Sonic Boom, Episode 1.40: Tails’ Crush

Sonic Boom, Episode 1.40: Tails’ Crush

Original Air Date: August 22nd, 2015

In fandom spaces, there is no concept more commonplace, and contentious, than “shipping.” (A, honestly, kind of dumb abbreviation of “relationshipping.”) The more popular a show, movie, anime, comic book, piece of musical theater, or literally anything is, the more likely you are to find people passionately debating who should be dating and/or screwing who. Nothing makes humans nuttier than romance, so as wild as it is to think about, it’s not surprising that folks manage to get enormously invested in the love lives of people who don’t actually exist. Shipping wars have torn apart many once civil internet communities. Even a lack of actual romance in a story doesn’t stop people from putting enormous amounts of time and energy into manifesting and defending whatever match-up makes them the giddiest. 

“Sonic” media being so fractured, and “Sonic” fans being so uniquely impassioned, maybe makes the shipping debates in this fandom more frothing-at-the-mouth insane than the usual level of madness. Just the mere mention of Sally Acorn is enough to set some people off. I think even Sega, seemingly indifferent to most fandom drama, eventually became aware of how bad the shipping issue is. These days, they have an official policy of there being no long-lasting romances between game-originating “Sonic” characters in tie-in media. No matter how passionate the SonAmy or Silvaze crowds are, it's unlikely these pairings will ever actually exist in the "Sonic" games, comics, or whatever. Which is a little funny, when the games are where Amy’s unrequited crush on Sonic and Knuckles and Rouge’s flirtatious relationship began. 

Of course, it wasn't always this way. Obviously, the old cartoons and comics are full of love interests for the various "Sonic" characters... Which brings us to the topic of today's review. Sonic having a plethora of potential girlfriends makes sense, because he’s a hyper-confident teenager. Yet what of Tails’ various partners? Despite his official status as a prepubescent child, Tails has had a number of crushes and girls interested in him over the years. Sometimes she’s a plant, sometimes she’s a robotic doppelgänger, sometimes she's inappropriately aged for him. Not to mention the fans have shipped Tails with anyone and anybody. As kind of weird as it is to imagine an eight-year-old cartoon fox with a girlfriend, I get it. Tails is Sonic's sidekick and just as beloved as he is. If the hedgehog sparks intense infatuation with various females, why shouldn't his best buddy? Isn't it only fair? 

In its fortieth episode, "Sonic Boom" would add another name to the surprisingly long list of potential romantic partners for Tails. In "Tails' Crush," Sonic is noticing that the young vulpine engineer seems unusually distracted. After the gang notices him making goo-goo eyes at a cute fox girl named Zooey, they all figure out why. Tails is in wuv. Having an analytical mind, he decides to asks his friends on strategies for getting Zooey to notice him and fall for him. None of this goes well, as all his friends have weirdo answers for him. The best advice, that brings Tails and Zooey together, comes from the most unexpected place. 

"Tails' Crush" is a classic sitcom setup. Someone who is young and naïve in the ways of romance goes to different people in a group. Everybody gives them wildly different feedback, resulting in many awkward scenarios as the young person attempts to woo the object of their desire. You've definitely seen this play out in fiction before. But there's a reason for that: Having a first crush, and trying to get them to notice you, is a pretty universal event. Similarly, everybody has different approaches that work for them which will frequently (usually) not work for anybody else. We all have different experiences with romance, with failures and successes in attracting partners. Love is a messy, complicated thing and chemistry can be unpredictable. The dating advice industry is enormous but the most common, and aggravating, truth is that "the heart wants what it wants."  Whether or not someone is attracted to you, or vice versa, is something we actually have little control over. Yet everyone thinks they know best, everyone thinks what works for them will work for other people, and everyone is desperate for help. So people follow others' techniques in hopes of attracting a mate. When the messy truth is, they are usually just figuring out what about them sparks interest and attraction in a potential partner. 

