I hated it. I only watched ten or so episodes, and I found it dumb that they used music to destroy their enemies. Sonic, Manic, and Sonia forming a rock band was a... terrible idea, in my opinion.

Anyway, that's just what I feel.

Did you know that there were Sonic Underground plushies that were given to children at Denny's? I got one, six or so years ago.

EE

I didn't hate it, just didn't like it very much...

The stories were dull and repetitive, and they seemed more or less just like the stories other cartoons like that would show. The only decent episodes were the Beginning 3-parter and the 3-parter featuring Knuckles in it.

I love the cartoon and think it works a lot better than SatAm did. Mobius is actually a world in SU- it's vast, it has varied cultures in it and it has a large populace with many different characters in it. The heroes travel around instead of being confined to one place. The sibling banter is fun too.

They've also got that great moment when Sonic realises "hang on, it'd be stupid to go to that race Robotnik is holding, it's an obvious trap meant for me and I'll be caught", so he stays home instead... but Sonia, Manic, Robotnik et al assume he is going to be there and the whole thing nearly goes very wrong.

Plus- Knuckles. Nuff said.

Jem > Sonic Underground. Glamour and glitter, fashion and fame!

Sure, "Sonic Underground" offered by far the most thorough portrayal of Mobius, which I certainly liked. Unfortunately, this simply isn't enough to make for a great show. What about (worthwhile) character development and atmosphere? Robotropolis as portrayed in "SatAM" was a much more threatening environment. Sure, "SatAM" was a bit more on the fantasy side but it boasted a real sense of adventure and genuinely complex characters.

can you go one post without mentioning Satam?

(Edited to suit rules better)

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can you go one post without mentioning Satam?

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Where do you get off bashing on someone for mentioning satAM? Hey! Here's a fun game; its called "grow the freak up and deal with it"!

The rules say no flaming, so don't start flaming someone at random; you'll get toasted back.

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On topic...

Yeah, I do remember seeing one of those large cardboard cutouts at a local Denny's. I haven't gotten around to watching the episodes of SU, but I probably will at some point. Hell, I still need to check out more of Sonic X to keep up with you guys.

XD

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What about (worthwhile) character development and atmosphere?

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Like Cyrus' debut ep? Manic growing tired of the fact they never won? Sonic realising how stupid it would be to blunder into an obvious trap just to show off his speed (which puts him a head above SatAm Sonic)? Manic getting over his feelings of homelessness? The entire character of A.R.T.? Knuckles making the choice between his friends and the fate of a planet? The entire Underground group having to become a group in the first place?

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Robotropolis as portrayed in "SatAM" was a much more threatening environment.

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Robotropolis in SU as portrayed in SU was an actual city that people lived in instead of a big evil fortress.

I think people hate SU because it's so damn different to the games. It's probably the most detatched continuity, like ever. But you shouldn't hate it for that. Not when there's so many other reasons to hate it.

Oh, and there wasn't Tails ever. In a world so completely different to all the others, he could have been anything - sound guy, Queen Aleena's messenger, the Oracle... but they dropped him completely.

Mobius really was a different planet there, not just Earth with Anthromorphic animals - there were obvious aliens too.

The songs had their moments, and it was nice to have a song every episode, even if it was mostly stock footage.

As for the characters, well, it's quite impossible to create characters that everybody loves all the time. They did pretty well if you ask me.

And it's French, anyway. It's going to be different in more ways than just continuity - there will be culture differences too.

Tough one.

I'd say, when it comes to mood, and voice acting (for the american version), SatAM tops it.

Also, although some of the music was good, and some fit into the story, I hated it when they would have the band play a song for no particular reason, and that song would also happen to be a lame one...

However, Underground did have it's good points -- Knuckles, a more developed world than SatAM, character development (to an extent), and a rule saying that roboticized Mobians don't have access to their living version's memories (thus fixing the plot hole in Archie and SatAM of why Robotnik coldn't find out the location of Knothole from those he'd roboticized who knew of it's location...)

Beyond all this, the question remains, "how good of a series was it". It certainly wasn't anything spectacular, but it wasn't all that bad either. All in all, pretty much your average kid's adventure cartoon (if you don't count the songs)...

Oh, and...

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For instance, I rather enjoyed the SU crossover in Super Special #10, and would like to see more of that universe in the future. What about the rest of you?

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I enjoyed it too, although I'm a sucker for alternate universe stories. I think I read somewhere, though (a letters page, I assume, but I could be wrong), that a return trip ain't gonna happen.

I love it when people say "I think people hate SU because it's so different then the games." when SatAM is in the exact same boat. I seen people praise SatAM for being different to the games, and then the same people slam SU for being different to the games. Go figure.

Anyways... Personally, I like SU. It had it's flaws but for what it was, it's an enjoyable Sonic spin-off that just gets the bad end of everything thrown it's way. More people should give it a chance and not compare it to the other universes. That's what I did and i guess that's why I like it.

I actually liked what I saw of Sonic Underground. The storyline was decent. I loved the episodes with Knuckles. I liked how Sonia, Manic, and Sonic changed in their own ways and grew as "hedgehogs."

The only thing I despised about the series were the songs, particularly since they usually just popped out of nowhere in terms of placement. I understood that they were a band, but I felt that the overall enjoyment of the series was hurt by the "forced" songs.

I thought by the time this show made it to tv, tv shows about bands had become passe.

I'd only seen a few episodes of this show, and I hardly remember them. Did they have any rival bands like Jem and the Holograms? They had the Misfits to deal with. I think band shows work better when there's a musical rival besides the saving-the-world crap. Then again, Josie and the Pussycats didn't have a rival, did they? They sure did go into outerspace and possibly under the sea (???), though...

