Sonic Prime

Frank Hegevall (age 7) has longed convulsively for Netflix's new series about Sega's laser blue long-distance sprinter. An unreasonable amount. Every morning for two weeks now he has asked the exact same thing. In the same way: "Has Sonic Perajm arrived?"

After answering "not yet" 13 times in a row, yesterday morning I was finally able to change my answer to a cheerful "Yes!" and since then we've watched, watched and watched some more. Because there really isn't anything wrong with Sonic's new adventure. And looking at Prime from the perspective of a Sonic-loving seven-year-old, it's most likely the absolute best thing ever made.

Sonic Prime is Netflix's new big venture where Sega's hyper-popular, seemingly immortal mascot gets into a whole new kind of trouble. The eternal bastard Dr. Eggman has cobbled together a macabre device that allows him to use Sonic's extreme speed to cause an earthquake within the mountain that forms the foundation of the Green Hill Zone and once there, extract the mysterious Paradox Prisman (a kind of giant emerald) to use in his own enable time travel, among other things. Eggman's goal is to destroy the Green Hill Zone and destroy Sonic and his friends, and with Prisman's help, he manages to cause all kinds of trouble. Fortunately, Sonic has both Knuckles, Amy and Tails to help him and together they travel between time and space to stop the corpulent villain from permanently destroying Sonic's home.

In more ways than one, Sonic Prime reminds me of the morning shows I loved as a kid. Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck, Talespin, Turtles, Mask... Prime has the same kind of qualities, where the convivial atmosphere and lighthearted dialogue works well for the ages it was produced for. This is unlike the hyper-expensive feature films released, not a show for all ages, but rather focused on children between say 5-10 years, or something like that. I am thus about 90 years too old, of course, but have partly watched Prime through my son's eyes and taken in what he said, as well as comparing this to scores of other children's programs I have binged on in recent years.

Prime is good. Fun, exciting, fast-paced and mysterious in a way that Sonic hasn't really been in quite some time. I like the time travel and all of the different worlds, which conceptually creates a lot of variety and I like the voice actors. It is possible to criticize the animation which feels a bit cheap in some places, but on the other hand this is a TV series and not a feature film, and as I mentioned it brings back memories from the 80's series that I sat down in front of each Saturday morning in my childhood. Sonic has by and large participated in far worse things than this.