Because sitcoms exaggerate reality in wacky ways, in order to produce laughs, this plays out on TV as a young person doing a bunch of dumbass shit in order to impress their crush. Sonic tells Tails to be "cool," which seems to mostly mean being tauntingly unavailable. Knuckles thinks being hyper-masculine, lifting weights and eating red meat, impresses girls. Amy assures Tails that drippy declarations of romantic longing and poetic complements work the best. Sticks, being a complete lunatic, recommends animalistic displays of colorful plumage. This results in ridiculous comedic moments. Such as Tails totally failing to appear effortlessly cool or absolutely fucking up the romantic poetry. (While dressed as the Phantom of the Opera, which made me snort.) Maybe the best of these predictable, if highly amusing, punchlines is Tails constantly undermining Knuckles' advice to appear macho and tough. This includes an incongruous interest in woodworking, a gag the show runs with in a funny way. 

We know all these attempts are going to fail not just because "Tails' Crush" follows a well understood comedic formula. These techniques fail because they don't represent who Tails is. He's not a cool bad boy that intrigues women with his mysteriousness. He's not a sculpted piece of sinew that activates lust. And he's not an eloquent romantic who can charm with pretty words. He's kind of an awkward nerd, truthfully. But Tails is brilliant and brave and adorable. When he squees over a Meh Burger Happy Meal toy or defeats a killer robot with the cool airplane he built, things he would've done anyway, that's what impresses Zooey the most. That's why Eggman's advice of "Be yourself" is what actually works. As frustrating as it can be to hear sometimes, I think this cliché nugget of wisdom is the best dating advice you can get. The right person will be attracted to who you are, for all the unique individual qualities you have. 

As wacky as it gets, this is still one of the most down-to-Earth episodes of "Boom" yet. Most of it is devoted to Tails being adorably dorky. When he sees Zooey, his tails start to spin and he floats up into the air. That's both a funny little gag and a good visual representation of what it feels like when you're crushing on someone. Tails' youthful awkwardness, honestly, is more charming here than it probably would be in reality. Tails' fans like it when he's being a fuzzy little guy, which is probably why this episode is more popular than the one where he wants to fuck his airplane. Zooey clearly already seems to like him, as she gets friendlier and slightly giggly whenever she's around him. Watching these two kids work towards each other is pretty gosh darn cute. 

I do wish Zooey was more fleshed-out though. Tails' object of infatuation is named for the new millennium's prototypal manic pixie dream girl, Zooey Deschanel. Yet I don’t think Zooey is even defined enough to classify as that trope. What do we actually learn about Zooey in this cartoon? Well, she's a female, with a very traditionally feminine style of dressing and accessorizing. And she likes Tails! And, uh, um... Well, we see her shopping for fruit in one scene. But that's pretty much it. I get that this cartoon has limited time to explore its character but they probably should've given Zooey more of a personality than this. 

She really does just exist as a plot device for Tails to have a puppy-dog crush on. In the last act, he rescues her from Eggman's robot and she immediately rewards him with a kiss. Not to accuse "Sonic Boom" as a show, or Reid Harrison as a writer, of being sexist or anything. but stories like this where the female character just exists as a prize for the male hero to win, who then hands out romantic attention as a reward, look pretty antiquated in 2023. I can't imagine it looked much better in 2015.  

Despite this, Zooey is a fan favorite. In fact, she's probably the most popular of the "Sonic Boom" characters unique to the cartoon. This is almost assuredly because Tails fans are desperate to validate their favorite boy with a cute GF, which is exactly what Zooey is. I know the character appears in more episodes this than one, so hopefully she actually develops a personality. 

