EDITORIAL: Will Sonic Underground Do Well with U.S. Fans?

Since Great Britain has shown the latest Sonic animated TV series, some have praised it, others are calling it another Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog. With that criticism, the big question is “When the show hits the US, can it do as well as the Saturday Morning cartoon did?” Let’s look at some critical points to answer that.
First off, do you hate songs that have really no meaning to the cartoon? Well, guess what? It’s in SU. Honestly, that may be the reason that would keep me away. To be quite honest, I hate songs in cartoons, period. Why? Because, like I said, they have little meaning to the cartoon’s plot, and are just plain idiotic. It really doesn’t matter to me that the “music videos” are computer generated. I think having songs will hurt the series more than help.

Next, the series introduces a new plot, new characters, and some other new elements (like the singing). Now, when the SatAM Sonic was released, that introduced a truckload of new elements. And it got much praise. When Archie made a Sonic adaptation, that got a lot of praise during its prime. When the Archie Knuckles series was released, it had more praise than the Sonic comic, but sales don’t seem to indicate that. When AoSTH was shown, to be quite frank, people thought it was very bad.

Now, think about this. Sonic Underground is basically a hybrid of AoSTH and SatAM, in my view. It also introduces some more elements. Does that mean it will fail? No. But does that mean the show will enjoy as much viewership as SatAM? Not necessarily.

Finally, where the show is playing is also a major factor. SU will be playing on UPN. And UPN is the lowest rated network. Sorry Dilbert fans, but it’s true. By the same token, when Pocket Monsters began airing on UPN first, it became an instant success. Will the network have a factor on viewership? Maybe.

That said, I think that Sonic Underground will be a wait-and-see situation. I guess if Britain can handle it, we can too.

UPDATE: Chupamedia has returned to it’s R-rated goodness after only a couple of weeks of tolerating being censored. Yay!