Sonic Mania Adventures, Episode 2: Sonic and Tails

Sonic Mania Adventures, Episode 2: Sonic and Tails 

Original Release Date: April 30th

From the title on-down, the second episode of "Sonic Mania Adventures" makes it clear what the structure of this show is going to be. The first installment was called "Sonic Returns" and it was about, go figure, Sonic returning. This episode is called "Sonic and Tails" and, clearly enough, it is about reuniting this duo. From here in out, it's not too hard to realize how this series will progress. Just as every classic "Sonic" game introduced a new beloved character to the universe's ensemble, each episode of this cartoon will re-introduce those same characters. It serves a practical function for marketing "Sonic Mania Plus," which I'm sure Sega's money people where overjoyed about. The younger potential players of that game might not know some of these guys – or at least the Classic iterations of them – that well and this allows those hypothetic audience members to get to know them. For long-time fans, we are getting a chance to see these characters again, some of them for the first time in animation ever, and that is a treat in and of itself. Normally, you want to keep your viewers guessing but sometimes knowing what's around the corner and seeing it smoothly snap into place is immensely satisfying too. 

And "Sonic and Tails" doesn't waste any time getting to it either. Though the first installment ended with a comic book movie style teaser for future events, the show is clearly not patterning itself too closely after origin-heavy blockbuster cinema. We are not going to have to wait around through a feature length film to see Sonic and Tails meet, to hear the epic tale of how they first got together. Tails is hanging out on the beach and Sonic runs up to him and says "Yo." Obviously, this is a three minute YouTube short. It doesn't have time to run through all that tedious getting-to-know-you shit that CEOs love. Philosophically, however, this represents the show's clear determination to get right to the point and not worry about over-explaining everything. On the off chance you don't know who these two are, you can still figure it out immediately. A good example of showing and not telling in action. 

So anyway, yeah. Tails is tinkering with the Tornado on the beach, as Tailses are wont to to do. Sonic appears and shows him the doohickey Eggman dropped last time. The fox quickly figures out that it's some sort of Chaos Emerald radar, revealing that Eggman is drilling for the magical plot device nearby. Sonic races off after the baddie only to soundly get his butt kicked. That's when his bestest buddy offers his hand in help and the two team-up against evil once again, as the gods predicted. Eggman is far from defeated however and might have inadvertently been presented with his next wicked scheme... Meanwhile, another familiar face is lurking around this tropical island.

In the past, I have sometimes felt a bit of resistance to "Sonic" media that is on the goofier side. Over time, I've grown fond of "Boom" and the sillier "X" episodes but I still struggle to overcome that initial repulsion to slapstick stories with this cast. I suppose this is a natural result of growing up as a "SatAM" kid in a "Adventures of..." world. Blue hedgehogs are serious business. Us Sonic fans are adults and we can handle a little swearing, alright? Despite that built-in reluctance on my part, I have to say that "Sonic Mania Adventures" integrates its comedy and action very nicely. The smooth, high-energy animation surely plays a role in that. It's still satisfying to watch Sonic and Tails weave around and dodge Eggman's drilling machine. Or see them team up and smash it, which builds up nicely before playing as a fantastic visual gag.

I also continue to enjoy how much this series emphasizes that Sonic is, in fact, a vulnerable little guy that only needs a good whack to send his rings flying. We, in fact, see that exact scenario play out here. Eggman smacks him and he sails through the air, power rings trailing behind him. It's an excellent joke but it also continues to show that Sonic isn't an unstoppable hero that always easily outmatches Eggman based solely on the power of his speed. So much of modern nerdom is obsessed with power scaling and showcasing feats of strength that I think people sometimes lose sight of how stories like this are actually more compelling when, ya know, it seems like there's a chance the hero might not win every time. I have no doubt this is meant more as a callback to the Genesis era of the series. That "Mania Adventures" hasn't acknowledged the Power Rings before this point, using them strictly as a visual cue to show Sonic is taking a beating, makes that clearer. It's a small choice that I appreciate. 

"Sonic Mania," as an entire endeavor, was meant as an extended homage to the original video games, after all. "Sonic and Tails" truly doubles down on this by utilizing lots of recognizable sound effects from those games. Before Eggman's machine explodes, it makes the ramping up noise familiar to anyone who played "Sonic 2." The puttering helicopter noise Tails' propeller tails make or the wheel-screeching effect that plays when Sonic speeds off definitely scratch that sense of nostalgia for me. However, the episode doesn't drop these familiar notes in here simply to make old guys like me feel the warm and fuzzies. It helps sell the comedy too, functioning as evident exclamation points on the big jokes. The music is used similarly too, underlining when a situation feels tedious or ridiculous to our heroes. Naturally, the Hesse-isms are present too, in Sonic's cocky grin or half-open eyelid and Eggman's lips curling up and quivering. Little touches like these go such a long way in telling this story. 

