Unlike other Sonic the Hedgehog media, the setting of the series is the world of Planet Freedom, which is split into two distinct realms: the Land of the Sky and the Land of Darkness. The Land of the Sky consists of an unknown number of continents that drift high in the stratosphere of the planet, all of them connected to a massive ice formation which also serves to anchor them to the planet's surface below. According to Knuckles, if this ice network was destroyed, Planet Freedom's rotation would hurl the Land of the Sky into outer space, undoubtedly killing everyone on it. The Land of Darkness is the actual surface of Planet Freedom, a post-apocalyptic wilderness with Robotnik as its sole living inhabitant. The Land of Darkness can only be accessed in one of two ways: by a whirlwind-like "portal" in the Land of the Sky, or via a warp zone, an extradimensional link between two points on Planet Freedom. Most of its terrain is untamed and mountainous, but a crumbling city serves as the location of Robotnik's empire. The city and terrain strongly imply that Planet Freedom is a post apocalyptic Earth that was built upon with floating islands, with certain landmarks suggesting that the ruins are those of New York City.
The OVA series was produced by Studio Pierrot, Sega Enterprises and General Entertainment and directed and storyboarded by Kazunori Ikegami, with Mayori Sekijima and Masashi Kubota handling the story structure and script, Tsuneo Ninomiya designing the characters and Mitsuhiro Tada composing the music. It was originally distributed by Taki Corporation in Japan on a rental-only basis before being released for retail sale on May 31, 1996. The series was licensed by ADV Films, who dubbed the OVA series in English and released it as a single direct-to-video film titled Sonic the Hedgehog: The Movie on September 7, 1999 on VHS and DVD. It was later re-released on DVD on January 13, 2004. Due to ADV Films being dissolved and its assets being spun off into Section23 Films and Sentai Filmworks, both releases are now out of print.
Critical reception
The March 1996 issue of the DieHard Magazine gave the OVA a positive review stating that "all in all, the artwork looks amazing, plus it's an O.V.A., so the artists have been given quite an extensive budget. The animation is much cleaner than you could ever expect from a TV show, but the characters on-screen presence is what really makes Sonic so cool. It's like playing the game, but in anime form. After the U.S. Sonic cartoon has been canceled, this anime is definitely a good choice." Henry Gilbert of GamesRadar approved of the concept of a colorful, fast-paced anime adaptation of Sonic, noting the fights between Sonic and his evil counterpart, Metal Sonic, as "cool." This is unfortunately accompanied by "scenes of slapstick humor, anime cliches, and childish voice acting" as well as the "perpetually annoying" Sara. Chris Shepard of Anime News Network praised the OVA for its non-traditional action and said it was "good for the Sonic fans". He called the English dub poor, and said the story "strayed from the video games a little too much" and it was "very basic". John Sinnott of DVD Talk remarked "it didn’t really pull me in at any time."
