This is the most important section; what this site is all about. This is where the episode comparisons will go. All comparisons have all information on every single cut, scene alteration, important dialogue change, and other information.
When you come to a comparison through the Series page, you will see many things.
On the Series page is an "episode guide" link. Click it, and you'll be taken to a page with all 78 episode titles in Japanese and English.
In the middle of the page are the comparisons. In the comparisons themselves there is a mini navigation between the previous and next episodes, and a box where episode titles, air dates (mm-dd-yy), and episode numbers are listed in Japanese, French and English. The yellow box below this is for my comments regarding this episode, and below that is the actual comparison itself. All cuts and scene alterations are accompanied by pictures in small thumbnails. Click these pictures to see a bigger, better quality version.
Also on the Series page are many subsections: episode title cards, Eyecatchers (they are in-between commercial breaks in Japan), and next episode titles captured from the "next week's episode preview".
In a comparison, the term "scene-shortening cut" or "scene shortener" means there is a still shot, no moving animation, which is cut for time. No real footage is lost at all in these cuts. The scene is just shortened. For example, a scene can be eight seconds in the original, in which it shows the sun in the sky, nothing moving. The dub shortens this to three seconds, and no footage is really lost because the five seconds cut are exactly the same as the three seconds the dub shows. They are listed at the beginning of the comparison, via this format: "x/yy:yy - (description of cut)", where 'x' is the time in seconds cut from the dub, and the yy is the timestamp of how far into the episode the cut is (if it was 13 minutes and 37 seconds in, it would be 13:37). The average length of an episode is about 24 minutes and 34 seconds, including the opening, ending, eyecatchers, and the next episode preview.
Episodes 53 through 78 are very unique. In February of 2005, Jetix France announced they would air new episodes of Sonic X starting in March; these occured, and all 26 episodes were aired. Around the end of July of the same year, a member of the Sonicanime.net forums from the Republic of China came forth with news that he found some new Japanese/Chinese episodes of Sonic X on a Video CD. Another member of the same forums told this person how to rip the episodes into a video file that could be distributed to everyone and viewed on a computer. These turned out to be the same episodes aired in France, but in Japanese and Chinese. All 26 episodes were released in this format. Then, these 26 English-dubbed 4kids episodes aired in America, starting in September of that year. As of now, Episodes 53 through 78 have not been aired in Japan. The reasons are pretty much unknown. Eventually, all of said episodes were released in Japan, but on DVD only.
Other notes, which will help when reading the comparisons on this site:
- "Sonic-tachi" means "Sonic and the group" (Tails, Amy, Cream, etc). "-tachi" is a suffix in Japanese used to indicate that a word refers to a group.
- I use the word "Engrish" when referring to an English word or phrase that is spoken by the Japanese actors. For example, "Oh, what a great view!" "Hey guys, are you alright?", and "Of course!" are pronounced by the Japanese actor to try to sound exactly like it would sound if a native English speaker said it. Said Engrish will have a heavy Japanese accent, and because of the Japanese language's syllable system, sometimes will not be exactly what it would sound like in English.
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