Review: Season 3, Episode 3

So this was…a complicated episode to write. Like many recent episodes, it’s a story that I’ve been looking forward to telling for a very long time. But how exactly I would tell it is another issue. In the earliest pre-planning phases, the assumption was that this episode, like S1 E11 Condition Extreme, would derive its drama almost entirely from the medical emergency taking place. Rather than Johnny already being deathly ill, Seraph would have some other reason to be scanning everyone in the Rebellion one by one, and eventually finding that Johnny is the only one in imminent danger. That obviously means that the context of Johnny being treated would’ve been very different, Seraph’s story would already have been at least mostly told, so the two of them would’ve had a lot more alone time together. That probably would’ve been better for the “romance” aspect of this episode, but the way this episode ended was problematic as it was, focusing on storytime for nearly the entire second half. If the story had already been told, any sense of interest left in the plot of the episode would be pretty much gone, and it was clear to me that “oh no Johnny’s sick let’s heal him” would not be enough drama to make up for that. Also of note is that, at this early phase in the planning, heavy consideration was being given to having the Rebellion still split up following the events of Civil War at this point, such that it would take the alien visitor and the potential threats to everyone’s lives to get them all back on speaking terms for the first time after their falling out. In that hypothetical plotline, S3 E2 Agent Black probably wouldn’t have existed at all (some of its elements might have carried back into part 1), this would’ve been episode 2, and all that drama would’ve been what kept this episode going. But, as planning for the Civil War plot reached more detailed phases, I decided that Civil War required a far more direct, cohesive, and wholesome ending. If you can call it that.

The Civil War arc obviously took mega priority over this more random early season episode, so I was left to pick up the pieces here once that was set in stone. Seraph’s origin and her medical role was, as mentioned, planned far in advance, but the circumstances of Shadow/Shadow’s Civil War team/the Rebellion as a whole meeting her for the first time was a little bit more…nebulous. As was what she was generally capable of. I knew I wanted her to attack Shadow on sight, and have her stopped by Johnny stepping in to defend him. That sounded like a two minute scene at best. But, now with the need to add action/drama back into the mix, this felt like the right place to do it. I knew that three things needed to happen here. 1: As our first look at the White Arms, she needed to represent the absolute opposite of the biological everything that the Black Arms are tied to. 2: To give this scene the length, action, and drama that it needed, she needed to not only hold her own, but downright outclass Shadow, at least in his surprised/off-his-game state. 3: To lead into Johnny having a crush on her, her trained fighting skills needed to shine through as much if not more than the power of her technology. So, taking all of this into account, I needed a highly futuristic alien technology that is hypothetically capable of taking down almost any foe, regardless of power level, yet also seamlessly and organically integrates with the user’s action movie–oriented skills. My thoughts went to one place. Samus Aran, Space Warrior and protagonist of Nintendo’s Metroid franchise.

Now, I’ve been a fan of the Metroid series for quite some time, and I’d like to state for the record that this episode’s proximity to the recent release of Metroid Dread is a complete coincidence. The choice to give Seraph a Samus-style power armor was storyboarded out on (virtual) paper in December of last year, 6 months before Dread was announced to exist, and even longer given that I’d had the idea for some time before writing it down. It likely was Dread, however, that reinforced the tone I wanted this set of scenes to have. As the Metroid series has gone on, its protagonist has been portrayed more and more like an action hero, pulling off incredible feats of agility and control, and looking freaking awesome while doing it. Dread has integrated those concepts into gameplay more closely than ever, and Seraph’s fight against the giant snake…well, that’s pretty much what a Dread boss fight looks like.

It would be a stretch to say that I “had to” make Seraph so much like Samus. But given the three requirements I stated above, making something that didn’t come out looking like Samus would’ve been a very difficult feat. Futuristic technology that depends entirely upon a user’s combat skills that would be instantly recognizable to a soldier pretty much mandated some form of power armor. I didn’t have to give that power armor a variable (and chargeable) Arm Cannon, or a Speed Booster, or a Morph Ball, but it had to have some kind futuristic weapon that could keep Shadow back, and it had to be fast enough to keep up with Shadow’s speed, and I really wanted to give her a Sonic-style technology-assisted Spin Attack. I suppose I could have made those all separate pieces of technology instead of integrated armor, but that would look less futuristic, less intimidating, less mysterious, and would take away the logical aspect of her studying alien planets and likely needing a suit/helmet that can keep her alive in a variety of environments anyways. So I had the choice to either make a character who doesn’t suit my needs as well as she could, or to make a Samus ripoff. I decided, much as I did with a certain Sly Raccoon, that if I was going to make something that already exists, I might as well go all in and call it a reference. And so, Seraph gained not just the weapons, but also the specific skills and body language of Samus. Of course, visually, the armor is quite a bit different from that of Samus, lacking any of the signature orange color (although Dread stole my white and blue color scheme), having a three-eyed alien face visor with elongated skull, and having a general focus on “teardrop” shapes that Samus’ armor definitely doesn’t have. There’s also the difference of personality, which appears quite similar at first, but soon clarifies that Seraph is perfectly well allowed to talk where Samus is not. (Long story short, Metroid had its own version of Sonic 06 called “Other M,” where Samus apparently talked “too much,” and now the franchise avoids everything that game did like the plague.) So yeah, that’s the story of White Seraph.

