Sonic Boom, Episode 2.42: If You Build It, They Will Race

Sonic Boom, Episode 2.42: If You Build It, They Will Race

Original Air Date: August 26th, 2017

The last couple episodes of "Sonic Boom" have prominently featured the gang in various vehicles matched to their personalities. If you're watching the show in the order it aired, like I am, these cars popped up without any introduction. You might think that isn't too unusual for a toyetic kids show to randomly introduce something they can make toys of. But that wasn't the plan. See, keeping a tradition that goes back to "Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog," "Boom" did not air in production order. You wouldn't think this would be a problem for a jokey, gag-centric show like this... But the crew decided to lay on the continuity in season two, so it ended up leading to several inconsistencies. This episode has two actually. Not only does it introduce the team's cars after they've already appeared, it's also the first appearance of Tails' Build-a-Box, which showed up in "Nominatus Rising" as if it was a normal thing that had always existed. Oh, you wacky "Sonic" cartoons, when will you ever be produced without some easily avoided fuck-up?

So, yes, "If You Build, They Will Race" has Tails going to his Build-a-Box 3D printer device to whip up a new nut for his airplane. The gang decides this is so cool that they are immediately distracted from their plan to skydive into an active volcano. Tails is talked into Build-a-Boxing a bigger Build-a-Box so that the crew can 3D print a car. This soon escalates to everyone making their own cars. What else are you going to do in that scenario except have a big race? That's when Mayor Fink intervenes and says the team can't hold a race through town without filling out permits and making the competition open to everyone. The resulting competition naturally draws Eggman's attention, seeing a chance to humble his arch nemesis once again. 

Before we focus on the cool race car shit, I want to talk about something else this episode reminded me of: Who remembers when everybody thought 3D printing was going to change the world? The technology has been percolating since the seventies but the 2010s saw the release of consumer grade "additive manufacturing" machines. You could bring one home yourself for a couple hundred bucks. This led to speculation that people would be 3D printing their own cars and pacemakers and guns and all that shit in their garages. It was going to revolutionize the manufacturing industry! This was the beginning of us all having a "Star Trek" matter replicator! The end of scarcity as we know it! None of that happened! Okay, yes, 3D printing did have a big impact on the manufacturing industry. However, predictions of the tech's home use were wildly overhyped, not considering the obvious cost of material and other shortcomings. This episode of "Boom" was made right around the, uh, boom and unsurprisingly follows the fantastical pie-in-the-sky version of the tech investors promised people. The script literally hinges on Tails printing his own cars. 

But enough about that. Y'all wanna see some street racing? "If You Build It, They Will Race" – bad title, by the way – is essentially the "Sonic Boom" version of a mascot racing game. When Nintendo decided to combine the ever-green popularity of racing games with their mega-successful "Mario" series, I don't know if they predicted how irresistible this premise would be to their rivals. Yes, Pac Man, Crash Bandicoot, Banjo-Kazooie, Final Fantasy, Konami, Skylanders, Angry Birds, and even Bloodbourne have dabbled in cartoony racing spin-offs. Yet the concept has penetrated beyond the boundaries of platforming games. Basically, any company with a stable of recognizable, highly marketable characters has gotten into the field. We're talking Disney, Star Wars, DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Looney Tunes, Fox Animation, Lego, South Park, the Muppets, Garfield, Hello Kitty, Digimon, the goddamn M&Ms. A lot of these "MarioKart" imitators are bad but that has not stopped the subgenre from proliferating. In fact, people love them, fans often making their own. Honestly, I think we need more. When are we getting "Street Fighter Street Racing?" "Jurassic Parkway?" I wanna see bobbleheaded versions of Jason Voorhees and Freddy Kruger battling it out on the race track. Let's all demand "The Presidential Race," in which cartoon caricatures of U.S. presidents compete, not at the ballot box, but the speedway. 

Naturally, since it has followed "Mario's" lead in many ways, the "Sonic" franchise and Sega have their own mascot racing games. It's a natural enough conclusion, since Sonic is already a character preoccupied with speed. It has always struck me as funny that, out of the multiple "Sonic" racing games that exist, only one of them had the hedgehog doing the thing he's best known for: Running fast. All the others have plopped our blue friend down in his own little go-kart. As antithetical as it seems to the series' entire point, it's not hard to figure out why this is. It simply goes hand-in-hand with the corporate needs of these mascots. These characters are designed so that anyone can instantly identify their trademark qualities. Extending that to a race car that shares those qualities, and then having everyone compete, is a natural elaboration of that idea. Moreover, it fits the kid-in-a-sandbox approach to marketing. Little kids love cars. Little kids love your characters. They are probably going to imagine little cars for their favorite cartoon heroes anyway. Might as well cut out the middle man and make such vehicles canon! 

