Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie

After being treated to a few threatening angles of Metal Sonic and Robotnik boasting of it's goal to kill the real Sonic, we then watch Old Man Owl sputter his ship through the sky towards South Island, where our heroes are are soaking up some fun in the sun, as you do.

Of course, it's at this point every Sonic "fan" starts tugging at their ears because we finally hear our heroes speak, even if it is just an idle conversation that has nothing to do with the plot at hand. The voice acting does pick up along the way, but they made sure to give us the worst part of it to start with. Wonderful!

Tails tries out his jet-propelled body board, getting into zany out-of-control mischief while Sonic's relaxation period is interrupted both by being drenched and a sound he hears, that turns out to be Old Man Owl's also-out-of-control ship, which starts crashing all over the place.

Owl tells them he has good news, blissfully unaware of his ship being on fire. Tails, being an outright moaner at the moment, berates Sonic to take care of the problem, but since he isn't the one with helicopter rotor styled flight providing ass extensions, just leaves the fox boy to take care of it. After a minute of struggling, he lands himself on the ship but doesn't actually bother extinguishing the fire, and only ends up distracting Owl so they're nearly about to crash into a wall. Only one thing to do now!

HEEEAAALP!

"The Power Rangers need me!"

More or less, y'know.

Zooming along walls like a funky gravity slinky, Sonic proceeds to save the two, pulling them from the ship right before it explodes and bringing them back to land, and snapping Old Man Owl out of his dazed state with a pinch from a Crabmeat. After a full minute of nonsensical jibber jabber, he finally tells them that they're needed over at the President's palace, so they'll be over as quickly as possible.

And after an unnecessarily long Thunderbirds rip-off with the opening and extension of the launch pad, our heroes are off, and arrive at the President's place in no time flat, where Robotnik is waiting! Keeping up routine, he sets a couple of robots on them, which prove to be as much use as underwater window wipers, but before they can bust his chops, the President warns him not to harm Robotnik for the sake of him, his daughter Sara and his people.

Ol' Egg Head explains, stating that Planet Freedom is split into two dimensions: the good half and the evil half. The Land of the Sky where the action is currently set, and the Land of Darkness, where the rotund dictator once lived peacefully until Metal Robotnik and his army of "demonic robots" came out of nowhere and booted them out, but not before sabotaging the energy generator for the whole city, where the excess energy will cause a massive explosion, presumably totalling the whole planet unless shut off by sunset tomorrow, but since everyone has fallen asleep by this point, he just cuts himself short.

Naturally, Sonic and Tails are the ones assigned to stop this mess, even though the blue rodent doesn't see why Robotnik can't do it himself. Even the President begs him to consider, but it's only when the scantily clad Sara is brought in that he accepts his quest, where Tails is provided with a navigator on how to reach the generator. With this nifty gadget and the possibility of getting to know Sara more if-ya-know-wadda-mean they set out back onto the Tornado to find the way to the Land of Darkness. Never mind that it's not even a minute since they left, Tails wants to know if the President and Sara are doing alright.

They're playing what appears to be customized Virtua Fighter! On what looks like a Famicom with Saturn controllers on a flattened Xbox! With untranslated names, so they're called Dr. Eggman and Seira! Crazy!

Of course, after her second loss, Sara quits and wants to go for a drive, and ever conveniently, a huge machine crashes through the palace, opening up to allow passengers in. Sara leaps in and starts hitting every button imaginable while Robotnik follows after in an attempt to stop her as the door closes and the machine takes off again, leaving the President behind and showing us some digital paint.

Back to our heroes, they find the gateway to the Land of Darkness and proceed to fly through it, promptly crashing into the ground and getting out of the wreckage just fine. Hectic landings in rough weather are no match for superpower provided woodland creatures! Giving themselves a whole ten seconds to admire the huge amount of differences between the two lands (things are spikier), they proceed onwards, encountering spikes, springs, Badniks and the like.

While being attacked by Buzz Bombers, it's only now that Sonic gets a hunch that Robotnik was talking out of his very round ass and was simply leading them through the most dangerous path, but Tails confirms with the navigator that they are going the quickest way, and they'll be hitting a warp zone soon enough. With that encouragement, they stream ahead, pull a few more fancy moves and burst through the portal at the end of the warp.

I'm guessing the warp zones are meant to be similar to how one goes from each time zone in Sonic CD, but Tails describes it like it's a physical entity, not something that occurs by going really really fast.

I'm sure those demonic robots are meant to be rip-offs of something, but I'm not cultured enough in the world of Japanese pop culture to know for certain. =(