But perhaps what you came here for is the story of the White Arms. It’s, uhh…quite a shake-up to the canon, to say the least. There were a lot of factors that went into Seraph’s storytime. Above all else, like much of this series does, the goal was to create a backstory that accurately explains the actions and circumstances, in this case not just of a single Sonic character, but of an entire species…which is technically just a Black Doom hivemind, so it really only is one character, but whatever. The motivation of the Black Arms in Shadow the Hedgehog are unclear at best. Sometimes it looks like they want to simply own the planet from an imperial standpoint, calling for surrender and whatnot, sometimes it looks like they want to specifically subjugate the humans for slave labor/a food source, and sometimes it just looks like they want to annihilate everything. I’m not sure if the Japanese script is any clearer about this than the English one, but between the need to land the Black Comet and plant its roots into the Earth, to spread a new gas into the atmosphere, to plant Red Fruits and other alien vegetation, it always sounded to me like terraforming. They don’t actually want Earth, they want a planet that’s healthy and sustainable for their unique biological needs, and they’re replacing what’s on Earth in order to make that happen. What happens to the humans after that is effectively irrelevant, hence why they seem to keep changing their minds about what they want done in that area. They might hypothetically have some use, but no harm is done if they’re wiped out, so both options are explored over the course of the game. The real question is why. Why did they spend 2000 years or more in the attempt to terraform this particular planet? What was so important about it? Why did they need to in the first place?

We do have at least a small number of clues to look at. The Black Comet, as far as we’re made aware, is a thriving home for them. There’s no indicator that they are in any sort of desperate need for land or resources, and even if they were, Black Doom has such complete control over the population that he most certainly has access to other solutions that, while drastic, would definitely be easier than the 2000 year wait for this particular planet. Even if it was just for the land, there are…a lot of planets with land out there that don’t have the ability to fight back. That goes for our solar system alone. It pretty much can’t be for resources needed to sustain themselves, because they show themselves to be quite capable of bioengineering whatever resources they need regardless of the present conditions of the planet they intend to use. They show no interest in Earth’s inorganic resources—with the singular exception of the Chaos Emeralds. But that’s not it either. They don’t need the planet for the Emeralds, they need the Emeralds just to get down to the surface of the planet. There are planets with much thinner atmospheres that the Black Comet would have no trouble passing through. There’s another interesting factoid in there. Black Doom states that the Comet is unable to pass through “another planet’s atmosphere.” Another planet, as in, he considers the Comet to be a planet. That was what led me to an answer to all of these whys. If we were to assume that the Black Comet is the fragmented remains of what was once a home planet, it would explain almost everything. We’re no longer assuming that the Black Arms are trying to extend what they already have, but instead that they are trying to restore/replicate something that was lost. Sure, any old planet would be better than just a measly comet, but if they’re trying to replace a home planet, that would mean a much narrower range of acceptable conditions. They would need a planet with the right mass to produce the right amount of gravity, the right distance from the sun to maintain the right temperature, and the right composition and age of the sun for that matter. That’s just to name a few. Suddenly, coming across a planet like Earth is a once in a lifetime chance, and any amount of waiting is worth it. Of course, the Chaos Emeralds are probably a bonus/what allowed them to find Earth in the first place, and I’ll get to that.

But before that, we’re now left with the question of what destroyed their planet to begin with. There are plenty of ways to answer that question, but the Black Arms are such an intensely warlike race, seeming to be literally engineered for combat, that a planet-shattering war seems like by far the most reasonable option. But…all evidence seems to indicate the Black Arms are a hivemind species, where only the leader has any agency, controlling the rest telepathically as he attempts to do to Shadow at the end of the game. So…he certainly isn’t fighting himself. Ignoring the whole “Three Houses” idea for a minute, that leaves us with the need to introduce an outside element. A new species so threatening that the Black Arms’ home plant was completely obliterated in the conflict with them. The most straightforward way to play that would be…well, the Metarex style if we’re being honest. Introduce a new alien invader which eats planets for breakfast, outshining the Black Arms and sweeping them aside to show themselves as the far greater threat. There would certainly be some merit to that, but…we’ve spent how many paragraphs now trying to establish why the Black Arms are being made relevant again? It would kind of defeat the purpose if that train of logic ended at them being made irrelevant again. So instead, we need to complicate things a bit more, and give the Black Arms a more evenly matched foe. There are a couple smaller details here that I can’t necessarily talk about yet, but the important point here is that the threat level of the Black Arms is maintained by pitting them against a foe that didn’t clearly force them to do anything drastic or cowardly. A foe that came from their own planet was the most logical way to go about that.

