I’m one of those people who considers the Adventure era the best all-around era of Sonic games—basically everything from Sonic Adventure 1 up until Sonic 06, maybe even including Unleashed. It had a good mix of speed, platforming, and early-game campiness.

Sonic X is basically the embodiment of that era. Sonic himself is as cheesy as they come, and almost every character is spot-on for that time period, though some traits are exaggerated—like Amy’s violent tendencies.

As a big Sonic fan, I’ve tried every single Sonic animated series, and I just think Sonic X is better than the old-school cartoons like Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and SatAM. It sits somewhere between Adventures’ humor and SatAM’s darkness. While Boom and Prime have nice modernized animation, Boom’s humor has that cringy early-Boost-era feel, and Prime, while having an interesting concept, ended up being way more repetitive than expected.

The first season of Sonic X definitely has its flaws—ones that other Sonic animated series don’t have—but even taking everything into account, it’s still my favorite. And that’s not even considering the Metarex Saga, which I think is easily the best Sonic story ever put in animation.

I love how Sonic X balances slice-of-life episodes with serious story arcs. The whole “reverse isekai” concept—where Sonic and his friends end up in a human world—makes you think about how they’d adapt to real life, even if the city is clearly based on a big Western metropolis.

The absolute best stretch in the first 50 episodes? The Sonic Adventure 1 adaptation all the way up to the Emerl Arc. It’s fun seeing these plots woven into one cohesive story while still hitting the proper emotional moments from each.

Sonic games are known for their great music, and Sonic X absolutely destroys the other Sonic animated series in terms of background music (based on the Japanese version, of course). It has some really fun, hype action themes and surprisingly emotional tracks that hit exactly when they need to.

As much as I love this series and would love to “glaze” it, even I can’t deny Sonic X has its fair share of issues.

While I love when Sonic X actually adapts the games' plots, everything before the Sonic Adventure 1 arc and after the Emerl Arc is incredibly hit-or-miss. The slice-of-life episodes have some dramatic moments, but most of them are just boring.

A big part of that comes down to the human characters. I don’t mind the idea of humans having a role—in fact, the Paramount Sonic movies did this surprisingly well, especially with Tom. Some of the human characters in Sonic X are likable enough, but there’s just way too much focus on them, and most of them don’t have any real development.

The go-to character to hate on is Chris, and while I don’t think he’s as terrible as people say, they definitely didn’t execute him well. I like the idea of a lonely rich kid finding joy in life through Sonic and his friends, but the problem is that Chris is constantly shown to already have friends, and his parents—while busy—come home more often than most neglectful rich parents in other media. So a lot of the dramatic moments about his loneliness just don’t hit, especially toward the last few episodes.

Unfortunately, the mix of aimless slice-of-life episodes and human characters I don’t really care about kills the pacing of both the beginning and end of the first 50 episodes. And that’s a shame because I really love the middle episodes, along with a few scattered throughout the beginning and end.

And of course, there’s the 4Kids dub. Honestly, the actual dialogue changes and localization choices are more funny than anything, but my real issue is the sound design. I hate the 4Kids version’s soundtrack—it just blasts your ears with sound effects that try way too hard to keep kids' attention.

Thankfully, I still think Sonic X is really enjoyable overall. But I can’t rate it too highly because of the flaws I mentioned.