The episode around her seems to be among "Boom's" most popular installments as well. I don't think this is just because giving Tails a love interest was going to instantly catch the most obsessive fans' eyes. This is a likable, amusing episode. There's a decent number of laughs, including a really funny subplot where Eggman is aggravated with the local postal service. (Another example of "Boom" contrasting its superheroic characters with utterly mundane frustrations.)  The script balances the typical "Boom" wackiness with more character centric sequences. It's a mechanically well constructed episode too, telling a complete story. If Harrison and the rest of the team had actually bothered to give Tails' titular crush an actual personality, I probably would've given it an 8/10 instead of the [7/10] I'm giving it instead.

 

Sonic Boom, Episode 1.39: Battle of the Boy Bands

Sonic Boom, Episode 1.39: Battle of the Boy Bands

Original Air Date: August 15th, 2015

As I mentioned in the introduction, I've seen very few episodes of this cartoon before. By 2015, I had stopped paying for cable, mostly due to my dislike of "prestige television" stretching narratives out for 24 hours and everything about the reality genre. Though a new "Sonic" cartoon piqued by interest, I was still skeptical of "Boom" for a long time. I guess it wasn't until I heard folks talking positively about it online that I decided to actually try the program out. While at my mom's place, I looked "Sonic Boom" up on OnDemand, and this was the latest episode. I was reasonably amused and intended to follow the series from that point on. And then I didn't do that, for reasons. Anyway, the point of this rambling introduction is that "Battle of the Boy Bands" is one of the few "Booms" I've boomed before. 

This is also a rare "Boom" episode that doesn't feature Eggman at all. Instead, the plot revolves around Justin Beaver, a new pop singer that is driving all the females in the village giddy with his dulcet tones and boyish appearance. Amy, caught up in Beaver Fever, even manages to make Sticks – initially skeptical of the corporate music – into an obsessive fan. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles quickly realize something is up. (In addition to hating Beaver's music.) They decide to infiltrate the boy band industry by forming a pop trio called Dreamboat Express. Soon, the trio does in fact uncover a conspiracy to brainwash females with hypnotic tunes. 

"Battle of the Boy Bands" takes us back to that frightful time when an earlier pandemic gripped the globe: Bieber Fever. Actually, by the time this episode aired, Justin Bieber had been a hugely successful pop star for five years. The cherubic castrato with the lesbian haircut had grown into a tattooed, abbed bad boy who was pissing in public, renting Brazilian sex workers, egging his neighbors' houses, and earning the obligatory aging child star DUI. His 2014 concert movie made 67 million less than his previous one. Two months before this episode debuted, he was the subject of a typically ribald Comedy Central Roast, confirming Justin as a punchline. Bieber Fever had been successfully inoculated by this point. But I guess the pun of combining the Canadian crooner with his home country's national animal was too hard to resist. What was the show gonna do to be more relevant in 2015? Introduce a character named Shawn Muskrat? Doesn't blend as well! Or maybe this cartoon was just written by old men who are perpetually five years behind whatever's current. I can relate to that. 

Regardless of how relevant a specific reference like "Justin Beaver" was by 2015, some things are evergreen. Teenage girls, and sometimes older females too, have been losing their collective shit for popular musicians since at least the days of Franz Liszt. Alan Denton and Greg Hahn's script nails the reason why. Justin Beaver's song titles include "Girl, I Like You" and "Yes, I'm Actually Talking About You." He tells every female at a record signing they are "the only fan he cares about." Yet his songs are filled with generic platitudes like promising to take you places you like and unspecific praise like "complex" and "interesting." Boy bands are designed to have as wide an appeal as possible while simultaneously making every girl's fantasy feel validated. Beaver's image is also blatantly non-threatening, as he promises to return home before curfew and perform only symbolic vandalism in the name of his love. This contrasts with the lewd, awkward behavior of actual teen boys, further marking teenybopper icons like Bieber/Beaver as blatant fantasy figures. 