But why White Arms specifically? Any number of strange, planet-destroying things might have been born of the nonsensical alien world the Black Arms came from. Again, this starts heading towards certain details I can’t talk about yet, but hopefully the connection to Chaos Project lore is more than a little obvious. For all Light, there is Darkness, and for all Darkness, there is Light. The Black Arms are the absolute most unquestionably Evil Darkness that has ever existed in the Sonic canon (besides maybe Mephiles, but that’s a different debate). Creating a balancing force to them was a fairly logical conclusion, all things considered. But…doesn’t the whole “Balance” thing usually only apply in matters of Chaos? Well…this is something I hope to talk about in a future episode, but at this moment I’m not certain where it will fit, and I don’t mind sharing it here. The Black Arms are a matter of Chaos. On Earth, being able to use Chaos Control takes a highly specific set of qualifications that are generally unique to the existence of the Chaos Emeralds. Black Doom is the only creature in the known Sonic canon who can use Chaos Control naturally—despite not having Chaos Emeralds on his home world/comet. The claim I’m making is that this unique natural ability derives from the unique nature of the Black Arms’ origin. They come from a planet that is likely more perfectly balanced than any other in the universe. Any, that is, but Earth—which, as stated in Sonic Unleashed, gets quite a bit of an extra outside push to maintain that balance. The energy of the Chaos Emeralds doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from the energy of the Earth, which in turn is generated by the cyclical war between Light and Dark Gaia. A war between light and dark that permits the use of Chaos Energy. Sound familiar…?

So anyways, if we’re making the light opposites to the Black Arms, they, thematically, have to be good guys, and they naturally became a very useful vessel for introducing us and the cast to all of these ideas we just discussed, which pretty much leaves us at the origin of this particular episode. That all took a while, but I think that’s about it on the story of this episode’s creation. So, on to the trivia!

