In the lush green area of Green Hill, Sonic the Hedgehog (Deven Mack) along with his friends Miles "Tails" Prower (Ashleigh Ball) a two tailed technically proficient fox, Knuckles the Echnida (Adam Nurada), pink hedgehog Amy Rose (Shannon Chan-Kent), and Rouge the Bat (Kazumi Evans) have seemingly foiled another one of Dr. Eggman's (Brian Drummond) plans only for it to have been a trick to help open the path to Eggman's true goal the Paradox Prism. During a battle with Eggmam, Sonic inadvertently strikes the prism and winds up in a dystopian world where Dr. Eggman along with his Chaos Council rule over the industrialized autocratic New Yolk City which is an alternate Green Hill. Now with alternate versions of his friends Sonic must face new threats in an attempt to return home.
Sonic Prime is the sixth animated series featuring Sega's anthropomorphic blue Hedgehog following previous versions such as the three DIC produced series from the 90s Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog (aka Sonic SatAM), and Sonic Undergorund, as well as the TMS produced anime series Sonic X and the CGI series Sonic Boom. Produced as a co-production between the United States, Canada, and Japan (hence why Colleen O'Shaunghnessey doesn't reprise her role as Tails from the video games due to Canadian content and union laws) the series was made for streaming service Netflix with a planned total episode count of 24 episodes covering the story. The series is written by noted writing collective Man of Action with creative consulting from Ian Flynn who has penned a number of Sonic comics for Archie, Boom, and IDW. Now with the first 8 episode season dropping on Netflix, I'm pleased to say this will be a welcome treat for fans of this franchise.
For the most part the series is arranged in such a way that pretty much anyone can enjoy this show even if they've not played a Sonic game or read a Sonic comic, but the show does expect its audience to be at least somewhat familiar with these characters (for example Shadow the Hedgehog is a recurring character and the show doesn't do the best job of re-introducing him but it's not a major hurdle). Once the show kicks off with its premise Sonic is the pretty much the only constant in the series as the rest of the cast are given alternate versions of themselves that contrast with how the audience knows them. For the most part I thought Deven Mack does a decent job as Sonic and he manages to convey the titular blue hedgehog's personality quite effectively with his voice over performance and he makes a good proxy for which the uniqueness of the other worlds to bounce off against. The show also delivers some enjoyable dimension hopping shenanigans with the novelty of seeing different worlds and different takes on established characters such as a battle hardened version of Tails named Nine or pirate or caveman like versions of the rest of Sonic's friend lending themselves to some unique setpieces with Shannon Chan-Kent as Amy Rose and her various incarnations a lot of fun playing the various versions of the character including the secondary antagonist Rusty Rose. The action is very on point for the series with the show delivering some unique and inventive fight sequences tailored to the various environments although on occasion the action beats can maybe last a bit too long at the expense of building character.
I think people will be really pleased with Sonic Prime as an entry in the franchise and if you enjoyed Sonic SatAM or the idea and marketing of Sonic Forces (that was a pretty big lie) you'll definitely get what you're looking for here.
