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]