Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.59: Tails' Tale

Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Episode 1.59: Tails' Tale

Original Air Date: December 1st, 1993

Of the main "Sonic" cast, Tails is the character that has probably evolved the most. In his original game appearance, he was almost strictly Sonic's sidekick, the character that trailed behind him. Japan always intended for him to be a mechanical whiz but Sega of America ran with the sidekick more. This is why, in all early American "Sonic" media, Tails is little more than Sonic's little buddy. It took years for his technical know-how and piloting skills to take hold. Because the game characterization tends to supersede everything else in newer fans' minds, his genius is now Tails' defining aspects, making the old stuff weird in retrospect. 

"Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog" never really featured that part of Tails' personality but it did get him behind the steering wheel of an old-timey airplane once. "Tails' Tale" begins with Sonic and Tails awoken by the sound of an aerial dogfight overhead. Scratch and Grounder are attempting to dose William Le Duck, pilot and would-be hero, with sleeping powder. They succeed and Tails has to fly in and save the day. Afterwards, Sonic vanishes. With Professor Von Schlemmer's help, Tails and LeDuck track Sonic down... Except he's still nowhere to seen. Sonic is trapped inside the Temple of Komometz, a cursed temple that vanished during the day. If not rescued by the next dawn, Sonic will be an eternal prisoner. Robotnik has arranged this entire ordeal, of course. Tails and the cowardly Le Duck must save the day.

Since I'm nearly at the end of my "AoStH" watch-through, I can definitively say that the Tails-focused episodes tend to be a little more tolerable than most. "Tails Prevails," "Tails in Charge," "Full Tilt Tails," and "Tails' New Home" are all among the better installments of this show. There's an easily discerned reason for this. Sonic always has to be the slapstick superhero, who foils his enemies in ridiculous ways. He's basically all powerful and rarely is challenged in any meaningful way. This causes the scripts to collapse into random wackiness or to shift focus to annoying side characters. Tails, on the other hand, is inexperienced by default. He's allowed to fail, be challenged, and rise above his own weaknesses. This evident in a surprisingly touching moment here, where Tails insists he heads inside the dangerous temple to save his friend.  Sonic would do it for him, so he has to do it for Sonic. It's kind of badass and an unexpected moment of character-driven action. 

Sadly, most of "Tails' Tale" doesn't actually focus on Tails rising to the occasion and rescuing Sonic. Yeah, it happens but most of the episode is focused on the oddball "Indiana Jones" style adventure. Considering the Jones franchise's popularity and prominence in the early nineties, I'm really surprised "AoStH" didn't riff on it sooner. The temple has a Central American style design. Komometz is a bat monster in an Aztec headdress, confirming him as inspired by Camazotz, the Aztec bat god. (He brings with him a group of giant bat monsters, who appear in one strange scene and are never seen again.) The curse, river of lava, various traps and puzzles all recall the "exotic adventurer" genre that the "Jones" movie homages and briefly rebirthed. 

As is usual, the show rarely has anything meaningful to say about these tropes. Though there are two mildly amusing gags. While pursuing Tails and Le Duck, Scratch and Grounder reads from an instructional manual on curses. They successfully collapse the bridge across the river of lava but reassemble it via their own incompetence, before destroying it again and trapping themselves on the other side. (I can't help but think of the "You're on the wrong side of the river!" moment from "The Mummy," a later "Indiana Jones" wannabe.) After finding Sonic in a dungeon, Tails and Le Duck are prepared to unravel another puzzle... Only to discover the key is hanging right there. See, unexpected payoffs like that are successful examples of what we call "humor."

Sadly, most of "Tails' Tale" isn't that amusing. Instead, the episode falls back on this program's mistaken belief that a funny accent is inherently amusing. LeDuck speaks with an exaggerated French accent for no particular reason. He's also a coward, afraid of his own airplane. This means DiC created two cowardly French characters around the same time. Von Schlemmer shows up and is as terrible as usual. The scene where Tails tries to introduce the duck and the professor is especially terrible. And then there's Komometz himself, who has a gravelly accent of undetermined origins. None of this is especially amusing and each character is a largely useless addition to the wider "Sonic" lore. 

The episode at least has a somewhat unexpected conclusion, where we learn Komometz isn't such a bad guy. After he learns Robotnik was ripping him off, he puts a curse on the Eggman's fortress. Definitely one of the more nonsensical foilings we've seen on this show. I really wanted to like this one more, if just for that really nice moment where Tails decides to save Sonic. The focus on annoying side characters and reheated jungle adventures shenanigans leaves little room for anything else though. They were so close. Bummer. [5/10]