Since the "Sonic Drift" and "Sega All-Star Racing" series already existed by the time "Sonic Boom" was conceived, its not surprising an episode would riff on the idea. In fact, considering "Boom" was designed to sell video games and toys right from the get-go, I bet everyone having their own trademark vehicles was planned from the beginning. If "Rise of Lyric" hadn't flopped, would "BoomKarts" been an actual title? Whatever the origin, you can tell the designers and animators had fun making up race cars that match the gang's personalities. Knuckles has a big, dumb-looking monster truck, matching his status as a big, dumb, indomitable guy. Tails' Jeep is outfitted with gizmos to get around different terrain, reflecting his inventor personality. Amy's car is slick and stylish but also capable of brute force violence. Sticks' dune buggy looks like it was cobbled together in a cave and emphasizes stealth. Since the plot opens the race up to everyone, Dave the Intern gets a shitty looking Meh Burger-Mobile that sprays a trail of ketchup and mustard. I'm aware enough to see the blatant commercial, capitalistic greed inherent in this whole concept... But it's also fun. 

Beyond all that, as I've mentioned in the past, the race is a classic, intrinsically cinematic story. Real life drag racing is restrained by scientific laws and safety concerns. Boo, hiss. In films and cartoons, however, you can discard all that and go absolutely nuts. "MarioKart" was predated, and no doubt inspired by, "The Great Race," "Death Race 2000," "Wacky Races," and "The Cannonball Run." It's human nature: We want to see weird looking cars performing wildly dangerous stunts across improbable race tracks, usually with as many explosions and as much unnecessary violence as possible. "If You Build It" understands this and constructs the whole episode around the cars doing wacky shit and deploying unlikely gimmicks, tricks, and weapons to get ahead. Knuckles' monster truck has wheels on top of its cab, Amy's car has a hammer built into its hood, Dave has another member of the Lighting Bolt Society open a secret passageway for him.

Now, the episode could have doubled down on the gratuitous violence a bit. The crashes are all pretty tame. There is, however, a moment that surprised me: Amy totally tries to kill Sticks. She has spikes come out of her wheels and skewers her supposed friend's vehicle. Now, I know this episode resides fully in the realm of cartoon violence. That nobody is doing any of these insanely dangerous things with any expectations of actually causing harm to other people. I do think it says a lot about Amy Rose that, the minute she's put in a situation where she's competing against another woman, she immediately goes fully vicious. So much for sisterhood! I'm not sure where trying to crush your best gal pal in a car wreck falls within the "girlboss gaslight gatekeep" pattern but it's definitely in there somewhere. Maybe Knuckles was right about her...

The episode never directly addresses Sonic and his friends attempting vehicular homicide against each other. It's taken for granted that everyone sort of gets a little too caught up on the spirit of the race. However, "If You Build It..." does build towards a non-intrusive moral. As long as everyone in the race is only focused on winning, they crash their vehicles or get sucked into Eggman's trap. It's only after all they put aside their differences and work together – literally cobbling the remains of their different cars together to create some Frankensteinian super-racer – that they achieve victory in the most important goal of all: Humiliating Eggman and crushing his dreams. But I actually do like how this episode has a "team work makes the dream work!" message without putting a big bow on it for the really young or especially dense viewers. 

I laughed a decent amount too. Lots of good ol' fashion silliness abounds here, such as in an opening fixation on manufacturing bigger bolts or Sonic having a massive slip of the tongue. Once the race starts, the episode moves more towards visual gags. However, I did find some of Soar the Eagle's running commentary amusing. He gets all the episode's meta gags, putting out that it's weird the fox can fly on his own but he, the bird, needs a jet pack. Or pointing out the obviousness of the tortoise and the hare ending. The ending gag bumps right up against boomer-ish complaining but is saved by the overall absurdity of the joke. 

Overall, it's a pretty solid episode... Except for one thing. See, some of the racing scenes actually look decent. Amy and Sticks' vehicle colliding or Sonic going around those curves look fine, fast-paced and dynamic. However, other times, the animation sinks to some very rubbery levels. This is most apparent in the scenes where a downed tree threatened the race or whenever Amy's car deploys the robot arm holding a hammer. Dave getting splattered with mud looks as shitty as any other time this show attempts to animate viscous fluids of any type. Money and/or time must have completely run out by the final scene, where Sonic's arms seem to stretch out by about four feet. I guess they saved all the resources for the flashier racing scenes and didn't worry so much about the rest of the episode. 

Considering the title is a lame "Field of Dreams" joke, this one ended up being quite amusing overall. I guess "Wacky Races but with the Sonic Boom cast" turned out to be a totally fitting episode premise after all. Now I wonder what go-karts themed to other characters in the "Sonic" franchise would look like... Archie fucked up never doing a racing plot in the comics early years. I want to know what Antoine and Sally's little speedster would have looked like! Alas. Anyway, this episode is fine. Excuse me while I start drafting a pitch for “Monster Island Grand Prix” to sell to Toho... [7/10]