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where do you get off bashing someone

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er...what? i don't remember bashing anyone or flaming for that matter.
i said what i said.

since i'm getting the sh***y end of the stick here, just get it all out. anyone else want to take a shot at me?
go for it.

Kk, *hits shadow77 in the gut*

Back to topic,

Other than my inane reasons for not liking the show. I don't remember seeing much wrong with it, other than the songs that sounded like a current MTV spinoff.

~Rico

Overall I like it, I try not to compare the Dic Sonic shows all that much. I like all of them for different reasons. I loved AoSTH because it was just a zany good time to watch, and was always good for a laugh. As I got a little older I began to appreciate the darker, more serious approach that SATam took. I can clearly see why the comics are so heavily based off of it. Then came Sonic Underground, I didn't become aware of it's existence until late 1999.

I watched it every morning, I think I was just glad to see ANY Sonic show on the air again. I also liked how they attempted to blend elements from both AoSTH, and SATam. The one clunker was the songs, there were some decent ones, even a few good ones, but the rest were stinkers. The fact that Knuckles appeared in a few episodes, and Tails was nowhere to be found was a letdown. Maybe they were planning on introducing him later on in the series, but it got axed so we'll never know. I liked watching the show though, after the Dreamcast launched I'd watch the show and then play SA for a little while.

I was just really getting into the show when they just suddenly ripped it off the air in January 2000. I really missed it, and last month paid a pretty penny for a region free portable DVD player, and plus the cost of buying the series itself from Amazon UK. It was all worth it though, Dic just put a certain spin on their shows that Sonic X just can't match.

I liked it. The animation was great, the songs were cute, and the idea of Sonic's siblings was great! The only character I couldn't stand was Bartleby.

Oh, I get it. You're new around these parts. Well, hey, welcome to the MoFo. You might want to have a look HERE. Also, bumping up year-old topics is a 'no-no'.

Thank you, and enjoy your stay here at the MoFo.

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Also, bumping up year-old topics is a 'no-no'.

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Technically, as long as your posting something relevant it's okay, and I think that technically she bumped barely within the rules. However, I'm not a mod so what do I know, and plus, yeah, bumping up a year-old ain't really all the great in the first place.

it's not against the rules to do that. He/She put in what she thought of SU and that's the whole point of the topic.

Cutting and pasting something I said elsewhere:

I know that this show has its fans. I don't generally view deviation from the Sonic norms as an automatic reason to dislike a series - I reserve dislikes for series that simply aren't of decent quality with any licence.

And SU came across as one of those.

I won't start by taking chunks out of the lack of Tails or the addition of Sonia, Manic or Sonic's royal bloodline. There's so much deviation in settings between Sonic continuities that to say that one's bad because it doesn't take place in the Green Hill Zone is a waste of time in my book.

But let's just look at the concept, shall we? A trio of disinherited rock musician royalty, travelling around in a battered camper van, fighting evil with a set of medallions that can turn into musical instruments or weapons on demand.

The weapons were straight out of 'Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers'. The van even looked like the Mystery Machine. To me, the whole feeling was of every cheap and nasty 1970s Hanna-Barbera super-team that I wanted to forget.

The use of Jaleel White as the voice of all three hedgehogs, for all it was probably meant as a "cute" gimmick, was a mistake. For me, Sonia came across as though she was gargling with gravel, and the fact that it was so obvious that one man was having a three-way conversation with himself just came off as cheap.

But there was an overarching story under there. And it seemed to develop. Knuckles turned up, and whether or not you count Sonia's little crush on him as just adding up to a Rouge-Julie-Sonia debate as bad as any of Sonic's triangles, the story made sense within itself.

Knuckles was even handled fairly well (all profiles I've seen say that girls're one of his weak spots ;)). It was just a pity that that oddball spinning fist punch of his where he started whirling his gloves like a pair of parallel windmills was animated to look as though he was charging his enemies whilst holding a pair of dumbbells. Even today, when I read Archie, I can still here Knux's SU VA (although he may've been slightly nasal) reading the lines.

All of the downsides could probably have perhaps been forgiven - and the series vaguely average and bearable, if not outstanding - if it hadn't been for the soundtrack. The absolute insistence on cramming at least one alleged "song" into each episode wasn't only a squeaky assault on the ears for me (couldn't they've hired some better song-writers and session singers?), but crowbarred them in and broke up the action at moments when just telling the darned story would've been far more use.

The use of the cheap and nasty pop video effects seemed almost calculated to show off exactly how big a CGI budget the series hadn't got.

SU never seemed to be able to make up its mind who its audience was. It had the style and look of SatAM, but the execution of Jem and the Holograms, right down to the music style. It seemed designed to make absolutely no sense to anyone from any age group who'd come across any of the Sonic continuities before.

I'm afraid that every time I think of 'SU', I picture a group of forty-something W.A.S.P. males in grey suits, sitting around a boardroom table on the twentieth floor of a skyscraper and saying: "Today's kids like rock music and being rebellious, so let's make Sonic a way past bodaciously rad rebellious rock musician! Tubular... umm... man!"

I know that there're 'SU' fans out there. They've attacked me for this stance, saying that I shouldn't attack a Sonic series like that if I'm a "true" or "real" fan of the franchise.

And I'm sorry. The fact is: I'd like to've been an SU fan - but when a series is what I feel is sub-standard, I'm not going to put up and shut up just because it has Sonic's name attached. I'm going to be vocal, rather than risk watching the licence get dragged any further down because some executive or other things that they can get away with it.

Lemmee be the first here to say "Amen"

Hit the nail on the head completely, Sam'.

Personally, I prefer it to Sonic X, but that's just me. Plus, it had Knux in it!