Christ and Cartoons #4: Sonic X
Yes friends, Christ and Cartoons has returned after at least a year’s hiatus. Today we go back to the series that started all of this...and I don’t mean Digimon. The Digimon post (C&C #1) was the first one to gain any attention as well as giving the series its name by way of the Harvard Ichthus, but my first “Christ and Cartoons”, written long before it became a series, was a short diatribe on what many people call one of the worst games of all time, Sonic the Hedgehog (2006). You can read that post here.
Eight or nine years after this post, I still think about Sonic the Hedgehog and his universe way more than the average person and way more than I probably should. Hulu has only fed the fire by having every episode of my favorite Sonic show from my childhood, Sonic X, available on demand. As a child, I liked seasons 1 and 2, but was very confused by season 3. But as a 24-year-old I decided to watch season 3 again with fresh eyes, and I found it very compelling (especially the last five or six episodes).
Two warnings. #1, spoilers are coming, obviously. #2, Sonic X is actually an anime, so you can watch the episodes in the original Japanese (sub) or dubbed in English (dub). If you wish to watch the cartoon after my post, WATCH THE JAPANESE VERSION. The English version cuts out a lot of important details, as well as being much more corny in general.
Season 3 follows Sonic and his friends as they set out into space to fight the intergalactic terrorist Dark Oak and his army, the Metarex. Dark Oak and the Metarex go from planet to planet destroying things and especially targeting each planet’s Planet Egg, which is what gives the planet the ability to sustain life. (Scientific accuracy to be confirmed.) Sonic and company go to each planet trying to restore the damage, all the while being confronted by the Metarex, who aside from being very, very strong, seem to know Sonic and company’s every move and often start attacking them before they can even plan a counterattack.
The intergalactic struggle eventually takes Sonic and his friends to Planet Green Gate, where they finally learn about the origins of the Metarex. Before they were the Metarex, Dark Oak and his army were plant-based creatures, suffering from an interplanetary war against an animal-based species. He wanted to use the planet’s power to become invincible and destroy the animals once and for all, but the ruler of Green Gate’s council, Earthia, opposed him. When he started consolidating power, Earthia took the remaining women and left Green Gate on a ship. Before dying, she gave birth to her last child, Cosmo, who as a young girl alerted Sonic and his friends to the Metarex and who accompanied them on the trip. Dark Oak’s plan is to take all the Planet Eggs and use them to cause forestation, where all species will be destroyed except plants, and the universe will be “beautiful and silent”. (Literally worse than Thanos.)
As soon as Sonic and friends find out about all this on Planet Green Gate, Dark Oak and his army go to Planet Aquarius (a water planet) with all the stolen Planet Eggs to execute their plan across the universe. Sonic and friends of course go to fight Dark Oak, and this last struggle is a three-episode thriller where Sonic and his friends basically have to give everything that they have and more in order to stand a chance of defeating Dark Oak.
At one point, Dark Oak is able to actually capture Sonic, and he shows Sonic his beliefs and intentions in a dream. He essentially is trying to convince Sonic that his plan is inevitable and that nothing Sonic does will stop him, but despite this, Sonic starts running and doesn’t stop. Dark Oak first sends small monsters to try and trap Sonic, but Sonic avoids them and continues running. He then shows Sonic a vision of his “beautiful, silent universe” with nothing but trees as tall as sequoias. Sonic looks at it for a little bit and then continues to run. Dismayed and a little shocked, Dark Oak notes that Sonic still has hope, and Sonic replies, “It’s not over. I can still run!” And despite everything Dark Oak brings, he still runs, and he eventually finds his way out of the dream and is rescued.
Sonic looks at Dark Oak’s vision of the universe—trees as far as the eye can see.
At this point it’s about to get a little personal. I just finished the United States Medical Licensing Exam (USMLE) Step 1, and the exam itself wasn’t brutal, but the preparation for it was. I came into the dedicated study time with the wrong mentality and the wrong methods, and it wasn’t until the end of May that I finally came to my senses and delayed my test so I could really study. For the two weeks before the test, I fought anxiety every single day. It would nag me about my new methods, it would question the music I was listening to, it would suffocate the joy out of my breaks and prevent me from eating and sleeping. And I couldn’t escape it; I had to fight it. My anxieties, essentially, were like Dark Oak, continually putting obstacles in my way and trying to convince me that everything was pointless and that I was too late and that I would never pass.
