Sonic X: An Ode to Excess
Also, there are a lot of guns
When George Miller’s movie Mad Max: Fury Road hit theaters in 2015, one reviewer described it as “an ode to 1980s excess.” I can no longer find that article to credit the author, but their assessment was perfect. Fury Road, which I first watched in the front row of a little bar-plus-cinema in Bar Harbor, Maine with a very large glass of wine in my hand, is much more than an excessive film. Although it’s set in a desert, it is really about the allure and costs of excess; a film whose very style invites us to consider the whole idea of excessiveness more deeply. "Do not, my friends, become addicted to water,” says the dictator Immortan Joe in one memorable scene. ”It will take hold of you, and you will resent its absence." Other films and books have struck out into similar territory: The Great Gatsby, for instance, both celebrates and censures the roaring twenties, and The Picture of Dorian Gray is all about the beautiful but destructive slippery slope of self-indulgence.
To this list of great works, I’d like to add a lesser and stranger one: 2003’s animated kids’ series Sonic X. I first stumbled on this show one Saturday morning with my six-year-old and it immediately made an impression: every scene blinded us with the glint of shining chrome. Electric guitar solos punctuated the dialogue and, unlike the gentler and more P.C. villains of our modern era, Dr. Eggman and his goons went after Sonic with assault rifles and guided missiles. Now this was excess. At first I laughed but, after a few minutes, I realized I was dealing with something much more than trash, if also much less than great art.
The very first episode (resplendently titled “Chaos Control Freaks”) is the perfect example of the strange goodness of Sonic X. Hurtled by accident into our dimension, everyone’s favorite hedgehog ends up panicked and running from the authorities. In the end, he’s confronted by the High-Speed Pursuit Unit, a special police detachment that, of course, drives Formula 1 race cars. Obviously, Sonic outruns them, but it’s the setup scene that will catch the well-informed eye: the glisten of rotating lights atop police cars flashing down a dark highway, the saturated red and blue of Sonic’s skin and shoes, the intricately detailed flight suits, the simmering brassy soundtrack. It’s like a fever dream of 90s America, a portrait of a decadent culture viewed through a kaleidoscope.
The Japanese, who are obsessed with aesthetic perfection, have always had a knack for expressing American culture better than we do ourselves. Just take a look at the American-inspired clothing stores in Tokyo and you’ll see what I mean. And the Japanese creators of Sonic X certainly perfected a kind of high-octane Americana long before George Miller dreamed of Fury Road. The show might not be worth watching the whole way through: the plot is absurd and the writing far from inspiring. Also, there are a lot of guns. But the art and atmosphere of Sonic X, the apotheosis of high-octane en extremis, unquestionably reaches iconic heights. Watching it is a reminder that certain kinds of excellencies can crop up unexpected almost anywhere, and that sometimes it takes a mirror lifted by the hand of some other culture to help us recognize our own.
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