The story told here is simple enough. Sonic runs off to meet his brainy friend for some brainy help. When the physical threat is detected, he tries to stop it personally, assuming his super speed and smashing abilities will be enough. Turns out it's not. That's when Tails lends a hand and, together, the two save the day. (At least for now.) That presents a clear arc for Sonic and a lesson that, perhaps, we all need to hear sometimes: No man is an island. You get by with a little help from your friends. Five keeps a neighborhood alive. So on and so forth. Having a bit of an ego is a cooked-in part of his personality but Sonic isn't treated like a cocky asshole who needs humbling because we still need to like him. Again, some of the brevity of these plot points is surely because Hesse and his team only have a few minutes to tell this entire narrative. However, making sure that each single installment of this program, no matter how short, still tells a whole story is a big reason why these little cartoons work so well for me. 

And work for me it does. This is another nearly perfect blast of classic "Sonic" fun that resonates deeply within my barren soul. Much as "Mania" itself gave the keys to super-fan Christian Whitehead and immediately produced the best game in the series in decades – much as how Archie letting this crazy guy who kept sending them a detailed plan on how he'd fix the comic actually fix the comic – the philosophy of handing these characters over to a life-long "Sonic" fan, go figured, produced some fantastically orchestrated art. Going to extreme lengths to appease the pickiest eaters in the fandom is not, in my opinion, the route to making a high-quality product. However, letting someone with an extremely strong vision – who has been thinking about this franchise, what does and doesn't make it work in their opinion, since they were kids – is the best solution sometimes. Anyway, "Sonic and Tails" rocks. [9/10]

Sonic Mania Adventures, Episode 1: Sonic Returns

Sonic Mania Adventures, Episode 1: Sonic Returns

Original Release Date: March 30th, 2018

All throughout what can collectively be looked back on as the Dork Age of "Sonic" games – which stretches roughly from the release of "Sonic '06" to whatever Modern era game you like the most – fans of my age were begging Sega for something that seemed so simple. Why not take Sonic back to his roots? Why not make a 16-bit style throwback to the original Genesis games? The releases for the various handheld systems had been exactly that for a long time and those titles were a lot better received than the big budget releases. And Sega would half-heartedly acknowledge this request from time to time. "Sonic Unleashed" featured segments where the perspective would switch to a traditional platformer format, short lived respites between the boost shenanigans and werehog brawling. "Sonic the Hedgehog 4" was ostensibly meant to be exactly this but was botched by a number of poor decisions. "Sonic Generations" was obviously the closest we got to this prayer being answered but Sonic Team still felt the need to cut back and forth between Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic stages. In other words, this frustrating need to please two very different audiences, who wanted very different things, at the same time persisted. The idea to simply make Classic games for Classic fans and Modern games for Modern fans seemed out of reach. 

That would change with "Sonic Mania" in 2017, the first "Sonic" game to be universally beloved by the press in decades. It's not too hard to figure out what made this shift happen: Sega decided to let the lunatics run the asylum, at least for a little bit. "Mania" was made by a fan game creator and shows an obvious dedication and love of the original Mega Drive era, resulting in what could arguably be the best 2D-style game in the series. Christian Whitehead was not the only well-known fan who was allowed to do his own thing with "Mania." Tyson Hesse had risen from edgy sprite comics to popular fan artist to official contributor to the Archie books. The bastard would next be drafted to direct the animated intro to "Mania." Hesse's personal style was already heavily influenced by the "Sonic CD" opening, with his own touches of quirky humor added, which made him the idea choice to create this sequence. And it was glorious. Simply beautiful, as fun and carefree and exciting a piece of "Sonic" that had existed in decades. The kind of stuff that reminded old fans like me why we loved these characters in the first place. 

The animation was so well received that Hesse was invited back to do a trailer in the same style for the expanded physical release of "Mania" the next year, reintroducing Mighty and Ray to the world. The reception to these clips was such that a common refrain went up through the fandom: Why can't we get a full-length "Sonic" animated series in this style, with Hesse's involvement? At the time, there was no "Sonic" cartoon producing new episodes and the live action movie was still a few years off. Seemed like the time to strike, didn't it? Somebody actually involved with Sega Corporate must have had a similar idea because, in spring of 2018, we would kind of get exactly that. Animation – especially traditional animation, in which artists still physically draw each frame – is a long, drawn-out process that can take years to produce. Not to mention arguing with networks or streaming services can lead to less-than-ideal results, as Sonic Team has recently experienced with Cartoon Network's handling of "Sonic Boom." Everyone clearly wanted a Hesse-led animated series in the same style as his work on "Mania" but getting such a project out in a timely manner – much less soon enough to tie-in with the release of "Sonic Mania Plus" – was probably too tall an order to handle...