With the help of God, I kept running. But I also got quite a bit of help from other people. One of the best decisions I did make was to go home for dedicated. My parents not only fed me and made sure I was clothed, they pushed me to conquer my fears. My mother noticed that I had a fear of doing questions, so she had me do tons and tons of questions until the fear of doing them was gone. They were not about to let me leave their house and take this test until I had conquered every fear and had done everything required. But it wasn’t just my parents. I had spent a lot of time in isolation leading up to study time, and a large part of that time was spent on social media. At the behest of my mom, I put down Instagram and started texting lots of people, sending them encouragement and asking them for prayers and occasionally for advice. The response was more than I could have ever imagined. Before that, I had known all of the people I texted and had even hung out with them, but I was always starved for real connection, and I wondered if I would ever make real friends in California. It turns out that I do have real friends in California—all I had to do was send a text! Even the thought that there were lots of people that I know who were praying for me and thinking of me made me happy and helped me push through the dark days. At one point during the dream, Dark Oak again tries to get Sonic to give up, and Sonic responds, “No, I can’t. I have to get back. All of my friends are waiting for me.” Often in the last couple days when I wanted to give up, I had that exact same thought: I can’t give up. All my friends are pulling for me.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-13 says, “Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken.” This study season taught me what real community actually is. It’s not just having people to hang out with and go to parties with; it’s being with people when it’s hard and nothing around them seems to be changing.
In the end, Sonic does get out and he gets back to his friends, but the fight still continues, and it is extremely difficult to stop Dark Oak. At one point, as Dark Oak begins the process of “forestation”, he sends out power waves that suck the life out of all the animals present (including Sonic and his friends), plunging them into pain and preventing them from moving. The only person who the wave doesn’t affect is Cosmo, who is from Dark Oak’s tribe. Cosmo is not the most powerful creature, and she spends a lot of the journey freaking out and thinking that she’s useless, but this time she gets herself together, comes up with a plan, and leaves the ship in order to execute said plan.
Cosmo executing her plan.
It is discovered not too long beforehand that the reason why the Metarex are able to anticipate Sonic and company’s every move is because they planted a radar device in Cosmo’s brain, so that Dark Oak can hear everything she’s saying and doing. It is a huge disadvantage, but as Cosmo starts with her plan, she finally uses it to her advantage and starts talking to Dark Oak and telling him to cut it out. Of course Dark Oak responds, and he wonders why they continue to hope. Cosmo’s response: “We’re not hoping. We’re running. We’re running towards the future!”
Running, in this case, can be considered a sign of faith. Hebrews calls faith “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” You believe that the future you want is coming, and you act like it is coming even when there’s no sign that it will come. Hope is the desire to have it happen, and faith is the expectation that it will happen. There is no guarantee in Cosmo’s case that her side will win against Dark Oak, but she fights not because she surmises that her side might win; she believes that they will win. She doesn’t know how, but she figures that they will win somehow. When I was studying for Step 1, there was no physical guarantee that anything was happening; I was scared a lot of the time. But by God’s grace, things started coming together around the last week, and eventually the test was okay. What kept me going was the belief that something good would happen, that I would get past this and come into third year and fourth year and my future beyond that. I had to believe that the present was not my forever, but that I had to do the hard things in the present in order to bring about my forever. And by the grace of God, that’s what I was able to do. I actually wrote this post on a plane to Dublin, Ireland, less than twenty-four hours after taking Step 1. It feels WONDERFUL to be done.
To those people going through a hard season that is taking everything you have; I feel you. It is hard to confront your fears and it is hard to come to terms with your situation. But the sooner you do it, the sooner you’ll find your way out. Get some community around you; often all it takes is an honest text sent to a couple of people. And set your vision of a better life before you. You will get there. You will.
Sonic X is available on Hulu. Again, watch the version with the subtitles!