasonably fit into the series where we are right now. That left me with pretty limited options. I contemplated an episode that would take place entirely in Classic Sonic’s world, eliminating any worries about the current context of the series. But Classic Sonic as an anniversary entity is a little cliched, and I couldn’t really come up with any good ideas for that anyways. That train of thought lead me to consider something a little more unique, a complete telling of the lost Sonic 4 Episode III. I liked the thought, but I wasn’t sure that I could reasonably get it to fill an entire episode without making it completely unlike its predecessors, and either way, it’s a bit of an odd choice for an anniversary celebration. I was bouncing around between those two ideas for a while, before I began wondering if I should just skip the anniversary altogether. But as the date grew closer, I began to realize that it would fall right around the time that I would ordinarily be writing my regularly scheduled pre-finale comedy episode. There was actually a completely different episode idea planned to fill this slot, but I pulled out another idea I had on reserve to take its place. The idea was simple. A propaganda documentary for the Eggman Empire, poorly put together by Orbot and Cubot. It was intended to take inspiration from some legendary comedy episodes from my favorite cartoons, including Spongebob’s “Krusty Krab Training Video,” Avatar’s “Ember Island Players,” and the somewhat more recent “Rising Tides / Crashing Skies” from Steven Universe. An episode that covers and makes fun of Sonic’s entire history. I realized that it was perfect for the anniversary slot, even if it would also count towards the standard season length, unlike a typical special.

Having the idea was one thing. Writing it was a whole other issue. Comedy has never been my strong suit, and keeping fresh under this one constrictive theme for an entire episode was challenging. But then I got to writing, and the ideas kept on flowing. Soon enough, the episode was halfway done, and I’d only just made it out of the Classic era. I decided at that point that I’d only go as far as Colors—for the Ultimate relevance—before skipping ahead to The Chaos Project. Even that took longer than I was expecting, and the segment on The Chaos Project had to be cut very short. It’s kind of sad, seeing as this was supposed to be a celebration of our 5th anniversary as well as Sonic’s 30th, but in the end, I think the episode was better for it. This didn’t need to turn into a recap episode. And I still got the chance to flaunt myself around a little bit, while doing some foreshadowing to the future.

Part of the point of this whole thing was to create a product that would actually make for really respectable propaganda, if it didn’t have such poor production value. There were some honestly legitimate arguments made in Eggman’s favor, and some twists on the truth so minor that they could be easily missed by someone who doesn’t know the details. For the most part, a fairly accurate representation of Sonic history was given, just from the perspective of Eggman instead of Sonic. As I wrote, I was surprised to find how few accommodations I actually had to make for that. As pretty much the walking definition of “villain because evil,” I didn’t expect it to be so easy to portray him as the hero.

In hindsight, I can see how I might’ve crossed a line with this episode, as a reviewer kindly pointed out once the episode was published. The attempts at comedy in the scripts of recent Sonic games have averaged around bland and cringey at best, and one of the reasons I’m writing this story in the first place is to fight back against this idea of using bad comedy as a substitute for real story content. I imagine that most of my regular readers are probably in general agreement with that, and so, putting out an episode like this that channels the Meta Era of Sonic writing so heavily could easily be a turn off to what should be a serious story. My goal in writing the episode was certainly to be a bit less Modern Sonic and a bit more Boom Sonic in style, hence the inclusion of Dave the Intern and a plethora of Boom references. Personally, I always found Boom to be absolutely hilarious where most of the games have fallen flat, and that’s probably why I didn’t consider how tactless this episode really was. Whether it was funny or not, I chose to spend Sonic’s anniversary by bashing him and defaming him in every way possible, something that the fanbase already does more than enough of. Sonic deserves better, and some part of me definitely regrets this decision. But at the same time, that was part of the joke. Eggman was a reflection of the Sonic fanbase, finding every excuse to hate him for doing nothing wrong. (Maybe nothing is an understatement, and that was also part of the joke.) And regardless, I spend every day of every year celebrating the best of Sonic’s history just by writing this story. I chose to use this anniversary to celebrate the rest. I wanted to show that I love Sonic as he is, not just the drama and the action, but the memes as well.