A rather brilliant compromise was found. Hesse would direct a series of six episodes, totaling only eleven minutes in length all together, and released directly to the "Sonic" YouTube channel, bypassing any exhausting network negotiations. New installments would drop at the end of every month starting in spring of 2018. The plot of "Sonic Mania Adventures" would link the end of "Sonic Forces" with the additional content in the "Plus" re-release, while giving us more of the Classic universe thrills and laughs we so clearly wanted. It wasn't quite what we actually wanted but it would allow Hesse and his team to maintain a high level of quality while making the Sega CEOs happy. The resulting "Adventures" was about as universally beloved as any "Sonic" content can be these days, ignoring the screeds of people who hate anything Classic era by default. The success of "Adventures" would create a habit of Sega dropping new, stylized animations onto YouTube every time they have a new game to promote, one of the best things the studio has done in recent memory.

Each episode of "Sonic Mania Adventures" only runs a few minutes each. I should probably review the entire series in one block. However, I gotta be me and what me does is ramble on about stuff for far too long, so expect individual reviews for each episode. The series kicks off with "Sonic Returns," so named because it begins with Classic Sonic returning to his home world or timeline or whatever it is. He immediately spies Eggman carrying some Flickies in an Egg Prison and leaps into action. This is soon revealed to be a trap, Sonic getting captured by a simple snare and stuck beside a ticking bomb. Eggman must appear to gloat, leading to much shenanigans and the reveal that the doctor is still after those pesky Phantom Rubies. 

Something that makes "Sonic Mania Adventures" such a delight is that it returns to the franchise's roots in more way than one. "Sonic Returns" obviously features many familiar bits of music, environment, and story elements, all designed to activate the serotonin centers of old people like me. However, a particular choice takes us back to the very first bit of "Sonic" media. Before the comics and the cartoons, there were the games themselves. The Genesis titles told simple stories through brief cut scenes that didn't feature word balloons, conveying the plot entirely through visuals and music. Back in the day, you'd play those games, provide your own words for the characters in your head, and imagine deeper interaction in-between the stages. It fired the imagination, in other words. "Sonic Mania Adventures" continues this trend by depicting the cast as speechless, the animation alone telling the story. I realize this was probably not Hesse and his team's decision. Sega has decided a while back that "Classic" Sonic would not talk. However, it ends up invoking the original experience of first playing these games in a surprisingly powerful way.

There's an easily uncovered reason why Classic Sonic and friends wouldn't talk. We all know that the character's original main inspiration were "rubber hose" style classic cartoons from the twenties and thirties. Sonic was very much a product of the nineties and would soon enough reflect that but Felix the Cat, Steamboat Willie, and Oswalt the Lucky Rabbit we're his immediate influences. This is reflected in "Sonic Returns." Mainly, in the way it revolves around a simplistic story of a smiling hero going up against a rotund, buffoonish enemy. Eggman setting traps for Sonic and attempting to capture him brings the straight-forward premises of "Tom and Jerry" or "Coyote and Run Roader." Eggman doesn't want to eat this little blue guy but he's still trying to get one over on him, only to be effortlessly undermined by the mischievous, slicker-than-slick hero. Like Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd or the Wolf and Red Hot Riding Hood, its as direct as can be. Baddie wants to get the hero but the hero is much too clever for that. Tale as old as time. 

And that simple kind of physical comedy is exactly what this episode features. When Sonic gets tossed along by a series of spikes emerging from the ground or fools Eggman into his own boobie trap, it's obviously in the style of old school chase cartoons. We certainly see this in Eggman's characterization as equal parts antagonist that vexes the hero and pathetic fool that he feels kind of sorry for, evident in the scene where Eggman whimpers and blubbers until Sonic tries to set him free. That the adversary is ultimately hoisted by his own petard could not be more in the fashion of classic animation. However, you can still tell that Tyson Hesse was directly involved in this, providing the storyboards. (Which, no doubt, resembled his comic work a lot.) The artist's quirky sense of humor and ability to get a laugh with a wacky but very expressive face remains intact. So much of Sonic's personality, his exuberance but also his attitude, are conveyed through the stretched mouth and squinting eyes. The fact that Hesse's Sonic can clearly be surprised by what happens to him actually adds some depth to this blue dude with 'tude. He can be caught off-guard. He's not infallible. Makes him a lot easier to root for, despite Eggman's machinations still providing little challenge for him. 

There is, simply put, an exuberance that is apparent in every frame of "Sonic Returns." You can tell that working on this short was a dream come true for everyone involved in it and that sheer joy never leaves. That the episode is only a few minutes long certainly doesn't hurt, not giving us enough time for that sugar rush high to ebb or run down. However, you can clearly see that "Sonic Mania Adventures" is largely inspired by the legendary "Sonic CD" opening animation. Not only in the spindly limbed character designs, which clearly draw from that intro. You also see it in the way Sonic runs, jumps, and moves. He doesn't merely speed off in one direction. He twirls around a tree, spins into the air, his limbs unfurling like a flying squirrel. He's having a good time, living his life and being a hero. That fun is infectious. When you combine it with the bright colors, the catchy music, the fun sound effects, you get a short that instantly captures the sense of freedom and speed that the original "Sonic" games produced, all beautifully and fluidly animated in a likable and playful style. 

