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In 1995, a Two Episode Straight to video animation (known as an OVA meaning Original Video Animation, Sometimes known as a OAV for Original Animated Video) was released in Japan. This was the ONLY Sonic Cartoon with more direct involvement even if it was just a Couple of Production Directors (Yuji Naka and the great Naoto Ohshima (BigIsland)). This animated was also the most game accurate, despite many people's confusion on the Subject. Done by Taki Corp, these episode base themselves on the MegaCD game 'Sonic CD'. Very Little is known about production work on this show. It featured a theme Song by Riu Konaka, Written by Masahi Kubota and starred Masami Kikuchi (Tenchi Muyo, Ah!My Goddess, Mobile Suit Z Gundam and others) as Sonic the Hedgehog and Metal Sonic, Hekiru Shiina (Twinbee Paradise, Magic Knight Rayearth, DNA2 and others) as Tails, Yasunori Matsumoto (Slayers, Dragonhalf, Love Hina and many others) as Knuckles and Junpei Janikuchi as Dr Eggman, with Mika Kanai (Sailor Moon, Irresponsible Captain Tylor, Pokemon) as The Presidents Daughter Seira. Unlike many Japanese Animations, this one was translated within a couple of years of it's Japanese release by ADV Films, with Martin Burke as Sonic, Lainie Frasier as Tails, Bill Wise (Walker, Texas Ranger, GetBackers, and others) as Knuckles and Edwin Neal (Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers & Most spin-offs and others) as Both Dr Robotnik and the President with Sascha Biesi as Sara (renamed via phonic version of Seira) and translation writer Gary Dehan as Metal Sonic in his one line. When it was released in the UK and US, very little fuss was made with only a couple of Printed adverts and a competition to win it appeared in the pages of 'Sonic the Comic', though it was a long time after the real release of the item. UK DVDs and VHS releases seam to go for a fair amount of money at times. There are many theory's on why it didn't really get picked up much, some people claimed it was a bit on the dark side for Sonic, while others claimed there was too many adult references which wouldn't be right for the kids and the reason it got a PG rating, though these are just theory's and don't seam to stand up compared to much darker and more adult kids shows were shown and more readily available |
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