Alright, let’s get into the specifics. I’m obviously not going to explain all my jokes here, but there are a couple of things worth pointing out. Dave the Intern, for instance. Now that Lyric’s already a canon character, I had no problem with pulling in another Boom character for the jokes. In fact, the original episode that was planned to fill this slot also would have featured a Boom character for very different reasons. Anyways, it’s safe to assume that this is the canon-world version of Dave, not actually the same character from Boom. Although,  Eggman could be experimenting with multiversal shenanigans for all we know. I guess I should say “was” the canon-world version, because he’s probably dead now. Unless Tails Doll actually did save him. The world may never know…

Showing Eggman’s origin was a bit of a surprise. I wasn’t planning on discussing most of that information until considerably later. But keep it all in mind. It may be more important than you realize.

The “Inside the mind of the mad Doctor” segments were obviously a bit of a stand out in the episode. They were meant to be a complete tonal shift, thoroughly serious and seemingly high-budget, with no jokes to be seen. Technically, that contrast is a joke in and of itself, but I can see in hindsight how it might have messed up the flow and pacing a bit too much. Regardless, just like last season’s comedy episode, I wanted to make sure that it was still here for a reason, and integrating the Metal Sonics was an important part of that. The change in tone was supposed to help draw focus, tell the audience to pay attention because this part is actually important. The focus on this importance is also why I chose to leave out the joke entries of Shadow Android and RC Sonic from Colors and Lost World.

Speaking of relevance to the season, there was another big lore drop here in the interview with the Sergeant. The Postcursors were revealed just last episode, and now they’re already getting their backstory established. Before this scene was slotted in, that exposition probably would’ve come next episode in part 1 of the finale, but the less I defer to that the better. I at least want it to look a little bit like I’ve been planning ahead… An interesting note about this lore that I only realized after I finished writing it is that I effectively just wrote the backstory of Doctor Who. Race of time travelling beings from another planet have a time war that ends with their annihilation, save for one survivor who carries the weight of the rest with them. This one surviving Postcursor is unlikely to appear in the near future (but don’t count out the possibility for certain), and we’ve been given no reason to assume that they aren’t still around. But by the nature of being a time traveler alone in the universe, they could hypothetically show up any time and for any reason.

I suppose I also ought to explain a little bit of my thought process behind this story. Eggman and the Sergeant covered a lot of it. Someone clearly lived on the Little Planet, yet they were never seen nor mentioned in any of the three games that feature the location. Meanwhile, we have this unexplained Lost Labyrinth treasure which I theorize to be connected to Neo Metal Sonic’s shapeshifting powers. Regardless of my claims, it’s seemingly an ancient magic power source which is perfectly compatible with a futuristic machine, first appearing in the context of a game where the Little Planet is the central focus, a location where past and future are intimately connected. Really, I just put two and two together. Calling this treasure a piece of the power of the universe is certainly a little out there, but the idea in mind was that it turned out to be a sort of data core—a blueprint for all things in the universe, allowing Metal Sonic to transform into such things. The rest was just putting together a simple narrative for how that universal blueprint got from the Postcursors to the Labyrinth.

And now for the trivia!

• The following locations from previous Sonic games were shown and/or mentioned in this episode.
  • Spagonia (Sonic Unleashed, Hub World)
  • Green Hill Zone (Sonic 1)
  • Scrap Brain Zone (Sonic 1)
  • Emerald Hill Zone (Sonic 2)
  • Death Egg Zone (Sonic 2)
  • Angel Island Zone (Sonic 3)
  • Hidden Palace Zone (Sonic & Knuckles)
  • Stardust Speedway Zone (Sonic CD)
  • Station Square (Sonic Adventure, Adventure Field)
  • Mystic Ruins (Sonic Adventure, Adventure Field)
  • City Escape (SA2)
  • Iron Gate (SA2)
  • The ARK
  • Eggmanland (Sonic Unleashed)
  • Eggman’s Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park (Tropical Resort, Sweet Mountain, Aquarium Park, Asteroid Coaster, and Planet Wisp, Sonic Colors)
• This episode’s title “Hate That Hedgehog,” is a reference to a catchphrase of Dr. Robotnik in The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog Cartoon. There’s no extra pun here, the title is supposed to say all that needs to be said.
  • This episode took several other bits of inspiration from that show, including the Eggman Sez segment, playing off of Sonic Sez, and the reference to Mobius City, a location from the show.
• This episode features the debut appearances of Dave the Intern from Sonic Boom and Professor Pickle from Sonic Unleashed.
• Early in the episode, a photograph is shown of Eggman in pajamas. This is a reference to the earliest concept art of the character, before he was even planned to be a Sonic character. Shown below.
  