Being made during the height of Marvel movie mania, it's not too surprising that "Sonic Returns" has a superhero movie style post-credit scene that teased the appearance of a fan favorite villain. The episode sets up a wider story, dropping a hint about those pesky emeralds, while still functioning as a totally entertaining work in its own right. In other words, in all of three minutes, it captures so much of what the Sonic experience should be about. I love it. I honestly can't remember if the rest of "Sonic Mania Adventures" is as good as this first installment, as I haven't watched them since they were new. Now, I'm very excited to see if the remaining episodes stand up to the quality of this one. [9/10]

Come Join the Eggman Empire!

Come Join the Eggman Empire!

Original Release Date: November 2nd, 2017

The official "Sonic the Hedgehog" YouTube channel was launched about ten years ago. At first, it was about what you'd expect from an extension of a corporate product's advertising arm. Trailers, announcements, gameplay footage, and other clips of that nature were uploaded to there. However, the YouTube of ten years ago is not quite the same beast it is now. Clear to say, the video upload website has become one of those apps that changed society as we know it. YouTube is now the source of entertainment, news, and background noise for a not-inconsiderate amount of the global population. Showing a surprising amount of in-the-know savvy that Sega started displaying in the last decade, the "Sonic" Youtube followed the path of the official Twitter account. It started playing along. The channel kept uploading the typical contents of trailers and behind-the-scenes teaser. It also started posting goofier stuff. Short little joke videos, gags, memes. Clips of real hedgehogs scurrying around a tiny Green Hill Zone set or footage of a dog dressed as Sonic messing around. In other words: Sonic started shitposting. 

Normally, such an event would be seen as the blatant cynical act it was. Just a greedy corporation saying "How do you do, fellow kids," right? That's exactly what it was, of course, but the main difference is that the people putting together these little videos were clearly having fun with them. And fun is infectious. All of these bits and sketches were designed to go viral and extend the public's awareness of the "Sonic" brand. However, that most of this little uploads were genuinely cute and fun went a long way. It might have still been marketing but it was good marketing. One might make the case that there is a degree of art is stuff like this, of someone expressing an idea or a thought for its own sake. Maybe? Sure.

I bring this up because, eventually, original pieces of animation were uploaded to the official "Sonic" YouTube channel. If YouTube is, functionally, a television station of sorts in this day and age, then these little bits of animation count as "Sonic" cartoons. Indeed, several short series and films tying into the main franchise have been distributed this way. I don't feel the need to talk about every single thing uploaded to the "Sonic" YouTube channel because most of it doesn't warrant that much discussion. (Unless I get bored and decide to do exactly that.) Some of them are a bit more interesting and worthy of writing about, or so I have impulsively decided in this moment. That's what I'll be doing for the next few weeks because I don't have a kid yet and still have some free time to write about this stupid shit.

The first of these little bits of YouTubery tomfoolery to be worthy of an entry over at the Sonic Fan Wiki is "Come Join the Eggman Empire!" This was part of Sega's advertising push for "Sonic Forces." The forty-nine second clip essentially acts as an in-universe bit of propaganda for Eggman's forces, in the style of old-timey workplace instructional videos. Or, perhaps, the modern day descendants of such films, like those humiliating slide shows Amazon warehouse workers have to watch explaining how unions are bad actually. Anyway, over some cheesy animation, Mike Pollack's Eggman narrates all the reason you should sign up to join the Eggman Empire and be turned into a soulless machine for his evil empire. He's rather jovial about it the whole time. 

What I like about "Come Join the Eggman Empire!" is that it feels like a little cutaway gag they might have done on "Sonic Boom." "Sonic Forces" was mostly an attempt to re-establish a degree of seriousness to the mainline "Sonic" games, which had arguably gotten a little too jokey in the years before. Its images of Sonic running through an industrial wasteland and fighting enormous Eggman built robots certainly established more of a serious action/adventure tone, drawing a handful of comparisons to "SatAM." Whether the game was successful at that, or if this is a direction the "Sonic" series should have gone in at all, is still hotly debated. However, the fact that somebody threw together a jokey little bit of promotion like this suggests maybe a lack of tonal direction was a problem that game faced after all. 

Nevertheless, "Come Join the Eggman Empire!" is cute. Little jokes about the obvious sinister intentions of what Eggman is promising, contrasting with his happy presentation, made me chuckle. Such as how he makes a lack of clean air or free will sound like selling points. Like I said, it's very easy to imagine the "Boom" version of Eggman broadcasting this to the local TV station on that show and probably getting more than a few people to sign up. The final joke of "LOVE MANDATORY" makes me wonder if some of the "Boom" writing team didn't have a hand in this. (I can't find a writer credited anywhere for this, so that's speculation on my behalf.)

