Sonic X, Episode 3.19: Hedgehog Hunt

Sonic X, Episode 3.19: Hedgehog Hunt

Japanese Title: Cafe Chaotix

With the Blue Typhoon on the run, the Metarex empire is focusing their military campaign on finding and eliminating Sonic and his friends. Eggman is officially made the fourth Metarex boss and immediately begins bickering with the other villains. Meanwhile, the Chaotix have opened a café on an alien world, hoping to make enough money to repair their damaged ship. Sonic and the gang soon arrive on this world and wonder how they can safely escape with the Metarex and Eggman breathing down their necks. 

Eggman is, surprisingly, emerging as one of season three's most compelling characters. Lately, the show has really been playing with the idea of whether or not the villain is as bad as the Metarex. After joining up with the evil robot empire last episode, it seemed to confirm that the doctor is that ruthless. But maybe not. Black Narcissus confronts Eggman shortly after he's announced to be the new boss. It seems the encounter they had recently, where the doctor chastised Narcissus for his sadism, was totally sincere, creating tension among the evildoers. More than anything else, Eggman's ego is bruised by being part of the team. He doesn't like taking orders, needed to be accepted by the other bosses, or his abilities not being appreciated. The Metarex bosses point out – rightly – that Eggman has never succeeded in killing Sonic. Eggman, of course, believes himself to be a master genius who is the only person who can defeat Sonic. 

This builds towards an interesting conclusion. Eggman single-handedly saves the day but not because he wants to save the universe. He just can't handle the idea of Pale Bayleaf defeating Sonic. He would rather have his enemy escape, have the Metarex believe the Blue Typhoon is destroyed, than have anyone else claim victory over Sonic. He did the right thing for the wrong reasons but it clearly weighs on him. He ends the episode in a bar, drinking away his sorrows like they're a hangover. I figured Eggman would align with Sonic against the Metarex because he realizes they're a threat to both of them. Instead, the rotund one is working both with and against the Metarex, undermining them to prop up his own ego. That's an interesting dynamic and I hope the show milks it more. 

Despite that fairly serious set-up, this is an episode of "Sonic X" co-starring the Chaotix. So you know what that means: It's a goofy one. There's a lot of humor here and it seems to be split into two categories. Sometimes the jokes are almost subtle. Like when Eggman and his henchmen bust into the Chaotix bar, asking to put up wanted posters of Sonic. Since Vector isn't interested in this, they compromise by pasting the posters to the bottom of the tables. When the Sonic Team asks the Chaotix if they want to leave the planet with them, Vector dryly responds that he "doesn't want to die." Of course there's some fourth wall breaking. Vector talks directly to the audience, brags about his piano skills, and Charmy mentions something that just happened in a flashback. Naturally, the setting brings with it a few direct shout-outs to "Casablanca."

But, this being the show that it is, there's still plenty of wacky goofiness to be had here. Vector yells at the weird aliens in the bar that want to set up a tab. The Chaotix ended up in this scenario because they very stupidly piloted their spaceship into a random black hole. The broadest, and funniest, gag occurs early on. Bocoe tells Eggman he's going to have to suck up to the other Metarex bosses if he hopes to be accepted by them. This leads to a deliriously silly montage where Eggman imagines himself complimenting Yellow Zakova on his golf game, gifting Black Narcissus a present, and giving Pale Bayleaf a sensual back massage. I love that the Japanese can include random absurdity like that in an otherwise serious scenario. 

Make no mistake, this is a serious scenario. Sonic and the gang suffered a major defeat at the hands of their enemies, barely surviving. They are now being hunted across the galaxy, with the villains closer to eliminating them then they'd like to realize. Yet the heroes don't seem too bothered by this. In fact, Sonic is particularly jovial in this episode. He laughs at Eggman as he chats with Vector and happily zips around the planet, just under the Metarex drones' noses and swiping food from a grocery store. I guess, since the last episode was fairly grim, the show runners figured we needed a light-weight one this time. But I would've liked to have seen more acknowledgment of how deep into the shit our heroes are at this point. 

It's not a great episode but it's got enough goofy laughs in it to keep me entertained. Mostly, I like the complexity Eggman is showing here of late. It seems that last bit really bugged the 4Kids censors. Most of the scenes of Black Narcissus being suspicious of Eggman, and of the villain wondering if he can handle this, we're cut down or removed in the dub. The circumstances of the ending were changed, even inserting footage from a previous episode to sell the illusion. I guess 4Kids didn't want children emulating, uh, the behavior of the show's antagonist. It's not as severe as rewriting Molly from being dead to alive but it's still a strange episode to change so much. Also, since this episode is largely set in a bar, that was a problem. All the wine bottles were changed to soda. What's weird about this is Eggman never asks to drink anything other than water or vinegar. Meanwhile, the obvious hangover cure reference at the end – Eggman dumping a raw egg into his drink – was maintained. I guess they figured the four to seven-year-olds in the audience wouldn't catch that one. 

Anyway, none of that is really relevant. For an episode where Sonic and the other heroes barely do anything, I still found this one pretty compelling. I never expected to be invested in the "Sonic X" version of Eggman, since I'm very particular about how Sonic's archenemy is portrayed. Then again, I never expected to like "Sonic X" in general and here we are. [6/10]