• Eggman claims that Robo Sonic was destroyed in an unfortunate lab accident. This most like refers to the battle against Zero and Amy seen in S0 E4. However, the events of those episodes were rewritten at the end of the arc, so we know longer know the exact circumstances being described.
  • Eggman also discusses how Robo Sonic was specifically designed to harness Chaos energy in a way that other Sonic robots were not. This is intended to explain how it is able to use Time Control in that same episode.
• When Eggman refers to the popular mustached hero look from the video games, he seems to be referring to Mario (and his penchant for being kissed by princesses). This is actually rather strange, as Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games have already been implied to be canon with a reference to the “Interdimensional Olympics” in S1 E6 Lost Chronicles.
• The Archival Footage of Eggman’s Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park is a reimagining of a real (and really bad) trailer for the original Sonic Colors from the good old Nintendo Channel app for the Wii. The trailer featured the brochure with Sweet Mountain playing in the background. Strangely, the brochure showed five locations chained to the center, except one of them was Tropical Resort which is supposed to be the center, and then three of them were concealed by question marks, even though there are four other locations, and all of them are showcased over the course of the trailer. I’m not sure what exactly they were trying to hide there. Just hiding how poorly made the trailer is, I guess. I decided to amp up the trailer in a way that they really should’ve done to begin with. Eggman’s P.A. announcements are absolutely the best thing to come out of Sonic Colors, and there’s no reason that they shouldn’t have been used to voice over the trailers.
  • This scene also featured some cheeky references to the upcoming Colors Ultimate remaster, quickly summing up all of my personal gripes with it.
• Eggman’s description of The in-universe Chaos Project may not have been particularly comedic, but the joke is that he is also effectively describing the story itself. Not just a story that uses these elements of Sonic lore, but a greater study of the franchise that draws connections between these elements, and uses them to their fullest.
• Orbot and Cubot are a little bit confused by how Blacklight seems to be communicating with them from beyond the grave. Canonically, he is still lying dead in a trash pile, and he just seems to be really good at predicting what they will say how ever many years after his death. But, by the alternative canon of the yearly Blacklight Takeovers here on the website, he, despite being dead in the show, could very well be sneaking himself back onto the set to film a new scene without anyone noticing.

And that’s all for now! Sit tight, as the exciting Season Finale is coming soon! Hope to see you all there!

-And until next time, remember to live and learn every day!

Review: Season 2, Episode 4

I have been waiting for such a long time to write this episode. It wasn’t necessarily my earliest idea, but I knew from the moment I thought of it that it was a story that needed to be told. For the longest time, whenever I tried to think to the future of this series, this was almost always the episode that my thoughts drifted to first. It’s hard to explain exactly why that is. I believe I’ve said before that growth and coming of age is one of the greatest overarching themes of this series, and even in the canon, Tails has long been the representative of that idea. Everyone grows up over time, and in this series, Tails is no exception. Knowing that he would one day, years from now, be grown into a mature adult, I suppose I always saw this episode as a vital transition point. If there will ever be a moment where you can say that Tails grew up, it will be this episode. Sonic has long kept him in a world of black-and-white—we’re the good guys, and we fight the bad guys. But on this day, Tails was pushed into a much greyer world. And, more to the point, it was a reflection of Sonic who gave him that push.