• This episode’s title, “Impending Doom,” is a pretty straightforward reference to the idea that signs are pointing towards the impossible return of Black Doom. Definitely not my favorite title, but it does its job.
  • You might almost say that a sense of impending doom is the same thing as a sense of “Dread”. That’s a coincidence. Mostly…
• The majority of this episode was spread across all 3 (and a half) acts of the Mystic Jungle Zone from Sonic Forces. This is the first major appearance of this location in the Chaos Project, though Big was seen fishing there in the 50th Episode Special.
  • The spot where Johnny and Shadow land appears to be somewhere below Hero’s Act, Aqua Road (and Ep:Shadow Eggman’s Facility by extension), matching the description of aqueducts passing over the ocean.
  • From the top of the hill, Johnny and Shadow are able to view large patches of forest where fires burned years ago, as seen in the background of Sonic’s Act, Luminous Forest. (Eggman’s scattering bombs like confetti!)
  • Being chased by Seraph, Johnny and Shadow enter a particularly decorated ruins structure with a half-finished casino inside, apparently one of the same buildings seen in the background of Classic Sonic’s Act, Casino Forest.
• The concept of the “Black Heralds” shares something of a similarity with post-SGW Archie’s interpretation of the Black Arms in the form of Eclipse the Darkling. It would be a lie to say that no inspiration at all was taken, and planning for this season was happening right around the time those comics first hit my radar, but personally, I never quite liked the way that Archie handled that whole ordeal. Don’t get me wrong, I love that they handled it at all. But you might say that this is me showing how I would’ve done it.
• In his early discussions with Johnny, Shadow mentions that, were he to remove his Inhibitor Rings, he would no longer need a source of Chaos Energy in order to use Chaos Control. This is the first time that this possibility has been mentioned since Chapter 1. Sort of dropped the ball on that one. At that time, the Inhibitor Ring part wasn’t mentioned, so this is serving as the explanation for why we’ve never seen this ability used in The Chaos Project, despite it being explained as possible.
  • Material at lower levels of canon (such as Sonic Battle) have stated outright that this is possible at any time regardless of Inhibitor Rings, but this is one of those instances where I’m choosing not to take everything that game says at face value, even though it has otherwise been CP-canonized.  (7 green Chaos Emeralds, some of which are casually shattered offscreen. I don’t buy it.)
• In the Shadow the Hedgehog game, random soldiers have idle dialogue that includes “Don’t touch the Red Fruit.” If I remember correctly, there might even be a soldier in Westopolis who is forced into one of the Fruits when you get close, teaching you that they’re damaging to the touch. For all we know, that could be Johnny. Sonic was probably off rescuing him during that period of time where he magically disappeared so that Doom’s Eye could introduce himself to Shadow.
• Expect this season to be absolutely packed with random SEGA references. Many of them have already shown up here.
  • The empress of the White Arms is called White Genesis. Besides being the literal opposite of Doom, Genesis is also the American name of the SEGA console that Sonic first appeared on. This is, effectively, the origin point from which all the other references spawned.
  • The mothership commanded by White Genesis is called the White Dreamnet. You might say that I’ve…cast a net to pull in that one. Dreamnet isn’t a SEGA console, but Dreamcast sure is. It’s also been pointed out to me that the “net” change allows the ship’s name to kinda sorta sound like “comet.” Total coincidence, but I’ll take it.
  • The potentially dangerous species listed by Seraph at the end of the episode include the Zoah, a Twilight Cage resident species from Sonic Chronicles, the Algolian monsters, a recurring component of the SEGA fantasy/sci-fi series Phantsy Star, and the Titans of Star—…we’ll get to that.
    • The use of the term “Algolian” was intended as a clever dodging of the issue that the Phantasy Star planet in question is called “Algo” in some games and “Algol” in others. This phrasing is able to cover either option.
      • What Seraph originally said here was “Algolian Monsters and Mother Brain “. Metroid fans likely know that Mother Brain is the primary antagonist of most Metroid games. What they probably don’t know is that Mother Brain is also a primary antagonist in Phantasy Star. As far as I’m aware, it’s a complete coincidence. But it’s such a hilarious one to me, and such an unlikely scenario that I’d be able to simultaneously reference both of them, that I felt like I just had to do it. In the end, however, I cut the reference, because I was just too worried about introducing the potential confusion of “Are you claiming Metroid is canon to Sonic here?” Phantasy Star, maybe, but Metroid, no. The episode starring a Samus knock-off is the last place I would want to give people that false idea.
    • As for the Titans, this is, hopefully, a Sonic Frontiers reference. According to the (deleted?) plot synopsis we currently have of the game, the giant machine(s) seen in the trailer are referred to as Titans. I already theorized that there was something “alien” about the design of that Titan, and when you combine that with the name of the “Starfall Islands,” a potential alien connection becomes downright likely, if you ask me. I theorize that the Titans quite literally fell from the stars, and therefore that there are likely others out there in the galaxy. Depending on how things go from here, I’m starting to think that the “Titans of Starfall” might actually play a significant role this season. Later.
    • EDIT: Hit and a miss! This reference was retconned out of existence, following the release of Sonic Frontiers. The alien prediction was right, but the use of the Titans as something that makes space dangerous didn’t end up making much sense, so this item on the list was replaced with “the enemy of the Ancients.”
  • Also a reference is one of the creatures kept by Seraph on her ship—the Skenouan Astropede. This is a reference to the title character of a scrapped Genesis game which was originally pitched to SEGA as taking place in the Sonic universe. The game never saw the light of day, but the little guy ended up in the CP canon anyways. Welcome home, Astropede! Enjoy your tiny cage!
    • The respective planets from which Seraph’s creatures come are “Orthan” and “Skenoua.” There’s a reference-y naming pattern here, but I think I’ll keep that to myself until a little bit farther down the road.
  • Least notable on the list of SEGA references is the “port town of Miracworl,” a reference to “Alex Kidd in Miracle World,” the former SEGA mascot who was usurped by Sonic. It made sense to me as something that was around before Sonic on the Genesis.
• The three hive leaders of Black Kaosia—Black Famis, Black Morbus, and Black Gladius—have their names derived from Latin. “Famis” for famine, or starvation. “Morbus” for mortality or death, especially by illness or plague. “Gladius” for gladiator, soldier, or death by blade. Combine those three with the Black Beasts, and you have representations of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—the four general ways a person can die: by starvation, by illness, by the hand of man, or by the hand of nature. Naturally, the unifier of them all would become Black Doom. Literally, the apocalypse.
• The “three ruling houses” of Black Kaosia are of absolutely no relation to the game “Fire Emblem Three Houses,” despite that being one of my favorite games ever. It’s a coincidence, I swear.

I was expecting a longer trivia section than this, but that’s all I got for now!

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