Most guys as you probably know, haaaate this. Denton/Hahn seem to understand the root behind that as well. Part of it is jealousy. Many a sweaty, stubbly teen boy has secretly wished the Bieliebers and Directioners and BTS Army were creaming their panties for regular guys like them. This is an unspoken reason why Sonic immediately forms his own boy band. Most adolescents would never stoop to that level because the blustering, macho ego cringes when presented with such one-size-fits-all-teen-girls fantasies. Knuckles fears that dressing snappy, looking pretty, and doing synchronized dances will threaten his "street cred." Tails directly says boy band behavior isn't manly. Guys want to appear gritty and genuine, which is why Dreamboat Express quickly mutates into by a three-piece hard rock band... Which is named "Dude-itude," a moniker that rejects the innocuous androgyny of the Tiger Beat set. They are DUDES! And they have ATTITUDE! The stereotypical young female wants to be pampered by soft, cute guys who respect them. The stereotypical young male wants to establish his prowess, to leave no question that he is male. The two concepts are hard to reconcile. 

Of course, the rock star fantasy of melting faces with sick riffs and banging sexually pliable groupies is also a ridiculous, manufactured ideal designed to fan unrealistic, youthful desires. Most teen boys aren't self-aware enough to realize their own daydreams are as fake as their distaff counterparts. I guess middle-age animation writers aren't either. "Battle of the Boy Bands" has fun mocking prefab pop. Beaver's music is literally hypnotizing girls into being rabid consumers, to make his manager lots of money. Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles mastering the boy band aesthetic so quickly suggests it's easily replicated. This is also reflected in Dreamboat Express' lyrics, which are all about how their music is generic, safe, and sellable. Yet the guys saving the day with The Power of Rock – breaking Justin's spell by blasting him with a bolt from Sonic's guitar, which gave me "Underground" flashbacks – is too tidy. Saying pop music caters to commonplace fantasies, in service of capitalistic greed, is subversive. Saying acts like Justin Bieber are fake and suck and rock music rocks is simply being a boomer. At the very least, Dude-itude should have been mocked more after defeating Beaver, as their music is pretty objectively bad. 

Nevertheless, this is a very funny episode. Denton and Hahn include more of those meta gags they like. Sonic and the guys master the boy band dance moves in a scene transition, so they devote the allotted montage time to thinking up a name instead. The episode then mocks the typical visual language of montages, such as calendar pages sweeping by. There's two separate lines about dramatically waiting until the scenery changes to finish a sentence. Cartoon contrivances, like the villain revealing his scheme just as the heroes are listening or characters wearing the same outfits every episode, are lampshaded. There's also a Benny Hill homage, which always makes me laugh. Overall, "Boom" simply makes good use of its characters here. Amy's enthusiasm, the incongruity of Sticks becoming a fangirl overnight, and Knuckles' attempt to play the trumpet are all worthy chuckles. Even Soar the Eagle and Fastidious Beaver get laughs here. 

"Battle of the Boy Band's" parodying of pop music and the accompanying industry could maybe be a little deeper. I’m not going to blame the short runtime, for once, as “Blue With Envy” pulled off some similar insight within the same length restraint. Then again, maybe expecting in-depth pop culture commentary from an episode built around a fifth-grade level pun is an example of me being a pretentious dweeb and not this show missing the mark. I liked this one the first time I watched it. Now that I've seen every proceeding episode, it's solidly funny. Lots of good jokes and better written than it had to be, even if the ending kind of whiffs. [7/10]

Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Issue 57

Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW): Issue 57

Publication Date: February 8th, 2023

Ian Flynn has, more-or-less, been the driving creative force behind the “Sonic” comics for the last seventeen years. Considering his recent contributions to “Sonic Frontier” and a few episodes of “Boom,” you could even make the argument that he’s been the most consistently working writer of the character over his entire existence period. While I still tend to think of IDW “Sonic” as Flynn’s baby, Evan Stanley has technically been head-writer for a bit now. The truth is more like Evan and Ian have been trading back and forth for the last few arcs. While I’m sure Stanley had a hand in crafting the new plot that kicks off here in issue 57, this is the first story in a while that feels more like Flynn’s work than Evan’s. 