And I suppose this is the part where I talk about Metal Sonic. That big twist at the end…wasn’t necessarily part of the original plan. I suppose I must give credit where credit is due. Usually in this series, I try to make everything my own. When it comes to new ideas and big reveals that were never a part of the original games, I have to dig deep to put the pieces together, and form my own ideas about what does and doesn’t work in the established world of Sonic. It’s rare that I become truly inspired by another person’s theories or headcanons, but this would be one of those instances. When I saw The Sega Scourge’s “Metal Sonic is Sonic, Roboticized” video, I was inspired—not because the theory was particularly convincing, but because it added so much weight and meaning to Metal Sonic’s long history that wasn’t there before. And weight and meaning are exactly the primary factors I consider when writing in such ideas. It’s not enough to have an interesting idea if it doesn’t add anything to the greater context, but this most certainly did. I started wondering immediately if there was a way I could make this admittedly outlandish theory work in my favor. And when I considered what that big reveal would add to this particular episode, I was sold.

Unfortunately, while the story of Tails and Metal Sonic was well planned and put together, the rest was not so much. As often as I thought ahead to this episode, I never muched considered how it could be made any more than one long, slightly boring conversation. A rescue party going after them was obvious of course, but what wasn’t obvious was how to make that relevant. Sonic running off to rescue Tails without any other kind of conflict or moral just wouldn’t have been interesting. At first I thought, with how I’ve been setting up a rivalry between Omega and Metal Sonic, it would be reasonable to have Omega go with him, and I could go through with some of the Metal Sonic-related conflicts I’d been planning in that area, but then I realized…I already had an episode just like that last season. While I enjoy pairing up characters in unusual ways for episodes, I certainly didn’t want to use the same unusual pair a second time when there are so many other pairs waiting to be done. I decided on Espio instead, for fairly obvious reasons, but…there was no conflict there. Both Sonic and Espio would want the same thing, both would be very focused on the task, I wouldn’t be much better off than with Sonic on his own. I decided to compromise and go for both. I thought that I could have the primary friction be between Espio and Omega, since they clash on a more fundamental level than Sonic ever did with Omega, but…that didn’t really go anywhere. They disagreed, and then…that was it. I mean, that conflict could have been taken as a warning sign for what was to come, but it just didn’t add anything to the bulk of the episode. The only other real option would’ve been having them make up and come to a better understanding of one another by the end, which there definitely wasn’t room for with the focus on Tails. It might have been possible without having Sonic awkwardly in the middle, but I was not willing to remove Sonic from the episode when the plot was so personal to him.

There’s one other disappointment of this episode, which you may have noticed. The ending was…not exactly conclusive. What did Metal Sonic do with Omega? I didn’t say. Why did they leave him behind? I didn’t say. What were the repercussions of that decision? I didn’t say. What ever happened to Charmy becoming a doctor? I didn’t say. The problem here is, the answer to each of those questions would’ve required just one more scene tacked onto the end of the episode. As it is, I already felt like I gave up a very good ending by continuing on after the moment that Metal Sonic attacked Omega, but Sonic and Tails talking about what happened was an absolute necessity. As for the rest…most of it will be integrated into the beginning of the next episode, where it will be irrelevant and out of place and distracting from the intended plot. But that’ll still be better than ending this episode five times over.

And now, for some general trivia! (I hope to make this a tradition with future reviews.)

