Sonic X, Episode 2.16: A Date to Forget

Sonic X, Episode 2.16: A Date to Forget

Japanese Title: Amy's Love Escape Journey

Japanese Air Date: January 18th, 2004

U.S. Air Date: January 29th, 2005

Translating from another language into English is tricky. English is full of weird idioms and grammatical rules that don't make sense in other languages and the reverse is also true. Sometimes, a literal translation is awkward or weird. I take the Japanese titles for the "Sonic X" episodes from the Sonic News Network wiki. They list this one's original title as "Amy's Love Escape Journey," a string of words that doesn't quite make sense. IMDb adds an incredulous interrobang at the end of the title, making it seem like a befuddled statement. Some other source lists this episode's Japanese title as "Amy Love's Escape." When combined with the punctuation, that forms a semi-coherent sentence that means "Amy, your love has escaped." Which sort of explains the plot of this episode. Unless the meaning is meant to be closer to "The Escape of Love Belonging to Amy Rose," which isn't quite as clear. All of this is probably why I'm just going to use the English dub title, "A Date to Forget." 

Anyway, enough rambling. This episode begins with Amy in a violent rage at Sonic. They had a date this morning and the blue hedgehog stood her up. Sam Speed also arrives at the Thorndyke mansion, saying he also had an appointment to race with Sonic. After Amy gets over her annoyance with Sonic for making two appointments in the same day, her and Sam go in search of the hedgehog. The reason Sonic is a no-show is because he's fighting Bokkun and a new Eggman robot named Emerl, all part of a plot the doctor is directing from his jail cell.

"Sonic Adventure" and "Sonic Adventure 2" are obviously important titles in the history of Sega video games. Flagship releases for the Dreamcast, they also loom prominently in Sonic lore. It makes sense that "Sonic X" would adapt those. But what about "Sonic Battle," an attempt by Sonic Team to do a "Super Smash Bros." clone for the Game Boy Advance? It would probably be a forgotten title if, ya know, "Sonic" fans weren't obsessive weirdos that remember everything. The real reason this often overlooked title got a "Sonic X" adaptation is presumably because it was brand new at the time and Sega was eager to promote the latest release. Gotta love that corporate synergy!

While this episode is notable for introducing Emerl, "Sonic Battle's" sole contribution to series lore, it's not really what "A Date to Forget" is about. Instead, this is another episode designed to tease SonAmy shippers. As Sam and Amy go on their journey to find Sonic, Amy encounters a country store owner whose grandson was saved by Sonic. Amy realizes that Sonic, as a superhero, has a responsibility to the world, which may prevent him from ever having a normal love life. Of course, this goes out the window at the very end, as the final scene reveals Sonic really did forget about his date with Amy. So either he's a hero or an insensitive D-bag, your choice. 

This does not change the fact that Amy's actions in this episode are a bit, well, unreasonable. This episode begins with Amy storming into the Thorndyke living room in a fiery rage. Okay, I get that. Being stood up sucks. Next, she grabs Chris by the throat, pulls out her hammer, and threatens to beat him unless Sonic appears. Holy shit! That's some Alex Forrest behavior there. Amy doesn't go through with it but even threatening to physically beat a child a death is pretty fucked-up. Ya know, I would recommend removing Amy from the household because of that! The episode plays this for humor and I laughed but that's because I can't believe this show included such an inappropriate, dark gag and not because I find child abuse hilarious. I promise. Poor Chris has another thing to talk about with his therapist now... Shit like this does not help the perception that Amy's fixation on Sonic is unhinged. 

While a whole episode devoted to Amy's bunny boiler antics would be pretty entertaining, that is not the focus is "A Date to Forget." Instead, the majority of the runtime sees Amy and Sam Speed getting into all sorts of shenanigans. He's a man on a road trip, so he naturally refuses to ask for directions. This has him driving his super fast transforming car to varied locations, like the desert and a farm occupied by realistically drawn sheep. This story arc ends with Amy and Sam stopping the weird street locomotive Eggman has built to bust him out of prison. But most of this episode is devoted to Sam Speed being an idiot and Amy being frustrated with him. It's not the best comedic set-up, is what I'm getting at here.

As is pretty typical of "Sonic X's" goofy filler episodes, the title character really only appears in the action scenes. Here, Bokkun straps Emerl into an old-time-y tank. They chase Sonic through the abandoned warehouse district. They fire oversized shells at him, which the hedgehog dodges via some goofy, possibly "Matrix"-inspired slow-mo moves. Eventually, the tank starts to toss exploding television monitors at Sonic, cause that's Bokkun thing, I guess. It's pretty underwhelming, as far as action scenes go. I'm not sure why this simple tank seems to give Sonic so much trouble, when he's singlehandedly devastated much larger robots without even breaking a sweat before. 

Other elements of the episode's comedy work better for me. Following his failed coup in the last episode, Eggman, Bocoe, and Decoe are all in prison. They wear stripy prison uniforms and harass a guard until he gives them more stew from a filthy bucket he carries around. Decoe and Bocoe also prefer prison to living with Eggman, which is also amusing. Eggman is humiliated pretty frequently in this cartoon but it's funny to see him so degraded here. (This also explains that one issue of the Archie "Sonic X" comic, where the bad guys were in prison inexplicably. See, it's making sense now!)

This one ends with Cream discovering a terrified, traumatized Emerl, so presumably he'll have more to do in the next one. It's a pretty dumb episode but Amy threatening to kill Chris and Eggman begging for gruel made me laugh enough for it to earn a [6/10.] I never said I was consistent, you guys.