The issue is entitled “Urban Warfare, Part 1” and it starts in media ras with Sonic, Tangle, Whisper, and Lanolin swinging into Eggperial City. They find the metropolis strangely empty while also noticing that it’s bigger than the last time Sonic explored it. The heroes soon determine that the city is constantly expanding, by totally stripping the resources from the ground underneath it. Just after discovering this fact, Sonic and the team are ambushed by the portal technology from the “Test Run” arc. The hedgehog is soon left all alone in enemy territory, surrounded by Badniks. 

When I say that “Urban Warfare” is clearly more of a Flynn joint than a Stanley one, I don’t necessarily mean that in a positive sense. Don’t get me wrong, this is a decent issue, with one or two caveats. It’s also very much the first part of a loner story, displaying the kind of “laying the groundwork” story structure that is both Flynn’s greatest strength and most prominent weakness. This issue is very much devoted to establishing our team of heroes and their dynamic, while also introducing the threat they will be facing off against. It’s the first act of a longer story in a way that feels a little perfunctory at times. Here’s the guys, here’s what they’re up against, the actual good stuff starts next month. 

Either because Sega insists that Sonic has to be a free agent, or out of a desire to distinguish the IDW books from the Archie continuity, the blue hedgehog and his gang of video game-appearing friends are not technically members of the Restoration. In fact, it feels like the comic has been stepping back from the Restoration premise in the last year, as the chaos of the Metal Virus Saga fades further into the memory. So there has to be a rather laborious set-up scene here, of Sonic coming on as a freelance agent to the Restoration as Jewel puts together a new team of proactive agents. (Which Tangle quickly dubs the Diamond Cutters.) No wonder Flynn starts off in the middle of an action scene before flashing back to this relatively dull, expositonary set-up sequence. 

And anyone with any familiarity with storytelling knows that a standard scouting mission, which Lanolin presents this as, is never just that. Flynn tries to establish a sense of mystery, with the eerily empty city. The reader figures out long before the characters do that Eggperial City is some sort of self-perpetuating machine that heals itself and is always growing. (Not the least of which because it recalls the Nanite City premise from the Archie Comics a little bit.) Sonic insists the team stay and fight after Lanolin suggests going back, after which things go predictably awry. It feels like this was probably an ambush, a carefully laid trap, and the heroes not recognizing that makes them seem a little foolish. 

That Eggperial City draws the power necessary to fuel its ever-expanding growth by strip-mining the earth under it, admittedly, caught me off-guard. I honestly expected Eggman to have a Chaos Emerald or something shoved in a corner somewhere to get all of this rolling. That Eggman’s latest scheme revolves around sucking all the resources from the Earth is a nice return to the often overlooked ecological subtext of this series. If Flynn was a more insightful writer, the idea of a city that is always growing, at the price of destroying the environment, would be a handy little metaphor for capitalism gobbling up everything it can and not caring about the consequences. Since “Sonic” isn’t that deep, it’s simply a neat idea to insert here, to let kids know that unchecked growth of industry inevitably means the destruction of the natural world. 

This issue was hotly anticipated among IDW “Sonic” nerds specifically because it’s the technical proper introduction of Lanolin the Sheep. Now, Lanolin has existed in this series since the second issue, as a regular citizen that Sonic rescued before quickly cropping back up as a member of the Restoration. Because “Sonic” fans have a laser-like focus on new characters being introduced, readers immediately embraced Lanolin as a favorite. Even though she was literally just a reoccurring face in the background up until this point. This issue sees Lanolin — whose name we’ve known for months, after it was revealed on social media —introducing herself to Sonic and actually contributing to the plot for the first time. 

