Sonic X, Episode 3.22: Eye Spy

Sonic X, Episode 3.22: Eye Spy

Japanese Title: The Lost Planet

U.S. Air Date: April 8th, 2006

Japanese Air Date: April 24th, 2020

This episode picks up right where the previous one left off. After learning she's been a spy for the Metarex the entire time, Cosmo freaks out. The jewel on her chest glows and the entire Blue Typhoon is teleported to a distant planet. The dead world, populated only by a vast forest, is soon discovered to be the former home world of Cosmo's race. Amy and Rouge come across a computer that explains the origins of the Metarex and the conflict that lead to the destruction of this world. Meanwhile, everyone else debates about what to do with Cosmo, whose eyes and ears have been broadcasting directly to Dark Oak this whole time.

I've been wondering for a while what the exact origins and motivations of the Metarex were, so here comes this episode to provide that. Kind of. Here we learn that Cosmo's home world was embroiled in a war with some technological advance enemy. The little tree people can transform into enormous, dinosaur like monsters – which is known as "mover mode" – but at the risk of depleting their life energies. A Metarex scientist named Lucas discovered how to extract Planet Eggs from worlds as a way to keep his race alive while in Mover Mode. And he immediately plan to start taking Planet Eggs from other worlds, to further his scheme. Cosmo's mother, Earthia, opposed this plan. She wanted to stuff the entire species onto a spaceship and simply flee, while wearing jewels that repress the Mover Mode superpower. Once in orbit, she dropped nuclear bombs on the entire planet to stop Lucas' scheme, killing all life on the world. Which seems like a slight overreaction to me! 

Yes, I did not find this to be an especially satisfying explanation. All this origin does is raise more questions. Who were the other people at war with the Metarex? Why were they attacking them? It really seems like a plot point is missing between Lucas extracting a Planet Egg from his own to world to him jumping to plans of universal conquest. The introduction of Mover Mode really needlessly complicates things. If Lucas – who, if you haven't figured out by now, is Dark Oak – suggested blending his race's fleshy, plant-like body with robotics to survive, that would've made sense. I don't know how you get from "giant plant dinosaurs" to "an army of cyborg aliens." Did the Metarex, like an indecisive seven-year-old boy, decide robots were cooler than dinosaurs? I'm guessing someone just wanted to include some wacky kaiju and shoved them in here. The importance of Mover Mode feels like something that should've been mentioned before now. 

Earthia destroying her entire planet to stop the Metarex might've been an attempt to add some moral grayness to this story. Cosmo's mom would rather sacrifice her own planet than allow Lucas to destroy countless other worlds, which is sort of noble. Lucas removing the Planet Egg had already ostensibly doomed the Metarex home world anyway. The planet was going to die, so why not nuke it to stop the enemies? Yet Sonic and the gang have repeatedly returned Planet Eggs and restored worlds to health, so maybe Earthia should've tried that before nuking everything from orbit. Moreover, if the Metarex had nuclear weapons, why was Mover Mode so important? It seems atom bombs would be a much stronger deterrent than a dozen skyscraper sized tree-dinosaurs to me. This plot point mostly just makes Earthia seem unwilling to negotiate and unreasonable. Also, did her nuclear devastation also kill all the unnamed people that were bombing the Metarex? There were probably some innocent families in there. 

Really, it seems to me a much simpler story could've been written here. Why not have the Metarex home world be threatened by some other threat, like an asteroid, not a war with unnamed outsiders? Have the conflict be between Earthia simply wanting to abandon the world and Lucas' insane plot to harvest Planet Eggs. Have Earthia's space colony leave before the asteroid hits, instead of her raining nuclear hellfire down on the planet. That makes Cosmo's mom more sympathetic and also make Lucas/Dark Oak's plan seem understandable, if insane. He lost his world and is determined to recreate it across the galaxy, at the price of every other planet's population. 

Of course, I'm not sure Dark Oak's scheme is to recreate his home world. From what we've seen of Metarex civilization, it had cities and advanced technology. All along, they've talked about wanting to bring tranquility and peace to the universe. It seems the plan has always been to destroy worlds' natural population by stealing the Planet Eggs and then build huge forests on the ruins, powered by the artificial Chaos Emeralds. And it seems the Metarex home world – which is probably still radioactive, I want to point out – was the first planet to receive this forestation treatment. But there's no Metarex on the planet, just trees. Is the Metarex's end game to turn all sentiment life into trees, like they did with the human rebels? Does that include themselves? Does Dark Oak hate all non-tree life and wants the universe to just be an endless forest? Like I said, more questions, few answers.

I might be overthinking it. I've been accused of that before. And I'm not done either. We learn here that Cosmo's eyes and ears have a direct link to Dark Oak. Everything she sees and hears, he sees and hears. Dark Oak using Earthia's daughter as a means to further his own goal would be some decent dramatic irony. (Or speak to Lucas being obsessed with Earthia, as it's hinted the two had some sort of relationship.) Yet, if this has been the case, how come Sonic and the others have won so many battles? If Dark Oak was privy to the heroes' plans all along, shouldn't he have been stopping them every step of the way? How many worlds have the Metarex lost because of Sonic and the others' intervention? I guess the point I'm making is that Cosmo wasn't a very good spy. Or that Dark Oak was making piss-poor use of the intel she unknowingly gave him. 

It might not make a lot of sense from a narrative perspective but it does make a nice addition to Cosmo’s litany of angst. All along, Cosmo has been beating herself up for the hatred and fear she feels towards the Metarex. She has blamed herself for the death of her species all this time. (Considering her mom also talked about hatred and, ya know, nuked their home world, maybe these are qualities Cosmo inherited.) After being accepted by Tails and the rest of the gang, Cosmo now learns she’s been a threat to them all along. This girl/plant can’t catch a break! Obviously, she immediately blames herself for being the villain’s pawn and plans to run away. 

This episode devoted considerable time to everyone else’s reaction to this information. In fact, “The Lost World” is a largely character-driven episode. Rouge banters with both Amy and Knuckles, to amusing effect. Sonic and Chris both have separate heart-to-hearts with Shadow and almost seem to convince him to help out. When Cosmo plans to leave, Tails appears to assure her it’s okay. That’s followed by everyone else immediately standing up for her too. They all plan to stop running and take the fight to Dark Oak. It’s nice to see an episode devoted to everyone’s thoughts and feelings towards their friend. Even if it results in yet another episode of “Sonic X” where Sonic seems like a minor player. 

But I don’t really care about that. This episode ends with a pair of decent cliffhangers. Bokkun finds the Blue Typhoon and begs for their help, as the Metarex have anticipated Eggman’s eventual betrayal and captured him. Meanwhile, Dark Oak completed his collection of Chaos Emeralds at some point. It seems the season is definitely ramping up to its climatic conclusion. I find the backstory in this episode pretty confounding and disappointing but it’s an otherwise decent installment. The characters remain compelling this season, if nothing else. [6/10]