The animation is intentionally cheap and limited looking, probably done in Adobe Flash or whatever it's equivalent was at the time. Still, I do like the dopey looking take on the Wolf Avatar character that was so heavily promoted in the game, a coughing pre-Roboticized Caterkiller, and the big smiley face being drawn on one of the generic looking Egg Drones. It fits the retro aesthetic the short is clearly invoking. If nothing else, "Join the Eggman Empire!" acts as a decent bit of world-building for the game, suggesting the sort of propaganda the ordinary inhabitants of Sonic's world are exposed to whenever Eggman is occupying their city or in the process of taking over the world. Reinventing Eggman as some sort of would-be businessman type who still desires utter subjugation of the populace and complete control over nature isn't the worst idea. Anyways, this was cute! I chortled. What else have you got, Official Sonic YouTube channel? [7/10]

Hi-sCoool! SeHa Girls, Episode 1.07: Eggman vs. Sonic with the Sega Hard Girls

Hi-sCoool! SeHa Girls, Episode 1.07: Eggman vs. Sonic with the Sega Hard Girls

Original Air Date: November 19th, 2014

In my previous review of an episode of "Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls," I got so busy ranting about the disturbing social and psychological underpinnings of this series, and the subgenre it is part of, that I overlooked an important part of the experience. See, the anime opening sequence is a proud tradition in Japan, flashy intros and a catchy theme song often being considered essential elements to a program's success. Unforgettable openings are valuable in American animation too but they often exist more as repetitive melodies that couldn't be mistaken for Top 40 hits, more commercial jingles than emotionally resonant works of art. Japanese cartoon makers, meanwhile, truly pioneered the idea of having professionally made pop or rock songs as their opening themes. These strong tunes are then paired with a dynamically edited series of images that are often better animated than the actual episode will be. A really good anime intro has you ready to Mazin-Go, leaves you-are-shocked, gets you to burning, puts your grasses on, and creates the Pegusu Fantusee even if you don't seem to understand what the fuck a Head Cha-La is. It's as much a statement of purpose as it is an eye-catching, ear-worming blend of music and visuals. 

In other words, a good anime OP delivers, sometimes being the difference between a generation spanning hit and a forgettable also-ran. How does the "Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls'" intro stack up? It gives the impression that this is a show meant to blind the viewer with a rocket-paced swirl of bright colors, cutesy cartoon imagery, and ear-piercing sounds. After a brief Genesis style start screen, the viewer is assaulted with an escalating, hectic dance beat, high-pitched anime girls shouting “HAI!,” and a visual vortex of bright colors and Sega consoles. Frantic dance moves and clips from classic games follow, with more extremely bright colors, more squeaky shouts, and a techno beat that simply never stops hammering into your skull. It is the audio/visual equivalent of swallowing six Pixie Stix and then getting slammed in the head with baseballs flung at high speed. The kind of assaultive, hyper-active sugar rush that makes me feel like I just lost a fight. 

In some ways, it is a fitting opening for a show like this. After being teased at the end of the last episode, Sonic and Eggman take center stage in the aptly named “Eggman vs. Sonic with the Sega Hard Girls” and it is as inanely plotted and obnoxious as the previous installment. Eggman hacking into the “Border Break” world has, for whatever reason, caused the three SeHa Girls to shrink to small size and revert to their “chibi” forms. Sonic shows up and protects the girls from Eggman and his legion of automated turrets. Soon, Sonic pursues his enemy across a montage of famous stages and scenes from his various video games. The SeHa Girls hitch a ride on the hedgehog's quills, taking a wild journey before returning to the “Border Break” world, where Sonic drives his opponent away for the time being. The wacky incidents that follow also finish up the quest Center-sensai sent the girls to this world to in the first place. 

When I was informed that Sonic the Hedgehog crossed over with some weird anime created to promote Sega's library of games, I expected him to... Ya know, talk. To act like Sonic in more than merely the sense of running around and fighting robots. No such luck. The hedgehog, as presented here, resembles his “Sonic Adventure” appearance. Despite that, not a single word crosses his lips, as is tradition with “Classic” Sonic by this point. Eggman is totally silent as well, flashing a crazy smile from his Egg-Mobile. That Sega's most beloved franchise (internationally anyway) shows up in this cartoon without saying anything goes a long way towards explaining the philosophy of “SeHa Girls.” That the I.P.s are present and represented is more important to the program than them actually doing anything of note or showing a genuine personality. 

Which isn't to say that “Eggman vs. Sonic with the Sega Hard Girls” isn't clearly meant to be a celebration of the “Sonic the Hedgehog” brand. We do get a mildly neat action sequence of Sonic running along the sides of the canyon walls and destroying Eggman's machine guns. (Amusingly, he accomplishes this by jumping on top of them.) However, Sonic soon pursues Eggman through some inverted inter-dimensional wedgie. This results in a montage of scenes from previous “Sonic” games. I don't mean we see Sonic chasing Eggman through stages and hazards we all know and love. Instead, the episode literally shows gameplay footage from “Sonic 1's” Green Hill Zone and Special Stage, as well as the famous orca chase from “Sonic Adventure.” The SeHa Girls appear in bubbles to comment on what is happening but that's about the only difference from these moments and zones we've all played a hundred times.

