Sonic X, Episode 2.12: Showdown in Space

Sonic X, Episode 2.12: Showdown in Space

Japanese Title: Maria's Wish, Everyone's Wish

Japanese Air Date: December 21st, 2003

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

We begin on the ARK as it plummets towards the Earth. Sonic and the team quickly formulate a plan, to use the Master Emerald to deactivate the seven emeralds powering the space station. They run deep into the bowels of the ship, where they encounter the Biolizard. That would be the prototype for the Ultimate Lifeform or more specifically a giant and very pissed-off cyborg lizard. Shadow — who has a change of heart after Chris makes him realize Maria wouldn't want him to destroy Earth — fights the creature off while Knuckles deals with the emeralds. The danger is not over, as the Biolizard fuses with the ARK and continues the fall towards Earth. Sonic and Shadow transform into their super forms to defeat the beast and save the world. 

This episode essentially completes Shadow's career arc. He goes from living only for revenge, caring nothing for other people, to wanting to protect the Earth and all the people who live there. How does the show accomplish such a drastic change? By having Chris Thorndyke give him a big talk about how, hey, some humans do suck but most of us are just trying to live our lives in peace and find happiness. This makes Shadow realize a sweet little girl like Maria obviously wouldn't have wished doom and destruction on an entire planet with her dying breath. Especially when she talked to him about how often she wished to visit Earth.

It definitely makes Shadow look like a dumb-ass that he didn't come to this conclusion on his own long before this point. What makes this even dumber is the show didn't have to rely on such awkward writing to get to this point. Minutes earlier, Chris Thorndyke was reading from Gerard Robotnik's journal, where the scientist admits he tampered with Shadow's memories, to carry out his own obsession with revenge. Couldn't Chris have just shown Shadow that passage to change his mind? Then again, that meant we would've missed out on that hilarious montage of a teary-eyed Shadow imagining all the good times he had with Maria.

This is an episode with a time limit, as there's only twenty-one minutes before the ARK smashes into the Earth and kills everyone on the planet. We know this because we're frequently shown the ominous timer counting down. Unfortunately, our heroes do not make very good use of this time. They spend almost half this countdown to doom reading Gerard's journal. Ya know, I know there's questions everyone is curious about but I'm pretty sure we can have story time after we save the world. When there's less time than a "Seinfeld" rerun before the apocalypse, maybe we should focus on the matter at hand. This weird writing decision ends up draining any tension from what should've been a suspenseful scene.

Once our heroes begin their run through the ARK, towards the Chaos Chamber, things pick up considerably. You can question the logic of a Giant Space Lizard from Nowhere — the Biolizard was briefly foreshadowed in the last episode, with some sort of monitor lizard appearing in the ARK lab but that's it — appearing to hassle the heroes in this final moment. But it does provide an exciting action beat. However, after Shadow defeats the lizard, it immediately uses Chaos Control to fuse itself with the ARK. We head right into Super Sonic and Super Shadow charging up for the final boss battle. Stacking two big fight scenes like this in top of each other leaves little breathing room. I feel like Super Sonic appearing should be given more grand importance, not to mention Shadow's super form appearing for the first time. 

But, ya know, at least the fight scenes look pretty cool. Maybe the last few episodes looking so shitty is because TMS was saving money for end-of-the-arc episodes like this. The animation is a lot more detailed and fluid here. There's a cool shot of Sonic grinning in the shadows or Rouge kicking down a door. Obviously, the boss battles get the most attention. The Biolizard charging up its attacks or Shadow racing around him look great. As does Super Sonic and Super Shadow teaming up to defeat the Final Hazard. There's even a pretty bitchin' shot of the lizard exploding spectacularly, like something out of an nineties mecha OVA.

You know this sequence of events are A Big Damn Deal because the video game's theme song, "Live and Learn," kicks in as Super Sonic and Super Shadow Chaos Control — everybody's just doing that now! — the ARK back into orbit and save the day. Yet the moment that follows is less impressive. Shadow disappears after saving the world and I mean that almost literally. Sonic returns to the ARK, hands Chris one of Shadow's power inhibiting bondage bracelets, and says "yeah, Shadow's dead." I know the real reason this "sacrifice" is handled so vaguely — so there's plausible deniability before Shadow's inevitable return — but it definitely makes the moment less effective than it should've been. Chris gets weepy after hearing the news and that does a lot of the emotional heavy-lifting here. Were you hardcore Shadow fans satisfied with this?

Gerard's video taped message — which, by the way, was recorded right before he was executed, which makes me wonder even more how the hell it got on the ARK — also plays on every screen on Earth. This alerts the planet to its impending doom. We only get a peek at the chaos this surely causes, mostly via the President freaking the fuck out while sitting in his limo in gridlocked traffic. What's weird about these scenes on Earth is that the show pauses, right in the middle of this end-of-the-world scenario, to resolve the plot line Mr. Stewart and Scarlett Garcia have been stuck in these last few episodes. Turns out, there was a secret faction within G.U.N., unknown even to the government, that was covering up the Project: Shadow experiments. The cops even show up to arrest these duplicitous men in black. Yeah, that really matters when the entire Earth is literally minutes away from being destroyed. Glad we resolved that. 

So, yeah, a lot of weird writing decisions were made in this episode. Some of them are because "Sonic X" has to continue to justify its investment in Chris Thorndyke and the other human characters. Others feel like the show just ran out of time. Like they had to squeeze the entire "Sonic Adventure 2" storyline into six episodes and that just left the ending rushed and cut short. It's a bummer, as I felt this show was doing a good job of handling this shit up until a few episodes ago. Now that the "Adventure" games have been integrated into "Sonic X" lore, hopefully the show can go back to doing its own weird thing for a while, which is where it tends to excel. [6/10]