You know how Chris has a weird way of counting Sonichu episodes?
He refuses to count a couple of them, making the amount of episodes inconsistent.
The reason for this is a lost episode.
Finding details about this missing episode is difficult. From what has been pieced together, the lost episode was written entirely by Chris. During production of the entire issue, Chris started to act strangely. He was very quiet, seemed nervous and morbid. Mentioning this to anyone who was present results in them getting very angry, and forbidding you to ever mention it to Chris.
I first heard of it at an event where Anna McLerran was speaking. Someone in the crowd asked about the episode, and Anna simply left the stage, ending the presentation hours early. The episode's production number was 22, the title was Dead Barb. The episode in its place, A Sonichu Christmas, was made later and given Dead Barb's place in the issue to hide the latter's existence.
In addition to getting angry, asking anyone who was in contact with Chris about this will cause them to do everything they can to stop you from directly communicating with Chris. At Bronycon, I managed to follow him after he spoke to the crowd, and eventually had a chance to talk to him alone as he was leaving the building. He didn't seem upset that I had followed him, probably expected a typical encounter with an obsessive fan. When I mentioned the lost episode though, all color drained from his face and he started trembling. When I asked him if he could tell me any details, he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. He grabbed a piece of paper, wrote something on it, and handed it to me. He begged me never to mention the episode again.
The piece of paper had a website address on it, I would rather not say what it was, for reasons you'll see in a second. I entered the address into my browser, and I came to a site that was completely black, except for a line of yellow text, a download link. I clicked on it, and a file started downloading. Once the file was downloaded, my computer went crazy, it was the worst virus I had ever seen. System restore didn't work, the entire computer had to be rebooted. Before doing this though, I copied the file onto a CD. I tried to open it on my now empty computer, and as I suspected, there was a jpg of a Sonichu comic on it.
The episode started off like any other episode, but had very poor quality artwork. If you've seen the original artwork for Sonichu Special 3, it was similar, but less stable. The first act was fairly normal, but the way the characters acted was a little off. Sonichu seemed angrier, Magi-chan seemed depressed, Chris seemed anxious, Barb seemed to have genuine anger and hatred for her son.
The episode was about the Chaotic Combo and Chris going on a plane trip, near the end of the first act, the plane was taking off. Barb was sitting in her chair, as you'd expect. However, as the plane was about 50 feet off the ground, the floor of the plane beneath Barb broke and she was sucked out.
At the beginning of the series, Chris had an idea that the art style of the Sonichu world represented life, and that death turned things more realistic. This was used in this episode. The picture of Barb's corpse was barely recognizable, he took full advantage of it not having to move, and made an almost photo-realistic drawing of her dead body.
Act one ended with the shot of Barb's corpse. When act two started, Sonichu, Magi-chan, and Chris were sitting at their table, crying. The crying went on and on, it got more pained, and looked more realistic, better art than you would think possible. The art started to decay even more as they cried. The characters could barely be made out, they were stretching and blurring, they looked like deformed shadows with random bright colors thrown on them.
There were faces looking in the window, flashing in and out so you were never sure what they looked like.
This crying went on for all of act two.
Act three opened with a title card saying one year had passed. Sonichu, Magi-chan, and Chris were skeletally thin, and still sitting at the table. There was no sign of Robbie Sonee or Patti-chan.
They decided to visit Barb's grave. CWCville was completely deserted, and as they walked to the cemetery the houses became more and more decrepit. They all looked abandoned. When they got to the grave, Barb's body was just lying in front of her tombstone, looking just like it did at the end of act one.
The family started crying again. Eventually they stopped, and just stared at Barb's body. The camera zoomed in on Chris's face.
The view zoomed out as the episode came to a close. The tombstones in the background had the names of every Sonichu guest star on them. Some that no one had heard of in 2009, some that haven't been on the comic yet. All of them had death dates on them.
For guests who died since, like BILLY MAYS and Panda Halo,, the dates were when they would die. The credits seemed handwritten. The final image was the Sonichu cast on their couch, but all drawn in hyper realistic, lifeless style of Barb's corpse.
A thought occurred to me after seeing the episode for the first time, you could try to use the tombstones to predict the death of living Sonichu guest stars, but there's something odd about most of the ones who haven't died yet.
All of their deaths are listed as the same date.
