Sonic Boom: The Complete Season 2 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.0

Sonic Boom: The Complete Season 2 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman May 31, 2022

Sonic the Hedgehog was a big deal in the 1990s as the flagship character for Sega's Genesis console system. While Nintendo and its mascot, Mario (also earning a new CGI film coming soon), won the "console wars" the Sonic character has seen a recent upsurge in popularity with not only several good games (Sonic Mania being the highlight amongst them and a new open world adventure, Sonic Frontiers, on the horizon) but also a couple of well-received feature films. There have also been several animated TV shows, amongst them Sonic Boom, a two-season adventure that features all of the fan favorite characters from the video game series of the same name. The first season debuted on Cartoon Network on November 8, 2015, and was followed by this second season on Boomerang which debuted on November 18, 2017.

Official synopsis: Sonic Boom Season Two continues the high-powered, hilarious hijinks of the Blue Blur and his friends. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, and Sticks encounter bizarre cases of mistaken identity, androids from an outlandish land, real live urban legends, a haunted lair, familiar faces (Shadow and more characters from the beloved Sonic game universe), plus epic conflicts with new foes and of course, constant clashes with the offensive Dr. Eggman and his fiendish creations.

Sonic Boom's second season is much like the first: it is packed with a dizzying number of episodes, each of them running around 11 minutes in length and most of them telling more or less succinct, self-contained, stand-alone stories. The season does end with a ridiculously fun two-part episode that has some surprises up its sleeve and clearly stands about the rest of the season as its best offering (not that there's much wrong with the rest of the show as it is). Mostly, however, the season follows various adventures with a surprisingly diverse character roster that expands beyond the core from season one and introduces plenty of familiar, and memorable, individuals and some crazy scenarios that allow for both a healthy dose of action as well as some careful characterization that doesn't push too hard to build truly complex individuals (this is a kid's animation after all) but that does take the time to allow each main character to shine in different situations and around different stimuli to bring out core personalities and introduce some fun supportive character- and world-building facts along the way. It's good stuff and a true treat that will delight longtime fans of the game series, anyone who enjoyed season one, or newcomers just looking for some quick-fix animation fun.

Technically, what held true of season one holds true for season two. The show is not much of a visual standout. Animation is effective but on the crude side of things, lacking fluidity and depth and detail, of course nowhere near feature film level but only barely scraping beyond the bare minimum for a modern-day animation program. Fortunately, the show's color -- the vivid visual expressions -- offers enough vitality to fool the brain into thinking that there is more eye candy going on than there actually is. The voice work is truly stellar, with each character full of verbal zest and personality; the blend of top voice work and good scriptwriting combine to elevate the show a good bit. Fans of the game franchise should enjoy it.

Sonic Boom: The Complete Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

NCircle Entertainment's 1080p transfer for Sonic Boom's second season is framed at the 1.78:1 aspect ratio, filling the screen of modern HD displays. The picture quality is very, very good and is pretty much identical to the season one release. Inherent to the animation is a lack of the sort of detail and complexity one would find in Pixar or Sony animation films, but even as it lacks rigorous textural complexity there is no mistaking that this transfer is well capable of bringing out all that there is to see in the source animation itself. With this transfer viewers will find a picture which is clear and very sharp as it showcases the limited, but nevertheless visually agreeable, textures to be found within any given episode, which include Eggman's red leathery jacket or various creature furs, which are not super well defined on any character, but viewers will certainly be able to see every detail there is to see throughout the series. Overall clarity is greatly impresses; there are very few soft elements inherent to the source and very few on display. Color proves to be the high-water mark for this release. While it lacks nuanced gradations and even subtlety, the bold and aggressive color spaces and splashes do offer eye-catching depth, pop, and vividness. Sonic's blue fur coloring is, of course, the main highlight, but all of his friends are different colors -- red, yellow, brown, and pink -- and all of these hues leap off the screen to the fullest of their ability. The image is free of any distracting source anomalies and there are no bothersome encode issues to bog it down beyond a bit of aliasing which can interfere with the odd shot. This one looks very good overall; fans are going to be well pleased with NCircle's work on this Blu-ray presentation.

Sonic Boom: The Complete Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Likewise similar to the season one effort is the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. The track is pleasantly large and engaging with its widely spaced front side music and a healthy dose of both surround and subwoofer support. Action scenes spring to life with plenty of zip and movement and depth, all carried by every active speaker in the configuration. Environmental elements are not so regular as to fully draw the listener into the very finest of audio details in the world, but what is present and necessary is handled quite nicely for space and engagement. Dialogue is clear and center positioned for the duration.

Sonic Boom: The Complete Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Sonic Boom: The Complete Season 2 contains a couple of fleeting, token extras on disc three. No DVD or digital copies are included. This release does not ship with a slipcover.

• Trailers and More (1080p): There are some different trailers here compared to season one. Most are for various Sonic games, like Sonic Mania and Sonic Colors: Ultimate, but also for Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania, another Sega property.
• Animatics vs. Final (1080i): Early conceptual storyboards and animatics appear on the left-hand side of the screen, juxtaposed against the finished product on the right. Included are It Wasn't Me, It Was the One-Armed Hedgehog (2:37), It Takes a Village to Defeat a Hedgehog (3:30), Vector Detector (0:55), Sticks and Amy's Excellent Staycation (1:26), Eggman: The Video Game Part 1 (2:17), and Eggman: The Video Game Part 2: The End of the World (2:54).

Sonic Boom: The Complete Season 2 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sonic Boom's second season is every but as fun as the first. There's nothing drastically different here in terms of structure, but there are of course plenty of new micro-stories and scenarios and some cool new characters. This is no classic, not by a long shot, but it should more than satisfy animation and Sonic fans who can enjoy in long binge sessions or crank out a quick episode in about 11 minutes. The supplements are slim but the video and audio presentations are very good. Recommended.