Lanolin represents a fairly unprecedented bit of evolution. In this comic, and in Archie before, new characters being introduced was usually done with a big trumpeting announcement. IDW didn’t sneak in Tangle. It dropped her right on the cover and said, “Look! It’s your new favorite!” Lanolin growing from nothing but a bit player, the comic book equivalent of local color, an artist sneaking an O.C. into the background just cause he could, to an actual character has never really happened before. It’s pretty neat. And I can see why fans latched onto Lanolin quickly, as she’s got a cute, eye-catching design. 

Of course, Lanolin’s origins and appearance has nothing to do with whether or not she’s actually a likable character. Now that the little sheep has an actual personality, what do I think of her? As opposed to the energetic Tangle and the quiet Whisper, Lanolin is a focused and practical soldier who always puts the safety of her teammates and the furthering of the cause above everything else. That’s nice, I guess, and distinguishes her from the overstressed Jewel. Lanolin also has a little purple wisp friend that hides in her bell, which gives her some action-worthy superpowers. 

Though the prominent role the Wisps continue to play in this comic always throws me — a guy for which “Sonic Colors” is just another game and not a beloved classic — for a loop. The moment where Sonic fuses with Whisper’s green wisp and turns into a flying spiral shaped like his own head confused me for a minute. “Oh, yeah, he can do that now.” Overall, I do find the characters getting random power-ups, at the whims of the writers when they don’t forget about them, distracting. Little floating alien guys that can snipe Badniks right out of the air, in very uninvolving action beats, still don’t feel like they belong to the “Sonic” franchise to an old fogey like me. But I guess that’s more my problem than anyone else’s. Since clearly “Colors” has long been accepted into the canon of actually good “Sonic” games by this point. 

Lanolin’s introduction is fine and the plot here is a potentially promising start, even if it’s pulled off in a somewhat dull manner. Yet the real heart of this issue happens between Whisper and Tangle. This is the first time the “very, very good friends” have been reunited since their mini-series together. Following the apparent break-up referenced in “Trial by Fire,” the two remain tense. Tangle tries to get friendly with Whisper several times, only for the wolf to give her a cold shoulder. When Lanolin asks how Whisper “handles her,” she replies that she doesn’t. This chilliness continues until Tangle yells at her near the issue’s end, about how she needs to stop trying to “go solo.” 

Of course, any resolution of this particular moment will have to wait, as the plot interrupts the gooey emotions. I’ve already pegged what is happening here. After seeing Tangle get Zombotted during the Metal Virus Crisis, Whisper is afraid of loosing somewhat she loves. So she is attempting to cut her girlfriend out of her life, in order to keep her love and her own heart safe. One expects Tangle will prove to Whisper that the joys of having love in your life is worth the risk that you might loose it. But we aren’t there yet. Until then, the “Sonic” franchise’s favorite sapphic pairing will continue to be apart. Hopefully this is resolved by end of “Urban Warfare,” as I hate to see my moms fight. 

As you probably expect, the art here is excellent. The opportunity for Adam Bryce Thomas to make his O.C. officially official canon is clearly invigorating for him. The character interactions are extra sharp here. Sonic’s clear boredom after Lanolin tells everyone to be cautious or the chilliness between Tangle and Whisper — which results in the lemur hugging her own tail awww — are expertly conveyed. The action is great too. A page made up of long, vertical panels, showing the heroes fight off an incoming wave of Badniks, is fantastic. (And Thomas clearly details in getting to draw a bunch of classic Badniks.) As is a panel where Lanolin drops down into the totally empty cavern underneath the city, which is portrayed in total darkness at first. Thomas is pretty definitively the best artist working regularly on this book and he proves it again here. 

Issue 57 is a slightly mixed affair for me. Whether or not this arc ends up going some really exciting places remains to be seen. As a kick-off, it feels a little by-the-numbers. The cliffhanger can’t help but be frustrating, as it separates Sonic from the characters I’m actually invested in here. Hopefully, there continues to be a balance between the interpersonal manners and whatever story line shenanigans Flynn is planning as we move forward. [6.5/10]