I suppose it would be useful to remember that “SeHa Girls” was, obviously, a very low-budget TV show. At the same time, I didn't expect it to reuse quite so much pre-existing footage. Despite the clear lack of effort expended on this extended tribute to Sonic the Hedgehog, the script certainly never lets you forget who the real star of the show is. From the moment the blue hero appears, all the SeHa Girls' dialogue is devoted to exalting how great he is. The titular trio spends nearly the entire eleven minute runtime of the episode talking about how much they love Sonic and how fantastic they think he is. Listen, you could say I'm a fan of Sonic the Hedgehog. He might be a character that I enjoy. Yet an episode of television – especially one he's ostensibly only guest starring in – stopping dead in its tracks to remind us how fucking awesome Sega's corporate mascot is not an ideal way to tell a narrative.

In execution, this does not come off as a loving tribute to Sonic and his long history as a franchise. In fact, this feels a lot closer like an ego-stroking session for Sega as a corporate entity. Which, it should be all too apparent, it exactly is. “SeHa Girls” is a TV show literally about the video game consoles the company is famous for making, as personified by three cutesy CGI anime chicks. Every episode has them stepping into a new Sega video game. The final minutes of this episode hints that the mysterious Center-sensai, directing the girls, is actually Yuji Naka himself. (He provides the voice too, though under a heavily digitalized filter.) In other words: This is not an episode of a television show. It is a long commercial for Sega as a company, the products they produce, and how fucking amazing and great you should find all of the above. Am I watching a story or being sold something? 

A television show being designed to sell you something, existing to be nothing more than an extension of a cooperate commercial agenda, is one thing. I like “Beast Wars,” “The LEGO Movie,” “Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers,” and numerous other movies and shows made with this purpose in mind. If “Eggman Versus Sonic and the SeHa Girls” managed to do a better job of disguising its status as an advertisement, I still would not be able to overlook an important fact: I hate the SeHa Girls. I really don't like them. I cannot sanction their buffoonery. The CGI models continue to be as shallowly defined as possible. Dreamcast's clumsy antics remain unbearable. Mega Drive is simply the smart one and Saturn has no personality at all. They spend the whole episode as tiny gremlins with enormous heads, fawning over Sonic and shrieking in a variety of situations. 

It's fair to say that “SeHa Girls” is simply not the kind of humor that appeals to me. What are the jokes here? Dreamcast stumbles into the enemy core in the “Border Break” world, her physical clumsiness once again causing her to sail head first into an object. After the entire ordeal is over, Center-sensai forgets what deal he made with the SeHa Girls, as far as their rewards go. Naturally, the girls respond with loud, vocal bafflement. That's truly about it though! How is this presentation meant to amuse us? Are we simply suppose to feel a dopamine hit from the cute girls shrieking or seeing references made to video games that we recognize? If that's the case, “SeHa Girls” is a truest example I can think of a TV show jingling keys in front of its viewers' faces. Bright colors, loud noises, easy nostalgia, cutesy faces: Truly dire stuff. 

The “Sega Hard Girls” multimedia project was, I suppose by any traditional measure, a success. The light novels wrapped up by June of 2014 but the manga kept running until February of 2015. The anime's thirteen episode run concluded in December of 2014 but was apparently popular enough to spawn an OVA two years later, in 2016. That is, not coincidentally, the same year a video game that crossed the Sega Hard Girls over with the “Hyderdimension Neptunia” series came out. That includes a North American release too. That game got re-released for Steam the next year and that is, as far as I can tell, the last anyone has heard of this particular franchise. Not a bad run but, at the same time, it does not seem to me that “SeHa Girls” is an especially beloved or well-remembered endeavor. I'm sure Sonic has cameos or split-second appearances in some of the later episodes of “Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls” or the other branches of the project. As the primary mascot for the company this whole thing is meant to be fluffing, that's inevitable. However, I don't think I'm strong enough to seek those installments out. Needless to say, “SeHa Girls” is definitively not for me. I prefer a cartoon with characters that have genuine personalities and exist for a reason beyond shilling old video games and overpriced statues of waifus... [5/10]

Hi-sCoool! SeHa Girls, Episode 1.06: Center-sensei's Center Exam

Hi-sCoool! SeHa Girls, Episode 1.06: Center-sensei's Center Exam

Original Air Date: November 12, 2014

I think I've mentioned this before but Japan, as a culture, seems rather fixated on the idea of the mascot. Here in God's country, mascots are only associated with those lowest forms of entertainment: School sports, breakfast cereals, fast food restaurants, disingenuous anti-drug/crime/gun safety organizations. Basically, the kind of otherwise boring shit corporations want to trick six-year-olds into liking. In Japan, however, all sorts of stuff have colorful cartoon mascots. Big cities, small towns, organizations, or companies are encouraged to create a mascot to further promotion, identify their core values, and endear themselves to the public at large. This practice is called "yuru-chara" – short for "yurui mascot character," in which "yurui" is best translated as "light-hearted" – and has been embraced by everything from massive companies to tiny local initiatives. These mascots are often characterized by their overwhelmingly cute and simplified designs, often all the more apparent in the large costume suits – known as "kigurumi" in Japan – that appear at events and gatherings. Some of these mascots have become so popular in their own right that their link to whatever they were originally made to promote – Hello Kitty for the Sanrio corporation, Domo-Kun for the NHK television network, Chiitan for the city of Susaki – becomes hazy, the characters becoming a brand in their own right. To American readers, this is like if Smokey Bear became so internationally beloved that you could buy everything from slippers to vibrators featuring his likeness. Or if Dig 'Em Frog was so popular that you could be a lifelong fan of the character and have ton of his merch without once being within mouth's reach of a bowl of Honey Smacks. 