• The following locations from previous Sonic games were featured in this episode:
  • Emerald Hill Zone (Sonic 2)
  • Aquatic Ruin Zone (Sonic 2)
  • Hill Top Zone (Sonic 2)
  • Mystic Cave Zone (Sonic 2) (implied)
  • Lost Labyrinth Zone (Sonic 4) (cameo appearance)
  • Metallic Madness (Sonic CD) (implied)
• Metal Sonic’s memory featuring the Lost Labyrinth was an exact first-person recreation of a cutscene from Sonic 4 Episode Metal.
  • The artifact obtained in this scene was stated to be the source of Metal Sonic’s copy ability and shapeshifting power seen in Sonic Heroes.
    • The actual purpose/history of this artifact has never been officially confirmed. However, in-game text does pose the question, “Just how did Metal Sonic make his comeback after Sonic the Hedgehog CD?” Given that Metal Sonic’s first canon chronological comeback after CD would be in Heroes, this implies a connection between the plots of the two games.
• Both Metal Sonic and Tails frequently refer to the events of Sonic Heroes—particularly, the battle between Team Sonic and Metal Overlord—which took place approximately five years before this episode.
• In describing how he was betrayed by Eggman, Metal Sonic refers to the events of Sonic CD, Sonic 4 Episode Metal, and an unspecified number of Classic Sonic games which take place in between, and feature some form of mechanical Sonic.
  • As there are no such “main series” Sonic games, this must refer to more obscure titles. Sonic Triple Trouble is the most likely candidate, as it has already been Chaos-Project-canonized by the appearance of Fang in Season 1.
• Metal Sonic frequently quotes the phrase, “I am no longer afraid of anything,” originally spoken in the opening moments of the Metal Overlord fight.
  • He quotes himself on several other occasions, including the famous “I am the one true Sonic.”
• This episode marks the first in-universe usage of the name of one of Metal Sonic’s abilities, V. Maximum Overdrive.
  • I have no idea what the “V” stands for. Maybe velocity? Metal Sonic was also shown using the Black Shield, an ability not seen outside of the 2-player mode of Sonic Adventure 2 Battle.
• The episode title “Before I Sleep,” combines with the title of the previous episode, “Miles to Go” (also meant to be a reference to Tails’ given name) to form the line, “Miles to go before I sleep,” a repeated phrase from the Robert Frost poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
  • While this is not a two-part episode, the related titles show that the episodes are meant to be grouped together.
  • The implication of this line is that someone is on a path towards their end (sleep), and has much to do before that time comes.
• This episode marks the first time the Chaotix tent has been shown in an episode written by me. Its original appearance in Season 1, episodes 13 and 14, (“Out of the Shadows” parts 1 and 2) was written by a guest author.
• When attempting to convince Tails, Metal Sonic provides the first ever CP-canon implication of a population size of Sonic’s world, giving the approximation of 10 billion.
  • Given that the real world has a population of about 8 billion, and that Sonic’s Earth typically approximates the very near future of ours, this implies that the number of animoids in Sonic’s world is somewhat less than 2 billion.
  • This number was chosen as one that is large enough to reasonably populate large-scale animoid-majority cities such as Sunset Heights, while still showing that they are vastly outnumbered by humans as implied by most other relevant games.
  • It is also notable that 10 billion is predicted as the maximum stable human population that Earth can support.
• During a conversation with Sonic, Espio refers to himself as Charmy’s guardian. It is not specified whether this title is legal or honorary. Either way, it is a component of their relationship which has not previously been described.
• Metal Sonic suggests that he does not remember Omega, despite having fought him as Metal Madness during the events of Sonic Heroes, as well as several prior encounters while disguised as Eggman.
  • It is possible that Metal Sonic has forgotten that particular detail, or that he was pretending not to care in order to maintain a more menacing image.
• While it is never stated directly, Metal Sonic implies that his head may contain Sonic’s actual organic brain.
  • This is supported by his especially protective actions towards the machinery around his head.
  • A direct confirmation was avoided, partly because I may want to change my mind about that in the future, partly because the image of it might be a bit graphic for children, and partly because I felt the idea might be a bit more powerful if the reader could come up with it themselves.
• This episode marks Espio’s first successful usage of an entirely new chakra-based Ninja Arts technique—the Shadow Sealing, which he was shown failing to do in S1 E15: In Too Deep—opening the way for him to potentially learn many more.
  • Why did I decide to give Espio magic shadow powers? I mean, he can already create a whirlwind using his fingers, so I didn’t think this would be much of a stretch.
  • Regardless, I expect any future technique he learns to be similarly underpowered. It isn’t exactly efficient to spend a minute-long fight scene drawing a seal on the ground and hoping that the enemy stands right in the middle of it without noticing.
  • What do I mean by chakra-based? That’ll be explained in a future episode.

And there we have it. Flawed though it may be, I still love this episode and all of the deep implications it presents. There’s one other interesting note here. This episode was designed with the idea in mind that the reader may have to choose a side. If Sonic is right, then every word Metal Sonic said was a convoluted attempt at psychological warfare, forcing Tails to play into his hand. But if Tails is right, then Metal Sonic is still Sonic at his core, and can be saved. So are you Team Sonic? Or Team Tails? Make your choice.

-And until next time, remember to live and learn every day!