Sonic X, Episode 2.03: A Robot Rebels

Sonic X, Episode 2.03: A Robot Rebels

Japanese Title: Amy the Captive

Japanese Air Date: October 19th, 2003

U.S. Air Date: October 4th, 2004

As the “Sonic Adventure” adaptation continues, “Sonic X” continues to divide its attention among several subplots. Sonic and Tails fly off in the X-Tornado to face off with the Egg Carrier. Knuckles, who is closer than ever to reassembling the Master Emerald and is still having odd visions of the past, soon joins them. Eggman is preoccupied with gathering the penultimate Chaos Emerald, which is still inside Froggy. He sends the E-100 series to catch the amphibian but only E-102 Gamma — who just happens to be standing there when Big and Chris fish Froggy out of the lake — is the only successful one. Afterwards, the robot is sent to grab the blue bird, which is still hanging out with the captured Amy. The pink hedgehog reaches the machine’s inner humanity and he frees her. All of this happens just in time for the big showdown between Tails’ jet and Eggman’s Flying Fortress.

After two episodes that just swapped incidents and boss bottles directly from “Sonic Adventure” and shoved them into “Sonic X,” the show actually goes about adapting the video game a little bit here. The game’s sprawling plot still means this episode is awkwardly splitting its time between several on-going storylines… But at least it’s not just one tedious boss battle after another. This episode actually pauses for quite a few character beats and quieter moments. It changes elements from “Sonic Adventure” to make them fit better within “Sonic X’s” take on this world. There’s even some serialized character development, as Tails is extra driven not to fail this time after his last defeat at Eggman’s hands. It’s not perfect but this is definitely more like what you should do when turning a heavily story-driven video game into an on-going cartoon show. 

One of my favorite parts of “Sonic Adventure” was E-102 Gamma’s storyline. There was something really poignant about a robot, seemingly mechanical and unfeeling on the outside, learning empathy and turning against its master. This episode includes almost all of Gamma’s juiciest scenes from the game: Watching his “brothers” in the E-100 series thrown away after they fail Eggman, stumbling upon E-101 Beta being torn apart and rebuild inside the bowels of the ship, and Amy successfully talking him into letting her go. These moments were great in the game specially because Gamma’s exterior is so steely and unmoving. The robot’s lack of expression, in the face of these very emotional moments, proved more powerful than just telling us how he’s feeling. “Sonic X” doesn’t get that memo. Bocoe and Decoe outright describe what Gamma is feeling as the other E-100 robots are disposed of. The machine is given more dialogue, more obvious emotion, in the other two moments. The show is going for sappy when subtle would’ve been a better choice. It definitely makes Gamma’s arc less effective. 

But let’s talk about Amy Rose for a little bit. When she’s locked up in Eggman’s jail cell, this does give her plenty of time to reminisce. She thinks back to a time on her home world, when Sonic rescued her from a giant robot. Mostly, she fantasizes. She imagines a scenario where she impresses Sonic with her improved cooking skills or an even more elaborate fantasy, where Sonic is so blown away by how much she’s matured that he begins to chase after her. It seems Amy is doing that thing everybody does when they’re in their twenties and moving into their own place for the first time. She becomes nostalgic for simpler times and constantly fantasizes about the day she’ll figure it all out and it’ll all make sense. This almost justifies the damsel-status this storyline has hassled the previously untamable Amy with. She’s taking getting her own place really hard and it’s messing with her. If nothing else, the fantasy where Sonic is really impressed with how different Amy looks — when she looks exactly the same — is good for a laugh. 

Also good for a laugh are several of the episode’s comedic moments. Yes, “Sonic X” is back to including goofball comic relief, which I’ve really missed so far this season. The humorous highlight of the episode is when the E-100 robots stand around and compare the different frogs they’ve caught, trying to prove which one is better. Seeing these murder machines, that literally have guns for hands, act like a bunch of kids at summer camp is cute. A later moment, where Bocoe and Decoe activate a robotic cheerleader squad on the deck of the Egg Carrier, isn’t as funny but is the kind of appealingly random bullshit this show likes to include. Weirdly, though Big the Cat is a blatantly ridiculous character, he does not feature in any of these comedic scenes. He just stands around and fishes while Chris tells him they don’t have time to fish… And still people defend this character’s existence…

An element from the games I’m really glad “Sonic X” ditched is watching Knuckles glide around and dig up Master Emerald shards. We really didn’t need to see too much of that to get the general idea. At the start of this episode, he’s already gathered most of the shards he needs, meaning this plot thread will conclude soon enough. Instead, Knuckles’ subplot focuses on his continued visions from Tikal. These scenes further clarify that Chaos wasn’t such a bad guy before Pachamac barged into his temple like an asshole, to a less vague degree than the similar scenes in the game. There is a pretty funny moment when Tikal delivers some blatant exposition about the connection between the Master Emerald and the less Emeralds and then afterwards Knuckles is all like “what did that mean?” I love this red dumbass.

But even my love for Knuckles’ very toned and muscular dumb ass does not equal this show’s love of transforming airplanes. In order to mimic the Tornado II’s secondary mode from the game, “Sonic X” gives the X-Tornado a new battle mode. It sprouts ridiculous looking robot arms, which a shield and a sword further extending from these new appendages. The amount of sheer joy this jet turning into a fighting robot clearly gave the people who worked on this show is almost infectious. The Egg Carrier also transforms into its secondary mode in this scene, which is taken straight from the game but just seems to intensify the overwhelming joy-boner the sight of an airplane shifting into a different looking airplane gives this program. Even Tails is caught up in this ecstasy, as Sonic has to remind him that showing off his bitchin’ robot is not the point of this mission. 

And speaking of Sonic, this is another episode where he doesn’t really contribute to the plot. Aside from his role in Amy’s daydream or a pep talk he gives Tails early on, the blue hedgehog doesn’t do much besides stand on-top of the X-Tornado here. It definitely amuses me how irrelevant Sonic is to his own TV show sometimes. Anyway, this episode is definitely an improvement over the previous two so hopefully this is the speed the rest of the “Sonic Adventure” arc keeps as it nears its conclusion. [6/10]