Japan's all-abiding fascination with mascots is largely a result of the country's embrace of kawaii as an aesthetic philosophy. This has, unsurprisingly, crossbred with more hardcore nerd circles in order to create the spin-off concept of moé anthropomorphism. This is when the link between the mascot and whatever product or concept it is promoting is tossed out, the very thing itself becoming the character. If you love your favorite open-to-the-public-to-edit online encyclopedia so much that you want to marry it, there's now a cute anime girl version with which you can live out that disturbing fantasy! Being so closely linked to otaku culture, moé anthropomorphism crossed over into video games, anime, light novels, and manga very quickly. Essentially, if you are a fan of a type of thing, there's probably a cute Japanese cartoon girl version of it out there that you can imagine vivid erotic scenarios about, if not an entire animated series or gaming franchise devoted to a whole horde of them. World War II battle ships? Animals? Countries? The cells that make up your very body? Pandemics that devastate the global population? Yep, yep, yep, yep, and yep. Is there a manga out there in which the rivalry between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung's schools of psychotherapy is symbolized as a love-hate relationship between two big titty waifus? If not, I call dibs on that one. 

Being an ultra-nerdy conclave within already super-dorky fandoms, it should be unsurprising that gaming related phenomenon has spawned quite a lot of moé anthropomorphism media. There's a fantasy series reimagining the Nintendo/Sega console wars of the nineties as a Tolkienian epic. The extremely popular "Hyperdimension Neptunia" series does something similar within the JRPG genre, turning every gaming console you can think of into provocatively dressed, suspiciously young looking "digital goddesses" with enormous eyes. Yes, this process, of re-imagining objects you can buy as cutesy 2D babes, has also crossbred with Japan's idol culture. You can show your fidelity to Sega products by decorating your home with figures, posters, and shrines to a cutesy personification of your beloved console. This feels like the end game of capitalism, doesn't it? The product itself becoming an object of desire or literal worship for the individual, people willingly creating a creepy parasocial relationship not with a public figure but a sexualized personification of their favorite possession. Marx would have an aneurysm if he lived to see this. 

Anyway, I bring all of this up on my stupid "Sonic the Hedgehog" blog for a reason. In 2013, some mad scientist deep within a Japanese publishing company came up with a light novel series in which Sega's various game consoles are reimagined as kawaii anime girls that go on wacky adventures together. This quickly led to a manga, which soon beget video games and an anime adaptation. The umbrella term for the entire brand is "Sega Hard Girls." The title refers to the difficulty of the referenced video games but I'm betting a double entendre – what might these anime girls in short skirts and thigh-highs do to your pants, UwU – was intentional. Which might explain why the series is usually abbreviated to "SeHa Girls." Following another common trend in anime storytelling, most of the installments in the series depict the various consoles/girls as students at a high school. 

TMS Entertainment would follow that template with "Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls," a 2014 CGI anime series with an extremely annoying-to-type name. The series follows three of the SeHa Girls: The ditzy but well intentioned Dreamcast, the studious and withdrawn meganekko Mega Drive, and Saturn, who is apparently the sexy one despite showing the same amount of skin as the other two. Their goal is to graduate Sehagaga Academy. They do this under the cruel tutelage of Center-sensai, a computer program with a rabbit avatar. He gives the girls tasks which take them inside the worlds of various beloved and not-so-beloved Sega properties. In other words, this entire venture is an excuse to promote the popular I.P.s Sega owns as well as turn their consoles into cute girls you can adore and/or lust after. The cartoon focuses on the central trio mentioned above but the other branches of the project takes the gag as far as possible, featuring moé versions of the Sega CD, the 32X, the SG-1000, and the fuckin' DreamCast memory cards too. That the series doesn't feature waifus based on the various incarnations of the Sega Pico feels like a massive oversight but perhaps someone decided sexualizing consoles for preschoolers was too far even for the Japanese. 

Entire episodes of "SeHa Girls" take place in the worlds of "Virtua Fighters," "Space Channel 5," "Puyo Puyo," "Jet Set Radio," "Space Harrier," "Hang-On," and some fucking cell phone game. Notable shout-outs to "Golden Axe," "Altered Beasts," "Sakura Wars," "Phantasy Star," "Congo Bongo," and "Fantasy Zone" pop up. That weird beetle fighting game, where you scanned physical trading cards at arcade cabinets, is a running joke. Obviously, for a series so entrenched in Sega lore, it was only a matter of time before the company's beloved blue hedgehog showed up. Aside from cameos in the opening and closing credits, Sonic appeared in the sixth and seventh episodes of "SeHa Girls." Which finally brings me to the reason I'm talking about this particular obscure Japanese cartoon show, whose premise is so fuckin' dumb and dependent on cultural context that it required six paragraphs of preamble to set it up.

Sonic and Eggman actually only have cameos at the very end of episode six, the two characters appearing suddenly to set up the next installment. However, I'm the thorough sort so I'm covering both halves. "Center-sensei's Center Exam" focuses mostly on "Border Break," a co-op arcade shooter starring giant robots with simple "capture the flag" game play. (I've never heard of it but apparently it was popular in Japan.) The girls are sent into the game's world to collect the stars they need to pass their exam. Dreamcast and Mega Drive get enormous mecha to pilot while Saturn is forced to get around on her own. Shenanigans ensue, mostly because of Dreamcast being kind of an idiot. As the three are finally about to claim the enemy team's flag, Center-sensai appears to announce that their system has been hacked. The culprit? Dokutā Egguman! Luckily, Sonikku quickly appears to assist the fight. 

I actually first heard about "SeHa Girls" years ago thanks to the Anime World Order podcast reviewing it. Despite a lot of blatant anti-Sonic rhetoric in that review, the otherwise knowledgeable hosts had positive things to say about this program. Perhaps that set my expectations too high for what is described by multiple sources as a gag anime. Because this shit is dumb, y'all. A lot of the humor is extremely broad physical comedy, built mostly on the girls doing stuff by accident. Dreamcast's ditziness is the source of a repeating gag, where she keeps accidentally shooting at Saturn. It would seem this show is pitched right at the kind of fans who find high-pitched anime girls shrieking at each other and being involved in pedestrian slapstick inherently hilarious. It did not make me laugh! Is it possible that Daryl Surat doesn't actually know what he's been talking about all these years??? 

The truth is, this episode of "Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls" didn't make me feel much of anything. That the series is animated with CGI, and largely takes place within a video game, it makes me feel like I'm watching one of those old Machinima animations. It's not ugly, as so many CGI anime are, but it's also not especially distinctive. Honestly, considering the entire point of this series is to turn the Sega consoles into anime waifus you can buy merchandise of, I'm surprised at how uninteresting the SeHa Girls' designs are. They don't incorporate nearly enough of the console's color schemes or features into their appearances. Dreamcast has a big controller as a crown, the orange spiral and the triangle on her chest, and stockings vaguely reminiscent of the system's controllers. Saturn and Mega Drive are not that distinct, with an easily missed hairclip or a symbol on some boots being the main giveaways as to what consoles they are meant to represent. 

Instead of drawing obvious inspiration from their source material, they look like generic moé blobs to me. They have colorful hair, enormous glittery eyes, costumes that are distinct enough to cosplay but not so elaborate as to be difficult to make. Despite the weird, objectifying element inherent in this entire enterprise, the girls don't strike me as especially sexualized either. The SeHa Girls are not the big titty anime GFs you might be expecting. They exist in that obnoxious J-pop idol realm of sexuality: Cute, a little teasing of their feminine attributes, but never too forward or provocative. This is essential to the moé girls' appeal. Their kawaii purity must never be violated, least the otakus at home find themselves unable to imagine each character as his personal dream girl, an attractive but forever youthful and virginal digital girlfriend that can never reject him like real girls, with their depth and complex human personalities, can. 

In other words... The SeHa Girls, and all the other comparable anime characters, can never be allowed to be anything more than archetypes. They do not own their sexuality. That belongs to the fan boys that will deify them. They can't have too defined of a personality, least it spoil the universal appeal these girls are meant to have. They are not fully fleshed-out living things but rather... Objects. Not unlike the game consoles they are named after and meant to represent, bringing the disturbingly sexist subtext of the entire moé anthropomorphism subgenre to the forefront. Thus, Dreamcast can never be more than a clumsy bimbo, despite being based on a the "thinking" console. Mega Drive is the quiet, nerdy bookworm that is too shy to participate in the dance number over the end credits. The kind of little sister type a hikinomori shut-in can dream of protecting and cherishing. Based on this one episode, Saturn doesn't seem to have much of a personality at all. 

Man, I guess watching "Perfect Blue" and "Welcome to the N.H.K." didn't prepare me for how pandering anime aimed directly at the lonely fanboys can be. Not to mention how crushingly commercial it is, with this implicit subtext of "disregard humanity and embrace products instead." I want to be offended by the layers of sexism and capitalism woven through every part of this show but "Hi☆sCoool! SeHa Girls" truly isn't that distinctive. It's dumb, short, lame, and unimaginative and not worthy of any outrage. But, uh, hey, Sonic the Hedgehog and Robotnik sure do show up in the last two minutes! Hopefully the next one of these will provide more "Sonic" content for me to talk about. Otherwise, I am simply and clearly not the target audience for this program. [5/10]